Lots of man love ❤️ for Boris, for his roadmap and for his luxuriant hair on PB this afternoon. Some positive swooning. Bless.
And bloody well deserved too. We can all quibble over the exact speed of the unlocking, but we're now in a position to escape this thing faster than almost all countries that are not led by a certain Boris Johnson.
Before quibbling over the exact speed of the unlocking, you ought to take off your hat and bow your head for the tens of thousands killed by Boris Johnson's negligence to date.
Give it a rest.
Useful to have a list of all the pbers who have a vacuum where their souls should be. Tens of thousands died because Boris Johnson was asleep at the wheel - not once, but over and over.
And you want to forget that. Well, it will not be forgotten by anyone with a conscience.
Stop being an idiot.
So, we are supposed to forget, among other things:
1) Boris Johnson bunking off February 2020 to spend his time billing and cooing over Carrie. He missed five Cobra meetings at the time the risks of Covid-19 were becoming apparent to all.
2) lockdown 1 starting at least a week late.
3) the murderous discharge of Covid patients to care homes.
4) his bayoneting of the government’s public health messages by backing Dominic Cummings’ flagrant flouting of Covid regulations.
5) Ignoring Sage recommendations to lockdown in September, only to put a longer one in place six weeks later, 6,000 deaths later.
6) Relaxing restrictions in early December with the intention of further relaxing them for Christmas in defiance of the emerging horrific data, before backtracking when the turkeys were already defrosting.
7) Yet again, imposing lockdown 3 far too late.
The consequence was that Britain has a death rate per million exceeded only by Belgium, Slovenia and Czechia (and imminently about to overtake Slovenia). Excess deaths look almost as bad.
But there is no mistake, no matter how deadly or how obvious, that government supporters won’t try to overlook.
I'm not ignoring it, HMG has made terrible and egregious errors, and I happily point and shriek with horror when they happen. The inability to close the fucking borders, from February 2020, is particularly incendiary. A total mistake. Likewise, the advice on masks. Shitshow (tho here the scientists - yes, you, Van Tam - are probably guiltier than the politicians)
But, I also acknowledge that Britain was uniquely and unfortunately positioned to have a very bad plague, whatever happened - old, obese, internationally super-connected, world city, plentiful BAME community, generally libertarian, individualistic, service industry oriented - and I genuinely doubt most UK govts would have done much better (or many European govts, as we see in Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Portugal)
Besides, you seem intent on grief-shaming others for "not caring about death", rather than making any specific point. This is beneath you. For all you know, you are accusing people who have lost loved ones to Covid, of "not caring".
As I say below, you were driven mad by Brexit, and every so often the psychosis re-emerges. Tonight is one such. Tsk
Note that Alastair is sticking to his guns on open borders, despite being the single biggest error the government made not a single mention in his (fair IMO) list of errors that they've made.
Every single one of those pales in comparison to not closing the borders but his ideological need to keep the county "open" means he won't ever criticise that absolutely horrible and ongoing rubbish decision not to mandate quarantine for all incoming arrivals.
A very small handful of countries shut borders quickly enough. And even those that did enjoyed substantial luck that I still struggle to explain. Case in point, the last weekend in Jan 2020 was Chinese New Year. I recall me and my social group that week being incandescent that Singapore was still allowing direct flights from China, including Wuhan, just to avoid upsetting communist China’s sensibilities. And Singapore was ahead of the curve versus almost anyone.
I can criticise loads that the UK government didn’t do last Spring, and loads that it has done ever since with no good evidence in support.
Failing to lock borders before Wave 1 is a hard one for me to nail the government on, especially if the scientific advice and pandemic preparedness plan didn’t call for it. Certain people need to take a breath before accusing people of having no soul. Comical if it wasn’t so sad.
Lots of man love ❤️ for Boris, for his roadmap and for his luxuriant hair on PB this afternoon. Some positive swooning. Bless.
And bloody well deserved too. We can all quibble over the exact speed of the unlocking, but we're now in a position to escape this thing faster than almost all countries that are not led by a certain Boris Johnson.
Before quibbling over the exact speed of the unlocking, you ought to take off your hat and bow your head for the tens of thousands killed by Boris Johnson's negligence to date.
Give it a rest.
Useful to have a list of all the pbers who have a vacuum where their souls should be. Tens of thousands died because Boris Johnson was asleep at the wheel - not once, but over and over.
And you want to forget that. Well, it will not be forgotten by anyone with a conscience.
Stop being an idiot.
So, we are supposed to forget, among other things:
1) Boris Johnson bunking off February 2020 to spend his time billing and cooing over Carrie. He missed five Cobra meetings at the time the risks of Covid-19 were becoming apparent to all.
2) lockdown 1 starting at least a week late.
3) the murderous discharge of Covid patients to care homes.
4) his bayoneting of the government’s public health messages by backing Dominic Cummings’ flagrant flouting of Covid regulations.
5) Ignoring Sage recommendations to lockdown in September, only to put a longer one in place six weeks later, 6,000 deaths later.
6) Relaxing restrictions in early December with the intention of further relaxing them for Christmas in defiance of the emerging horrific data, before backtracking when the turkeys were already defrosting.
7) Yet again, imposing lockdown 3 far too late.
The consequence was that Britain has a death rate per million exceeded only by Belgium, Slovenia and Czechia (and imminently about to overtake Slovenia). Excess deaths look almost as bad.
But there is no mistake, no matter how deadly or how obvious, that government supporters won’t try to overlook.
I'm not ignoring it, HMG has made terrible and egregious errors, and I happily point and shriek with horror when they happen. The inability to close the fucking borders, from February 2020, is particularly incendiary. A total mistake. Likewise, the advice on masks. Shitshow (tho here the scientists - yes, you, Van Tam - are probably guiltier than the politicians)
But, I also acknowledge that Britain was uniquely and unfortunately positioned to have a very bad plague, whatever happened - old, obese, internationally super-connected, world city, plentiful BAME community, generally libertarian, individualistic, service industry oriented - and I genuinely doubt most UK govts would have done much better (or many European govts, as we see in Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Portugal)
Besides, you seem intent on grief-shaming others for "not caring about death", rather than making any specific point. This is beneath you. For all you know, you are accusing people who have lost loved ones to Covid, of "not caring".
As I say below, you were driven mad by Brexit, and every so often the psychosis re-emerges. Tonight is one such. Tsk
You are ignoring it. Because you have a void where any person of decency has a soul, and you desperately seek to avoid any analysis of that catastrophe because it is imperative for you that this government be forgiven any mistake, no matter how abysmal.
Personally, I think most, perhaps all, countries away from the West Pacific rim will be pretty much a wash by the time we are flooded with vaccines in the summer. Our good vaccine performance balanced by errors elsewhere, particularly on lockdowns, but also foreign travel, EOTHO etc, and a bigger economic hit.
There are no winners in this, just different forms of losing.
How can we say there were failures on lockdowns? Who succeeded where we failed?
I was thinking in terms of timing, such as schools returning for a single day six weeks ago, for example.
Maybe. What's emerging from the path of the virus in the US and elsewhere, surely, is that lockdown does not reliably act on covid like a thermostat on central heating. Florida vs California is surely indicative it does not.
And so to accuse someone of causing deaths because they turned the thermostat up too late is not only immoral but not sustainable as an argument.
Lots of man love ❤️ for Boris, for his roadmap and for his luxuriant hair on PB this afternoon. Some positive swooning. Bless.
And bloody well deserved too. We can all quibble over the exact speed of the unlocking, but we're now in a position to escape this thing faster than almost all countries that are not led by a certain Boris Johnson.
Before quibbling over the exact speed of the unlocking, you ought to take off your hat and bow your head for the tens of thousands killed by Boris Johnson's negligence to date.
Give it a rest.
Useful to have a list of all the pbers who have a vacuum where their souls should be. Tens of thousands died because Boris Johnson was asleep at the wheel - not once, but over and over.
And you want to forget that. Well, it will not be forgotten by anyone with a conscience.
Stop being an idiot.
So, we are supposed to forget, among other things:
1) Boris Johnson bunking off February 2020 to spend his time billing and cooing over Carrie. He missed five Cobra meetings at the time the risks of Covid-19 were becoming apparent to all.
2) lockdown 1 starting at least a week late.
3) the murderous discharge of Covid patients to care homes.
4) his bayoneting of the government’s public health messages by backing Dominic Cummings’ flagrant flouting of Covid regulations.
5) Ignoring Sage recommendations to lockdown in September, only to put a longer one in place six weeks later, 6,000 deaths later.
6) Relaxing restrictions in early December with the intention of further relaxing them for Christmas in defiance of the emerging horrific data, before backtracking when the turkeys were already defrosting.
7) Yet again, imposing lockdown 3 far too late.
The consequence was that Britain has a death rate per million exceeded only by Belgium, Slovenia and Czechia (and imminently about to overtake Slovenia). Excess deaths look almost as bad.
But there is no mistake, no matter how deadly or how obvious, that government supporters won’t try to overlook.
I'm not ignoring it, HMG has made terrible and egregious errors, and I happily point and shriek with horror when they happen. The inability to close the fucking borders, from February 2020, is particularly incendiary. A total mistake. Likewise, the advice on masks. Shitshow (tho here the scientists - yes, you, Van Tam - are probably guiltier than the politicians)
But, I also acknowledge that Britain was uniquely and unfortunately positioned to have a very bad plague, whatever happened - old, obese, internationally super-connected, world city, plentiful BAME community, generally libertarian, individualistic, service industry oriented - and I genuinely doubt most UK govts would have done much better (or many European govts, as we see in Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Portugal)
Besides, you seem intent on grief-shaming others for "not caring about death", rather than making any specific point. This is beneath you. For all you know, you are accusing people who have lost loved ones to Covid, of "not caring".
As I say below, you were driven mad by Brexit, and every so often the psychosis re-emerges. Tonight is one such. Tsk
You are ignoring it. Because you have a void where any person of decency has a soul, and you desperately seek to avoid any analysis of that catastrophe because it is imperative for you that this government be forgiven any mistake, no matter how abysmal.
I mean, sorry, but this is..... insane. I have a daughter suffering terribly from Lockdown. I have a good friend dying of Covid: right this minute. I have close relatives who are suffering: physically, mentally, and emotionally.
I know a young child - very well - that has attempted suicide during lockdown. I have wept many times over the past year, when normally I don't sob from one year to the next. Yet I have a "void where any person of decency has a soul"???
You, Sir, are turning into a nasty old c*nt, because of Brexit. Please go away, and calm down
You started by endorsing a call for me to “give it a rest” because I had the temerity to suggest that Boris Johnson’s performance had been suboptimal in causing so many avoidable deaths. “Stop being an idiot” were your words.
There are many posters on this site who are cracking open the champagne because the government’s catastrophic errors in this pandemic are going unexamined. But the least we can do for the dead is make sure that we learn from those mistakes.
I know that the scruffiness is part of the Boris persona, part of the act, but I really felt that today it was also quite the power play.
The normal rules simply don't apply to Boris. No other politician could get away with being so unkempt, let alone failing the country in the most basic duty of protecting them, to the tune of tens of thousands of avoidable deaths.
The other notable sign of his untrammelled power was the criticism of Carrie's position. It's always been the case that when it's too dangerous to criticise the person in charge malcontents will criticise the "evil advisers"and so it is with Boris the Mightily Dishevelled.
The question is: how long does Boris want to be Prime Minister for?
That's always the question for a leader at their peak, and yet before long it's 'When can they be ousted?'. He's in a pretty strong position, but just yesterday someone on here was eagerly talking about letters going in to the 1922 chairman. Misplaced optimism, perhaps, but an indication that many will be waiting in the wings for an opportunity.
Air New Zealand says it will trial a new digital health pass designed to help streamline safe international travel.
The Travel Pass app, developed by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), will store Covid test results and vaccination details in one place that can be shared among airlines and border control agencies. The trial will start in April with flights between Auckland and the Australian city of Sydney.
What do people without smartphones do?
If you're flying abroad, you'll have a smartphone.
Not me. I use a laptop for everything, and always have done, (since the 1990s). Ive been using Apple Macintosh laptops since 1995. I think Im on my 5th or 6th since then. Smartphones got on my nerves for some reason.
Lots of man love ❤️ for Boris, for his roadmap and for his luxuriant hair on PB this afternoon. Some positive swooning. Bless.
And bloody well deserved too. We can all quibble over the exact speed of the unlocking, but we're now in a position to escape this thing faster than almost all countries that are not led by a certain Boris Johnson.
Before quibbling over the exact speed of the unlocking, you ought to take off your hat and bow your head for the tens of thousands killed by Boris Johnson's negligence to date.
Give it a rest.
Useful to have a list of all the pbers who have a vacuum where their souls should be. Tens of thousands died because Boris Johnson was asleep at the wheel - not once, but over and over.
And you want to forget that. Well, it will not be forgotten by anyone with a conscience.
Stop being an idiot.
So, we are supposed to forget, among other things:
1) Boris Johnson bunking off February 2020 to spend his time billing and cooing over Carrie. He missed five Cobra meetings at the time the risks of Covid-19 were becoming apparent to all.
2) lockdown 1 starting at least a week late.
3) the murderous discharge of Covid patients to care homes.
4) his bayoneting of the government’s public health messages by backing Dominic Cummings’ flagrant flouting of Covid regulations.
5) Ignoring Sage recommendations to lockdown in September, only to put a longer one in place six weeks later, 6,000 deaths later.
6) Relaxing restrictions in early December with the intention of further relaxing them for Christmas in defiance of the emerging horrific data, before backtracking when the turkeys were already defrosting.
7) Yet again, imposing lockdown 3 far too late.
The consequence was that Britain has a death rate per million exceeded only by Belgium, Slovenia and Czechia (and imminently about to overtake Slovenia). Excess deaths look almost as bad.
But there is no mistake, no matter how deadly or how obvious, that government supporters won’t try to overlook.
I'm not ignoring it, HMG has made terrible and egregious errors, and I happily point and shriek with horror when they happen. The inability to close the fucking borders, from February 2020, is particularly incendiary. A total mistake. Likewise, the advice on masks. Shitshow (tho here the scientists - yes, you, Van Tam - are probably guiltier than the politicians)
But, I also acknowledge that Britain was uniquely and unfortunately positioned to have a very bad plague, whatever happened - old, obese, internationally super-connected, world city, plentiful BAME community, generally libertarian, individualistic, service industry oriented - and I genuinely doubt most UK govts would have done much better (or many European govts, as we see in Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Portugal)
Besides, you seem intent on grief-shaming others for "not caring about death", rather than making any specific point. This is beneath you. For all you know, you are accusing people who have lost loved ones to Covid, of "not caring".
As I say below, you were driven mad by Brexit, and every so often the psychosis re-emerges. Tonight is one such. Tsk
You are ignoring it. Because you have a void where any person of decency has a soul, and you desperately seek to avoid any analysis of that catastrophe because it is imperative for you that this government be forgiven any mistake, no matter how abysmal.
I mean, sorry, but this is..... insane. I have a daughter suffering terribly from Lockdown. I have a good friend dying of Covid: right this minute. I have close relatives who are suffering: physically, mentally, and emotionally.
I know a young child - very well - that has attempted suicide during lockdown. I have wept many times over the past year, when normally I don't sob from one year to the next. Yet I have a "void where any person of decency has a soul"???
You, Sir, are turning into a nasty old c*nt, because of Brexit. Please go away, and calm down
You started by endorsing a call for me to “give it a rest” because I had the temerity to suggest that Boris Johnson’s performance had been suboptimal in causing so many avoidable deaths. “Stop being an idiot” were your words.
There are many posters on this site who are cracking open the champagne because the government’s catastrophic errors in this pandemic are going unexamined. But the least we can do for the dead is make sure that we learn from those mistakes.
By what benchmark are you measuring Johnson's 'sub-optimal' performance? who or what is 'optimal?'
How many people has Grant Shapps killed with his mad open at all costs obsession ? If ever there was a crisis to listen to Patel's more reactionary instincts this was it. Boris is Shapps' boss so he carries the can for Shapps' decisions.
