I assume the French and others will have lost their rights to fish in UK waters altogether then
This is an elephant-sized trap for the Prime Minister. If he sticks to his "no extension" guns, the EU and some in this country will criticise him (perhaps fairly) for walking away when a Deal was within reach. If he continues the negotiation, the Faragists will claim he is back-sliding on his EU principals, he's selling out and not to be trusted.
Earlier, Sturgeon said that Scotland was going into Tier 4 as a preventive measure. Hopefully Bozo was watching and will do the same for the rest of England rather than wait until we are deeper in the shit.
They have no food, no water, and no toilets. It is a disgraceful failure of basic welfare, we should be ashamed. It may not be “our” fault but these are people trying to do an honest job on UK soil.
Agreed.
And aside from the moral disgrace, as @RochdalePioneers pointed out, should we No Deal, it’s going to be quite difficult to persuade a lot of continental hauliers to bother visiting the UK. More so now.
It is unacceptable for these truckers to have no facilities and Shapps needs to deal with it
I see the ridiculous gaslighting continues. The people who are responsible for Brexit are those who voted and/or campaigned for Cameron, Brexit, May and Johnson. No-one else. Brexit is yours, for better or worse. For God's sake, have the guts to own it.
It's pretty silly, indeed raving bonkers, to blame the one person who campaigned vigorously for Remain for Brexit. And also pretty silly to blame those who voted for Theresa May: Brexit had already been decided by then, and if she had had the majority she asked for and needed, she'd have been able to deliver it in the sensible way she was planning, without Labour and other opposition parties helping (and actively voting with) the ERG to torpedo it.
I'll grant you the other two categories.
Cameron richly deserves his share of the blame/kudos for Brexit, given that he was the one who called the referendum and set out its terms in the first place. May campaigned for PM on a mandate of implementing Brexit, and it was she who invoked Article 50 with no proper plan in place. So she also shares in the honours.
Cameron was right to call the referendum, which he didn't exactly hurry into. Not that he had any choice - but are you seriously suggesting that the voice of the majority should not have been heard, just because you don't like the answer?
Theresa May stonewalled Article 50 for over nine months, which was hardly rushing into it, with a two-year extendable implementation period. Those who voted Leave would have had a very, very legitimate grievance if she'd waited even longer. What's more, it was impossible to have a 'proper plan' in place, not least because the EU, to their great discredit and contrary to their own interests, had the brain-dead idea of insisting that we couldn't negotiate the final destination until after we'd agreed to a transition to somewhere unknown and actually left.
At the time Cameron named the date of the referendum, you were predicting Remain would win by 70-30. You shared his delusions about his strategy.
I thought Remain would win 58:42 at the start.
I was wrong too.
They lost because people like you changed their minds, which, despite Richard Nabavi's insistence that Cameron was practically perfect in every way, was mainly down to Cameron's failed strategy.
I assume the French and others will have lost their rights to fish in UK waters altogether then
This is an elephant-sized trap for the Prime Minister. If he sticks to his "no extension" guns, the EU and some in this country will criticise him (perhaps fairly) for walking away when a Deal was within reach. If he continues the negotiation, the Faragists will claim he is back-sliding on his EU principals, he's selling out and not to be trusted.
CHB is obsessed with lockdowns. He calls for them about 3 times daily atm.
It is the right thing to do, it's clearly time.
Maybe where you are. Here in Dorset, not so much.
Trouble is, it's spreading pretty fast westwards (starting in Kent) along the south coast and could reach Dorset sooner than you think. A few weeks ago there were hardly any cases in Hastings at all; now, it is one of the worst places in the country. Cases, and proportions, have shot up from very low numbers in Eastbourne, Brighton, Crawley, Lewes - so it's already spread from Kent to throughout Sussex. Portsmouth is already struggling with high numbers, so is Southampton. Bournemouth has had a lot of cases already. So I don't think Dorset is immune (!) at all.
It does appear that areas in Tier 2 that are adjacent to areas in Tier 4 are seeing exponential growth, and of course that will ripple out swiftly.
You can see that in our part of the world. North Hertfordshire, where I live, is in tier 4 along with the rest of the county and, despite being the least worst of all the districts, is now comfortably in excess of 200 cases per 100,000 for the last week. Tier 2 South Cambs, immediately to the North of us, is approximately as bad. To the East, the three remaining Tier 2 districts in Essex are all worse (and Uttlesford significantly so.) The Plague is accelerating almost everywhere, albeit from different starting points and at different rates. Even comparatively remote and hitherto lightly affected areas like Herefordshire and North Norfolk are now beginning to be hit harder.
I don't see how a national lockdown (including, if the Government has any sense left at all, closure of educational institutions) can be avoided from this position. We're going to need to go back pretty much to Lockdown 1.0, save for a more permissive attitude to outdoor exercise, for all but especially for shielders, and stick with it until we're far enough into the vaccination programme to get away with loosening restrictions.
They have no food, no water, and no toilets. It is a disgraceful failure of basic welfare, we should be ashamed. It may not be “our” fault but these are people trying to do an honest job on UK soil.
Agreed.
And aside from the moral disgrace, as @RochdalePioneers pointed out, should we No Deal, it’s going to be quite difficult to persuade a lot of continental hauliers to bother visiting the UK. More so now.
It is unacceptable for these truckers to have no facilities and Shapps needs to deal with it
They have no food, no water, and no toilets. It is a disgraceful failure of basic welfare, we should be ashamed. It may not be “our” fault but these are people trying to do an honest job on UK soil.
Obviously they are getting emotional. Their families too, probably even their employers.
What happens then when our government gets a dual carriageway full of positive test results, and hands them out to these people?
😟
Then we put them in quarantine hotels, while saying sorry. As happens in other civilised countries. It’s not like there’s a lack of empty hotels.
I assume the French and others will have lost their rights to fish in UK waters altogether then
This is an elephant-sized trap for the Prime Minister. If he sticks to his "no extension" guns, the EU and some in this country will criticise him (perhaps fairly) for walking away when a Deal was within reach. If he continues the negotiation, the Faragists will claim he is back-sliding on his EU principals, he's selling out and not to be trusted.
I assume the French and others will have lost their rights to fish in UK waters altogether then
This is an elephant-sized trap for the Prime Minister. If he sticks to his "no extension" guns, the EU and some in this country will criticise him (perhaps fairly) for walking away when a Deal was within reach. If he continues the negotiation, the Faragists will claim he is back-sliding on his EU principals, he's selling out and not to be trusted.
I think it just means they will negotiate after the transition is over, rather than anything about an extension.
Yes, that may be what the EU means but that's not how it will be reported or viewed over here. Some will argue the Prime Minister hasn't kept his word which was "no continuation of transition after 31/12". Terms like "capitulation" or "selling out" will be coined widely but that's the price of making such a hostage to fortune.
Under the current circumstances, prolonging the negotiation period for 90 days would have seemed more than reasonable - unless you take the view Johnson's endgame was always to walk away without a Deal.
Come back to me in a few weeks, we will regret not taking action now.
Time to lockdown the entirety of England.
I think the regional approach is better. I think that is how many countries have faced this issue. Locking down the entire country because of an outbreak in one area is a bit of overkill.
The Tier system has comprehensively failed. It's time to accept that.
Yet it works in other countries. Shutting down the entire country for an outbreak in one part is not the answer.
It's not an outbreak in one place, it's spreading everywhere.
You have your point of view, I think it's going to come to be a very poor one. We will see.
Then that argues for an adjustment to the restrictions in each region. It doesn't mean one size fits all.
I think a regional approach simply doesn't work, as I said, we will see.
The regional approach worked ok in Scotland. The problem is that the increased transmissibility of the new virus renders anything below tier 4 insufficient to keep R below 1, so I agree it needs to be tier 4 everywhere now.
And the jury is out on whether tier 4 is enough. Good job it will effectively be tier 5 for the next couple weeks due to the school holidays. God help us if that's not enough.
My amateur hunch, from reading the various expert views, is that Tier 4/5 will not be enough. Supercovid is that bad. I fervently pray I am wrong.
If I am right we are in for a horrific winter, until the vaccines really start to kick in, around March/April, when a significant proportion of the country will be invulnerable and the virus will find it harder and harder to spread
I assume the French and others will have lost their rights to fish in UK waters altogether then
This is an elephant-sized trap for the Prime Minister. If he sticks to his "no extension" guns, the EU and some in this country will criticise him (perhaps fairly) for walking away when a Deal was within reach. If he continues the negotiation, the Faragists will claim he is back-sliding on his EU principals, he's selling out and not to be trusted.
And, for anyone who could see further ahead than the end of his todger, that was always the endgame.
The EU can just sit there and wait, because they're not the ones moving. And however you slice and dice the figures, they can afford to wait more than the UK can.
But to calculate the chess moves that far would require a Prime Minister who can see further ahead than the end of... you get the idea.
They have no food, no water, and no toilets. It is a disgraceful failure of basic welfare, we should be ashamed. It may not be “our” fault but these are people trying to do an honest job on UK soil.
Agreed.
And aside from the moral disgrace, as @RochdalePioneers pointed out, should we No Deal, it’s going to be quite difficult to persuade a lot of continental hauliers to bother visiting the UK. More so now.
Continental firms and drivers have already started their boycott - signs on EU registered trucks saying they don't serve the UK. But its not just them. The kind of transit time it takes to get a truck through a full customs check means that a massive queue is inevitable. It costs money to tie vehicles stock and drivers up in a mega queue, so many firms just won't bother.
Then we have to consider the costs. Quotes to send a full load from EU to UK have escalated significantly - if you can find one. Again, a deal will reduce / remove tariff costs added on top, but the true problem and cost are the customs checks.
I assume the French and others will have lost their rights to fish in UK waters altogether then
This is an elephant-sized trap for the Prime Minister. If he sticks to his "no extension" guns, the EU and some in this country will criticise him (perhaps fairly) for walking away when a Deal was within reach. If he continues the negotiation, the Faragists will claim he is back-sliding on his EU principals, he's selling out and not to be trusted.
