Today’s Daily Mail front pages looks set to one of those that will be remembered and referred back to in the time to come. You can see it being used as one of the pics in the biographies that are likely to be written after he has stood down and will also be clipped for posterity by obituary writers.
Comments
I agree with this assessment in its nuances. Boris surprised me yesterday. I didn't think his contrition was an act. He looked and sounded genuinely sorry. He also looks worn and possibly still unwell.
It's a wretched business. I woke at 3.30 am from a covid dream and that was that. Awake now.
Blair and Cameron both said in their memoirs, that the most difficult thing they ever did was having to make the final call on military operations abroad, knowing that both service and civilian lives were on the line. This past year will have have been constantly like that, in slow motion as every call played out over a period of weeks.
The next big call is on hotel quarantines. I say do it with no exceptions, until everyone has been vaccinated. No-one *needs* a summer holiday abroad, and those business travellers who really need to go sign that big deal will happily pay the hotel bill. There needs to be a sense of being all in this together, not of a two-tier ‘lockdown’ where making a social media fitness video from a foreign beach counts as ‘work’.
They should have held their fire and moved on.
(Of course, McConnell wanted the Dems to waste their time on impeachment. Smart man, Mitch.)
Yet more half-arsed measures, which may have to be paid for in huge amounts of blood, treasure and misery a few months down the line. Why do they always have to do this?
I mean, you can do it. And there's probably little harm (given tourism and things are shutdown anyway). But...
The way I look at this is simple.
We're vaccinating 3 million people a week. It's going to be 5 million when J&J, Moderna and others are approved. In Israel all the data is that this has an extraordinary effect on hospitalisations and deaths.
The people dying now, then were infected in December.
In just three weeks time, 10 million more people will have been vaccinated. It's entirely possibly 20 million people will have been jabbed by the end of February.
Look at Israel. While cases continue to be high, hospitalisations are down more than 60%.
If we keep up current vaccination trends, and I suspect we'll do better than that, then we're going to have fewer people being hospitalised in just six or seven weeks time than at the trough last summer.
Now, against that, the vaccine may be less effective against new strains (which is a good reason to be cautious). But I can't help fear this is a case of us choosing to do something that should have been done last summer, at a time when it will have little benefit. Frankly, if cases are collapsing, the vulnerable are protected, and the number of people the virus could spread to are shrinking, then... it's a lot of hassle for little benefit.
In the unlikely event of non-cooperation, however, then we slap quarantine on travel from the whole of Ireland as well. It's not as if this would be a particularly radical move. Scotland and Wales have both already attempted to cut themselves off from England to various degrees during this crisis.
(EDIT: actually, the Irish have at various points put in place stricter measures than we have, and they may already be contemplating hotel quarantine themselves, but I don't know enough about what's going on over there to say.)
The PM has made plenty of mistakes. Though on vaccines the British government and the NHS have done well. I have no doubt he is genuinely sorry. How could anyone not be.
I would like to see China's leader apologise to the world for the actions they took and failed to take which unleashed this pandemic on the world. China's mistakes at the start of this made this pandemic a whole lot worse than it might have been. China should not be allowed to forget its responsibility for this pandemic and all the deaths and suffering that have ensued.
Start with Australia, NZ and Korea, and build it out from there based on case numbers and local quarantine rules. Direct flights only, with the crew and passengers all having quarantined and tested at the departure point, and with no-one allowed to board the plane during any tech stop.
In practice we are talking a few dozen flights a week, from carefully controlled counties, and at a higher cost than usual due to the number of crew required.
Saying it’s only flights from Brazil and SA that have to quarantine is asking for massive trouble, as you say.
Also, no more than 12 hours between announcement and effect, we don’t want people rushing to airports to get back early.
Also, why are people fined £500 for not giving contact address form to the authorities still allowed in? They should be fined the £500 then given the form to complete properly.
(Oh, and are we even allowed to say whitelist and blacklist any more?)
Besides which, even if we don't import a resistant form we could very easily bring in something even more transmissible than the Kentish strain, which would be bad enough in and of itself. Vaccination of the most vulnerable groups will cut down the death toll considerably, but (i) vaccines are not 100% effective and (ii) most of the population still won't have been lanced by the end of next month anyway, nor for many months after that. Until the program is complete we are still at risk of the hospitals getting swamped by younger patients and the wretched lockdown dragging on for even longer than it otherwise would.
No. Pull up the drawbridge. Now.