My biggest concern of the plan is it is clear thr government again want us all to have a summer holiday abroad again...I think that is very unwise given most of EU will be way off in terms of vaccinations and places like Portugal have plenty of Brazilian variant, let alone SA variant.
Vaccine passports trips to low-infection regions seem perfectly feasible to me, by the summer. Israel, Greece, Cyprus, some other Med islands, Canaries, and so on.
Vaccine passports are deffo coming. They are the only way airlines - and hotels, and all of hospitality - will commercially survive. Ignoring this fact is stupid. People, and their insurers, will want the certainty.
Air New Zealand says it will trial a new digital health pass designed to help streamline safe international travel.
The Travel Pass app, developed by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), will store Covid test results and vaccination details in one place that can be shared among airlines and border control agencies. The trial will start in April with flights between Auckland and the Australian city of Sydney.
What do people without smartphones do?
If you're flying abroad, you'll have a smartphone.
Not me. I use a laptop for everything, and always have done, (since the 1990s). Ive been using Apple Macintosh laptops since 1995. I think Im on my 5th or 6th since then.
I think the QR code (That shows you're vaxxed) will be part of the flight booking process.
Basically, why can't you give us an exact date when this will be over and a report says that lifting restrictions could kill an extra 30k people, how many do you think you will be killing with this plan.
There was a sweet spot between the overly deferential 50s and early 60s and today’s brain numbing shitshow when political journalism managed to be challenging, intelligent, occasionally funny and accessible to the public all at once. I’m thinking the 80s, John Cole etc
Lots of man love ❤️ for Boris, for his roadmap and for his luxuriant hair on PB this afternoon. Some positive swooning. Bless.
And bloody well deserved too. We can all quibble over the exact speed of the unlocking, but we're now in a position to escape this thing faster than almost all countries that are not led by a certain Boris Johnson.
Before quibbling over the exact speed of the unlocking, you ought to take off your hat and bow your head for the tens of thousands killed by Boris Johnson's negligence to date.
Give it a rest.
Useful to have a list of all the pbers who have a vacuum where their souls should be. Tens of thousands died because Boris Johnson was asleep at the wheel - not once, but over and over.
And you want to forget that. Well, it will not be forgotten by anyone with a conscience.
Stop being an idiot.
So, we are supposed to forget, among other things:
1) Boris Johnson bunking off February 2020 to spend his time billing and cooing over Carrie. He missed five Cobra meetings at the time the risks of Covid-19 were becoming apparent to all.
2) lockdown 1 starting at least a week late.
3) the murderous discharge of Covid patients to care homes.
4) his bayoneting of the government’s public health messages by backing Dominic Cummings’ flagrant flouting of Covid regulations.
5) Ignoring Sage recommendations to lockdown in September, only to put a longer one in place six weeks later, 6,000 deaths later.
6) Relaxing restrictions in early December with the intention of further relaxing them for Christmas in defiance of the emerging horrific data, before backtracking when the turkeys were already defrosting.
7) Yet again, imposing lockdown 3 far too late.
The consequence was that Britain has a death rate per million exceeded only by Belgium, Slovenia and Czechia (and imminently about to overtake Slovenia). Excess deaths look almost as bad.
But there is no mistake, no matter how deadly or how obvious, that government supporters won’t try to overlook.
I'm not ignoring it, HMG has made terrible and egregious errors, and I happily point and shriek with horror when they happen. The inability to close the fucking borders, from February 2020, is particularly incendiary. A total mistake. Likewise, the advice on masks. Shitshow (tho here the scientists - yes, you, Van Tam - are probably guiltier than the politicians)
But, I also acknowledge that Britain was uniquely and unfortunately positioned to have a very bad plague, whatever happened - old, obese, internationally super-connected, world city, plentiful BAME community, generally libertarian, individualistic, service industry oriented - and I genuinely doubt most UK govts would have done much better (or many European govts, as we see in Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Portugal)
Besides, you seem intent on grief-shaming others for "not caring about death", rather than making any specific point. This is beneath you. For all you know, you are accusing people who have lost loved ones to Covid, of "not caring".
As I say below, you were driven mad by Brexit, and every so often the psychosis re-emerges. Tonight is one such. Tsk
You are ignoring it. Because you have a void where any person of decency has a soul, and you desperately seek to avoid any analysis of that catastrophe because it is imperative for you that this government be forgiven any mistake, no matter how abysmal.
I mean, sorry, but this is..... insane. I have a daughter suffering terribly from Lockdown. I have a good friend dying of Covid: right this minute. I have close relatives who are suffering: physically, mentally, and emotionally.
I know a young child - very well - that has attempted suicide during lockdown. I have wept many times over the past year, when normally I don't sob from one year to the next. Yet I have a "void where any person of decency has a soul"???
You, Sir, are turning into a nasty old c*nt, because of Brexit. Please go away, and calm down
You started by endorsing a call for me to “give it a rest” because I had the temerity to suggest that Boris Johnson’s performance had been suboptimal in causing so many avoidable deaths. “Stop being an idiot” were your words.
There are many posters on this site who are cracking open the champagne because the government’s catastrophic errors in this pandemic are going unexamined. But the least we can do for the dead is make sure that we learn from those mistakes.
I've just been reading. It's a long list of the accused. The First Minister herself doesn't seem to be explicitly taken to task - yet - but the denunciations encompass he husband, her chief of staff and other SNP officials, the Permanent Secretary, the Lord Advocate, the Crown Office, and a number of other figures who 'cannot be named for legal reasons.'
It looks very much like a favourite tactic that aggrieved medieval nobles used to weaken God's anointed King (or Queen) - if going for them directly is too problematic you blame their misdeeds on their bad advisors, and if the monarch can't then save their favourites from the executioner's block then they, in turn, are exposed as weak and ripe for overthrow.
Of course, whether the appearance at the Parliamentary hearing turns out to be a popcorn spectacular or a damp squib remains to be seen.
Today we went over 140k nameable individuals dead. (133,077 death certificate by date to 5/2, 7,000 exactly hospital deaths by date since then).
There was one key, killer failure that made the UKs second wave so bad - in the last week of November, the failure to appreciate quite what was going on in Kent - the numbers were there to be seen - and the failure to moderate the lockdown release accordingly. The over generous initial Christmas offer, didn't help and limited how much could be scaled back, but that was secondary, the damage was already done in early December with Kent in tier 3 and Essex and London in tier 2, by waiting for the confirmation of the new strain before acting, rather than acting on the 'something' in the numbers.
Unfortunately, rapid vaccination compared with Europe and our likely faster downswing, although welcome and a psychological boon, will be a lesser influence in overall assessment than people believe. We will save lives here, but Europe will, is, downswinging and will have the summer to play catch up on that downswing.
Yes, people still don't grasp how absolutely appalling the second wave has been. The absolute botching of the response to case and death rises in SEPTEMBER, never mind November is a key topic for the Truth and Reconciliation comission.
Which country will the T&R commission be holding up as best practice? that'll be an interesting one.
That's not the point of a t&r commission. The point is to find out what decisions were made, when they were made and more importantly why they were made so that the next time there is a pandemic the same mistakes are not repeated.
It is not a dick measuring contest. Nor a sop to make people feel better because other countries did badly.
It is an internal process.
It is still intended to find Government witches to burn.
Just be honest.
Ah so you are willing to let another hundred and forty thousand people die just so long as it doesn't hurt a Conservative Minister's feelings.
Glad we've got your position clear.
There is nothing government supporters will not excuse. But they’d prefer not to have to make the effort.
Can you imagine what they would be saying if Labour were in power and had produced results like these, having made the unforced errors that this government has made?
I’d be saying “these bloody Stalinist, nanny state lunatics have bankrupted the country, turned fiat into toilet paper, taken away ancient liberties with no reasoned evidence as to why and don’t seem to even care about the cascade of mental illness they’ve unleashed, such is their fixation on a single, likely undeliverable policy goal”.
I’d then say, what do Her Maj’s Oppositon have to say? Much the same. But at least the leader has banter, an exciting sex life and an amusing hairline with a mind of its own.
Starmer is not as clever as he looks if he thinks he’ll win Downing St in 3 years by harping on about locking down / not locking down in Spring 2020. He needs to pivot to cheerful optimism and fast or he’s done for.
Is this your main requirement from political leaders then? Cheerful optimism?
Cheerful optimism is quite important for prospective political leaders. Most people want something to hope for in the future, not just cold, hard reality.
Labour's challenge isn't resolving the rift between hard and centre left. Or even coming up with interesting policies. Blair didn't really win on policies in 97. He stuck to Tory spending plans for his first parliament safe in the knowledge he had destroyed the Tory challenge for as long as he wanted to be PM.
Labour's challenge is actually trying to find someone, anyone, within the PLP to lead them and fight for PM who doesn't look like Dot Cotton licking piss off a nettle.
To steal a phrase...
She's no oil painting, but I think Jess is the one to do it
I think Jess is great, but Angela Rayner more likely, as she is both Deputy Leader, and quite appealing to the Corbynite faction.
Today we went over 140k nameable individuals dead. (133,077 death certificate by date to 5/2, 7,000 exactly hospital deaths by date since then).
There was one key, killer failure that made the UKs second wave so bad - in the last week of November, the failure to appreciate quite what was going on in Kent - the numbers were there to be seen - and the failure to moderate the lockdown release accordingly. The over generous initial Christmas offer, didn't help and limited how much could be scaled back, but that was secondary, the damage was already done in early December with Kent in tier 3 and Essex and London in tier 2, by waiting for the confirmation of the new strain before acting, rather than acting on the 'something' in the numbers.
Unfortunately, rapid vaccination compared with Europe and our likely faster downswing, although welcome and a psychological boon, will be a lesser influence in overall assessment than people believe. We will save lives here, but Europe will, is, downswinging and will have the summer to play catch up on that downswing.
Yes, people still don't grasp how absolutely appalling the second wave has been. The absolute botching of the response to case and death rises in SEPTEMBER, never mind November is a key topic for the Truth and Reconciliation comission.
Which country will the T&R commission be holding up as best practice? that'll be an interesting one.
That's not the point of a t&r commission. The point is to find out what decisions were made, when they were made and more importantly why they were made so that the next time there is a pandemic the same mistakes are not repeated.
It is not a dick measuring contest. Nor a sop to make people feel better because other countries did badly.
It is an internal process.
It is still intended to find Government witches to burn.
Just be honest.
Ah so you are willing to let another hundred and forty thousand people die just so long as it doesn't hurt a Conservative Minister's feelings.
Glad we've got your position clear.
There is nothing government supporters will not excuse. But they’d prefer not to have to make the effort.
Can you imagine what they would be saying if Labour were in power and had produced results like these, having made the unforced errors that this government has made?
Your analysis of the government's mistakes rests upon your belief that you can use lockdown to turn up or turn down COVID like you would your central heating.
That US experience shows graphically that the relationship is much more complex than that.
He's frustrated he can't hang Covid-19 around Boris's neck to bring him down, because of his obsession with his original leading role in Brexit.
It really is that simple.
The obsession with Brexit is entirely among Leavers. Boris Johnson has made a series of unforgivable mistakes on Covid-19. But Leavers are willing to overlook them all because of Brexit.
There is literally nothing Leavers will not excuse, up to and including tens of thousands of avoidable deaths.
This has important betting implications. (It also means the country will continue its long term decline under atrocious governance, but that’s a side note really.)
Question is- how much do any of us realise the relative degrees of messed-upness in different countries?
Partly, that's about absolute death tolls- the January spike seems to have just happened with a shrug.
Also, it's the extent of current lockdown. If you take the numbers here,
The UK has been in an unusually long and hard lockdown this winter, compared with other similar countries.
(And to save anyone the trouble- lockdown is what you do when you've messed up. You can hold cases constant fairly easily, and as long as you hold them constant and low, that's sort of tolerable. If you let them get out of control, you have to lockdown harder to reduce them. It's germ theory and maths.)
But I don't know how the numbers are generated. What would be interesting would be:
1 What actually have been the social controls in different places over the winter? 2 What is the public perception of what the social controls in different places have been? 3 What is the public perception of the infection rates in different places?
Because that gets to the heart of whether this is an awful challenge that most nations have fumbled or an awful challenge where the UK government have done significantly worse.
Only the first of those is in any way significant. The other two do not have any objective or even subjective validity because different populations have different attitudes to social controls based on their cultures and history.
Badly phrased- which was my fault, sorry.
I'm interested in how the GBP thinks GB is doing compared with elsewhere. My hypothesis is that we are all assuming that the English experience of Winter 2020/1 is much of a muchness with other rich countries currently leaving winter and entering spring.
There are some hints (which match what I see when I check in with news from Spain, purely because I used to live there and am interested) that it's not quite like that; that the social restrictions in Seville are looser than in London.
So what I'm interested in (because it affects the politics in the UK) is what do people in the UK think is going on elsewhere, and how well that matches reality? Because those two things taken together might explain some of the odder aspects of the conversation.
Again not entirely sure how you judge these things.
France has kept shops open but has had a strict nightly curfew 6pm - 6am. All bars, restaurants etc have been closed. But whatever they have been doing has basically failed because they are seeing a rapid increase in cases and are saying they will have to go into lockdown again.
Italy also has a curfew (10pm to 5am)
Germany has shut all shops, schools, bars, restaurants etc and ha similar rules to us on meeting people from outside your household.
In spite of what you say about Spain, officially they are under a nationwide curfew until early May 2021. People are only allowed out to go to work, for education, to buy medicine, or care for elderly people or children. That seems much stricter than the UK.
Personally it seems to me that the rest of the EU are generally pretty much on a par with the strictness of their lockdowns but the detail varies (I see a curfew as far more intrusive and strict than anything we have in the UK)
But sadly even if this was working it is completely undermined by their poor vaccination progress.
And yet the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford university rate the UK's restrictions as stricter than many of our neighbours. And the FT are happy to put their data on their webpage.
And annoying though a curfew is, England is currently under 24/7 Stay At Home, except for limited reasons. Remember?
Lots of man love ❤️ for Boris, for his roadmap and for his luxuriant hair on PB this afternoon. Some positive swooning. Bless.
And bloody well deserved too. We can all quibble over the exact speed of the unlocking, but we're now in a position to escape this thing faster than almost all countries that are not led by a certain Boris Johnson.
Before quibbling over the exact speed of the unlocking, you ought to take off your hat and bow your head for the tens of thousands killed by Boris Johnson's negligence to date.
Give it a rest.
Useful to have a list of all the pbers who have a vacuum where their souls should be. Tens of thousands died because Boris Johnson was asleep at the wheel - not once, but over and over.
And you want to forget that. Well, it will not be forgotten by anyone with a conscience.
Stop being an idiot.
So, we are supposed to forget, among other things:
1) Boris Johnson bunking off February 2020 to spend his time billing and cooing over Carrie. He missed five Cobra meetings at the time the risks of Covid-19 were becoming apparent to all.
2) lockdown 1 starting at least a week late.
3) the murderous discharge of Covid patients to care homes.
4) his bayoneting of the government’s public health messages by backing Dominic Cummings’ flagrant flouting of Covid regulations.
5) Ignoring Sage recommendations to lockdown in September, only to put a longer one in place six weeks later, 6,000 deaths later.
6) Relaxing restrictions in early December with the intention of further relaxing them for Christmas in defiance of the emerging horrific data, before backtracking when the turkeys were already defrosting.
7) Yet again, imposing lockdown 3 far too late.
The consequence was that Britain has a death rate per million exceeded only by Belgium, Slovenia and Czechia (and imminently about to overtake Slovenia). Excess deaths look almost as bad.
But there is no mistake, no matter how deadly or how obvious, that government supporters won’t try to overlook.