I think it just means they will negotiate after the transition is over, rather than anything about an extension.
Yes, that may be what the EU means but that's not how it will be reported or viewed over here. Some will argue the Prime Minister hasn't kept his word which was "no continuation of transition after 31/12". Terms like "capitulation" or "selling out" will be coined widely but that's the price of making such a hostage to fortune.
Under the current circumstances, prolonging the negotiation period for 90 days would have seemed more than reasonable - unless you take the view Johnson's endgame was always to walk away without a Deal.
I suspect a big song and dance will be made of the fact the transition period will have ended without a deal. It won't exactly go unnoticed.
Come back to me in a few weeks, we will regret not taking action now.
Time to lockdown the entirety of England.
I think the regional approach is better. I think that is how many countries have faced this issue. Locking down the entire country because of an outbreak in one area is a bit of overkill.
The Tier system has comprehensively failed. It's time to accept that.
Yet it works in other countries. Shutting down the entire country for an outbreak in one part is not the answer.
It's not an outbreak in one place, it's spreading everywhere.
You have your point of view, I think it's going to come to be a very poor one. We will see.
Then that argues for an adjustment to the restrictions in each region. It doesn't mean one size fits all.
I think a regional approach simply doesn't work, as I said, we will see.
The regional approach worked ok in Scotland. The problem is that the increased transmissibility of the new virus renders anything below tier 4 insufficient to keep R below 1, so I agree it needs to be tier 4 everywhere now.
And the jury is out on whether tier 4 is enough. Good job it will effectively be tier 5 for the next couple weeks due to the school holidays. God help us if that's not enough.
My amateur hunch, from reading the various expert views, is that Tier 4/5 will not be enough. Supercovid is that bad. I fervently pray I am wrong.
If I am right we are in for a horrific winter, until the vaccines really start to kick in, around March/April, when a significant proportion of the country will be invulnerable and the virus will find it harder and harder to spread
Um. Supercovid can't leap through walls.
If we all stay at home it can't spread.
The higher R is largely down to a longer asymptomatic period.
The final deadline is and always has been 22:59 on the day. If a deal is agreed then there will just be an interim agreement to keep things going for a few days/weeks.
The Brexit deal will be announced this Thursday early in the afternoon. I say that on basis it’s optimal moment for little scrutiny and quick rubber stamp.
The final deadline is and always has been 22:59 on the day. If a deal is agreed then there will just be an interim agreement to keep things going for a few days/weeks.
The deadline has long been passed in the real world. Politicians may want to talk until the last minute but business can't wait for them.
Odds must be reasonably high, given the limited sanitary facilities that there's a covid outbreak at Manston ? Think I'd keep a small spade in the trailer with me and swerve the portaloos tbh.
Come back to me in a few weeks, we will regret not taking action now.
Time to lockdown the entirety of England.
I think the regional approach is better. I think that is how many countries have faced this issue. Locking down the entire country because of an outbreak in one area is a bit of overkill.
The Tier system has comprehensively failed. It's time to accept that.
Yet it works in other countries. Shutting down the entire country for an outbreak in one part is not the answer.
It's not an outbreak in one place, it's spreading everywhere.
You have your point of view, I think it's going to come to be a very poor one. We will see.
Then that argues for an adjustment to the restrictions in each region. It doesn't mean one size fits all.
I think a regional approach simply doesn't work, as I said, we will see.
The regional approach worked ok in Scotland. The problem is that the increased transmissibility of the new virus renders anything below tier 4 insufficient to keep R below 1, so I agree it needs to be tier 4 everywhere now.
And the jury is out on whether tier 4 is enough. Good job it will effectively be tier 5 for the next couple weeks due to the school holidays. God help us if that's not enough.
My amateur hunch, from reading the various expert views, is that Tier 4/5 will not be enough. Supercovid is that bad. I fervently pray I am wrong.
If I am right we are in for a horrific winter, until the vaccines really start to kick in, around March/April, when a significant proportion of the country will be invulnerable and the virus will find it harder and harder to spread
Um. Supercovid can't leap through walls.
If we all stay at home it can't spread.
The higher R is largely down to a longer asymptomatic period.
It hasn't grown legs.
But that’s exactly it. The only answer is Ultra-lockdown, a la Wuhan, where you weld everyone into their homes for several months. Is that do-able in a western democracy? I guess it will have to be, if it’s the only choice.
But wow. You can see why any politician - of any flavour - would be reluctant to go down that road.
Come back to me in a few weeks, we will regret not taking action now.
Time to lockdown the entirety of England.
I think the regional approach is better. I think that is how many countries have faced this issue. Locking down the entire country because of an outbreak in one area is a bit of overkill.
The Tier system has comprehensively failed. It's time to accept that.
Yet it works in other countries. Shutting down the entire country for an outbreak in one part is not the answer.
It's not an outbreak in one place, it's spreading everywhere.
You have your point of view, I think it's going to come to be a very poor one. We will see.
Then that argues for an adjustment to the restrictions in each region. It doesn't mean one size fits all.
I think a regional approach simply doesn't work, as I said, we will see.
The regional approach worked ok in Scotland. The problem is that the increased transmissibility of the new virus renders anything below tier 4 insufficient to keep R below 1, so I agree it needs to be tier 4 everywhere now.
And the jury is out on whether tier 4 is enough. Good job it will effectively be tier 5 for the next couple weeks due to the school holidays. God help us if that's not enough.
In the short term, Christmas gatherings are still being authorised in most of the country and a lot of people in the Tier 4 areas will just go ahead with their gatherings in defiance of instruction, so we still have some room to make more progress once that's out of the way. Tier 4 also permits the continuation of in-person education, so as things currently stand the schools will be going back. "Tier 5" would do away with this (and other unwise tweaks like allowing communal worship in churches and other religious establishments) and essentially herald a return to a lockdown similar to that which we had last Spring.
Now, if and when that happens then it would help if the Government would just call a spade a spade and announce a lockdown, rather than inventing another new name for it. The tier system is a busted flush. Limping along with it, and creating new tier numbers in a pathetic attempt to suggest that a lockdown isn't happening, is just an insult to everybody's intelligence.
Come back to me in a few weeks, we will regret not taking action now.
Time to lockdown the entirety of England.
I think the regional approach is better. I think that is how many countries have faced this issue. Locking down the entire country because of an outbreak in one area is a bit of overkill.
The Tier system has comprehensively failed. It's time to accept that.
Yet it works in other countries. Shutting down the entire country for an outbreak in one part is not the answer.
It's not an outbreak in one place, it's spreading everywhere.
You have your point of view, I think it's going to come to be a very poor one. We will see.
Then that argues for an adjustment to the restrictions in each region. It doesn't mean one size fits all.
I think a regional approach simply doesn't work, as I said, we will see.
The regional approach worked ok in Scotland. The problem is that the increased transmissibility of the new virus renders anything below tier 4 insufficient to keep R below 1, so I agree it needs to be tier 4 everywhere now.
And the jury is out on whether tier 4 is enough. Good job it will effectively be tier 5 for the next couple weeks due to the school holidays. God help us if that's not enough.
My amateur hunch, from reading the various expert views, is that Tier 4/5 will not be enough. Supercovid is that bad. I fervently pray I am wrong.
If I am right we are in for a horrific winter, until the vaccines really start to kick in, around March/April, when a significant proportion of the country will be invulnerable and the virus will find it harder and harder to spread
Um. Supercovid can't leap through walls.
If we all stay at home it can't spread.
The higher R is largely down to a longer asymptomatic period.
It hasn't grown legs.
Covini, the character in Spitting Image, had lots of little hands. And didn’t like number seventeen being tickled.
Brexit was and remains a big mistake for the UK. May's Deal was to some extent an attempt to mitigate the damage, which is why most Leavers didn't support it. They didn't vote for damage limitation.
The dilemma for Remainers, who were the sensible people at least at the time of the referendum, was whether to aim to mitigate the damage or to try to prevent it happening. Arguably they should have plumped for damage limitation rather than prevention, but it's not quite straightforward.
May's Deal prospects were blighted anyway, despite any Remainer support, because not a lot of people in the Conservative and the soon to be enjoined Brexit Party supported it.
I assume the French and others will have lost their rights to fish in UK waters altogether then
The clock will stop at 23:59 GMT on 31 Dec. Someone, with everyone's agreement, will reach inside and halt the pendulum. It will be restarted sometime early next year. The UK will have ended the transition by 31 Dec even though it is actually April.
They have no food, no water, and no toilets. It is a disgraceful failure of basic welfare, we should be ashamed. It may not be “our” fault but these are people trying to do an honest job on UK soil.
Agreed.
And aside from the moral disgrace, as @RochdalePioneers pointed out, should we No Deal, it’s going to be quite difficult to persuade a lot of continental hauliers to bother visiting the UK. More so now.
It is unacceptable for these truckers to have no facilities and Shapps needs to deal with it
Come back to me in a few weeks, we will regret not taking action now.
Time to lockdown the entirety of England.
I think the regional approach is better. I think that is how many countries have faced this issue. Locking down the entire country because of an outbreak in one area is a bit of overkill.
The Tier system has comprehensively failed. It's time to accept that.
Yet it works in other countries. Shutting down the entire country for an outbreak in one part is not the answer.
It's not an outbreak in one place, it's spreading everywhere.
You have your point of view, I think it's going to come to be a very poor one. We will see.
Then that argues for an adjustment to the restrictions in each region. It doesn't mean one size fits all.
I think a regional approach simply doesn't work, as I said, we will see.
The regional approach worked ok in Scotland. The problem is that the increased transmissibility of the new virus renders anything below tier 4 insufficient to keep R below 1, so I agree it needs to be tier 4 everywhere now.
And the jury is out on whether tier 4 is enough. Good job it will effectively be tier 5 for the next couple weeks due to the school holidays. God help us if that's not enough.
My amateur hunch, from reading the various expert views, is that Tier 4/5 will not be enough. Supercovid is that bad. I fervently pray I am wrong.