But some Z-list celebrity is allowed to fly half-way round the world to take pictures of them hanging round a pool with a pina colada.....? Come off it! That's not work and it's a risk to our health. So shut down those borders until we really have this under control and prioritise businesses here not celebrity twaddle.
UK is 7m vaccine doses through a 100m programme, stopping all incoming traffic until that programme completes could make a huge difference to the final outcome at comparatively little cost.
The elephant in the room, as noted in the past couple of days, is that the countries surrounding the UK are having a terrible vaccine programme.
I’d also like to see my parents soon, haven’t seen them for 18 months and am praying this is all over by the summer.
Thankfully my Mum (74) gets her first jab tomorrow
Mind you, I am Catholic.
All the arguments you make could just as easily be used by criminals of all types, large and small.
"Moving on" may be necessary, indeed, wise - but only when those involved in the wrongdoing accept that they have indeed done wrong. Trump has not. Nor have his ardent supporters. Nor, frankly, has the Republican Party which is choosing to overlook its own discreditable role in allowing such a man to gain power in its name and supporting him throughout. The tactical backtracking by a few of them at the end does not wipe this out.
The lie - that Trump won and had the election "stolen" from him - needs to be removed from public discourse. It (and all the other lies and actions leading up to this - voter suppression and gerrymandering) needs to be comprehensively and publicly accepted as a lie by the Republican Party and apologised for by them. Not simply forgotten but allowed to fester in the background.
Until the Republicans do this, all their talk of "healing" and "moving on" is so much cant, which has nothing to do with them wanting to unite the country and everything to do with them wanting not to face up to their own inexcusable actions and loss of moral compass these last 4 years.
How is young Mstr Cyclefree doing?
https://www.berlaymonster.com/post/why-astrazeneca-may-be-shrugging-off-eu-s-vaccine-deal-tantrum
The deaths have not finished and Boris is still PM, isn't he.....
But China should not be allowed to forget. It is a repellent regime. Glad to see the Jewish community speaking up about the Uighurs, especially today. "Never again" is a big fat pious lie.
https://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2021/01/26/news/interview_pascal_soriot_ceo_astrazeneca_coronavirus_covid_vaccines-284349628/amp/
Plenty of others on this forum, let alone elsewhere, have suffered far worse.
We just have to KBO.
Husband finding it a bit hard. V tired. Eldest son is the least affected, bizarrely. So far - **crosses fingers and touches wood**.
Dog mightily miffed at not having as much exercise as he would like.
Best wishes to you and your family through all of this, it sounds like a shocker but glad to see you and your family have at least the right attitude. Best of wishes.
Now the Tourism Authority of Thailand has announced this:(edited)
'Foreigners who have been vaccinated against COVID-19 could be allowed to visit Thailand without the need to quarantine, according to new proposals from the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT).
The tourism authority says so-called ‘vaccine passports’ would enable foreign tourists to stay in Thailand without needing to spend the first 14 days of their trip in an alternative state quarantine facility.
The ‘vaccine passports’ are one of a number of ideas mooted by TAT governor Yuthasak Supasorn in a bid to revive the country’s decimate tourism industry, which faces the prospect of one million workers left unemployed as a result of the pandemic.
Mr Supasorn said under the proposals, vaccinated tourists from the United States and Europe could start arriving in Thailand as early as March or April, with a focus on what would be the Easter holidays in Europe.
Mr Supasorn said that if the ‘vaccine passports’ get the approval he would expect 10 million tourists to visit the country in 2021.
Mr Supasorn added that TAT have already entered discussions with Emirates Airlines and Qatar Airways about offering tourists all inclusive packages. While details were not specified, it is presumed that the packages would enable vaccinated foreigners to travel to Thailand without restrictions or the need to enter quarantine.
TAT will also ask the tourism authorities in other ASEAN countries to adopt the ‘vaccine passport’ model in order to stimulate tourism across the region.
Meanwhile, Dusit International CEO Suphajee Suthumpun said: “The current quarantine restrictions are crippling our industry and having a massive impact on Thailand’s economy. With foreign tourists accounting for around 70% of the total industry, and with tourism representing around 22% of GDP, it’s clear that we need to open the borders to vaccinated travellers as soon as possible.”
Suthumpun said that people working in the hospitality sector should be given the vaccine as a priority in order to help protect locals and foreigners by limiting the risk of infection.]
Thailand, which normally welcomes around 40 million tourists, saw tourist arrivals fall by 90 percent in 2020.'
Seems sensible to me.