I'm not ignoring it, HMG has made terrible and egregious errors, and I happily point and shriek with horror when they happen. The inability to close the fucking borders, from February 2020, is particularly incendiary. A total mistake. Likewise, the advice on masks. Shitshow (tho here the scientists - yes, you, Van Tam - are probably guiltier than the politicians)
But, I also acknowledge that Britain was uniquely and unfortunately positioned to have a very bad plague, whatever happened - old, obese, internationally super-connected, world city, plentiful BAME community, generally libertarian, individualistic, service industry oriented - and I genuinely doubt most UK govts would have done much better (or many European govts, as we see in Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Portugal)
Besides, you seem intent on grief-shaming others for "not caring about death", rather than making any specific point. This is beneath you. For all you know, you are accusing people who have lost loved ones to Covid, of "not caring".
As I say below, you were driven mad by Brexit, and every so often the psychosis re-emerges. Tonight is one such. Tsk
Note that Alastair is sticking to his guns on open borders, despite being the single biggest error the government made not a single mention in his (fair IMO) list of errors that they've made.
Every single one of those pales in comparison to not closing the borders but his ideological need to keep the county "open" means he won't ever criticise that absolutely horrible and ongoing rubbish decision not to mandate quarantine for all incoming arrivals.
A very small handful of countries shut borders quickly enough. And even those that did enjoyed substantial luck that I still struggle to explain. Case in point, the last weekend in Jan 2020 was Chinese New Year. I recall me and my social group that week being incandescent that Singapore was still allowing direct flights from China, including Wuhan, just to avoid upsetting communist China’s sensibilities. And Singapore was ahead of the curve versus almost anyone.
I can criticise loads that the UK government didn’t do last Spring, and loads that it has done ever since with no good evidence in support.
Failing to lock borders before Wave 1 is a hard one for me to nail the government on, especially if the scientific advice and pandemic preparedness plan didn’t call for it. Certain people need to take a breath before accusing people of having no soul. Comical if it wasn’t so sad.
Not before the first wave, I can excuse that. We should have done it during the first wave and put mandatory quarantine in place over the summer before the second wave and prevented it completely. To my mind ca. 80k people died in the second wave, a more infectious variant mutated in Kent which is plaguing the rest of the world and we sacrificed the economy and non-COVID hospital treatments to keep the borders open in the second wave. It's been a disaster.
Looking at those YouGov polls, it seems like Johnson has a Derren Brown-like influence over British voters at the moment.
Give the British public a sensible plan, and they'll respond sensibly. This one seems to have hit the Goldilocks zone - not too fast, and not too slow - and has carried most people with it. No small feat in these fractured times.
Not often we see 'going too slow' polling higher than 'going to fast'.
Doesn’t surprise me. Those “let’s keep locking down forever” polls oft quoted by the ultras were obviously showing ‘support’ a mile wide and a millimetre deep. A whiff of spring, and the puddle dries up.
Lots of man love ❤️ for Boris, for his roadmap and for his luxuriant hair on PB this afternoon. Some positive swooning. Bless.
And bloody well deserved too. We can all quibble over the exact speed of the unlocking, but we're now in a position to escape this thing faster than almost all countries that are not led by a certain Boris Johnson.
Before quibbling over the exact speed of the unlocking, you ought to take off your hat and bow your head for the tens of thousands killed by Boris Johnson's negligence to date.
Give it a rest.
Useful to have a list of all the pbers who have a vacuum where their souls should be. Tens of thousands died because Boris Johnson was asleep at the wheel - not once, but over and over.
And you want to forget that. Well, it will not be forgotten by anyone with a conscience.
Stop being an idiot.
So, we are supposed to forget, among other things:
1) Boris Johnson bunking off February 2020 to spend his time billing and cooing over Carrie. He missed five Cobra meetings at the time the risks of Covid-19 were becoming apparent to all.
2) lockdown 1 starting at least a week late.
3) the murderous discharge of Covid patients to care homes.
4) his bayoneting of the government’s public health messages by backing Dominic Cummings’ flagrant flouting of Covid regulations.
5) Ignoring Sage recommendations to lockdown in September, only to put a longer one in place six weeks later, 6,000 deaths later.
6) Relaxing restrictions in early December with the intention of further relaxing them for Christmas in defiance of the emerging horrific data, before backtracking when the turkeys were already defrosting.
7) Yet again, imposing lockdown 3 far too late.
The consequence was that Britain has a death rate per million exceeded only by Belgium, Slovenia and Czechia (and imminently about to overtake Slovenia). Excess deaths look almost as bad.
But there is no mistake, no matter how deadly or how obvious, that government supporters won’t try to overlook.
I'm not ignoring it, HMG has made terrible and egregious errors, and I happily point and shriek with horror when they happen. The inability to close the fucking borders, from February 2020, is particularly incendiary. A total mistake. Likewise, the advice on masks. Shitshow (tho here the scientists - yes, you, Van Tam - are probably guiltier than the politicians)
But, I also acknowledge that Britain was uniquely and unfortunately positioned to have a very bad plague, whatever happened - old, obese, internationally super-connected, world city, plentiful BAME community, generally libertarian, individualistic, service industry oriented - and I genuinely doubt most UK govts would have done much better (or many European govts, as we see in Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Portugal)
Besides, you seem intent on grief-shaming others for "not caring about death", rather than making any specific point. This is beneath you. For all you know, you are accusing people who have lost loved ones to Covid, of "not caring".
As I say below, you were driven mad by Brexit, and every so often the psychosis re-emerges. Tonight is one such. Tsk
Note that Alastair is sticking to his guns on open borders, despite being the single biggest error the government made not a single mention in his (fair IMO) list of errors that they've made.
Every single one of those pales in comparison to not closing the borders but his ideological need to keep the county "open" means he won't ever criticise that absolutely horrible and ongoing rubbish decision not to mandate quarantine for all incoming arrivals.
A very small handful of countries shut borders quickly enough. And even those that did enjoyed substantial luck that I still struggle to explain. Case in point, the last weekend in Jan 2020 was Chinese New Year. I recall me and my social group that week being incandescent that Singapore was still allowing direct flights from China, including Wuhan, just to avoid upsetting communist China’s sensibilities. And Singapore was ahead of the curve versus almost anyone.
I can criticise loads that the UK government didn’t do last Spring, and loads that it has done ever since with no good evidence in support.
Failing to lock borders before Wave 1 is a hard one for me to nail the government on, especially if the scientific advice and pandemic preparedness plan didn’t call for it. Certain people need to take a breath before accusing people of having no soul. Comical if it wasn’t so sad.
I think it was unlikely that we could ever have had a NZ outcome.
But we should still have shut the borders and not allowed foreign travel as that has played its part in spreading the virus. Add in the mutant strain risk and it's a no-brainer.
Lots of man love ❤️ for Boris, for his roadmap and for his luxuriant hair on PB this afternoon. Some positive swooning. Bless.
And bloody well deserved too. We can all quibble over the exact speed of the unlocking, but we're now in a position to escape this thing faster than almost all countries that are not led by a certain Boris Johnson.
Before quibbling over the exact speed of the unlocking, you ought to take off your hat and bow your head for the tens of thousands killed by Boris Johnson's negligence to date.
Give it a rest.
Useful to have a list of all the pbers who have a vacuum where their souls should be. Tens of thousands died because Boris Johnson was asleep at the wheel - not once, but over and over.
And you want to forget that. Well, it will not be forgotten by anyone with a conscience.
Stop being an idiot.
So, we are supposed to forget, among other things:
1) Boris Johnson bunking off February 2020 to spend his time billing and cooing over Carrie. He missed five Cobra meetings at the time the risks of Covid-19 were becoming apparent to all.
2) lockdown 1 starting at least a week late.
3) the murderous discharge of Covid patients to care homes.
4) his bayoneting of the government’s public health messages by backing Dominic Cummings’ flagrant flouting of Covid regulations.
5) Ignoring Sage recommendations to lockdown in September, only to put a longer one in place six weeks later, 6,000 deaths later.
6) Relaxing restrictions in early December with the intention of further relaxing them for Christmas in defiance of the emerging horrific data, before backtracking when the turkeys were already defrosting.
7) Yet again, imposing lockdown 3 far too late.
The consequence was that Britain has a death rate per million exceeded only by Belgium, Slovenia and Czechia (and imminently about to overtake Slovenia). Excess deaths look almost as bad.
But there is no mistake, no matter how deadly or how obvious, that government supporters won’t try to overlook.
I'm not ignoring it, HMG has made terrible and egregious errors, and I happily point and shriek with horror when they happen. The inability to close the fucking borders, from February 2020, is particularly incendiary. A total mistake. Likewise, the advice on masks. Shitshow (tho here the scientists - yes, you, Van Tam - are probably guiltier than the politicians)
But, I also acknowledge that Britain was uniquely and unfortunately positioned to have a very bad plague, whatever happened - old, obese, internationally super-connected, world city, plentiful BAME community, generally libertarian, individualistic, service industry oriented - and I genuinely doubt most UK govts would have done much better (or many European govts, as we see in Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Portugal)
Besides, you seem intent on grief-shaming others for "not caring about death", rather than making any specific point. This is beneath you. For all you know, you are accusing people who have lost loved ones to Covid, of "not caring".
As I say below, you were driven mad by Brexit, and every so often the psychosis re-emerges. Tonight is one such. Tsk
Note that Alastair is sticking to his guns on open borders, despite being the single biggest error the government made not a single mention in his (fair IMO) list of errors that they've made.
Every single one of those pales in comparison to not closing the borders but his ideological need to keep the county "open" means he won't ever criticise that absolutely horrible and ongoing rubbish decision not to mandate quarantine for all incoming arrivals.
This is incorrect. I only omitted from my list by accident closing the borders. That is a clear and gross error, and I have thought that for a very long time.
You mischaracterised me.
Fair enough, I take it back. Apologies. I do agree with most of what you wrote and Boris needs to fall for his prior failures. However, I'm not going to let that get in the way of excitement that this might finally be over and crediting the government effort on vaccinations.
I've just been reading. It's a long list of the accused. The First Minister herself doesn't seem to be explicitly taken to task - yet - but the denunciations encompass he husband, her chief of staff and other SNP officials, the Permanent Secretary, the Lord Advocate, the Crown Office, and a number of other figures who 'cannot be named for legal reasons.'
It looks very much like a favourite tactic that aggrieved medieval nobles used to weaken God's anointed King (or Queen) - if going for them directly is too problematic you blame their misdeeds on their bad advisors, and if the monarch can't then save their favourites from the executioner's block then they, in turn, are exposed as weak and ripe for overthrow.
Of course, whether the appearance at the Parliamentary hearing turns out to be a popcorn spectacular or a damp squib remains to be seen.
Well its clear one of them, at least, is finished. Also from Salmond:
"The real cost to the Scottish people runs into many millions of pounds and yet no-one in this entire process has uttered the simple words which are necessary on occasions to renew and refresh democratic institutions - 'I Resign'.
"The Committee now has the opportunity to address that position."
How many people has Grant Shapps killed with his mad open at all costs obsession ? If ever there was a crisis to listen to Patel's more reactionary instincts this was it. Boris is Shapps' boss so he carries the can for Shapps' decisions.
A wider question is why Michael Green was ever allowed near government in the first place.
How many people has Grant Shapps killed with his mad open at all costs obsession ? If ever there was a crisis to listen to Patel's more reactionary instincts this was it. Boris is Shapps' boss so he carries the can for Shapps' decisions.
It is inconceivable that Schapps is following a policy that has not been approved and ordered by a higher authority.
Today we went over 140k nameable individuals dead. (133,077 death certificate by date to 5/2, 7,000 exactly hospital deaths by date since then).
There was one key, killer failure that made the UKs second wave so bad - in the last week of November, the failure to appreciate quite what was going on in Kent - the numbers were there to be seen - and the failure to moderate the lockdown release accordingly. The over generous initial Christmas offer, didn't help and limited how much could be scaled back, but that was secondary, the damage was already done in early December with Kent in tier 3 and Essex and London in tier 2, by waiting for the confirmation of the new strain before acting, rather than acting on the 'something' in the numbers.
Unfortunately, rapid vaccination compared with Europe and our likely faster downswing, although welcome and a psychological boon, will be a lesser influence in overall assessment than people believe. We will save lives here, but Europe will, is, downswinging and will have the summer to play catch up on that downswing.
Yes, people still don't grasp how absolutely appalling the second wave has been. The absolute botching of the response to case and death rises in SEPTEMBER, never mind November is a key topic for the Truth and Reconciliation comission.
Which country will the T&R commission be holding up as best practice? that'll be an interesting one.
That's not the point of a t&r commission. The point is to find out what decisions were made, when they were made and more importantly why they were made so that the next time there is a pandemic the same mistakes are not repeated.
It is not a dick measuring contest. Nor a sop to make people feel better because other countries did badly.
It is an internal process.
It is still intended to find Government witches to burn.
Just be honest.
Ah so you are willing to let another hundred and forty thousand people die just so long as it doesn't hurt a Conservative Minister's feelings.
Glad we've got your position clear.
There is nothing government supporters will not excuse. But they’d prefer not to have to make the effort.
Can you imagine what they would be saying if Labour were in power and had produced results like these, having made the unforced errors that this government has made?
Your analysis of the government's mistakes rests upon your belief that you can use lockdown to turn up or turn down COVID like you would your central heating.
That US experience shows graphically that the relationship is much more complex than that.
He's frustrated he can't hang Covid-19 around Boris's neck to bring him down, because of his obsession with his original leading role in Brexit.
It really is that simple.
The obsession with Brexit is entirely among Leavers. Boris Johnson has made a series of unforgivable mistakes on Covid-19. But Leavers are willing to overlook them all because of Brexit.
There is literally nothing Leavers will not excuse, up to and including tens of thousands of avoidable deaths.
This has important betting implications. (It also means the country will continue its long term decline under atrocious governance, but that’s a side note really.)
Question is- how much do any of us realise the relative degrees of messed-upness in different countries?
Partly, that's about absolute death tolls- the January spike seems to have just happened with a shrug.
Also, it's the extent of current lockdown. If you take the numbers here,
The UK has been in an unusually long and hard lockdown this winter, compared with other similar countries.
(And to save anyone the trouble- lockdown is what you do when you've messed up. You can hold cases constant fairly easily, and as long as you hold them constant and low, that's sort of tolerable. If you let them get out of control, you have to lockdown harder to reduce them. It's germ theory and maths.)
But I don't know how the numbers are generated. What would be interesting would be:
1 What actually have been the social controls in different places over the winter? 2 What is the public perception of what the social controls in different places have been? 3 What is the public perception of the infection rates in different places?
Because that gets to the heart of whether this is an awful challenge that most nations have fumbled or an awful challenge where the UK government have done significantly worse.
Only the first of those is in any way significant. The other two do not have any objective or even subjective validity because different populations have different attitudes to social controls based on their cultures and history.
Funnily enough some of the most authoritarian places are the laxest in lockdown - Russia notably. Belarus of course. Even China, once they had swept enough bodies under the carpet in Wuhan, found it desirable to pretend everything was a-okay when, I suspect, it wasn’t.
Not often we see 'going too slow' polling higher than 'going to fast'.
Doesn’t surprise me. Those “let’s keep locking down forever” polls oft quoted by the ultras were obviously showing ‘support’ a mile wide and a millimetre deep. A whiff of spring, and the puddle dries up.
And every day there are hundreds of thousands more people who feel safe because its now two weeks since they were vaccinated.
We have now reached agreement with the Parliamentary clerks on the publication of Mr Salmond’s evidence to the Committee.
This clears the way for Mr Salmond to attend an oral hearing on Wednesday........
The major issue delaying agreement today concerned an affidavit submitted by Anne Harvey, a senior SNP official based in the Whips Office at Westminster.
In that affidavit she describes in detail her reasons for believing that a “witch-hunt” was orchestrated against Mr Salmond by SNP officials. She provides contemporary documentary evidence from emails in 2018 which support her view.
Ms Harvey further describes her awareness that “one or more members of SNP Headquarters staff was engaged in a cynical attempt to construct a disingenuous and totally unwarranted case against Mr Salmond”
That affidavit has now been heavily and, in our view, unnecessarily redacted before publication. Its remaining contents have now been published on the Parliament site.