If I am right we are in for a horrific winter, until the vaccines really start to kick in, around March/April, when a significant proportion of the country will be invulnerable and the virus will find it harder and harder to spread
The narrative on here is very much about the UK and mainly England but the situation facing us must be mirrored across Europe but I assume they are a couple of weeks behind
Locking down the whole of the UK may come about shortly, but locking down each and every country in Europe and closing all their internal borders seems a very likely outcome very soon
They have no food, no water, and no toilets. It is a disgraceful failure of basic welfare, we should be ashamed. It may not be “our” fault but these are people trying to do an honest job on UK soil.
Agreed.
And aside from the moral disgrace, as @RochdalePioneers pointed out, should we No Deal, it’s going to be quite difficult to persuade a lot of continental hauliers to bother visiting the UK. More so now.
Continental firms and drivers have already started their boycott - signs on EU registered trucks saying they don't serve the UK. But its not just them. The kind of transit time it takes to get a truck through a full customs check means that a massive queue is inevitable. It costs money to tie vehicles stock and drivers up in a mega queue, so many firms just won't bother.
Then we have to consider the costs. Quotes to send a full load from EU to UK have escalated significantly - if you can find one. Again, a deal will reduce / remove tariff costs added on top, but the true problem and cost are the customs checks.
So you're saying there'll be less traffic going through Dover?
The pure joy of Corona parenting. Into the third hour of a row, the third row this week on why son cannot accept his girlfriend’s parents invitation to go round to their house.
He is chucking the local stats at me, which in our ward remain flat in the past week despite the country wide outbreak. He is arguing that it makes no sense that he can play rugby or that we can see family on Friday.
In the TV interviews with these lorry drivers many of them seem to have small kitchen facilities in their lorries. Which kind of makes sense if they are always on the road all day.
Do they have tend to have WC facilities? I wouldn't have thought so.
I assume the French and others will have lost their rights to fish in UK waters altogether then
The clock will stop at 23:59 GMT on 31 Dec. Someone, with everyone's agreement, will reach inside and halt the pendulum. It will be restarted sometime early next year. The UK will have ended the transition by 31 Dec even though it is actually April.
Come back to me in a few weeks, we will regret not taking action now.
Time to lockdown the entirety of England.
I think the regional approach is better. I think that is how many countries have faced this issue. Locking down the entire country because of an outbreak in one area is a bit of overkill.
The Tier system has comprehensively failed. It's time to accept that.
Yet it works in other countries. Shutting down the entire country for an outbreak in one part is not the answer.
It's not an outbreak in one place, it's spreading everywhere.
You have your point of view, I think it's going to come to be a very poor one. We will see.
Then that argues for an adjustment to the restrictions in each region. It doesn't mean one size fits all.
I think a regional approach simply doesn't work, as I said, we will see.
The regional approach worked ok in Scotland. The problem is that the increased transmissibility of the new virus renders anything below tier 4 insufficient to keep R below 1, so I agree it needs to be tier 4 everywhere now.
And the jury is out on whether tier 4 is enough. Good job it will effectively be tier 5 for the next couple weeks due to the school holidays. God help us if that's not enough.
My amateur hunch, from reading the various expert views, is that Tier 4/5 will not be enough. Supercovid is that bad. I fervently pray I am wrong.
If I am right we are in for a horrific winter, until the vaccines really start to kick in, around March/April, when a significant proportion of the country will be invulnerable and the virus will find it harder and harder to spread
The narrative on here is very much about the UK and mainly England but the situation facing us must be mirrored across Europe but I assume they are a couple of weeks behind
Locking down the whole of the UK may come about shortly, but locking down each and every country in Europe and closing all their internal borders seems a very likely outcome very soon
Yes, that is definitely the logic of Supercovid - if the scientists are correct.
Right now we are Plague Island, just as we were Worst Death Toll Archipelago, back in the spring, for a while. But each country gets its time in the spotlight, with this virus. There is a high chance Supercovid will be stomping all over France or Poland or wherever, in a month or two, and we will all be marvelling at the new horror overseas
They have no food, no water, and no toilets. It is a disgraceful failure of basic welfare, we should be ashamed. It may not be “our” fault but these are people trying to do an honest job on UK soil.
Agreed.
And aside from the moral disgrace, as @RochdalePioneers pointed out, should we No Deal, it’s going to be quite difficult to persuade a lot of continental hauliers to bother visiting the UK. More so now.
Continental firms and drivers have already started their boycott - signs on EU registered trucks saying they don't serve the UK. But its not just them. The kind of transit time it takes to get a truck through a full customs check means that a massive queue is inevitable. It costs money to tie vehicles stock and drivers up in a mega queue, so many firms just won't bother.
Then we have to consider the costs. Quotes to send a full load from EU to UK have escalated significantly - if you can find one. Again, a deal will reduce / remove tariff costs added on top, but the true problem and cost are the customs checks.
So you're saying there'll be less traffic going through Dover?
So firms are adjusting already?
Yes they are adjusting by stopping shipments. We aren't exporting. We aren't importing.
Honestly, they need someone from the government on the telly most days of the week telling us how the vaccination programme is going, how many people done, progress on the approvals, progress on the deliveries, etc. etc.
It may well be going well quietly in the background but if they want to lockdown the whole country again until Easter then they need to get out there and show a fucking sense of urgency and that there's actually some sort of end to all this coming.
In the TV interviews with these lorry drivers many of them seem to have small kitchen facilities in their lorries. Which kind of makes sense if they are always on the road all day.
Do they have tend to have WC facilities? I wouldn't have thought so.
Of course! Why do you think bottles of Oasis have large necks!
They have no food, no water, and no toilets. It is a disgraceful failure of basic welfare, we should be ashamed. It may not be “our” fault but these are people trying to do an honest job on UK soil.
Agreed.
And aside from the moral disgrace, as @RochdalePioneers pointed out, should we No Deal, it’s going to be quite difficult to persuade a lot of continental hauliers to bother visiting the UK. More so now.
Continental firms and drivers have already started their boycott - signs on EU registered trucks saying they don't serve the UK. But its not just them. The kind of transit time it takes to get a truck through a full customs check means that a massive queue is inevitable. It costs money to tie vehicles stock and drivers up in a mega queue, so many firms just won't bother.
Then we have to consider the costs. Quotes to send a full load from EU to UK have escalated significantly - if you can find one. Again, a deal will reduce / remove tariff costs added on top, but the true problem and cost are the customs checks.
So you're saying there'll be less traffic going through Dover?
So firms are adjusting already?
Yes they are adjusting by stopping shipments. We aren't exporting. We aren't importing.
Great success!
Indeed. And since they have a mammoth trade surplus with us we will just have to take our business elsewhere then.
Come back to me in a few weeks, we will regret not taking action now.
Time to lockdown the entirety of England.
I think the regional approach is better. I think that is how many countries have faced this issue. Locking down the entire country because of an outbreak in one area is a bit of overkill.
The Tier system has comprehensively failed. It's time to accept that.
Yet it works in other countries. Shutting down the entire country for an outbreak in one part is not the answer.
It's not an outbreak in one place, it's spreading everywhere.
You have your point of view, I think it's going to come to be a very poor one. We will see.
Then that argues for an adjustment to the restrictions in each region. It doesn't mean one size fits all.
I think a regional approach simply doesn't work, as I said, we will see.
The regional approach worked ok in Scotland. The problem is that the increased transmissibility of the new virus renders anything below tier 4 insufficient to keep R below 1, so I agree it needs to be tier 4 everywhere now.
And the jury is out on whether tier 4 is enough. Good job it will effectively be tier 5 for the next couple weeks due to the school holidays. God help us if that's not enough.
My amateur hunch, from reading the various expert views, is that Tier 4/5 will not be enough. Supercovid is that bad. I fervently pray I am wrong.
If I am right we are in for a horrific winter, until the vaccines really start to kick in, around March/April, when a significant proportion of the country will be invulnerable and the virus will find it harder and harder to spread
Um. Supercovid can't leap through walls.
If we all stay at home it can't spread.
The higher R is largely down to a longer asymptomatic period.
It hasn't grown legs.
But that’s exactly it. The only answer is Ultra-lockdown, a la Wuhan, where you weld everyone into their homes for several months. Is that do-able in a western democracy? I guess it will have to be, if it’s the only choice.
But wow. You can see why any politician - of any flavour - would be reluctant to go down that road.
That's impossible. I would suggest that the end state would be a lockdown almost the same as that in March and April, where people are allowed out of their homes only for work (if it can't be done from home,) for essential shopping, to attend medical appointments and for exercise. The main difference being that, now we've established that outdoor settings are very much safer than indoors, and that (socially distanced) outdoor exercise is good for physical and mental health, people should be encouraged to do as much of that as possible - crap weather allowing - and that should include shielders, who previously were effectively welded up inside their homes. And education must go back online, except for the relatively small numbers of children who could still be sent to school under the arrangements in force last Spring.
If that's not sufficient to stop the thing in its tracks, or at least slow it down enough to limit the damage whilst we race to get the vaccinations completed, then we're stuffed.
I assume the French and others will have lost their rights to fish in UK waters altogether then
The clock will stop at 23:59 GMT on 31 Dec. Someone, with everyone's agreement, will reach inside and halt the pendulum. It will be restarted sometime early next year. The UK will have ended the transition by 31 Dec even though it is actually April.
They have no food, no water, and no toilets. It is a disgraceful failure of basic welfare, we should be ashamed. It may not be “our” fault but these are people trying to do an honest job on UK soil.
Agreed.
And aside from the moral disgrace, as @RochdalePioneers pointed out, should we No Deal, it’s going to be quite difficult to persuade a lot of continental hauliers to bother visiting the UK. More so now.
Continental firms and drivers have already started their boycott - signs on EU registered trucks saying they don't serve the UK. But its not just them. The kind of transit time it takes to get a truck through a full customs check means that a massive queue is inevitable. It costs money to tie vehicles stock and drivers up in a mega queue, so many firms just won't bother.