As a result of that - and the tech bans, which have had an incredibly galvinising effect on not only the base but the GOP politicians - the Republicans are now coming out fighting. It was interesting that Rand Paul (who is extreme in his own way but not on this) talking about the Republicans spending the next 4 years scrutinising the electoral system and that he thought there were serious flaws in the 2020 election. GOP states are already taking measures.
I'd disagree about Trump fading away. He's opening up his new Office of the Former President in Florida and it's clear he will be very much taking an active role. I'm leaning more towards he won't run again but he will very much want to be seen as the kingmaker in the GOP.
Covid is a sneaky fucker. It will happily exploit ANY area where we are less than 100% vigilant.
I think the government should be pushing a stay in the UK this summer plan. British tourism needs the boost, and we have so much to see and enjoy. A stress on outdoor activities, even licensed raves, may well be better than the alternatives.
Nice big round number gets the soundbites out
I think we made a terrible mistake in not having mandatory quarantine for all visitors last February. I very much doubt our deaths would have been half of what they are if we had and it is possible that the lockdowns would have worked to bear down on the disease before the new virulent strain took hold. Is it worth doing, even now? I would say yes because I want life to get back to something like normal in this country as fast as possible and it reduces the risk factors but the opportunity for a massive upside in saved lives is probably gone.
- We have school children told not to go to school, as a matter of law.
- We have businesses, real "essential" work for those whose livelihoods they form shut down, as a matter of law.
- We are unable to have loved ones in our homes, as a matter of law.
- We have people unable to comfort and say goodbye to loved ones as they die in hospital.
If there's no problems that need dealing with then open schools, open pubs and restaurants, let us see our loved ones. Otherwise if we're still in the middle of a global pandemic then its better late than never to be putting restrictions on at the borders and they should be the last restrictions lifted not the first ones.Children want and need to go to school. Millions want to go to work. They matter more than a week on the beach.
The argument for doing so was a year ago, when the prevalence abroad (China, Italy, Spain) was much higher than here, and we needed the time to get other measures in place such as track and trace.
Then there is the lost year of schooling, non-covid healthcare and economic impact on various sectors.
The recovery plans need to start now. For example we are likely to need more inpatient beds for both medical and surgical care in order to catch up. My guess would be a 30% increase in capacity as a minimum, and a strong emphasis on supporting junior medical and nursing staff. They are getting burnt out.
Otherwise it should apply to Ireland - and Northern Ireland.
On this subject, I am starting to see some financial commentators float the possibility that the real financial crash will happen later this year, for the same reason.
https://twitter.com/johnharris1969/status/1354338158285107200?s=21
https://twitter.com/thismorning/status/1354014175215955969?s=09
Yet a Bastard Bug which has killed one hundred thousand and counting? Gets to walk over the border without showing a passport.
The 100,000 tombstone comic is dumb.
The Prime Minister has gotten a lot of things very wrong (should've locked down the airports a year ago) and other things very right (for once his instinct to splurge money provided exactly what the country needed for vaccines). As Stannis Baratheon said, the good does not wash out the bad, nor the bad wash out the good.
Criticise the stuff he got wrong and praise the stuff he got right, but trying to wrap it all together as if he's responsible for the Chinese Plague is unwise. It won't persuade those who might be convinced he's an imbecile because he isn't to blame for the disease's existence, and (as with the scattergun approach to rampant criticism of MPs' expenses) it'll let genuine and serious failings slip under the radar.
"Look, the sites that have the lowest productivity in the network are the sites that are supplying Europe. One of the plants with the highest yield is in the UK because it started earlier."
No messing from him in Telegraph interview this morning. EU slowed things down by two months and UK didn't and are first in the queue.
They are far more likely to point to the success of their lockdown policy and say that the world ought to have followed their example. And alongside that conduct targeted vaccine diplomacy (something they've already started to do).
Autocrats like Xi don't do apologies.
Who is Sheridan?
No, don't tell me.
Does Ignorance have its pluses?
Stay classy, Scott...
https://twitter.com/Mike_Blackley/status/1354341770998534145?s=20
Polling indicates that, for now at least, Republican voters split about 60/40 in favour of MAGA/Trump rather than sanity.
Once moderate Republican state parties are MAGA, too.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/26/pennsylvania-republican-party-trump-support-462843
As for impeachment, it is the appropriate constitutional remedy for Trump's attempt to overturn the Constitution. That only five Republican senators appear to recognise that is disturbing, but it doesn't make impeachment wrong.
Similarly, schools need to address a lot of remedial learning. Merely going back to normal is nowhere near enough. Ditto the courts, etc etc and that is the public sector. The private sector is going to have major changes to cope with too, with whole industries on life support for years. The post pandemic economy and society will look very different. This is a way point in history.