Lots of man love ❤️ for Boris, for his roadmap and for his luxuriant hair on PB this afternoon. Some positive swooning. Bless.
And bloody well deserved too. We can all quibble over the exact speed of the unlocking, but we're now in a position to escape this thing faster than almost all countries that are not led by a certain Boris Johnson.
Before quibbling over the exact speed of the unlocking, you ought to take off your hat and bow your head for the tens of thousands killed by Boris Johnson's negligence to date.
Give it a rest.
Useful to have a list of all the pbers who have a vacuum where their souls should be. Tens of thousands died because Boris Johnson was asleep at the wheel - not once, but over and over.
And you want to forget that. Well, it will not be forgotten by anyone with a conscience.
Stop being an idiot.
So, we are supposed to forget, among other things:
1) Boris Johnson bunking off February 2020 to spend his time billing and cooing over Carrie. He missed five Cobra meetings at the time the risks of Covid-19 were becoming apparent to all.
2) lockdown 1 starting at least a week late.
3) the murderous discharge of Covid patients to care homes.
4) his bayoneting of the government’s public health messages by backing Dominic Cummings’ flagrant flouting of Covid regulations.
5) Ignoring Sage recommendations to lockdown in September, only to put a longer one in place six weeks later, 6,000 deaths later.
6) Relaxing restrictions in early December with the intention of further relaxing them for Christmas in defiance of the emerging horrific data, before backtracking when the turkeys were already defrosting.
7) Yet again, imposing lockdown 3 far too late.
The consequence was that Britain has a death rate per million exceeded only by Belgium, Slovenia and Czechia (and imminently about to overtake Slovenia). Excess deaths look almost as bad.
But there is no mistake, no matter how deadly or how obvious, that government supporters won’t try to overlook.
I'm not ignoring it, HMG has made terrible and egregious errors, and I happily point and shriek with horror when they happen. The inability to close the fucking borders, from February 2020, is particularly incendiary. A total mistake. Likewise, the advice on masks. Shitshow (tho here the scientists - yes, you, Van Tam - are probably guiltier than the politicians)
But, I also acknowledge that Britain was uniquely and unfortunately positioned to have a very bad plague, whatever happened - old, obese, internationally super-connected, world city, plentiful BAME community, generally libertarian, individualistic, service industry oriented - and I genuinely doubt most UK govts would have done much better (or many European govts, as we see in Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Portugal)
Besides, you seem intent on grief-shaming others for "not caring about death", rather than making any specific point. This is beneath you. For all you know, you are accusing people who have lost loved ones to Covid, of "not caring".
As I say below, you were driven mad by Brexit, and every so often the psychosis re-emerges. Tonight is one such. Tsk
You are ignoring it. Because you have a void where any person of decency has a soul, and you desperately seek to avoid any analysis of that catastrophe because it is imperative for you that this government be forgiven any mistake, no matter how abysmal.
I mean, sorry, but this is..... insane. I have a daughter suffering terribly from Lockdown. I have a good friend dying of Covid: right this minute. I have close relatives who are suffering: physically, mentally, and emotionally.
I know a young child - very well - that has attempted suicide during lockdown. I have wept many times over the past year, when normally I don't sob from one year to the next. Yet I have a "void where any person of decency has a soul"???
You, Sir, are turning into a nasty old c*nt, because of Brexit. Please go away, and calm down
You started by endorsing a call for me to “give it a rest” because I had the temerity to suggest that Boris Johnson’s performance had been suboptimal in causing so many avoidable deaths. “Stop being an idiot” were your words.
There are many posters on this site who are cracking open the champagne because the government’s catastrophic errors in this pandemic are going unexamined. But the least we can do for the dead is make sure that we learn from those mistakes.
Just do one.
I’ve taken much pleasure and learnt a lot from AM’s headers over the years, even if I didn’t always agree with them. All I got in return from him was quite vicious online bullying as a new poster. Such is life. I hope he doesn’t take your advice literally and instead just calms down a bit below the line and carries on writing the interesting and entraining pieces he does above the line. Even better, I hope we can all meet for a line of socially undistanced flaming sambucas in the summer.
Lots of man love ❤️ for Boris, for his roadmap and for his luxuriant hair on PB this afternoon. Some positive swooning. Bless.
And bloody well deserved too. We can all quibble over the exact speed of the unlocking, but we're now in a position to escape this thing faster than almost all countries that are not led by a certain Boris Johnson.
Before quibbling over the exact speed of the unlocking, you ought to take off your hat and bow your head for the tens of thousands killed by Boris Johnson's negligence to date.
Give it a rest.
Useful to have a list of all the pbers who have a vacuum where their souls should be. Tens of thousands died because Boris Johnson was asleep at the wheel - not once, but over and over.
And you want to forget that. Well, it will not be forgotten by anyone with a conscience.
Stop being an idiot.
So, we are supposed to forget, among other things:
1) Boris Johnson bunking off February 2020 to spend his time billing and cooing over Carrie. He missed five Cobra meetings at the time the risks of Covid-19 were becoming apparent to all.
2) lockdown 1 starting at least a week late.
3) the murderous discharge of Covid patients to care homes.
4) his bayoneting of the government’s public health messages by backing Dominic Cummings’ flagrant flouting of Covid regulations.
5) Ignoring Sage recommendations to lockdown in September, only to put a longer one in place six weeks later, 6,000 deaths later.
6) Relaxing restrictions in early December with the intention of further relaxing them for Christmas in defiance of the emerging horrific data, before backtracking when the turkeys were already defrosting.
7) Yet again, imposing lockdown 3 far too late.
The consequence was that Britain has a death rate per million exceeded only by Belgium, Slovenia and Czechia (and imminently about to overtake Slovenia). Excess deaths look almost as bad.
But there is no mistake, no matter how deadly or how obvious, that government supporters won’t try to overlook.
I'm not ignoring it, HMG has made terrible and egregious errors, and I happily point and shriek with horror when they happen. The inability to close the fucking borders, from February 2020, is particularly incendiary. A total mistake. Likewise, the advice on masks. Shitshow (tho here the scientists - yes, you, Van Tam - are probably guiltier than the politicians)
But, I also acknowledge that Britain was uniquely and unfortunately positioned to have a very bad plague, whatever happened - old, obese, internationally super-connected, world city, plentiful BAME community, generally libertarian, individualistic, service industry oriented - and I genuinely doubt most UK govts would have done much better (or many European govts, as we see in Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Portugal)
Besides, you seem intent on grief-shaming others for "not caring about death", rather than making any specific point. This is beneath you. For all you know, you are accusing people who have lost loved ones to Covid, of "not caring".
As I say below, you were driven mad by Brexit, and every so often the psychosis re-emerges. Tonight is one such. Tsk
Note that Alastair is sticking to his guns on open borders, despite being the single biggest error the government made not a single mention in his (fair IMO) list of errors that they've made.
Every single one of those pales in comparison to not closing the borders but his ideological need to keep the county "open" means he won't ever criticise that absolutely horrible and ongoing rubbish decision not to mandate quarantine for all incoming arrivals.
This is incorrect. I only omitted from my list by accident closing the borders. That is a clear and gross error, and I have thought that for a very long time.
You mischaracterised me.
Fair enough, I take it back. Apologies. I do agree with most of what you wrote and Boris needs to fall for his prior failures. However, I'm not going to let that get in the way of excitement that this might finally be over and crediting the government effort on vaccinations.
It should not be difficult for anyone to say:
1) the government has in general handled the pandemic terribly; and
2) it has, fortunately, handled the procurement and delivery of vaccines very well to date.
The second success does not absolve it of the first failure. The first failure is grievous.
Lots of man love ❤️ for Boris, for his roadmap and for his luxuriant hair on PB this afternoon. Some positive swooning. Bless.
And bloody well deserved too. We can all quibble over the exact speed of the unlocking, but we're now in a position to escape this thing faster than almost all countries that are not led by a certain Boris Johnson.
Before quibbling over the exact speed of the unlocking, you ought to take off your hat and bow your head for the tens of thousands killed by Boris Johnson's negligence to date.
Give it a rest.
Useful to have a list of all the pbers who have a vacuum where their souls should be. Tens of thousands died because Boris Johnson was asleep at the wheel - not once, but over and over.
And you want to forget that. Well, it will not be forgotten by anyone with a conscience.
Stop being an idiot.
So, we are supposed to forget, among other things:
1) Boris Johnson bunking off February 2020 to spend his time billing and cooing over Carrie. He missed five Cobra meetings at the time the risks of Covid-19 were becoming apparent to all.
2) lockdown 1 starting at least a week late.
3) the murderous discharge of Covid patients to care homes.
4) his bayoneting of the government’s public health messages by backing Dominic Cummings’ flagrant flouting of Covid regulations.
5) Ignoring Sage recommendations to lockdown in September, only to put a longer one in place six weeks later, 6,000 deaths later.
6) Relaxing restrictions in early December with the intention of further relaxing them for Christmas in defiance of the emerging horrific data, before backtracking when the turkeys were already defrosting.
7) Yet again, imposing lockdown 3 far too late.
The consequence was that Britain has a death rate per million exceeded only by Belgium, Slovenia and Czechia (and imminently about to overtake Slovenia). Excess deaths look almost as bad.
But there is no mistake, no matter how deadly or how obvious, that government supporters won’t try to overlook.
I'm not ignoring it, HMG has made terrible and egregious errors, and I happily point and shriek with horror when they happen. The inability to close the fucking borders, from February 2020, is particularly incendiary. A total mistake. Likewise, the advice on masks. Shitshow (tho here the scientists - yes, you, Van Tam - are probably guiltier than the politicians)
But, I also acknowledge that Britain was uniquely and unfortunately positioned to have a very bad plague, whatever happened - old, obese, internationally super-connected, world city, plentiful BAME community, generally libertarian, individualistic, service industry oriented - and I genuinely doubt most UK govts would have done much better (or many European govts, as we see in Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Portugal)
Besides, you seem intent on grief-shaming others for "not caring about death", rather than making any specific point. This is beneath you. For all you know, you are accusing people who have lost loved ones to Covid, of "not caring".
As I say below, you were driven mad by Brexit, and every so often the psychosis re-emerges. Tonight is one such. Tsk
You are ignoring it. Because you have a void where any person of decency has a soul, and you desperately seek to avoid any analysis of that catastrophe because it is imperative for you that this government be forgiven any mistake, no matter how abysmal.
I mean, sorry, but this is..... insane. I have a daughter suffering terribly from Lockdown. I have a good friend dying of Covid: right this minute. I have close relatives who are suffering: physically, mentally, and emotionally.
I know a young child - very well - that has attempted suicide during lockdown. I have wept many times over the past year, when normally I don't sob from one year to the next. Yet I have a "void where any person of decency has a soul"???
You, Sir, are turning into a nasty old c*nt, because of Brexit. Please go away, and calm down
You started by endorsing a call for me to “give it a rest” because I had the temerity to suggest that Boris Johnson’s performance had been suboptimal in causing so many avoidable deaths. “Stop being an idiot” were your words.
There are many posters on this site who are cracking open the champagne because the government’s catastrophic errors in this pandemic are going unexamined. But the least we can do for the dead is make sure that we learn from those mistakes.
By what benchmark are you measuring Johnson's 'sub-optimal' performance? who or what is 'optimal?'
The national death toll is a pretty strong one to look at. Of course, the overall position will not yet be known, but plenty of perceived errors contributing to the current position have been noted (things like travel restrictions, acting too late on lockdown, ineffective regional measures) etc). It's not necessary to wait 1 year or 5 years to begin critical comments, so long as if things, in time, look a bit better, that is recognised where appropriate. But present good performance doesn't erase past or current poor performance, and despite the shouting it is perfectly possible to condemn the governemnt on X and condemn them on Y, and reasonable people may even disagree about whether Y makes up for X.
I'm not sure what is gained by people telling each other to eff off though (or the polite version, that they have voids for souls etc) other than theatrical masturbation. People enjoy that kind of thing, flamboyant expressions of outrage or disgust don't disguise that. When I see that stuff I cannot really connect with it, despite the mutual anger, as people are clearly enjoying the carthasis too much. Sometimes people want to shout and rage, we've all been there.
Yay we are back. I couldn't get on for about an hour and a half. Don't know if anyone else was having the same problem.
There was an outage at Vanilla's end. Here are the reports (in EST so 5 hours behind us) from their status page.
Resolved - This incident has been resolved. Feb 22, 14:54 EST Update - We are continuing to monitor for any further issues. Feb 22, 14:38 EST Monitoring - A fix has been implemented and we are monitoring the results. Feb 22, 14:31 EST Identified - The issue has been identified and a fix is being implemented. Feb 22, 14:23 EST Investigating - We are currently investigating this issue. Feb 22, 14:10 EST https://status.vanillaforums.com/
I know that the scruffiness is part of the Boris persona, part of the act, but I really felt that today it was also quite the power play.
The normal rules simply don't apply to Boris. No other politician could get away with being so unkempt, let alone failing the country in the most basic duty of protecting them, to the tune of tens of thousands of avoidable deaths.
The other notable sign of his untrammelled power was the criticism of Carrie's position. It's always been the case that when it's too dangerous to criticise the person in charge malcontents will criticise the "evil advisers"and so it is with Boris the Mightily Dishevelled.
The question is: how long does Boris want to be Prime Minister for?
Yes; not particularly wanting to defend him except that he's the best PM we've got, and not many could get away with that unrivalled display of 'I haven't had my hair cut, just like all you chavs' today.
The avoidable deaths thing is going to have to await an enquiry, and I think there are two sides at least to it. But an interesting speculation for now is the issue of failure. Boris has an extraordinary image as someone who wins, and gets what he wants, and the presentation skills to match. As a showman he is up with Blair, Thatcher, Clinton, Obama, right at the top.
What he has never really done is comprehensively failed in an ambition, election and so on. Can he continue this, unlike Thatcher or Blair who both essentially failed in the end, and stop being PM at a moment apparently of his choosing and at the top? He is at the moment one ahead of Trump, amazing charlatan and showman that he was/is. Trump lost and election and everyone knows it, and compounded it by losing gracelessly when he could have save his image by showing a trace of grace. Boris won't want to do that. As spectacle it will be worth following.
Only Nicola comes close in today's politics as a showman. Her show is worth watching too and is getting quite exciting.
My biggest concern of the plan is it is clear thr government again want us all to have a summer holiday abroad again...I think that is very unwise given most of EU will be way off in terms of vaccinations and places like Portugal have plenty of Brazilian variant, let alone SA variant.
The Government appears to have two complete obsessions. Schools, whether you think they're getting the timetable exactly right or not, are entirely understandable. Sunshine holidays aren't. Why in the name of God people can't be told to stay in this country, just until some mass market destinations catch us up with their vaccine projects and we can negotiate bubbles and air bridges, is quite beyond me.
Not importing a disastrous variant stands to save such an immense fortune on not having yet another bloody lockdown that the mothballing of airlines and tour operators for another 6-12 months could be paid for from the loose change.
Lots of man love ❤️ for Boris, for his roadmap and for his luxuriant hair on PB this afternoon. Some positive swooning. Bless.
And bloody well deserved too. We can all quibble over the exact speed of the unlocking, but we're now in a position to escape this thing faster than almost all countries that are not led by a certain Boris Johnson.
Before quibbling over the exact speed of the unlocking, you ought to take off your hat and bow your head for the tens of thousands killed by Boris Johnson's negligence to date.
Give it a rest.
Useful to have a list of all the pbers who have a vacuum where their souls should be. Tens of thousands died because Boris Johnson was asleep at the wheel - not once, but over and over.
And you want to forget that. Well, it will not be forgotten by anyone with a conscience.
Stop being an idiot.
So, we are supposed to forget, among other things:
1) Boris Johnson bunking off February 2020 to spend his time billing and cooing over Carrie. He missed five Cobra meetings at the time the risks of Covid-19 were becoming apparent to all.
2) lockdown 1 starting at least a week late.
3) the murderous discharge of Covid patients to care homes.