Then we have to consider the costs. Quotes to send a full load from EU to UK have escalated significantly - if you can find one. Again, a deal will reduce / remove tariff costs added on top, but the true problem and cost are the customs checks.
So you're saying there'll be less traffic going through Dover?
So firms are adjusting already?
Yes they are adjusting by stopping shipments. We aren't exporting. We aren't importing.
Great success!
And whilst I'm not an economist, my understanding is that every bit of free trade is a good thing for both parties, since both sides exchange something they want less for something they want more. And whatever else they did, SM and CU unblocked a lot of trade.
They have no food, no water, and no toilets. It is a disgraceful failure of basic welfare, we should be ashamed. It may not be “our” fault but these are people trying to do an honest job on UK soil.
Agreed.
And aside from the moral disgrace, as @RochdalePioneers pointed out, should we No Deal, it’s going to be quite difficult to persuade a lot of continental hauliers to bother visiting the UK. More so now.
Continental firms and drivers have already started their boycott - signs on EU registered trucks saying they don't serve the UK. But its not just them. The kind of transit time it takes to get a truck through a full customs check means that a massive queue is inevitable. It costs money to tie vehicles stock and drivers up in a mega queue, so many firms just won't bother.
Then we have to consider the costs. Quotes to send a full load from EU to UK have escalated significantly - if you can find one. Again, a deal will reduce / remove tariff costs added on top, but the true problem and cost are the customs checks.
So you're saying there'll be less traffic going through Dover?
So firms are adjusting already?
Yes they are adjusting by stopping shipments. We aren't exporting. We aren't importing.
Great success!
Indeed. And since they have a mammoth trade surplus with us we will just have to take our business elsewhere then.
Lol - absolutely thats how trade works. We will stop importing engine parts from the BMW factory in Germany to the BMW factory in England and import them from Mexico or somewhere else.
I assume the French and others will have lost their rights to fish in UK waters altogether then
The clock will stop at 23:59 GMT on 31 Dec. Someone, with everyone's agreement, will reach inside and halt the pendulum. It will be restarted sometime early next year. The UK will have ended the transition by 31 Dec even though it is actually April.
Honestly, they need someone from the government on the telly most days of the week telling us how the vaccination programme is going, how many people done, progress on the approvals, progress on the deliveries, etc. etc.
It may well be going well quietly in the background but if they want to lockdown the whole country again until Easter then they need to get out there and show a fucking sense of urgency and that there's actually some sort of end to all this coming.
Boris did yesterday and gave a figure of half a million. Not a bad start.
In the TV interviews with these lorry drivers many of them seem to have small kitchen facilities in their lorries. Which kind of makes sense if they are always on the road all day.
Do they have tend to have WC facilities? I wouldn't have thought so.
Apparently they are crapping by their own wheels. Gross. FFS get them some portaloos, food and water. It’s 4000 men, who need somewhere to do their biz. It’s not like organising D-Day
And, as has been pointed out, this is a Covid Emergency waiting to happen, if the bug visits them. THEN we have a real problem
They have no food, no water, and no toilets. It is a disgraceful failure of basic welfare, we should be ashamed. It may not be “our” fault but these are people trying to do an honest job on UK soil.
Agreed.
And aside from the moral disgrace, as @RochdalePioneers pointed out, should we No Deal, it’s going to be quite difficult to persuade a lot of continental hauliers to bother visiting the UK. More so now.
Continental firms and drivers have already started their boycott - signs on EU registered trucks saying they don't serve the UK. But its not just them. The kind of transit time it takes to get a truck through a full customs check means that a massive queue is inevitable. It costs money to tie vehicles stock and drivers up in a mega queue, so many firms just won't bother.
Then we have to consider the costs. Quotes to send a full load from EU to UK have escalated significantly - if you can find one. Again, a deal will reduce / remove tariff costs added on top, but the true problem and cost are the customs checks.
So you're saying there'll be less traffic going through Dover?
So firms are adjusting already?
The maddest post in the history of PB, if not the entire internet.
Come back to me in a few weeks, we will regret not taking action now.
Time to lockdown the entirety of England.
I think the regional approach is better. I think that is how many countries have faced this issue. Locking down the entire country because of an outbreak in one area is a bit of overkill.
The Tier system has comprehensively failed. It's time to accept that.
Yet it works in other countries. Shutting down the entire country for an outbreak in one part is not the answer.
It's not an outbreak in one place, it's spreading everywhere.
You have your point of view, I think it's going to come to be a very poor one. We will see.
Then that argues for an adjustment to the restrictions in each region. It doesn't mean one size fits all.
I think a regional approach simply doesn't work, as I said, we will see.
The regional approach worked ok in Scotland. The problem is that the increased transmissibility of the new virus renders anything below tier 4 insufficient to keep R below 1, so I agree it needs to be tier 4 everywhere now.
And the jury is out on whether tier 4 is enough. Good job it will effectively be tier 5 for the next couple weeks due to the school holidays. God help us if that's not enough.
My amateur hunch, from reading the various expert views, is that Tier 4/5 will not be enough. Supercovid is that bad. I fervently pray I am wrong.
If I am right we are in for a horrific winter, until the vaccines really start to kick in, around March/April, when a significant proportion of the country will be invulnerable and the virus will find it harder and harder to spread
The narrative on here is very much about the UK and mainly England but the situation facing us must be mirrored across Europe but I assume they are a couple of weeks behind
Locking down the whole of the UK may come about shortly, but locking down each and every country in Europe and closing all their internal borders seems a very likely outcome very soon
Yes, that is definitely the logic of Supercovid - if the scientists are correct.
Right now we are Plague Island, just as we were Worst Death Toll Archipelago, back in the spring, for a while. But each country gets its time in the spotlight, with this virus. There is a high chance Supercovid will be stomping all over France or Poland or wherever, in a month or two, and we will all be marvelling at the new horror overseas
It probably already is and it's just that we know it and have acted first. Other countries are probably shutting their border while it is already running rampant.
Case numbers are surging already all over the continent.
Honestly, they need someone from the government on the telly most days of the week telling us how the vaccination programme is going, how many people done, progress on the approvals, progress on the deliveries, etc. etc.
It may well be going well quietly in the background but if they want to lockdown the whole country again until Easter then they need to get out there and show a fucking sense of urgency and that there's actually some sort of end to all this coming.
Boris did yesterday and gave a figure of half a million. Not a bad start.
It's about the optics as much as it is the actual programme. Like I say, it does seem to be going quite quietly well in the background. Then make something proper of that, as opposed to just dropping it in as a sentence in a wider press conference which was mostly derided for being a bit pointless.
You can't tell there's any urgency to it at all.
God knows this Government needs some kind of win, and the public's patience is beginning to wear thin.
We can argue till the cows come home about the response of the various parts of the UK but the Sturgeon daily (or not quite as daily as it used to be but still most days) briefing has always provided a much clearer sense of message and connection than anything the UK government did.
Doing something like that but largely focused on the vaccination programme will actually show people that there's a genuine end-game here.
They have no food, no water, and no toilets. It is a disgraceful failure of basic welfare, we should be ashamed. It may not be “our” fault but these are people trying to do an honest job on UK soil.
Agreed.
And aside from the moral disgrace, as @RochdalePioneers pointed out, should we No Deal, it’s going to be quite difficult to persuade a lot of continental hauliers to bother visiting the UK. More so now.
Continental firms and drivers have already started their boycott - signs on EU registered trucks saying they don't serve the UK. But its not just them. The kind of transit time it takes to get a truck through a full customs check means that a massive queue is inevitable. It costs money to tie vehicles stock and drivers up in a mega queue, so many firms just won't bother.
Then we have to consider the costs. Quotes to send a full load from EU to UK have escalated significantly - if you can find one. Again, a deal will reduce / remove tariff costs added on top, but the true problem and cost are the customs checks.
So you're saying there'll be less traffic going through Dover?
So firms are adjusting already?
The maddest post in the history of PB, if not the entire internet.
No its fine. Lets take it step by step through the argument: 1. We have 9-10k trucks a day passing each way through Dover - Calais 2. Customs checks cuts that to perhaps 10-15% 3. "Just send the trucks to another port". Yes, with a longer sea crossing which needs boats that don't exist and would take hours longer at higher cost 4. "OK, so just trade with someone else" - yes, lets have that BMW engine plant in Birmingham source its components not from BMW Germany like now and instead ship them in from BMW America. Cos that would work 5. "Why do we need trade anyway. Bloody French ruining our brexit".
USA doesn't do genetic sequencing, so may have our supercovid or its own variants, just has no way of telling.
"This month, U.K. researchers have uploaded 2,131 full sequences to an international repository, GISAID. U.S. researchers, on the other hand, have uploaded only 36—despite this country having five times more people and hundreds of thousands of cases."
In the TV interviews with these lorry drivers many of them seem to have small kitchen facilities in their lorries. Which kind of makes sense if they are always on the road all day.
Do they have tend to have WC facilities? I wouldn't have thought so.
Apparently they are crapping by their own wheels. Gross. FFS get them some portaloos, food and water. It’s 4000 men, who need somewhere to do their biz. It’s not like organising D-Day
And, as has been pointed out, this is a Covid Emergency waiting to happen, if the bug visits them. THEN we have a real problem
What I don't understand is that this was supposed to be happening anyway within a week and a little bit. So does not say mucvh for UK Gmt planning, seeing as it's the hols soon anyway.
Come back to me in a few weeks, we will regret not taking action now.
Time to lockdown the entirety of England.
I think the regional approach is better. I think that is how many countries have faced this issue. Locking down the entire country because of an outbreak in one area is a bit of overkill.
The Tier system has comprehensively failed. It's time to accept that.
Yet it works in other countries. Shutting down the entire country for an outbreak in one part is not the answer.
It's not an outbreak in one place, it's spreading everywhere.
You have your point of view, I think it's going to come to be a very poor one. We will see.
Then that argues for an adjustment to the restrictions in each region. It doesn't mean one size fits all.