When we look at the post war periods of both WW1 and WW2 we seriously mismanaged the challenges. Certainly some of the social reforms were overdue, but the economic and constitutional policies of both periods were seriously flawed. Or more recently, look at how we made a mess of reconstructing Iraq postwar.
https://twitter.com/emmakennedy/status/1354103569755090945?s=21
The choice is to apply more restrictions on travellers, or more restrictions on the domestic population. The absolute priority has to be getting schools back open.
When we have high transmission figures people say "there's no point" in having quarantine because the virus is here.
When we have low transmission figures people say "there's no point" in having quarantine because the virus is under control, and we deserve a holiday.
The point of lockdown is to cut out everything unnecessary and to stop travel. If that includes children going to school right now it damn well should include people travelling unnecessarily between countries.
Is a child's education worth less than holidays?
In the High Court we are dealing with some trials remotely but they are the shorter, simpler trials with 1 accused and few witnesses. The mass of more complicated cases with multiple accused is still to come. A well instructed defence counsel told me recently that the cases he has pending will keep him busy for the next 2 years.
On the civil side we have an enormous backlog of proofs. Many cases have resolved themselves in the absence of judicial determination, often by a despairing party just giving up. Debates etc under the current procedure are awful and the decision making more random (I am not criticising the judges and sheriffs, I have considerable sympathy for them). Given the pressure of criminal business this will go on for years.
A bit rich coming from CNN. Has the USA got mandatory hotel quarantines? For that matter does France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain or Sweden?
I apologise if any of them do but as far as I know what we are considering is going further than any other non-Antipodean western nation.
So far in 2021 the UK is the only country in Europe to seriously implement a vaccine rollout. So far it seems to me we're the only country considering seriously mandatory hotel quarantines. That is not slow to react - though its slower than it could have been - compared to our peers it is rather fast to do so.
I hope the interests of foreign travellers are not put first, so we can put the priorities of schoolchildren, businessmen and women, employees, loved ones and more first - but it is not as if the UK is an exception in not doing this yet.
I'd say the unmentioned (ie I have not seen it) purpose of hotel quarantine should surely be to allow the UK to manage potential chaos if the EU end up 3-6 months behind in vaccine rollout.
Bad call by Boris.
Quite interested to know how Tigger Boris has been kept largely out of boostering the rollout with his natural tendencies. Has Nadhim Zahawi been sitting on his head?
Guess when the British tourists started arriving?
I suspect they knew for instance the grim milestone of 100,000 deaths was inevitably coming up and a serious and sombre tone was needed. Can't flip from boosterism to serious and sombre easily.
Once the deaths stop, once lockdown is lifted, then it will be the time for boosterism perhaps. Not yet. Not now.
As it happens the excellent progress it's making on the vaccine (particularly compared to others) will probably save it.
It might also do other things too, like improve the right/wrong scores on Brexit - and even help the Union a bit - if the UK escapes major constraints earlier than the EU and its economy starts recovering sooner.
Boris may well prove to be a lucky general again.
"Mum roast the parsnips for 40 minutes this time. I remember the time she roasted them for 20 minutes and they were a bit too hard."
The Govt should have sorted this out by the 2nd lockdown. I also think the furlough was too generous at 80%.
60% but put in the effort to cover those people who have lost their entire income with no benefits whatsoever. I know it isn't easy, but the Govt has had the time to do it.
So, it worked.
PR is one of those things (like management) where everyone goes "you can do without that"
But, countering fake news is PR. Publicising celebrities who get vaccinated and getting the story in the press is PR etc etc
HMG subsidises consumers to install heat pumps or other measures to reduce energy consumption. The householder gets a voucher for the work which must be carried out by an improved installer. The American firm administering the scheme has been slow to make payments, slow to give vouchers to consumers. This means the whole industry has ground to a halt.
Government plans to turn England homes green 'in chaos' with debt and job losses
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/26/government-plans-to-turn-england-homes-green-in-chaos-with-debt-and-job-losses
(If it comes up at PMQs, we will know SKS reads the Guardian.)
They'd have been far better advised to have gritted their teeth about it and simply redoubled their efforts on rollout. As it happens they've made themselves look petulant, fragile and insecure.
That very public lack of confidence in themselves, and how much they dislike being shown up, won't go unnoticed.
More generally, have lamb prices come down yet? They don't seem to have.
https://twitter.com/theAliceRoberts/status/1351962456000704514
She seems to think that Kent Covid was predictable.