4) his bayoneting of the government’s public health messages by backing Dominic Cummings’ flagrant flouting of Covid regulations.
5) Ignoring Sage recommendations to lockdown in September, only to put a longer one in place six weeks later, 6,000 deaths later.
6) Relaxing restrictions in early December with the intention of further relaxing them for Christmas in defiance of the emerging horrific data, before backtracking when the turkeys were already defrosting.
7) Yet again, imposing lockdown 3 far too late.
The consequence was that Britain has a death rate per million exceeded only by Belgium, Slovenia and Czechia (and imminently about to overtake Slovenia). Excess deaths look almost as bad.
But there is no mistake, no matter how deadly or how obvious, that government supporters won’t try to overlook.
I'm not ignoring it, HMG has made terrible and egregious errors, and I happily point and shriek with horror when they happen. The inability to close the fucking borders, from February 2020, is particularly incendiary. A total mistake. Likewise, the advice on masks. Shitshow (tho here the scientists - yes, you, Van Tam - are probably guiltier than the politicians)
But, I also acknowledge that Britain was uniquely and unfortunately positioned to have a very bad plague, whatever happened - old, obese, internationally super-connected, world city, plentiful BAME community, generally libertarian, individualistic, service industry oriented - and I genuinely doubt most UK govts would have done much better (or many European govts, as we see in Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Portugal)
Besides, you seem intent on grief-shaming others for "not caring about death", rather than making any specific point. This is beneath you. For all you know, you are accusing people who have lost loved ones to Covid, of "not caring".
As I say below, you were driven mad by Brexit, and every so often the psychosis re-emerges. Tonight is one such. Tsk
Note that Alastair is sticking to his guns on open borders, despite being the single biggest error the government made not a single mention in his (fair IMO) list of errors that they've made.
Every single one of those pales in comparison to not closing the borders but his ideological need to keep the county "open" means he won't ever criticise that absolutely horrible and ongoing rubbish decision not to mandate quarantine for all incoming arrivals.
This is incorrect. I only omitted from my list by accident closing the borders. That is a clear and gross error, and I have thought that for a very long time.
You mischaracterised me.
Fair enough, I take it back. Apologies. I do agree with most of what you wrote and Boris needs to fall for his prior failures. However, I'm not going to let that get in the way of excitement that this might finally be over and crediting the government effort on vaccinations.
It should not be difficult for anyone to say:
1) the government has in general handled the pandemic terribly; and
2) it has, fortunately, handled the procurement and delivery of vaccines very well to date.
The second success does not absolve it of the first failure. The first failure is grievous.
Pretty reasonable stuff. There'll be a range on 1) but even if someone felt in general it was ok there would still be grievous failures within that, so it's semantic at that point.
One other thing about stopping people travelling abroad. The people who want to get on a plane during a pandemic are precisely the sort of people who aren't worried about catching or spreading the virus. That should have been enough to put a stop to it.
Looking at those YouGov polls, it seems like Johnson has a Derren Brown-like influence over British voters at the moment.
Give the British public a sensible plan, and they'll respond sensibly. This one seems to have hit the Goldilocks zone - not too fast, and not too slow - and has carried most people with it. No small feat in these fractured times.
It may not be, but it feels the first time in a while that the public don't think action has been taken too fast or too slow, which is a bit of a feat as you say. But I'm not sure how much it means, since the public's view will retroactively change if it does not turn out well.
Lots of man love ❤️ for Boris, for his roadmap and for his luxuriant hair on PB this afternoon. Some positive swooning. Bless.
And bloody well deserved too. We can all quibble over the exact speed of the unlocking, but we're now in a position to escape this thing faster than almost all countries that are not led by a certain Boris Johnson.
Before quibbling over the exact speed of the unlocking, you ought to take off your hat and bow your head for the tens of thousands killed by Boris Johnson's negligence to date.
Give it a rest.
Useful to have a list of all the pbers who have a vacuum where their souls should be. Tens of thousands died because Boris Johnson was asleep at the wheel - not once, but over and over.
And you want to forget that. Well, it will not be forgotten by anyone with a conscience.
Stop being an idiot.
So, we are supposed to forget, among other things:
1) Boris Johnson bunking off February 2020 to spend his time billing and cooing over Carrie. He missed five Cobra meetings at the time the risks of Covid-19 were becoming apparent to all.
2) lockdown 1 starting at least a week late.
3) the murderous discharge of Covid patients to care homes.
4) his bayoneting of the government’s public health messages by backing Dominic Cummings’ flagrant flouting of Covid regulations.
5) Ignoring Sage recommendations to lockdown in September, only to put a longer one in place six weeks later, 6,000 deaths later.
6) Relaxing restrictions in early December with the intention of further relaxing them for Christmas in defiance of the emerging horrific data, before backtracking when the turkeys were already defrosting.
7) Yet again, imposing lockdown 3 far too late.
The consequence was that Britain has a death rate per million exceeded only by Belgium, Slovenia and Czechia (and imminently about to overtake Slovenia). Excess deaths look almost as bad.
But there is no mistake, no matter how deadly or how obvious, that government supporters won’t try to overlook.
I'm not ignoring it, HMG has made terrible and egregious errors, and I happily point and shriek with horror when they happen. The inability to close the fucking borders, from February 2020, is particularly incendiary. A total mistake. Likewise, the advice on masks. Shitshow (tho here the scientists - yes, you, Van Tam - are probably guiltier than the politicians)
But, I also acknowledge that Britain was uniquely and unfortunately positioned to have a very bad plague, whatever happened - old, obese, internationally super-connected, world city, plentiful BAME community, generally libertarian, individualistic, service industry oriented - and I genuinely doubt most UK govts would have done much better (or many European govts, as we see in Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Portugal)
Besides, you seem intent on grief-shaming others for "not caring about death", rather than making any specific point. This is beneath you. For all you know, you are accusing people who have lost loved ones to Covid, of "not caring".
As I say below, you were driven mad by Brexit, and every so often the psychosis re-emerges. Tonight is one such. Tsk
Note that Alastair is sticking to his guns on open borders, despite being the single biggest error the government made not a single mention in his (fair IMO) list of errors that they've made.
Every single one of those pales in comparison to not closing the borders but his ideological need to keep the county "open" means he won't ever criticise that absolutely horrible and ongoing rubbish decision not to mandate quarantine for all incoming arrivals.
This is incorrect. I only omitted from my list by accident closing the borders. That is a clear and gross error, and I have thought that for a very long time.
You mischaracterised me.
Fair enough, I take it back. Apologies. I do agree with most of what you wrote and Boris needs to fall for his prior failures. However, I'm not going to let that get in the way of excitement that this might finally be over and crediting the government effort on vaccinations.
It should not be difficult for anyone to say:
1) the government has in general handled the pandemic terribly; and
2) it has, fortunately, handled the procurement and delivery of vaccines very well to date.
The second success does not absolve it of the first failure. The first failure is grievous.
Agreed, but getting the second one right will reap more rewards for the government than the previous mistakes.
As horrible as it may seem, most people aren't thinking about the dead. They're thinking about their own lives and how they want to get back to normal.
Today we went over 140k nameable individuals dead. (133,077 death certificate by date to 5/2, 7,000 exactly hospital deaths by date since then).
There was one key, killer failure that made the UKs second wave so bad - in the last week of November, the failure to appreciate quite what was going on in Kent - the numbers were there to be seen - and the failure to moderate the lockdown release accordingly. The over generous initial Christmas offer, didn't help and limited how much could be scaled back, but that was secondary, the damage was already done in early December with Kent in tier 3 and Essex and London in tier 2, by waiting for the confirmation of the new strain before acting, rather than acting on the 'something' in the numbers.
Unfortunately, rapid vaccination compared with Europe and our likely faster downswing, although welcome and a psychological boon, will be a lesser influence in overall assessment than people believe. We will save lives here, but Europe will, is, downswinging and will have the summer to play catch up on that downswing.
Yes, people still don't grasp how absolutely appalling the second wave has been. The absolute botching of the response to case and death rises in SEPTEMBER, never mind November is a key topic for the Truth and Reconciliation comission.
Which country will the T&R commission be holding up as best practice? that'll be an interesting one.
That's not the point of a t&r commission. The point is to find out what decisions were made, when they were made and more importantly why they were made so that the next time there is a pandemic the same mistakes are not repeated.
It is not a dick measuring contest. Nor a sop to make people feel better because other countries did badly.
It is an internal process.
It is still intended to find Government witches to burn.
Just be honest.
Ah so you are willing to let another hundred and forty thousand people die just so long as it doesn't hurt a Conservative Minister's feelings.
Glad we've got your position clear.
There is nothing government supporters will not excuse. But they’d prefer not to have to make the effort.
Can you imagine what they would be saying if Labour were in power and had produced results like these, having made the unforced errors that this government has made?
Your analysis of the government's mistakes rests upon your belief that you can use lockdown to turn up or turn down COVID like you would your central heating.
That US experience shows graphically that the relationship is much more complex than that.
He's frustrated he can't hang Covid-19 around Boris's neck to bring him down, because of his obsession with his original leading role in Brexit.
It really is that simple.
The obsession with Brexit is entirely among Leavers. Boris Johnson has made a series of unforgivable mistakes on Covid-19. But Leavers are willing to overlook them all because of Brexit.
There is literally nothing Leavers will not excuse, up to and including tens of thousands of avoidable deaths.
This has important betting implications. (It also means the country will continue its long term decline under atrocious governance, but that’s a side note really.)
Question is- how much do any of us realise the relative degrees of messed-upness in different countries?
Partly, that's about absolute death tolls- the January spike seems to have just happened with a shrug.
Also, it's the extent of current lockdown. If you take the numbers here,
The UK has been in an unusually long and hard lockdown this winter, compared with other similar countries.
(And to save anyone the trouble- lockdown is what you do when you've messed up. You can hold cases constant fairly easily, and as long as you hold them constant and low, that's sort of tolerable. If you let them get out of control, you have to lockdown harder to reduce them. It's germ theory and maths.)
But I don't know how the numbers are generated. What would be interesting would be:
1 What actually have been the social controls in different places over the winter? 2 What is the public perception of what the social controls in different places have been? 3 What is the public perception of the infection rates in different places?
Because that gets to the heart of whether this is an awful challenge that most nations have fumbled or an awful challenge where the UK government have done significantly worse.
Only the first of those is in any way significant. The other two do not have any objective or even subjective validity because different populations have different attitudes to social controls based on their cultures and history.
Badly phrased- which was my fault, sorry.
I'm interested in how the GBP thinks GB is doing compared with elsewhere. My hypothesis is that we are all assuming that the English experience of Winter 2020/1 is much of a muchness with other rich countries currently leaving winter and entering spring.
There are some hints (which match what I see when I check in with news from Spain, purely because I used to live there and am interested) that it's not quite like that; that the social restrictions in Seville are looser than in London.
So what I'm interested in (because it affects the politics in the UK) is what do people in the UK think is going on elsewhere, and how well that matches reality? Because those two things taken together might explain some of the odder aspects of the conversation.
Again not entirely sure how you judge these things.
France has kept shops open but has had a strict nightly curfew 6pm - 6am. All bars, restaurants etc have been closed. But whatever they have been doing has basically failed because they are seeing a rapid increase in cases and are saying they will have to go into lockdown again.
Italy also has a curfew (10pm to 5am)
Germany has shut all shops, schools, bars, restaurants etc and ha similar rules to us on meeting people from outside your household.
In spite of what you say about Spain, officially they are under a nationwide curfew until early May 2021. People are only allowed out to go to work, for education, to buy medicine, or care for elderly people or children. That seems much stricter than the UK.
Personally it seems to me that the rest of the EU are generally pretty much on a par with the strictness of their lockdowns but the detail varies (I see a curfew as far more intrusive and strict than anything we have in the UK)
But sadly even if this was working it is completely undermined by their poor vaccination progress.
And yet the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford university rate the UK's restrictions as stricter than many of our neighbours. And the FT are happy to put their data on their webpage.
And annoying though a curfew is, England is currently under 24/7 Stay At Home, except for limited reasons. Remember?
As far as I can see you can currently spend as much time out of your house as you want.
The restrictions are what you can spend that time doing.
The Government has made errors. SAGE has made errors. The scientists have made errors. Drakeford has made errors, Sturgeon has made errors. The WHO has made errors. Ursula vd Leyen has made errors. Almost every politician in the Western world has made errors.
All these people had very difficult jobs to do. I am very relieved it was not my job.
It is inevitable that in dealing with a completely new disease, many of whose characteristics remain unknown even now, that scientists & politicians & health professionals made errors.
All the more so was this the case at the beginning when hardly anything was known.
If you want to pin the deaths on Johnson, you need to show by a statistical analysis of excess deaths that Johnson may many more errors than the others, many more errors than was typical or reasonable.
When that calculation has been done, there may be evidence to show Johnson did exceptionally badly.
My guess is that the English (or W or S) performance is not worse than the rest of Europe in a statistically significant way, but I am happy to wait and see.
Yet again, it is not enough just to show errors were made. Of course, errors were made. That is what happens when there are little data on a completely new disease
I don't think anything will dent my assumption they have a nailed on majority (though I would hope to be persuaded otherwise), so if other people overreact sounds like a bit of an opportunity, if I'm right.
One other thing about stopping people travelling abroad. The people who want to get on a plane during a pandemic are precisely the sort of people who aren't worried about catching or spreading the virus. That should have been enough to put a stop to it.
My employer could very easily justify our trips abroad to Sunak in terms of revenue potential, a 5 page form stating precisely why you need to go abroad (Along the lines of obtaining the right to do contract work in France....) to fill out would probably dissuade the joy trippers. At the moment we're not flying any staff abroad because flying unvaccinated is completely daft. The point about the sorts taking holidays abroad out of choice is a good one.
One other thing about stopping people travelling abroad. The people who want to get on a plane during a pandemic are precisely the sort of people who aren't worried about catching or spreading the virus. That should have been enough to put a stop to it.
I know loads of people that have got on a plane since March 2020. A couple wanted a bit of a holiday away from the gloom. Most were seeing family to try and avoid nervous breakdown in one side or the other. There’s so much condescension about the reasons for foreign travel on here sometimes that I pinch myself to remember that the Brexit vote was a close run thing.
Today we went over 140k nameable individuals dead. (133,077 death certificate by date to 5/2, 7,000 exactly hospital deaths by date since then).
There was one key, killer failure that made the UKs second wave so bad - in the last week of November, the failure to appreciate quite what was going on in Kent - the numbers were there to be seen - and the failure to moderate the lockdown release accordingly. The over generous initial Christmas offer, didn't help and limited how much could be scaled back, but that was secondary, the damage was already done in early December with Kent in tier 3 and Essex and London in tier 2, by waiting for the confirmation of the new strain before acting, rather than acting on the 'something' in the numbers.
Unfortunately, rapid vaccination compared with Europe and our likely faster downswing, although welcome and a psychological boon, will be a lesser influence in overall assessment than people believe. We will save lives here, but Europe will, is, downswinging and will have the summer to play catch up on that downswing.
Yes, people still don't grasp how absolutely appalling the second wave has been. The absolute botching of the response to case and death rises in SEPTEMBER, never mind November is a key topic for the Truth and Reconciliation comission.
Which country will the T&R commission be holding up as best practice? that'll be an interesting one.
That's not the point of a t&r commission. The point is to find out what decisions were made, when they were made and more importantly why they were made so that the next time there is a pandemic the same mistakes are not repeated.
It is not a dick measuring contest. Nor a sop to make people feel better because other countries did badly.
It is an internal process.
It is still intended to find Government witches to burn.
Just be honest.
Ah so you are willing to let another hundred and forty thousand people die just so long as it doesn't hurt a Conservative Minister's feelings.
Glad we've got your position clear.
There is nothing government supporters will not excuse. But they’d prefer not to have to make the effort.
Can you imagine what they would be saying if Labour were in power and had produced results like these, having made the unforced errors that this government has made?