I think a regional approach simply doesn't work, as I said, we will see.
The regional approach worked ok in Scotland. The problem is that the increased transmissibility of the new virus renders anything below tier 4 insufficient to keep R below 1, so I agree it needs to be tier 4 everywhere now.
And the jury is out on whether tier 4 is enough. Good job it will effectively be tier 5 for the next couple weeks due to the school holidays. God help us if that's not enough.
My amateur hunch, from reading the various expert views, is that Tier 4/5 will not be enough. Supercovid is that bad. I fervently pray I am wrong.
If I am right we are in for a horrific winter, until the vaccines really start to kick in, around March/April, when a significant proportion of the country will be invulnerable and the virus will find it harder and harder to spread
Um. Supercovid can't leap through walls.
If we all stay at home it can't spread.
The higher R is largely down to a longer asymptomatic period.
It hasn't grown legs.
But that’s exactly it. The only answer is Ultra-lockdown, a la Wuhan, where you weld everyone into their homes for several months. Is that do-able in a western democracy? I guess it will have to be, if it’s the only choice.
But wow. You can see why any politician - of any flavour - would be reluctant to go down that road.
That's impossible. I would suggest that the end state would be a lockdown almost the same as that in March and April, where people are allowed out of their homes only for work (if it can't be done from home,) for essential shopping, to attend medical appointments and for exercise. The main difference being that, now we've established that outdoor settings are very much safer than indoors, and that (socially distanced) outdoor exercise is good for physical and mental health, people should be encouraged to do as much of that as possible - crap weather allowing - and that should include shielders, who previously were effectively welded up inside their homes. And education must go back online, except for the relatively small numbers of children who could still be sent to school under the arrangements in force last Spring.
If that's not sufficient to stop the thing in its tracks, or at least slow it down enough to limit the damage whilst we race to get the vaccinations completed, then we're stuffed.
Lockdown 1 - in the Spring - got R down to 0.8. If the pessimistic take on Supercovid is correct, and the new variant increases R by 0.4-0.9 (and likely nearer 0.9) your lockdown would not be enough. Plenty of key workers would still have to leave home (we are not all lawyers or bankers) they would get infected, they will then hit the hospitals, and the health system crashes.
As I say, let’s hope the pessimistic take is very wrong.
The big difference between now and last March is the vaccines. Hopefully AstraZeneca willl be approved just after Xmas. That releases millions of jabs, and will offer real cause for cautious and guarded optimism
In the TV interviews with these lorry drivers many of them seem to have small kitchen facilities in their lorries. Which kind of makes sense if they are always on the road all day.
Do they have tend to have WC facilities? I wouldn't have thought so.
Apparently they are crapping by their own wheels. Gross. FFS get them some portaloos, food and water. It’s 4000 men, who need somewhere to do their biz. It’s not like organising D-Day
And, as has been pointed out, this is a Covid Emergency waiting to happen, if the bug visits them. THEN we have a real problem
There's been absolutely no festivals this summer. Portaloo companies would love the business ! Is it beyond the wit of the Gov't to organise this, as well as pop up vans to get them all food ?
Come back to me in a few weeks, we will regret not taking action now.
Time to lockdown the entirety of England.
I think the regional approach is better. I think that is how many countries have faced this issue. Locking down the entire country because of an outbreak in one area is a bit of overkill.
The Tier system has comprehensively failed. It's time to accept that.
Yet it works in other countries. Shutting down the entire country for an outbreak in one part is not the answer.
It's not an outbreak in one place, it's spreading everywhere.
You have your point of view, I think it's going to come to be a very poor one. We will see.
Then that argues for an adjustment to the restrictions in each region. It doesn't mean one size fits all.
I think a regional approach simply doesn't work, as I said, we will see.
The regional approach worked ok in Scotland. The problem is that the increased transmissibility of the new virus renders anything below tier 4 insufficient to keep R below 1, so I agree it needs to be tier 4 everywhere now.
And the jury is out on whether tier 4 is enough. Good job it will effectively be tier 5 for the next couple weeks due to the school holidays. God help us if that's not enough.
My amateur hunch, from reading the various expert views, is that Tier 4/5 will not be enough. Supercovid is that bad. I fervently pray I am wrong.
If I am right we are in for a horrific winter, until the vaccines really start to kick in, around March/April, when a significant proportion of the country will be invulnerable and the virus will find it harder and harder to spread
The narrative on here is very much about the UK and mainly England but the situation facing us must be mirrored across Europe but I assume they are a couple of weeks behind
Locking down the whole of the UK may come about shortly, but locking down each and every country in Europe and closing all their internal borders seems a very likely outcome very soon
Yes, that is definitely the logic of Supercovid - if the scientists are correct.
Right now we are Plague Island, just as we were Worst Death Toll Archipelago, back in the spring, for a while. But each country gets its time in the spotlight, with this virus. There is a high chance Supercovid will be stomping all over France or Poland or wherever, in a month or two, and we will all be marvelling at the new horror overseas
Deep breath, optimistic take.
New Covid, like New Coke, is a bad thing. And there is a link between UK policy and mutations; the more virus there is around, the more chances it has to mutate, the more chance it has to become more annoying. Matt Ridley and his "we should let it rip so it can mutate into something benign" theory can get into the sea. Or one of the Ridley coal mines.
But.
Imagine if New Covid had been the first on the scene. Then, we really would have been stuffed; think how close to collapse the UK got. And Spain and Italy really would have tumbled into the abyss.
As it is, we know what helps better than 9 months ago. We know that a vaccine is on its way. If we have to go full-on lockdown, it is for a finite time. And, if we're lucky, the 0.4ish extra nastiness of the mutation can be counteracted by the 0.4ish change in R by closing schools. It will be rubbish, but a finite fixable amount of rubbish.
As it is, the UK is a few weeks ahead because of approving the first vaccine early. It is now a few weeks behind because of its terrible handling of wild Covid since July, really. Certainly since September. Overall, it will be a closer run thing than we would like, but we will survive.
Honestly, they need someone from the government on the telly most days of the week telling us how the vaccination programme is going, how many people done, progress on the approvals, progress on the deliveries, etc. etc.
It may well be going well quietly in the background but if they want to lockdown the whole country again until Easter then they need to get out there and show a fucking sense of urgency and that there's actually some sort of end to all this coming.
Boris did yesterday and gave a figure of half a million. Not a bad start.
It's about the optics as much as it is the actual programme. Like I say, it does seem to be going quite quietly well in the background. Then make something proper of that, as opposed to just dropping it in as a sentence in a wider press conference which was mostly derided for being a bit pointless.
You can't tell there's any urgency to it at all.
God knows this Government needs some kind of win, and the public's patience is beginning to wear thin.
We can argue till the cows come home about the response of the various parts of the UK but the Sturgeon daily (or not quite as daily as it used to be but still most days) briefing has always provided a much clearer sense of message and connection than anything the UK government did.
Doing something like that but largely focused on the vaccination programme will actually show people that there's a genuine end-game here.
Hopefully we might get a bit more of that when the rollout of Oxford finally gets going in earnest. One of the problems with Pfizer is that, yes, they're obviously getting the thing out as fast as possible, but even that process is causing ructions. Everybody wants it and there's obviously much more demand than supply. The GPs and hospitals that have yet to receive the first batch, and there are many, have already started moaning as a result.
I've been busy enacting our No Deal plans but the rumour doing the rounds in this sector is that Boris Johnson will soon announce I can't believe it isn't an extension to the transition period (probably until 30th of June with the proviso that it can end the moment a deal is agreed.)
The EU are willing to give Boris Johnson cover and spin it as the incompetent EU can't ratify the agreement and blame mutant Covid-19.
With the sweet spot of Covid-19 denier Tory MPs and we get the horn over WTO Brexit Tory MPs Johnson will be like Edward Heath and relying on the votes of Labour MPs to pass his European Communities Act 1972.
In the TV interviews with these lorry drivers many of them seem to have small kitchen facilities in their lorries. Which kind of makes sense if they are always on the road all day.
Do they have tend to have WC facilities? I wouldn't have thought so.
Apparently they are crapping by their own wheels. Gross. FFS get them some portaloos, food and water. It’s 4000 men, who need somewhere to do their biz. It’s not like organising D-Day
And, as has been pointed out, this is a Covid Emergency waiting to happen, if the bug visits them. THEN we have a real problem
There's been absolutely no festivals this summer. Portaloo companies would love the business ! Is it beyond the wit of the Gov't to organise this, as well as pop up vans to get them all food ?
I saw one excellent suggestion on Twitter. Open a lobster shack. Many of these lorries are full of delicious Scottish seafood, slowly rotting.
Get it out, cook it up, serve it with butter and a bap to the drivers. That will cheer everyone up and the Scottish seafood companies will be paid by HMG. All sorted (apart from the loos)
USA doesn't do genetic sequencing, so may have our supercovid or its own variants, just has no way of telling.
"This month, U.K. researchers have uploaded 2,131 full sequences to an international repository, GISAID. U.S. researchers, on the other hand, have uploaded only 36—despite this country having five times more people and hundreds of thousands of cases."
Ditto almost every other country on the planet. IIRC it has been reported that no other European state has anything like the UK's genomic sequencing capabilities except for Denmark (which, surprise surprise, has found evidence of the same variant in its population.)
I've been busy enacting our No Deal plans but the rumour doing the rounds in this sector is that Boris Johnson will soon announce I can't believe it isn't an extension to the transition period (probably until 30th of June with the proviso that it can end the moment a deal is agreed.)
The EU are willing to give Boris Johnson cover and spin it as the incompetent EU can't ratify the agreement and blame mutant Covid-19.
With the sweet spot of Covid-19 denier Tory MPs and we get the horn over WTO Brexit Tory MPs Johnson will be like Edward Heath and relying on the votes of Labour MPs to pass his European Communities Act 1972.
In the TV interviews with these lorry drivers many of them seem to have small kitchen facilities in their lorries. Which kind of makes sense if they are always on the road all day.
Do they have tend to have WC facilities? I wouldn't have thought so.
Apparently they are crapping by their own wheels. Gross. FFS get them some portaloos, food and water. It’s 4000 men, who need somewhere to do their biz. It’s not like organising D-Day
And, as has been pointed out, this is a Covid Emergency waiting to happen, if the bug visits them. THEN we have a real problem
There's been absolutely no festivals this summer. Portaloo companies would love the business ! Is it beyond the wit of the Gov't to organise this, as well as pop up vans to get them all food ?
I saw one excellent suggestion on Twitter. Open a lobster shack. Many of these lorries are full of delicious Scottish seafood, slowly rotting.
Get it out, cook it up, serve it with butter and a bap to the drivers. That will cheer everyone up and the Scottish seafood companies will be paid by HMG. All sorted (apart from the loos)
I am going to have to try lobster when I move close to Peterhead. Never had it
Come back to me in a few weeks, we will regret not taking action now.
Time to lockdown the entirety of England.
I think the regional approach is better. I think that is how many countries have faced this issue. Locking down the entire country because of an outbreak in one area is a bit of overkill.
The Tier system has comprehensively failed. It's time to accept that.
Yet it works in other countries. Shutting down the entire country for an outbreak in one part is not the answer.
It's not an outbreak in one place, it's spreading everywhere.
You have your point of view, I think it's going to come to be a very poor one. We will see.
Then that argues for an adjustment to the restrictions in each region. It doesn't mean one size fits all.
I think a regional approach simply doesn't work, as I said, we will see.
The regional approach worked ok in Scotland. The problem is that the increased transmissibility of the new virus renders anything below tier 4 insufficient to keep R below 1, so I agree it needs to be tier 4 everywhere now.
And the jury is out on whether tier 4 is enough. Good job it will effectively be tier 5 for the next couple weeks due to the school holidays. God help us if that's not enough.
My amateur hunch, from reading the various expert views, is that Tier 4/5 will not be enough. Supercovid is that bad. I fervently pray I am wrong.
If I am right we are in for a horrific winter, until the vaccines really start to kick in, around March/April, when a significant proportion of the country will be invulnerable and the virus will find it harder and harder to spread
Um. Supercovid can't leap through walls.
If we all stay at home it can't spread.
The higher R is largely down to a longer asymptomatic period.
It hasn't grown legs.
But that’s exactly it. The only answer is Ultra-lockdown, a la Wuhan, where you weld everyone into their homes for several months. Is that do-able in a western democracy? I guess it will have to be, if it’s the only choice.
But wow. You can see why any politician - of any flavour - would be reluctant to go down that road.
That's impossible. I would suggest that the end state would be a lockdown almost the same as that in March and April, where people are allowed out of their homes only for work (if it can't be done from home,) for essential shopping, to attend medical appointments and for exercise. The main difference being that, now we've established that outdoor settings are very much safer than indoors, and that (socially distanced) outdoor exercise is good for physical and mental health, people should be encouraged to do as much of that as possible - crap weather allowing - and that should include shielders, who previously were effectively welded up inside their homes. And education must go back online, except for the relatively small numbers of children who could still be sent to school under the arrangements in force last Spring.
If that's not sufficient to stop the thing in its tracks, or at least slow it down enough to limit the damage whilst we race to get the vaccinations completed, then we're stuffed.
You know they did that, twice, in Australia and got broad compliance, right?
I suspect that - with the vaccine rolling out now - the willingness to lockdown so hard will be lower. But the reality is that if you do let it rip, and you do have a situation like in Northern Italy or New York in March/April, or like in South Dakota on November, then you will have people begging to be properly locked down.
This is sort of what I was talking about a couple of days ago:
"How Britain shot itself in the foot being the 'best in the world' at sequencing viruses and spotting the super-infectious mutation that left the UK a pariah - as scientists admit it could have emerged elsewhere
Covid-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) consortium hailed as the 'best genomic sequencing programme in world' Experts in the US and Belgium suspect strain emerged in different country but was detected by UK's experts Outside UK, cases of new strain already been identified in Denmark, Gibraltar, Netherlands, Australia and Italy"
In the TV interviews with these lorry drivers many of them seem to have small kitchen facilities in their lorries. Which kind of makes sense if they are always on the road all day.
Do they have tend to have WC facilities? I wouldn't have thought so.
Apparently they are crapping by their own wheels. Gross. FFS get them some portaloos, food and water. It’s 4000 men, who need somewhere to do their biz. It’s not like organising D-Day
And, as has been pointed out, this is a Covid Emergency waiting to happen, if the bug visits them. THEN we have a real problem
There's been absolutely no festivals this summer. Portaloo companies would love the business ! Is it beyond the wit of the Gov't to organise this, as well as pop up vans to get them all food ?
I saw one excellent suggestion on Twitter. Open a lobster shack. Many of these lorries are full of delicious Scottish seafood, slowly rotting.
Get it out, cook it up, serve it with butter and a bap to the drivers. That will cheer everyone up and the Scottish seafood companies will be paid by HMG. All sorted (apart from the loos)
I am going to have to try lobster when I move close to Peterhead. Never had it
TBH I have always found lobster faintly disappointing, It is pleasant, if cooked properly, but I am not sure why it has this luxurious image.
King Crab is vastly superior: a divine foodstuff. Basic langoustines are generally nicer. Oysters are a much better aphrodisiac. And so on.
In the TV interviews with these lorry drivers many of them seem to have small kitchen facilities in their lorries. Which kind of makes sense if they are always on the road all day.
Do they have tend to have WC facilities? I wouldn't have thought so.
Apparently they are crapping by their own wheels. Gross. FFS get them some portaloos, food and water. It’s 4000 men, who need somewhere to do their biz. It’s not like organising D-Day
And, as has been pointed out, this is a Covid Emergency waiting to happen, if the bug visits them. THEN we have a real problem
There's been absolutely no festivals this summer. Portaloo companies would love the business ! Is it beyond the wit of the Gov't to organise this, as well as pop up vans to get them all food ?
I saw one excellent suggestion on Twitter. Open a lobster shack. Many of these lorries are full of delicious Scottish seafood, slowly rotting.
Get it out, cook it up, serve it with butter and a bap to the drivers. That will cheer everyone up and the Scottish seafood companies will be paid by HMG. All sorted (apart from the loos)
I am going to have to try lobster when I move close to Peterhead. Never had it
Langostines in the UK are breaded and deep-fried as scampi, that classic pub staple.
In the TV interviews with these lorry drivers many of them seem to have small kitchen facilities in their lorries. Which kind of makes sense if they are always on the road all day.
Do they have tend to have WC facilities? I wouldn't have thought so.
Apparently they are crapping by their own wheels. Gross. FFS get them some portaloos, food and water. It’s 4000 men, who need somewhere to do their biz. It’s not like organising D-Day
And, as has been pointed out, this is a Covid Emergency waiting to happen, if the bug visits them. THEN we have a real problem
There's been absolutely no festivals this summer. Portaloo companies would love the business ! Is it beyond the wit of the Gov't to organise this, as well as pop up vans to get them all food ?
I saw one excellent suggestion on Twitter. Open a lobster shack. Many of these lorries are full of delicious Scottish seafood, slowly rotting.
Get it out, cook it up, serve it with butter and a bap to the drivers. That will cheer everyone up and the Scottish seafood companies will be paid by HMG. All sorted (apart from the loos)
A few dodgy claws and it would get very messy without loos.
In the TV interviews with these lorry drivers many of them seem to have small kitchen facilities in their lorries. Which kind of makes sense if they are always on the road all day.
Do they have tend to have WC facilities? I wouldn't have thought so.
Apparently they are crapping by their own wheels. Gross. FFS get them some portaloos, food and water. It’s 4000 men, who need somewhere to do their biz. It’s not like organising D-Day
And, as has been pointed out, this is a Covid Emergency waiting to happen, if the bug visits them. THEN we have a real problem
There's been absolutely no festivals this summer. Portaloo companies would love the business ! Is it beyond the wit of the Gov't to organise this, as well as pop up vans to get them all food ?
I saw one excellent suggestion on Twitter. Open a lobster shack. Many of these lorries are full of delicious Scottish seafood, slowly rotting.
Get it out, cook it up, serve it with butter and a bap to the drivers. That will cheer everyone up and the Scottish seafood companies will be paid by HMG. All sorted (apart from the loos)
I am going to have to try lobster when I move close to Peterhead. Never had it
TBH I have always found lobster faintly disappointing, It is pleasant, if cooked properly, but I am not sure why it has this luxurious image.
King Crab is vastly superior: a divine foodstuff. Basic langoustines are generally nicer. Oysters are a much better aphrodisiac. And so on.
King crab is OK. Giant mites I believe, and gone feral in the Norwegian fjords, so might spread to Scotland.
Come back to me in a few weeks, we will regret not taking action now.
Time to lockdown the entirety of England.
I think the regional approach is better. I think that is how many countries have faced this issue. Locking down the entire country because of an outbreak in one area is a bit of overkill.
The Tier system has comprehensively failed. It's time to accept that.
Yet it works in other countries. Shutting down the entire country for an outbreak in one part is not the answer.
It's not an outbreak in one place, it's spreading everywhere.
You have your point of view, I think it's going to come to be a very poor one. We will see.
Then that argues for an adjustment to the restrictions in each region. It doesn't mean one size fits all.
I think a regional approach simply doesn't work, as I said, we will see.
The regional approach worked ok in Scotland. The problem is that the increased transmissibility of the new virus renders anything below tier 4 insufficient to keep R below 1, so I agree it needs to be tier 4 everywhere now.
And the jury is out on whether tier 4 is enough. Good job it will effectively be tier 5 for the next couple weeks due to the school holidays. God help us if that's not enough.
My amateur hunch, from reading the various expert views, is that Tier 4/5 will not be enough. Supercovid is that bad. I fervently pray I am wrong.
If I am right we are in for a horrific winter, until the vaccines really start to kick in, around March/April, when a significant proportion of the country will be invulnerable and the virus will find it harder and harder to spread
Um. Supercovid can't leap through walls.