I’d be saying “these bloody Stalinist, nanny state lunatics have bankrupted the country, turned fiat into toilet paper, taken away ancient liberties with no reasoned evidence as to why and don’t seem to even care about the cascade of mental illness they’ve unleashed, such is their fixation on a single, likely undeliverable policy goal”.
I’d then say, what do Her Maj’s Oppositon have to say? Much the same. But at least the leader has banter, an exciting sex life and an amusing hairline with a mind of its own.
Starmer is not as clever as he looks if he thinks he’ll win Downing St in 3 years by harping on about locking down / not locking down in Spring 2020. He needs to pivot to cheerful optimism and fast or he’s done for.
Is this your main requirement from political leaders then? Cheerful optimism?
Cheerful optimism is quite important for prospective political leaders. Most people want something to hope for in the future, not just cold, hard reality.
Labour's challenge isn't resolving the rift between hard and centre left. Or even coming up with interesting policies. Blair didn't really win on policies in 97. He stuck to Tory spending plans for his first parliament safe in the knowledge he had destroyed the Tory challenge for as long as he wanted to be PM.
Labour's challenge is actually trying to find someone, anyone, within the PLP to lead them and fight for PM who doesn't look like Dot Cotton licking piss off a nettle.
To steal a phrase...
She's no oil painting, but I think Jess is the one to do it
I think Jess is great, but Angela Rayner more likely, as she is both Deputy Leader, and quite appealing to the Corbynite faction.
They are both election losing candidates.
Dr Rosena Allin-Khan MD is the one to ĺwatch.
Certainly one to watch.
I think though Angela Rayner and Lisa Nandy are more likely.
Not often we see 'going too slow' polling higher than 'going to fast'.
Doesn’t surprise me. Those “let’s keep locking down forever” polls oft quoted by the ultras were obviously showing ‘support’ a mile wide and a millimetre deep. A whiff of spring, and the puddle dries up.
And every day there are hundreds of thousands more people who feel safe because its now two weeks since they were vaccinated.
Indeed. And every day some of them are going to make tentative steps back towards normality. A hug from their grandkids. A sunday roast. I'm thrilled for them.
Prediction: In this race, and counting only the relative success of the two horses and no other participants, the relative positions will be Nicola first; Salmond second ie last.
Though the gaiety of nations would be greatly enhanced by Kate Forbes coming to the fore.
One other thing about stopping people travelling abroad. The people who want to get on a plane during a pandemic are precisely the sort of people who aren't worried about catching or spreading the virus. That should have been enough to put a stop to it.
I know loads of people that have got on a plane since March 2020. A couple wanted a bit of a holiday away from the gloom. Most were seeing family to try and avoid nervous breakdown in one side or the other. There’s so much condescension about the reasons for foreign travel on here sometimes that I pinch myself to remember that the Brexit vote was a close run thing.
And that's precisely why holidays and trips of that ilk need to be banned. If you let people do it, they will.
Depressingly, I think Sturgeon will sail through this almost unharmed: she is too popular, public support is too great - esp during a pandemic. She has already endured rumours and allegations that would have felled many similar public personae, particularly when you factor in her husband, who cuts the most pathetic figure
That said she will take some damage, below ships. Boris will, thereby, quite easily fend off her demand for a new vote.
Britain will continue, plaguey, cantankerous and divided, but it will continue
There's always a weirdness in these events, as people are often simultaneously very certain of certain details and on that certainty get irritated by questioning, and yet also incredibly uncertain about others around the same time.
I feel like I should be a lot more interested in this story than I am, but I just cannot work up the energy to develop a strong opinion about whether Salmond or Sturgeon are lying.
One other thing about stopping people travelling abroad. The people who want to get on a plane during a pandemic are precisely the sort of people who aren't worried about catching or spreading the virus. That should have been enough to put a stop to it.
My employer could very easily justify our trips abroad to Sunak in terms of revenue potential, a 5 page form stating precisely why you need to go abroad (Along the lines of obtaining the right to do contract work in France....) to fill out would probably dissuade the joy trippers. At the moment we're not flying any staff abroad because flying unvaccinated is completely daft. The point about the sorts taking holidays abroad out of choice is a good one.
Not sure if I've told this story on here before, but early on in the pandemic, a friend of my sister's booked a holiday in Cyprus for October half-term (her, husband and their three kids). She got a good deal and was happy to lose the money if they weren't allowed to go.
Of course, what happened was they got out there (having provided negative covid tests - not cheap), only for our government to impose a 14 day quarantine on people coming home from Cyprus. The husband ended up paying a lot to get home before the deadline so that he could go to work (he's an electrician).
Now, you might laugh at that (I did), but it's another example of where the government really ought to have protected people from themselves.
The Government has made errors. SAGE has made errors. The scientists have made errors. Drakeford has made errors, Sturgeon has made errors. The WHO has made errors. Ursula vd Leyen has made errors. Almost every politician in the Western world has made errors.
All these people had very difficult jobs to do. I am very relieved it was not my job.
It is inevitable that in dealing with a completely new disease, many of whose characteristics remain unknown even now, that scientists & politicians & health professionals made errors.
All the more so was this the case at the beginning when hardly anything was known.
If you want to pin the deaths on Johnson, you need to show by a statistical analysis of excess deaths that Johnson may many more errors than the others, many more errors than was typical or reasonable.
When that calculation has been done, there may be evidence to show Johnson did exceptionally badly.
My guess is that the English (or W or S) performance is not worse than the rest of Europe in a statistically significant way, but I am happy to wait and see.
Yet again, it is not enough just to show errors were made. Of course, errors were made. That is what happens when there are little data on a completely new disease
My biggest concern of the plan is it is clear thr government again want us all to have a summer holiday abroad again...I think that is very unwise given most of EU will be way off in terms of vaccinations and places like Portugal have plenty of Brazilian variant, let alone SA variant.
The Government appears to have two complete obsessions. Schools, whether you think they're getting the timetable exactly right or not, are entirely understandable. Sunshine holidays aren't. Why in the name of God people can't be told to stay in this country, just until some mass market destinations catch us up with their vaccine projects and we can negotiate bubbles and air bridges, is quite beyond me.
Not importing a disastrous variant stands to save such an immense fortune on not having yet another bloody lockdown that the mothballing of airlines and tour operators for another 6-12 months could be paid for from the loose change.
I think we should accept that nobody should be travelling much in 2021, and even next year travel is only going to be acceptable when mass testing and vaccination are in place at both ends of a route. This almost certainly means that travel is going to become a lot less pleasant, and more expensive, for quite a while to come. Why that is politcally unpalatable is beyond me, as the alternative of importing new variants and potentially needing lockdowns isn't something we want either, even if it's just a few days across a city like we've seen recently in Australia.
Lots of man love ❤️ for Boris, for his roadmap and for his luxuriant hair on PB this afternoon. Some positive swooning. Bless.
And bloody well deserved too. We can all quibble over the exact speed of the unlocking, but we're now in a position to escape this thing faster than almost all countries that are not led by a certain Boris Johnson.
Before quibbling over the exact speed of the unlocking, you ought to take off your hat and bow your head for the tens of thousands killed by Boris Johnson's negligence to date.
Give it a rest.
Useful to have a list of all the pbers who have a vacuum where their souls should be. Tens of thousands died because Boris Johnson was asleep at the wheel - not once, but over and over.
And you want to forget that. Well, it will not be forgotten by anyone with a conscience.
Stop being an idiot.
So, we are supposed to forget, among other things:
1) Boris Johnson bunking off February 2020 to spend his time billing and cooing over Carrie. He missed five Cobra meetings at the time the risks of Covid-19 were becoming apparent to all.
2) lockdown 1 starting at least a week late.
3) the murderous discharge of Covid patients to care homes.
4) his bayoneting of the government’s public health messages by backing Dominic Cummings’ flagrant flouting of Covid regulations.
5) Ignoring Sage recommendations to lockdown in September, only to put a longer one in place six weeks later, 6,000 deaths later.
6) Relaxing restrictions in early December with the intention of further relaxing them for Christmas in defiance of the emerging horrific data, before backtracking when the turkeys were already defrosting.
7) Yet again, imposing lockdown 3 far too late.
The consequence was that Britain has a death rate per million exceeded only by Belgium, Slovenia and Czechia (and imminently about to overtake Slovenia). Excess deaths look almost as bad.
But there is no mistake, no matter how deadly or how obvious, that government supporters won’t try to overlook.
I'm not ignoring it, HMG has made terrible and egregious errors, and I happily point and shriek with horror when they happen. The inability to close the fucking borders, from February 2020, is particularly incendiary. A total mistake. Likewise, the advice on masks. Shitshow (tho here the scientists - yes, you, Van Tam - are probably guiltier than the politicians)
But, I also acknowledge that Britain was uniquely and unfortunately positioned to have a very bad plague, whatever happened - old, obese, internationally super-connected, world city, plentiful BAME community, generally libertarian, individualistic, service industry oriented - and I genuinely doubt most UK govts would have done much better (or many European govts, as we see in Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Portugal)
Besides, you seem intent on grief-shaming others for "not caring about death", rather than making any specific point. This is beneath you. For all you know, you are accusing people who have lost loved ones to Covid, of "not caring".
As I say below, you were driven mad by Brexit, and every so often the psychosis re-emerges. Tonight is one such. Tsk
Note that Alastair is sticking to his guns on open borders, despite being the single biggest error the government made not a single mention in his (fair IMO) list of errors that they've made.
Every single one of those pales in comparison to not closing the borders but his ideological need to keep the county "open" means he won't ever criticise that absolutely horrible and ongoing rubbish decision not to mandate quarantine for all incoming arrivals.
This is incorrect. I only omitted from my list by accident closing the borders. That is a clear and gross error, and I have thought that for a very long time.
You mischaracterised me.
Fair enough, I take it back. Apologies. I do agree with most of what you wrote and Boris needs to fall for his prior failures. However, I'm not going to let that get in the way of excitement that this might finally be over and crediting the government effort on vaccinations.
It should not be difficult for anyone to say:
1) the government has in general handled the pandemic terribly; and
2) it has, fortunately, handled the procurement and delivery of vaccines very well to date.
The second success does not absolve it of the first failure. The first failure is grievous.
On a completely different subject, have you any thoughts on the implications of the McCloud judgement on public sector pensions? It looks an unholy mess to me, but how much is it all going to cos?
Am I the only PBer surprised to discover that outdoor tennis and basketball courts are supposed to be closed ?
Tennis courts yes, basketball courts no. Basketball is a physical game involving more than the two or four that tennis does.
Golf is the one that gets me...i know it is more than likely a political thing as is a middle class game, but can you get a more socially distantable sport, especially if you limit groups to 2....i mean it is literally a 4hr walk miles from everybody else with one other person who spends half the time 200 yards away from you as they have hooked their ball into the woods.
Lots of man love ❤️ for Boris, for his roadmap and for his luxuriant hair on PB this afternoon. Some positive swooning. Bless.
And bloody well deserved too. We can all quibble over the exact speed of the unlocking, but we're now in a position to escape this thing faster than almost all countries that are not led by a certain Boris Johnson.
Before quibbling over the exact speed of the unlocking, you ought to take off your hat and bow your head for the tens of thousands killed by Boris Johnson's negligence to date.
Give it a rest.
Useful to have a list of all the pbers who have a vacuum where their souls should be. Tens of thousands died because Boris Johnson was asleep at the wheel - not once, but over and over.
And you want to forget that. Well, it will not be forgotten by anyone with a conscience.
Stop being an idiot.
So, we are supposed to forget, among other things:
1) Boris Johnson bunking off February 2020 to spend his time billing and cooing over Carrie. He missed five Cobra meetings at the time the risks of Covid-19 were becoming apparent to all.
2) lockdown 1 starting at least a week late.
3) the murderous discharge of Covid patients to care homes.
4) his bayoneting of the government’s public health messages by backing Dominic Cummings’ flagrant flouting of Covid regulations.
5) Ignoring Sage recommendations to lockdown in September, only to put a longer one in place six weeks later, 6,000 deaths later.
6) Relaxing restrictions in early December with the intention of further relaxing them for Christmas in defiance of the emerging horrific data, before backtracking when the turkeys were already defrosting.
7) Yet again, imposing lockdown 3 far too late.
The consequence was that Britain has a death rate per million exceeded only by Belgium, Slovenia and Czechia (and imminently about to overtake Slovenia). Excess deaths look almost as bad.
But there is no mistake, no matter how deadly or how obvious, that government supporters won’t try to overlook.
I'm not ignoring it, HMG has made terrible and egregious errors, and I happily point and shriek with horror when they happen. The inability to close the fucking borders, from February 2020, is particularly incendiary. A total mistake. Likewise, the advice on masks. Shitshow (tho here the scientists - yes, you, Van Tam - are probably guiltier than the politicians)
But, I also acknowledge that Britain was uniquely and unfortunately positioned to have a very bad plague, whatever happened - old, obese, internationally super-connected, world city, plentiful BAME community, generally libertarian, individualistic, service industry oriented - and I genuinely doubt most UK govts would have done much better (or many European govts, as we see in Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Portugal)
Besides, you seem intent on grief-shaming others for "not caring about death", rather than making any specific point. This is beneath you. For all you know, you are accusing people who have lost loved ones to Covid, of "not caring".
As I say below, you were driven mad by Brexit, and every so often the psychosis re-emerges. Tonight is one such. Tsk
Note that Alastair is sticking to his guns on open borders, despite being the single biggest error the government made not a single mention in his (fair IMO) list of errors that they've made.
Every single one of those pales in comparison to not closing the borders but his ideological need to keep the county "open" means he won't ever criticise that absolutely horrible and ongoing rubbish decision not to mandate quarantine for all incoming arrivals.
This is incorrect. I only omitted from my list by accident closing the borders. That is a clear and gross error, and I have thought that for a very long time.
You mischaracterised me.
Fair enough, I take it back. Apologies. I do agree with most of what you wrote and Boris needs to fall for his prior failures. However, I'm not going to let that get in the way of excitement that this might finally be over and crediting the government effort on vaccinations.
It should not be difficult for anyone to say:
1) the government has in general handled the pandemic terribly; and
2) it has, fortunately, handled the procurement and delivery of vaccines very well to date.
The second success does not absolve it of the first failure. The first failure is grievous.
Yes, agreed. The first point outweighs the second one and the second doesn't absolve the first. The lack of leadership from Boris over too many aspects of this have been a real disaster for people. It's very frustrating that the debate in the UK became economy vs health, no one in the UK spoke up for achieving both, certainly not Boris. Worse still the UK has ended up with a very damaged economy and a lot of dead, worst of both worlds. Hopefully the party will dump him, if not then we have to hope the public vote to get rid in 2024.
He might have a point - I was about to ask where else the SNP's voters are liable to go, but of course on the list vote some of them could turn Green or opt for another alternative (isn't there meant to be a slate of nationalist ultras standing, attempting to outflank Sturgeon's position on independence?)
Just a random thought - would vaccinations slow as we start to enter the working-age brackets, when people have other demands on their time? "No you can't get time off to go and get vaccinated - keep working or I will fire you!"
Depressingly, I think Sturgeon will sail through this almost unharmed: she is too popular, public support is too great - esp during a pandemic. She has already endured rumours and allegations that would have felled many similar public personae, particularly when you factor in her husband, who cuts the most pathetic figure
That said she will take some damage, below ships. Boris will, thereby, quite easily fend off her demand for a new vote.
Britain will continue, plaguey, cantankerous and divided, but it will continue
I think it's a Holyrood village story.
Nationalists veins burn with pulsating passion for independence. They won't give a toss what Salmond or Sturgeon did in the past, so long as either one of them can deliver independence.
How many people has Grant Shapps killed with his mad open at all costs obsession ? If ever there was a crisis to listen to Patel's more reactionary instincts this was it. Boris is Shapps' boss so he carries the can for Shapps' decisions.
A wider question is why Michael Green was ever allowed near government in the first place.
One other thing about stopping people travelling abroad. The people who want to get on a plane during a pandemic are precisely the sort of people who aren't worried about catching or spreading the virus. That should have been enough to put a stop to it.