If we all stay at home it can't spread.
The higher R is largely down to a longer asymptomatic period.
It hasn't grown legs.
But that’s exactly it. The only answer is Ultra-lockdown, a la Wuhan, where you weld everyone into their homes for several months. Is that do-able in a western democracy? I guess it will have to be, if it’s the only choice.
But wow. You can see why any politician - of any flavour - would be reluctant to go down that road.
That's impossible. I would suggest that the end state would be a lockdown almost the same as that in March and April, where people are allowed out of their homes only for work (if it can't be done from home,) for essential shopping, to attend medical appointments and for exercise. The main difference being that, now we've established that outdoor settings are very much safer than indoors, and that (socially distanced) outdoor exercise is good for physical and mental health, people should be encouraged to do as much of that as possible - crap weather allowing - and that should include shielders, who previously were effectively welded up inside their homes. And education must go back online, except for the relatively small numbers of children who could still be sent to school under the arrangements in force last Spring.
If that's not sufficient to stop the thing in its tracks, or at least slow it down enough to limit the damage whilst we race to get the vaccinations completed, then we're stuffed.
You know they did that, twice, in Australia and got broad compliance, right?
I suspect that - with the vaccine rolling out now - the willingness to lockdown so hard will be lower. But the reality is that if you do let it rip, and you do have a situation like in Northern Italy or New York in March/April, or like in South Dakota on November, then you will have people begging to be properly locked down.
I think there might be more willingness to lockdown hard now that a vaccine is rolling out. It gives a foreseeable end to this. The fear pre vaccine was that we needed to live with this and it was going to be never ending.
R should start falling as we roll out the vaccine too which will help.
In the TV interviews with these lorry drivers many of them seem to have small kitchen facilities in their lorries. Which kind of makes sense if they are always on the road all day.
Do they have tend to have WC facilities? I wouldn't have thought so.
Apparently they are crapping by their own wheels. Gross. FFS get them some portaloos, food and water. It’s 4000 men, who need somewhere to do their biz. It’s not like organising D-Day
And, as has been pointed out, this is a Covid Emergency waiting to happen, if the bug visits them. THEN we have a real problem
There's been absolutely no festivals this summer. Portaloo companies would love the business ! Is it beyond the wit of the Gov't to organise this, as well as pop up vans to get them all food ?
I saw one excellent suggestion on Twitter. Open a lobster shack. Many of these lorries are full of delicious Scottish seafood, slowly rotting.
Get it out, cook it up, serve it with butter and a bap to the drivers. That will cheer everyone up and the Scottish seafood companies will be paid by HMG. All sorted (apart from the loos)
I am going to have to try lobster when I move close to Peterhead. Never had it
TBH I have always found lobster faintly disappointing, It is pleasant, if cooked properly, but I am not sure why it has this luxurious image.
King Crab is vastly superior: a divine foodstuff. Basic langoustines are generally nicer. Oysters are a much better aphrodisiac. And so on.
King crab is OK. Giant mites I believe, and gone feral in the Norwegian fjords, so might spread to Scotland.
In the TV interviews with these lorry drivers many of them seem to have small kitchen facilities in their lorries. Which kind of makes sense if they are always on the road all day.
Do they have tend to have WC facilities? I wouldn't have thought so.
Apparently they are crapping by their own wheels. Gross. FFS get them some portaloos, food and water. It’s 4000 men, who need somewhere to do their biz. It’s not like organising D-Day
And, as has been pointed out, this is a Covid Emergency waiting to happen, if the bug visits them. THEN we have a real problem
There's been absolutely no festivals this summer. Portaloo companies would love the business ! Is it beyond the wit of the Gov't to organise this, as well as pop up vans to get them all food ?
I saw one excellent suggestion on Twitter. Open a lobster shack. Many of these lorries are full of delicious Scottish seafood, slowly rotting.
Get it out, cook it up, serve it with butter and a bap to the drivers. That will cheer everyone up and the Scottish seafood companies will be paid by HMG. All sorted (apart from the loos)
I am going to have to try lobster when I move close to Peterhead. Never had it
My late brother in law skippered his own seine net boat out of Peterhead for many years
In the TV interviews with these lorry drivers many of them seem to have small kitchen facilities in their lorries. Which kind of makes sense if they are always on the road all day.
Do they have tend to have WC facilities? I wouldn't have thought so.
Apparently they are crapping by their own wheels. Gross. FFS get them some portaloos, food and water. It’s 4000 men, who need somewhere to do their biz. It’s not like organising D-Day
And, as has been pointed out, this is a Covid Emergency waiting to happen, if the bug visits them. THEN we have a real problem
There's been absolutely no festivals this summer. Portaloo companies would love the business ! Is it beyond the wit of the Gov't to organise this, as well as pop up vans to get them all food ?
I saw one excellent suggestion on Twitter. Open a lobster shack. Many of these lorries are full of delicious Scottish seafood, slowly rotting.
Get it out, cook it up, serve it with butter and a bap to the drivers. That will cheer everyone up and the Scottish seafood companies will be paid by HMG. All sorted (apart from the loos)
I am going to have to try lobster when I move close to Peterhead. Never had it
TBH I have always found lobster faintly disappointing, It is pleasant, if cooked properly, but I am not sure why it has this luxurious image.
King Crab is vastly superior: a divine foodstuff. Basic langoustines are generally nicer. Oysters are a much better aphrodisiac. And so on.
Insert. Gratuitous and completely unnecessary restaurant scene.
'She slips off her coat. Imelda is step-by-step taking her clothes off and Hugh's heart is working so fast he feels endangered, overbuzzed, like a student on too much speed. Stuck with his addiction Hugh watches, obsessing, as Imelda undoes buttons, glancing down he wants everything on the menu, he wants so much to take his time and explore it, slowly.
- We better be quick my mum will be home soon
- Sorry? - first course? - you order for both of us
She smiles across at him. Hugh prepares himself, unfolding his dress shirt, cotton soft between fingers. Her eyes fix upon it as he lowers good linen from her view. At the rugby club he is known as huge not Hugh. he motions with a hand; she understands:
- You mean I have to put all of that in my mouth?
You ordered it! Oh God. yes.
Hopeful, wistful, with mouthful of juice, he watches her little hands at work and he waits for as long as he can; but then he can't: now he goes: down to a rose, smelling the scent of St Malo restaurant on a winter's evening, lost in the thick soft furrier’s samples; lost in the young Czarina.
Gagging, enjoying, gagging; Hugh licks through a dish of shell food and considers the fact Imelda is the only woman he enjoys. He considers this: dismisses it. Dangerous, dangerous. Why shoud he enjoy her and no-one else?
Hugh lays off his tongue and considers the taste. It is, he feels, one of those very nearly disgusting lovely tastes that can so easily tip over into compete disgustingness. Like burnt charcoal peppers in oil. Like oysters. Olives. Anchovy butter. Like so much seafood.
But because he loves her, he loves the taste.. the taste of blood, from a war wound, from scar tissue, from mutilation; ohyes he loves it, loves the kowtow, yes he loves the taste.
But not that much. It is time. Now. Yes. Brupt, he rises from the dish, turns her over, flips her white body of flesh. Her small white tidy body. She is so small and so compact, and yet she has all the necessary features...
Shall I compare thee to a Sony Walkman? thou art more compact and more My own Toshiba, dinky little JVC, Oh sweet Aiwa
- Aiwa - She says, being served barbed sea bass between slimy red-peppers-in-olive-oil - Aiwa, aiwa aiwa aiwa aiwa aiwa aiwa aiwa aiwa aiwaaaaaaaaah
1. The French blockade is only likely to be lifted off the back of a testing regime, which will be slow as Hell and which the Government will bugger up anyway. The impact on the substantial chunk of trade that relies on truckers will be considerable, and as we all appreciate by now this disproportionately impacts food 2. The more reports of this circulate, the more people will "panic buy." Though in truth it's not panic buying, it's very sensible buying. Previous experience dictates that if you sit at home being calm and/or self-righteous and wait to go shopping until you need the stuff, then the locusts will already have stripped the shelves bare by the time you finally get to the supermarket. Voluntary rationing by the shops will achieve nothing if a sufficient number of customers are all after the same product, given that any ration is irreducible once it gets down to a single item 3. In Boris Johnson's Britain, Murphy's Law applies
The best we can hope for, I think, is that we end up not being able to get everything that we want but that we can get enough. Whilst this will be catastrophic for those who live off salads, I can manage without lettuce and lemons for a little while. Just so long as there's not another bloody run on bog roll (although if there is then the Rook household, population: 2, has now hoarded about 40 of the things, so we'll be alright for a little while. Once bitten, twice shy, and all that.)
Comments
Screw them.
You'll thank me one day.
I don't see how a national lockdown (including, if the Government has any sense left at all, closure of educational institutions) can be avoided from this position. We're going to need to go back pretty much to Lockdown 1.0, save for a more permissive attitude to outdoor exercise, for all but especially for shielders, and stick with it until we're far enough into the vaccination programme to get away with loosening restrictions.
Also tell UK fisherfolk they can’t export to their customers. 😟
It's astonishing they have waited and got it wrong twice now and they're doing it a third time. We never win by waiting, the virus does.
A point in its favour though.
Under the current circumstances, prolonging the negotiation period for 90 days would have seemed more than reasonable - unless you take the view Johnson's endgame was always to walk away without a Deal.
If I am right we are in for a horrific winter, until the vaccines really start to kick in, around March/April, when a significant proportion of the country will be invulnerable and the virus will find it harder and harder to spread
The EU can just sit there and wait, because they're not the ones moving. And however you slice and dice the figures, they can afford to wait more than the UK can.
But to calculate the chess moves that far would require a Prime Minister who can see further ahead than the end of... you get the idea.
Then we have to consider the costs. Quotes to send a full load from EU to UK have escalated significantly - if you can find one. Again, a deal will reduce / remove tariff costs added on top, but the true problem and cost are the customs checks.