I know loads of people that have got on a plane since March 2020. A couple wanted a bit of a holiday away from the gloom. Most were seeing family to try and avoid nervous breakdown in one side or the other. There’s so much condescension about the reasons for foreign travel on here sometimes that I pinch myself to remember that the Brexit vote was a close run thing.
And that's precisely why holidays and trips of that ilk need to be banned. If you let people do it, they will.
Even when the infection rate in the country of destination was lower than in the UK? Even for people who didn’t fly but drove long distances to Poland, Germany or Spain and saw no one but one household, at a time the Uk allowed rule of 6 indoors in pubs?
Just a random thought - would vaccinations slow as we start to enter the working-age brackets, when people have other demands on their time? "No you can't get time off to go and get vaccinated - keep working or I will fire you!"
I had wondered the same thing, albeit not as blunt as that - just that people will be fussier or unavoidably face other draws on their time that the old brackets would not.
My biggest concern of the plan is it is clear thr government again want us all to have a summer holiday abroad again...I think that is very unwise given most of EU will be way off in terms of vaccinations and places like Portugal have plenty of Brazilian variant, let alone SA variant.
The Government appears to have two complete obsessions. Schools, whether you think they're getting the timetable exactly right or not, are entirely understandable. Sunshine holidays aren't. Why in the name of God people can't be told to stay in this country, just until some mass market destinations catch us up with their vaccine projects and we can negotiate bubbles and air bridges, is quite beyond me.
Not importing a disastrous variant stands to save such an immense fortune on not having yet another bloody lockdown that the mothballing of airlines and tour operators for another 6-12 months could be paid for from the loose change.
I think we should accept that nobody should be travelling much in 2021, and even next year travel is only going to be acceptable when mass testing and vaccination are in place at both ends of a route. This almost certainly means that travel is going to become a lot less pleasant, and more expensive, for quite a while to come. Why that is politcally unpalatable is beyond me, as the alternative of importing new variants and potentially needing lockdowns isn't something we want either, even if it's just a few days across a city like we've seen recently in Australia.
Your kids being in school and getting sunshine in abroadland for two weeks every year is a central concern for about 20,000,000 voters that Boris wants a share of. Neither a caravan in Skegness nor the art galleries of Glasgow will do it.
Am I the only PBer surprised to discover that outdoor tennis and basketball courts are supposed to be closed ?
Tennis courts yes, basketball courts no. Basketball is a physical game involving more than the two or four that tennis does.
I've not noticed any formal games of basketball do but I've seen plenty of two and four player basketball taking place recently in park courts and likewise tennis when the weather is nice.
They're restrictions which are either little known about or widely ignored.
Lots of man love ❤️ for Boris, for his roadmap and for his luxuriant hair on PB this afternoon. Some positive swooning. Bless.
And bloody well deserved too. We can all quibble over the exact speed of the unlocking, but we're now in a position to escape this thing faster than almost all countries that are not led by a certain Boris Johnson.
Before quibbling over the exact speed of the unlocking, you ought to take off your hat and bow your head for the tens of thousands killed by Boris Johnson's negligence to date.
Give it a rest.
Useful to have a list of all the pbers who have a vacuum where their souls should be. Tens of thousands died because Boris Johnson was asleep at the wheel - not once, but over and over.
And you want to forget that. Well, it will not be forgotten by anyone with a conscience.
Stop being an idiot.
So, we are supposed to forget, among other things:
1) Boris Johnson bunking off February 2020 to spend his time billing and cooing over Carrie. He missed five Cobra meetings at the time the risks of Covid-19 were becoming apparent to all.
2) lockdown 1 starting at least a week late.
3) the murderous discharge of Covid patients to care homes.
4) his bayoneting of the government’s public health messages by backing Dominic Cummings’ flagrant flouting of Covid regulations.
5) Ignoring Sage recommendations to lockdown in September, only to put a longer one in place six weeks later, 6,000 deaths later.
6) Relaxing restrictions in early December with the intention of further relaxing them for Christmas in defiance of the emerging horrific data, before backtracking when the turkeys were already defrosting.
7) Yet again, imposing lockdown 3 far too late.
The consequence was that Britain has a death rate per million exceeded only by Belgium, Slovenia and Czechia (and imminently about to overtake Slovenia). Excess deaths look almost as bad.
But there is no mistake, no matter how deadly or how obvious, that government supporters won’t try to overlook.
I'm not ignoring it, HMG has made terrible and egregious errors, and I happily point and shriek with horror when they happen. The inability to close the fucking borders, from February 2020, is particularly incendiary. A total mistake. Likewise, the advice on masks. Shitshow (tho here the scientists - yes, you, Van Tam - are probably guiltier than the politicians)
But, I also acknowledge that Britain was uniquely and unfortunately positioned to have a very bad plague, whatever happened - old, obese, internationally super-connected, world city, plentiful BAME community, generally libertarian, individualistic, service industry oriented - and I genuinely doubt most UK govts would have done much better (or many European govts, as we see in Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Portugal)
Besides, you seem intent on grief-shaming others for "not caring about death", rather than making any specific point. This is beneath you. For all you know, you are accusing people who have lost loved ones to Covid, of "not caring".
As I say below, you were driven mad by Brexit, and every so often the psychosis re-emerges. Tonight is one such. Tsk
Note that Alastair is sticking to his guns on open borders, despite being the single biggest error the government made not a single mention in his (fair IMO) list of errors that they've made.
Every single one of those pales in comparison to not closing the borders but his ideological need to keep the county "open" means he won't ever criticise that absolutely horrible and ongoing rubbish decision not to mandate quarantine for all incoming arrivals.
This is incorrect. I only omitted from my list by accident closing the borders. That is a clear and gross error, and I have thought that for a very long time.
You mischaracterised me.
Fair enough, I take it back. Apologies. I do agree with most of what you wrote and Boris needs to fall for his prior failures. However, I'm not going to let that get in the way of excitement that this might finally be over and crediting the government effort on vaccinations.
It should not be difficult for anyone to say:
1) the government has in general handled the pandemic terribly; and
2) it has, fortunately, handled the procurement and delivery of vaccines very well to date.
The second success does not absolve it of the first failure. The first failure is grievous.
Yes, agreed. The first point outweighs the second one and the second doesn't absolve the first. The lack of leadership from Boris over too many aspects of this have been a real disaster for people. It's very frustrating that the debate in the UK became economy vs health, no one in the UK spoke up for achieving both, certainly not Boris. Worse still the UK has ended up with a very damaged economy and a lot of dead, worst of both worlds. Hopefully the party will dump him, if not then we have to hope the public vote to get rid in 2024.
120,000 have died. How many *ought* to have died, had the government got everything right? I expect it would still have been in the high tens of thousands.
Am I the only PBer surprised to discover that outdoor tennis and basketball courts are supposed to be closed ?
Tennis courts yes, basketball courts no. Basketball is a physical game involving more than the two or four that tennis does.
Golf is the one that gets me...i know it is more than likely a political thing as is a middle class game, but can you get a more socially distantable sport, especially if you limit groups to 2....i mean it is literally a 4hr walk miles from everybody else with one other person who spends half the time 200 yards away from you as they have hooked their ball into the woods.
During the round yes, but plenty of anecdotes of congregating before and after in the clubhouse car park...
Am I the only PBer surprised to discover that outdoor tennis and basketball courts are supposed to be closed ?
Tennis courts yes, basketball courts no. Basketball is a physical game involving more than the two or four that tennis does.
Golf is the one that gets me...i know it is more than likely a political thing as is a middle class game, but can you get a more socially distantable sport, especially if you limit groups to 2....i mean it is literally a 4hr walk miles from everybody else with one other person who spends half the time 200 yards away from you as they have hooked their ball into the woods.
Well its clear one of them, at least, is finished. Also from Salmond:
"The real cost to the Scottish people runs into many millions of pounds and yet no-one in this entire process has uttered the simple words which are necessary on occasions to renew and refresh democratic institutions - 'I Resign'.
"The Committee now has the opportunity to address that position."
Salmond is under the charming delusion that both the people he acuses, and the nationalist members of the committee investigating them, understand concepts like honour, decency, integrity and responsibility.
Sturgeon/Salmond is interesting. I think she and Boris have something in common: they will seem to be immune to political gravity, until one day they are not.
Whatever your view on season dates, I think we can all agree that 21 June is not mid-summer.
It would be if you have seasons of equal length with the mid point of each season being the solstice or equinox - which is one of the 47 ways of organising seasons. Summer would start in early May. (Not my view though - summer starts on June 11th).
Am I the only PBer surprised to discover that outdoor tennis and basketball courts are supposed to be closed ?
Tennis courts yes, basketball courts no. Basketball is a physical game involving more than the two or four that tennis does.
Golf is the one that gets me...i know it is more than likely a political thing as is a middle class game, but can you get a more socially distantable sport, especially if you limit groups to 2....i mean it is literally a 4hr walk miles from everybody else with one other person who spends half the time 200 yards away from you as they have hooked their ball into the woods.
Golf is the most boring "sport" on the planet, with Test Cricket a close second.
Lots of man love ❤️ for Boris, for his roadmap and for his luxuriant hair on PB this afternoon. Some positive swooning. Bless.
And bloody well deserved too. We can all quibble over the exact speed of the unlocking, but we're now in a position to escape this thing faster than almost all countries that are not led by a certain Boris Johnson.
Before quibbling over the exact speed of the unlocking, you ought to take off your hat and bow your head for the tens of thousands killed by Boris Johnson's negligence to date.
Give it a rest.
Useful to have a list of all the pbers who have a vacuum where their souls should be. Tens of thousands died because Boris Johnson was asleep at the wheel - not once, but over and over.
And you want to forget that. Well, it will not be forgotten by anyone with a conscience.
Stop being an idiot.
So, we are supposed to forget, among other things:
1) Boris Johnson bunking off February 2020 to spend his time billing and cooing over Carrie. He missed five Cobra meetings at the time the risks of Covid-19 were becoming apparent to all.
2) lockdown 1 starting at least a week late.
3) the murderous discharge of Covid patients to care homes.
4) his bayoneting of the government’s public health messages by backing Dominic Cummings’ flagrant flouting of Covid regulations.
5) Ignoring Sage recommendations to lockdown in September, only to put a longer one in place six weeks later, 6,000 deaths later.
6) Relaxing restrictions in early December with the intention of further relaxing them for Christmas in defiance of the emerging horrific data, before backtracking when the turkeys were already defrosting.
7) Yet again, imposing lockdown 3 far too late.
The consequence was that Britain has a death rate per million exceeded only by Belgium, Slovenia and Czechia (and imminently about to overtake Slovenia). Excess deaths look almost as bad.
But there is no mistake, no matter how deadly or how obvious, that government supporters won’t try to overlook.
I'm not ignoring it, HMG has made terrible and egregious errors, and I happily point and shriek with horror when they happen. The inability to close the fucking borders, from February 2020, is particularly incendiary. A total mistake. Likewise, the advice on masks. Shitshow (tho here the scientists - yes, you, Van Tam - are probably guiltier than the politicians)
But, I also acknowledge that Britain was uniquely and unfortunately positioned to have a very bad plague, whatever happened - old, obese, internationally super-connected, world city, plentiful BAME community, generally libertarian, individualistic, service industry oriented - and I genuinely doubt most UK govts would have done much better (or many European govts, as we see in Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Portugal)
Besides, you seem intent on grief-shaming others for "not caring about death", rather than making any specific point. This is beneath you. For all you know, you are accusing people who have lost loved ones to Covid, of "not caring".
As I say below, you were driven mad by Brexit, and every so often the psychosis re-emerges. Tonight is one such. Tsk
Note that Alastair is sticking to his guns on open borders, despite being the single biggest error the government made not a single mention in his (fair IMO) list of errors that they've made.
Every single one of those pales in comparison to not closing the borders but his ideological need to keep the county "open" means he won't ever criticise that absolutely horrible and ongoing rubbish decision not to mandate quarantine for all incoming arrivals.
This is incorrect. I only omitted from my list by accident closing the borders. That is a clear and gross error, and I have thought that for a very long time.
You mischaracterised me.
Fair enough, I take it back. Apologies. I do agree with most of what you wrote and Boris needs to fall for his prior failures. However, I'm not going to let that get in the way of excitement that this might finally be over and crediting the government effort on vaccinations.
It should not be difficult for anyone to say:
1) the government has in general handled the pandemic terribly; and
2) it has, fortunately, handled the procurement and delivery of vaccines very well to date.
The second success does not absolve it of the first failure. The first failure is grievous.
Yes, agreed. The first point outweighs the second one and the second doesn't absolve the first. The lack of leadership from Boris over too many aspects of this have been a real disaster for people. It's very frustrating that the debate in the UK became economy vs health, no one in the UK spoke up for achieving both, certainly not Boris. Worse still the UK has ended up with a very damaged economy and a lot of dead, worst of both worlds. Hopefully the party will dump him, if not then we have to hope the public vote to get rid in 2024.
120,000 have died. How many *ought* to have died, had the government got everything right? I expect it would still have been in the high tens of thousands.
That's why people generally need to be careful about seeming to blame the government for the existence of a pandemic, rather than blaming it for its response to the pandemic, which is when people blame for all the deaths rather than some amount of them. Even that Racheel Swindon Corbynite was careful enough to do that in a piece linked on here in a whinge about Keir.
Well its clear one of them, at least, is finished. Also from Salmond:
"The real cost to the Scottish people runs into many millions of pounds and yet no-one in this entire process has uttered the simple words which are necessary on occasions to renew and refresh democratic institutions - 'I Resign'.
"The Committee now has the opportunity to address that position."
Salmond is under the charming delusion that both the people he acuses, and the nationalist members of the committee investigating them, understand concepts like honour, decency, integrity and responsibility.
Nobody will resign.
Of course not. Shamelessness is the modern political way.
One other thing about stopping people travelling abroad. The people who want to get on a plane during a pandemic are precisely the sort of people who aren't worried about catching or spreading the virus. That should have been enough to put a stop to it.
I know loads of people that have got on a plane since March 2020. A couple wanted a bit of a holiday away from the gloom. Most were seeing family to try and avoid nervous breakdown in one side or the other. There’s so much condescension about the reasons for foreign travel on here sometimes that I pinch myself to remember that the Brexit vote was a close run thing.
And that's precisely why holidays and trips of that ilk need to be banned. If you let people do it, they will.
Even when the infection rate in the country of destination was lower than in the UK? Even for people who didn’t fly but drove long distances to Poland, Germany or Spain and saw no one but one household, at a time the Uk allowed rule of 6 indoors in pubs?
Get a grip.
It's not just about the destination, though that's obviously a factor. It's more the fact that you've got people squeezed together on a plane. And traipsing through airports.
I'm sure it is tough for people separated from their friends and family. But what we really needed was for our government to say "tough".
Lots of man love ❤️ for Boris, for his roadmap and for his luxuriant hair on PB this afternoon. Some positive swooning. Bless.
And bloody well deserved too. We can all quibble over the exact speed of the unlocking, but we're now in a position to escape this thing faster than almost all countries that are not led by a certain Boris Johnson.
Before quibbling over the exact speed of the unlocking, you ought to take off your hat and bow your head for the tens of thousands killed by Boris Johnson's negligence to date.
Give it a rest.
Useful to have a list of all the pbers who have a vacuum where their souls should be. Tens of thousands died because Boris Johnson was asleep at the wheel - not once, but over and over.
And you want to forget that. Well, it will not be forgotten by anyone with a conscience.
Stop being an idiot.
So, we are supposed to forget, among other things:
1) Boris Johnson bunking off February 2020 to spend his time billing and cooing over Carrie. He missed five Cobra meetings at the time the risks of Covid-19 were becoming apparent to all.
2) lockdown 1 starting at least a week late.
3) the murderous discharge of Covid patients to care homes.
4) his bayoneting of the government’s public health messages by backing Dominic Cummings’ flagrant flouting of Covid regulations.
5) Ignoring Sage recommendations to lockdown in September, only to put a longer one in place six weeks later, 6,000 deaths later.