If we all stay at home it can't spread.
The higher R is largely down to a longer asymptomatic period.
It hasn't grown legs.
Think I'd keep a small spade in the trailer with me and swerve the portaloos tbh.
But wow. You can see why any politician - of any flavour - would be reluctant to go down that road.
Now, if and when that happens then it would help if the Government would just call a spade a spade and announce a lockdown, rather than inventing another new name for it. The tier system is a busted flush. Limping along with it, and creating new tier numbers in a pathetic attempt to suggest that a lockdown isn't happening, is just an insult to everybody's intelligence.
The dilemma for Remainers, who were the sensible people at least at the time of the referendum, was whether to aim to mitigate the damage or to try to prevent it happening. Arguably they should have plumped for damage limitation rather than prevention, but it's not quite straightforward.
May's Deal prospects were blighted anyway, despite any Remainer support, because not a lot of people in the Conservative and the soon to be enjoined Brexit Party supported it.
Locking down the whole of the UK may come about shortly, but locking down each and every country in Europe and closing all their internal borders seems a very likely outcome very soon
So firms are adjusting already?
He is chucking the local stats at me, which in our ward remain flat in the past week despite the country wide outbreak. He is arguing that it makes no sense that he can play rugby or that we can see family on Friday.
Sigh. Three hours.
Do they have tend to have WC facilities? I wouldn't have thought so.
Right now we are Plague Island, just as we were Worst Death Toll Archipelago, back in the spring, for a while. But each country gets its time in the spotlight, with this virus. There is a high chance Supercovid will be stomping all over France or Poland or wherever, in a month or two, and we will all be marvelling at the new horror overseas
Great success!
It may well be going well quietly in the background but if they want to lockdown the whole country again until Easter then they need to get out there and show a fucking sense of urgency and that there's actually some sort of end to all this coming.
If that's not sufficient to stop the thing in its tracks, or at least slow it down enough to limit the damage whilst we race to get the vaccinations completed, then we're stuffed.
And, as has been pointed out, this is a Covid Emergency waiting to happen, if the bug visits them. THEN we have a real problem
Case numbers are surging already all over the continent.
You can't tell there's any urgency to it at all.
God knows this Government needs some kind of win, and the public's patience is beginning to wear thin.
We can argue till the cows come home about the response of the various parts of the UK but the Sturgeon daily (or not quite as daily as it used to be but still most days) briefing has always provided a much clearer sense of message and connection than anything the UK government did.
Doing something like that but largely focused on the vaccination programme will actually show people that there's a genuine end-game here.
Yes, I'm sick of you and them acting all haulier than thou.
1. We have 9-10k trucks a day passing each way through Dover - Calais
2. Customs checks cuts that to perhaps 10-15%
3. "Just send the trucks to another port". Yes, with a longer sea crossing which needs boats that don't exist and would take hours longer at higher cost
4. "OK, so just trade with someone else" - yes, lets have that BMW engine plant in Birmingham source its components not from BMW Germany like now and instead ship them in from BMW America. Cos that would work
5. "Why do we need trade anyway. Bloody French ruining our brexit".
Can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. There will be disruptions, firms will adjust and we will reach a new equilibrium.
"This month, U.K. researchers have uploaded 2,131 full sequences to an international repository, GISAID. U.S. researchers, on the other hand, have uploaded only 36—despite this country having five times more people and hundreds of thousands of cases."
https://newrepublic.com/article/160743/us-already-covid-variant-wouldnt-know
As I say, let’s hope the pessimistic take is very wrong.
The big difference between now and last March is the vaccines. Hopefully AstraZeneca willl be approved just after Xmas. That releases millions of jabs, and will offer real cause for cautious and guarded optimism
New Covid, like New Coke, is a bad thing. And there is a link between UK policy and mutations; the more virus there is around, the more chances it has to mutate, the more chance it has to become more annoying. Matt Ridley and his "we should let it rip so it can mutate into something benign" theory can get into the sea. Or one of the Ridley coal mines.
But.
Imagine if New Covid had been the first on the scene. Then, we really would have been stuffed; think how close to collapse the UK got. And Spain and Italy really would have tumbled into the abyss.
As it is, we know what helps better than 9 months ago. We know that a vaccine is on its way. If we have to go full-on lockdown, it is for a finite time. And, if we're lucky, the 0.4ish extra nastiness of the mutation can be counteracted by the 0.4ish change in R by closing schools. It will be rubbish, but a finite fixable amount of rubbish.
As it is, the UK is a few weeks ahead because of approving the first vaccine early. It is now a few weeks behind because of its terrible handling of wild Covid since July, really. Certainly since September. Overall, it will be a closer run thing than we would like, but we will survive.
I hope.
The EU are willing to give Boris Johnson cover and spin it as the incompetent EU can't ratify the agreement and blame mutant Covid-19.
With the sweet spot of Covid-19 denier Tory MPs and we get the horn over WTO Brexit Tory MPs Johnson will be like Edward Heath and relying on the votes of Labour MPs to pass his European Communities Act 1972.
Get it out, cook it up, serve it with butter and a bap to the drivers. That will cheer everyone up and the Scottish seafood companies will be paid by HMG. All sorted (apart from the loos)
https://twitter.com/JasonGroves1/status/1341485940792053764
Although that is almost too sweet.
I suspect that - with the vaccine rolling out now - the willingness to lockdown so hard will be lower. But the reality is that if you do let it rip, and you do have a situation like in Northern Italy or New York in March/April, or like in South Dakota on November, then you will have people begging to be properly locked down.
"How Britain shot itself in the foot being the 'best in the world' at sequencing viruses and spotting the super-infectious mutation that left the UK a pariah - as scientists admit it could have emerged elsewhere
Covid-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) consortium hailed as the 'best genomic sequencing programme in world'
Experts in the US and Belgium suspect strain emerged in different country but was detected by UK's experts
Outside UK, cases of new strain already been identified in Denmark, Gibraltar, Netherlands, Australia and Italy"
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9079333/How-Britain-shot-foot-best-world-sequencing-viruses.html
King Crab is vastly superior: a divine foodstuff. Basic langoustines are generally nicer. Oysters are a much better aphrodisiac. And so on.
https://twitter.com/imperialcollege/status/1341319768083734528
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/20/crab-22-how-norways-fisheries-got-rich-but-on-an-invasive-species
R should start falling as we roll out the vaccine too which will help.
I might be biased by the fact I ate King Crab - several times - in its ultimate dream-home, Ushuaia, in Tierra del Fuego. Just sublime.
https://discover.silversea.com/travel-tips/food-drink/southern-king-crab-tierra-del-fuego/
'She slips off her coat. Imelda is step-by-step taking her clothes off and Hugh's heart is working so fast he feels endangered, overbuzzed, like a student on too much speed. Stuck with his addiction Hugh watches, obsessing, as Imelda undoes buttons, glancing down he wants everything on the menu, he wants so much to take his time and explore it, slowly.
- We better be quick my mum will be home soon
- Sorry?
- first course?
- you order for both of us
She smiles across at him. Hugh prepares himself, unfolding his dress shirt, cotton soft between fingers. Her eyes fix upon it as he lowers good linen from her view. At the rugby club he is known as huge not Hugh. he motions with a hand; she understands:
- You mean I have to put all of that in my mouth?
You ordered it! Oh God. yes.
Hopeful, wistful, with mouthful of juice, he watches her little hands at work and he waits for as long as he can; but then he can't: now he goes: down to a rose, smelling the scent of St Malo restaurant on a winter's evening, lost in the thick soft furrier’s samples; lost in the young Czarina.
Gagging, enjoying, gagging; Hugh licks through a dish of shell food and considers the fact Imelda is the only woman he enjoys. He considers this: dismisses it. Dangerous, dangerous. Why shoud he enjoy her and no-one else?
Cunni. Cunniling. Cunnilinguling. Cunnilingulingilinguling
Oh yes. Cunnilingulingilinguling
Hugh lays off his tongue and considers the taste. It is, he feels, one of those very nearly disgusting lovely tastes that can so easily tip over into compete disgustingness. Like burnt charcoal peppers in oil. Like oysters. Olives. Anchovy butter. Like so much seafood.
But because he loves her, he loves the taste.. the taste of blood, from a war wound, from scar tissue, from mutilation; ohyes he loves it, loves the kowtow, yes he loves the taste.
But not that much. It is time. Now. Yes. Brupt, he rises from the dish, turns her over, flips her white body of flesh. Her small white tidy body. She is so small and so compact, and yet she has all the necessary features...
Shall I compare thee to a Sony Walkman?
thou art more compact and more
My own Toshiba,
dinky little JVC,
Oh sweet Aiwa
- Aiwa - She says, being served barbed sea bass between slimy red-peppers-in-olive-oil - Aiwa, aiwa aiwa aiwa aiwa aiwa aiwa aiwa aiwa aiwaaaaaaaaah
1. The French blockade is only likely to be lifted off the back of a testing regime, which will be slow as Hell and which the Government will bugger up anyway. The impact on the substantial chunk of trade that relies on truckers will be considerable, and as we all appreciate by now this disproportionately impacts food
2. The more reports of this circulate, the more people will "panic buy." Though in truth it's not panic buying, it's very sensible buying. Previous experience dictates that if you sit at home being calm and/or self-righteous and wait to go shopping until you need the stuff, then the locusts will already have stripped the shelves bare by the time you finally get to the supermarket. Voluntary rationing by the shops will achieve nothing if a sufficient number of customers are all after the same product, given that any ration is irreducible once it gets down to a single item
3. In Boris Johnson's Britain, Murphy's Law applies
The best we can hope for, I think, is that we end up not being able to get everything that we want but that we can get enough. Whilst this will be catastrophic for those who live off salads, I can manage without lettuce and lemons for a little while. Just so long as there's not another bloody run on bog roll (although if there is then the Rook household, population: 2, has now hoarded about 40 of the things, so we'll be alright for a little while. Once bitten, twice shy, and all that.)