6) Relaxing restrictions in early December with the intention of further relaxing them for Christmas in defiance of the emerging horrific data, before backtracking when the turkeys were already defrosting.
7) Yet again, imposing lockdown 3 far too late.
The consequence was that Britain has a death rate per million exceeded only by Belgium, Slovenia and Czechia (and imminently about to overtake Slovenia). Excess deaths look almost as bad.
But there is no mistake, no matter how deadly or how obvious, that government supporters won’t try to overlook.
I'm not ignoring it, HMG has made terrible and egregious errors, and I happily point and shriek with horror when they happen. The inability to close the fucking borders, from February 2020, is particularly incendiary. A total mistake. Likewise, the advice on masks. Shitshow (tho here the scientists - yes, you, Van Tam - are probably guiltier than the politicians)
But, I also acknowledge that Britain was uniquely and unfortunately positioned to have a very bad plague, whatever happened - old, obese, internationally super-connected, world city, plentiful BAME community, generally libertarian, individualistic, service industry oriented - and I genuinely doubt most UK govts would have done much better (or many European govts, as we see in Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Portugal)
Besides, you seem intent on grief-shaming others for "not caring about death", rather than making any specific point. This is beneath you. For all you know, you are accusing people who have lost loved ones to Covid, of "not caring".
As I say below, you were driven mad by Brexit, and every so often the psychosis re-emerges. Tonight is one such. Tsk
Note that Alastair is sticking to his guns on open borders, despite being the single biggest error the government made not a single mention in his (fair IMO) list of errors that they've made.
Every single one of those pales in comparison to not closing the borders but his ideological need to keep the county "open" means he won't ever criticise that absolutely horrible and ongoing rubbish decision not to mandate quarantine for all incoming arrivals.
This is incorrect. I only omitted from my list by accident closing the borders. That is a clear and gross error, and I have thought that for a very long time.
You mischaracterised me.
Fair enough, I take it back. Apologies. I do agree with most of what you wrote and Boris needs to fall for his prior failures. However, I'm not going to let that get in the way of excitement that this might finally be over and crediting the government effort on vaccinations.
It should not be difficult for anyone to say:
1) the government has in general handled the pandemic terribly; and
2) it has, fortunately, handled the procurement and delivery of vaccines very well to date.
The second success does not absolve it of the first failure. The first failure is grievous.
Pretty reasonable stuff. There'll be a range on 1) but even if someone felt in general it was ok there would still be grievous failures within that, so it's semantic at that point.
Boris's failings on the first count are many but, and here's the crucial thing, so were those of the civil service and Cameron administration in preparing for this pandemic as well: they assumed with blithe comfort that the "flu pandemic" plan could simply be dusted off and were totally unprepared for this. If there had been a Labour administration in charge, there'd have been mistakes too; have we all forgotten the Stafford Hospital scandal under Andy Burnham so quickly, where possibly over 1,000 died unnecessarily?
I think some on here fail to realise that the public in general don't have particularly high expectations of politicians anyway, and think they're as average as each other. Yes, they think Boris is a bit lazy and sloppy, and probably took a couple of decisions too late, but they also think that the care homes scandal would probably have happened under any PM, they notice nations struggling with this all over the world, and they're delighted the UK has finally got first out of the blocks with his vaccination programme. And they can detect Boris is taking it seriously, trying to learn from it, and the Government is trying to do the best it can.
So, no, he won't be defenestrated - and the best PM ratings are actually going in the opposite direction - because they don't think swapping out the PM is either warranted or necessary; nor that it'd make anything better if he was.
The Government has made errors. SAGE has made errors. The scientists have made errors. Drakeford has made errors, Sturgeon has made errors. The WHO has made errors. Ursula vd Leyen has made errors. Almost every politician in the Western world has made errors.
All these people had very difficult jobs to do. I am very relieved it was not my job.
It is inevitable that in dealing with a completely new disease, many of whose characteristics remain unknown even now, that scientists & politicians & health professionals made errors.
All the more so was this the case at the beginning when hardly anything was known.
If you want to pin the deaths on Johnson, you need to show by a statistical analysis of excess deaths that Johnson may many more errors than the others, many more errors than was typical or reasonable.
When that calculation has been done, there may be evidence to show Johnson did exceptionally badly.
My guess is that the English (or W or S) performance is not worse than the rest of Europe in a statistically significant way, but I am happy to wait and see.
Yet again, it is not enough just to show errors were made. Of course, errors were made. That is what happens when there are little data on a completely new disease
Admirably fair summary
And if we manage to crawl out of this hell-hole of existence on the next four to five months any "failures" will be lost in the noise of the country breathing a sigh of relief and getting on with things. The arguments over death statistics, their merits, methodology and comparisons with others will not be a major consideration come the next election. Arguments over whether lockdown one was one week too late or that Airports should have been closed will be confined to sites like this - not in the real world. And I think this is what is driving Mr Meeks to distraction - because he knows that, especially after escaping any harm following the prorogation, Benn Act etc etc.
The only major fall out of the pandemic to endanger Johnson and the Tories is the economic impact and how well or not that is ameliorated. Blair survived an illegal war and the deaths of millions. It's all in the smile.
Quite. I actually do want to go on a foreign holiday, I've only had one in 20 years, but I'd have no idea where to even start because of all that uncertainty.
Sturgeon/Salmond is interesting. I think she and Boris have something in common: they will seem to be immune to political gravity, until one day they are not.
We are lucky to have two such performing seals. If Labour could find one it would be Game On. What larks.
Lots of man love ❤️ for Boris, for his roadmap and for his luxuriant hair on PB this afternoon. Some positive swooning. Bless.
And bloody well deserved too. We can all quibble over the exact speed of the unlocking, but we're now in a position to escape this thing faster than almost all countries that are not led by a certain Boris Johnson.
Before quibbling over the exact speed of the unlocking, you ought to take off your hat and bow your head for the tens of thousands killed by Boris Johnson's negligence to date.
Give it a rest.
Useful to have a list of all the pbers who have a vacuum where their souls should be. Tens of thousands died because Boris Johnson was asleep at the wheel - not once, but over and over.
And you want to forget that. Well, it will not be forgotten by anyone with a conscience.
Stop being an idiot.
So, we are supposed to forget, among other things:
1) Boris Johnson bunking off February 2020 to spend his time billing and cooing over Carrie. He missed five Cobra meetings at the time the risks of Covid-19 were becoming apparent to all.
2) lockdown 1 starting at least a week late.
3) the murderous discharge of Covid patients to care homes.
4) his bayoneting of the government’s public health messages by backing Dominic Cummings’ flagrant flouting of Covid regulations.
5) Ignoring Sage recommendations to lockdown in September, only to put a longer one in place six weeks later, 6,000 deaths later.
6) Relaxing restrictions in early December with the intention of further relaxing them for Christmas in defiance of the emerging horrific data, before backtracking when the turkeys were already defrosting.
7) Yet again, imposing lockdown 3 far too late.
The consequence was that Britain has a death rate per million exceeded only by Belgium, Slovenia and Czechia (and imminently about to overtake Slovenia). Excess deaths look almost as bad.
But there is no mistake, no matter how deadly or how obvious, that government supporters won’t try to overlook.
I'm not ignoring it, HMG has made terrible and egregious errors, and I happily point and shriek with horror when they happen. The inability to close the fucking borders, from February 2020, is particularly incendiary. A total mistake. Likewise, the advice on masks. Shitshow (tho here the scientists - yes, you, Van Tam - are probably guiltier than the politicians)
But, I also acknowledge that Britain was uniquely and unfortunately positioned to have a very bad plague, whatever happened - old, obese, internationally super-connected, world city, plentiful BAME community, generally libertarian, individualistic, service industry oriented - and I genuinely doubt most UK govts would have done much better (or many European govts, as we see in Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Portugal)
Besides, you seem intent on grief-shaming others for "not caring about death", rather than making any specific point. This is beneath you. For all you know, you are accusing people who have lost loved ones to Covid, of "not caring".
As I say below, you were driven mad by Brexit, and every so often the psychosis re-emerges. Tonight is one such. Tsk
Note that Alastair is sticking to his guns on open borders, despite being the single biggest error the government made not a single mention in his (fair IMO) list of errors that they've made.
Every single one of those pales in comparison to not closing the borders but his ideological need to keep the county "open" means he won't ever criticise that absolutely horrible and ongoing rubbish decision not to mandate quarantine for all incoming arrivals.
This is incorrect. I only omitted from my list by accident closing the borders. That is a clear and gross error, and I have thought that for a very long time.
You mischaracterised me.
Fair enough, I take it back. Apologies. I do agree with most of what you wrote and Boris needs to fall for his prior failures. However, I'm not going to let that get in the way of excitement that this might finally be over and crediting the government effort on vaccinations.
It should not be difficult for anyone to say:
1) the government has in general handled the pandemic terribly; and
2) it has, fortunately, handled the procurement and delivery of vaccines very well to date.
The second success does not absolve it of the first failure. The first failure is grievous.
Yes, agreed. The first point outweighs the second one and the second doesn't absolve the first. The lack of leadership from Boris over too many aspects of this have been a real disaster for people. It's very frustrating that the debate in the UK became economy vs health, no one in the UK spoke up for achieving both, certainly not Boris. Worse still the UK has ended up with a very damaged economy and a lot of dead, worst of both worlds. Hopefully the party will dump him, if not then we have to hope the public vote to get rid in 2024.
120,000 have died. How many *ought* to have died, had the government got everything right? I expect it would still have been in the high tens of thousands.
The whole second wave, IMO, is because Boris didn't close the border and put in mandatory quarantine for all arrivals from May onwards when we unlocked. That around 80k people who have died of COVID, a whole bunch of people in hospital that would otherwise not have needed to go and 4-5% off our GDP which we will have to hope we can recover quickly from May/June onwards.
A lot of desperate people taking a punt. And to be fair, if they book package holidays they oughtn't to be taking too much of a risk. AIUI if loads of cancellations sink the tour operator then the punters still get their money back through the ATOL scheme.
Comments
I can criticise loads that the UK government didn’t do last Spring, and loads that it has done ever since with no good evidence in support.
Failing to lock borders before Wave 1 is a hard one for me to nail the government on, especially if the scientific advice and pandemic preparedness plan didn’t call for it. Certain people need to take a breath before accusing people of having no soul. Comical if it wasn’t so sad.
And so to accuse someone of causing deaths because they turned the thermostat up too late is not only immoral but not sustainable as an argument.
There are many posters on this site who are cracking open the champagne because the government’s catastrophic errors in this pandemic are going unexamined. But the least we can do for the dead is make sure that we learn from those mistakes.
If ever there was a crisis to listen to Patel's more reactionary instincts this was it. Boris is Shapps' boss so he carries the can for Shapps' decisions.
Vaccine passports are deffo coming. They are the only way airlines - and hotels, and all of hospitality - will commercially survive. Ignoring this fact is stupid. People, and their insurers, will want the certainty.
It looks very much like a favourite tactic that aggrieved medieval nobles used to weaken God's anointed King (or Queen) - if going for them directly is too problematic you blame their misdeeds on their bad advisors, and if the monarch can't then save their favourites from the executioner's block then they, in turn, are exposed as weak and ripe for overthrow.
Of course, whether the appearance at the Parliamentary hearing turns out to be a popcorn spectacular or a damp squib remains to be seen.
Dr Rosena Allin-Khan MD is the one to watch.
And annoying though a curfew is, England is currently under 24/7 Stay At Home, except for limited reasons. Remember?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eu2-Ka-WQAoE_oJ?format=png&name=large
But we should still have shut the borders and not allowed foreign travel as that has played its part in spreading the virus. Add in the mutant strain risk and it's a no-brainer.
"The real cost to the Scottish people runs into many millions of pounds and yet no-one in this entire process has uttered the simple words which are necessary on occasions to renew and refresh democratic institutions - 'I Resign'.
"The Committee now has the opportunity to address that position."
This clears the way for Mr Salmond to attend an oral hearing on Wednesday........
The major issue delaying agreement today concerned an affidavit submitted by Anne Harvey, a senior SNP official based in the Whips Office at Westminster.
In that affidavit she describes in detail her reasons for believing that a “witch-hunt” was orchestrated against Mr Salmond by SNP officials. She provides contemporary documentary evidence from emails in 2018 which support her view.
Ms Harvey further describes her awareness that “one or more members of SNP Headquarters staff was engaged in a cynical attempt to construct a disingenuous and totally unwarranted case against Mr Salmond”
That affidavit has now been heavily and, in our view, unnecessarily redacted before publication. Its remaining contents have now been published on the Parliament site.
https://wingsoverscotland.com/through-the-stable-door/
1) the government has in general handled the pandemic terribly; and
2) it has, fortunately, handled the procurement and delivery of vaccines very well to date.
The second success does not absolve it of the first failure. The first failure is grievous.
I'm not sure what is gained by people telling each other to eff off though (or the polite version, that they have voids for souls etc) other than theatrical masturbation. People enjoy that kind of thing, flamboyant expressions of outrage or disgust don't disguise that. When I see that stuff I cannot really connect with it, despite the mutual anger, as people are clearly enjoying the carthasis too much. Sometimes people want to shout and rage, we've all been there.
Resolved - This incident has been resolved. Feb 22, 14:54 EST
Update - We are continuing to monitor for any further issues. Feb 22, 14:38 EST
Monitoring - A fix has been implemented and we are monitoring the results. Feb 22, 14:31 EST
Identified - The issue has been identified and a fix is being implemented. Feb 22, 14:23 EST
Investigating - We are currently investigating this issue. Feb 22, 14:10 EST
https://status.vanillaforums.com/
The avoidable deaths thing is going to have to await an enquiry, and I think there are two sides at least to it. But an interesting speculation for now is the issue of failure. Boris has an extraordinary image as someone who wins, and gets what he wants, and the presentation skills to match. As a showman he is up with Blair, Thatcher, Clinton, Obama, right at the top.
What he has never really done is comprehensively failed in an ambition, election and so on. Can he continue this, unlike Thatcher or Blair who both essentially failed in the end, and stop being PM at a moment apparently of his choosing and at the top? He is at the moment one ahead of Trump, amazing charlatan and showman that he was/is. Trump lost and election and everyone knows it, and compounded it by losing gracelessly when he could have save his image by showing a trace of grace. Boris won't want to do that. As spectacle it will be worth following.
Only Nicola comes close in today's politics as a showman. Her show is worth watching too and is getting quite exciting.
Not importing a disastrous variant stands to save such an immense fortune on not having yet another bloody lockdown that the mothballing of airlines and tour operators for another 6-12 months could be paid for from the loose change.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=kECTqjJgOMA
https://twitter.com/paulhutcheon/status/1363961904377589772
As horrible as it may seem, most people aren't thinking about the dead. They're thinking about their own lives and how they want to get back to normal.
The restrictions are what you can spend that time doing.
The Government has made errors. SAGE has made errors. The scientists have made errors. Drakeford has made errors, Sturgeon has made errors. The WHO has made errors. Ursula vd Leyen has made errors. Almost every politician in the Western world has made errors.
All these people had very difficult jobs to do. I am very relieved it was not my job.
It is inevitable that in dealing with a completely new disease, many of whose characteristics remain unknown even now, that scientists & politicians & health professionals made errors.
All the more so was this the case at the beginning when hardly anything was known.
If you want to pin the deaths on Johnson, you need to show by a statistical analysis of excess deaths that Johnson may many more errors than the others, many more errors than was typical or reasonable.
When that calculation has been done, there may be evidence to show Johnson did exceptionally badly.
My guess is that the English (or W or S) performance is not worse than the rest of Europe in a statistically significant way, but I am happy to wait and see.
Yet again, it is not enough just to show errors were made. Of course, errors were made. That is what happens when there are little data on a completely new disease
At the moment we're not flying any staff abroad because flying unvaccinated is completely daft. The point about the sorts taking holidays abroad out of choice is a good one.
I think though Angela Rayner and Lisa Nandy are more likely.
Though the gaiety of nations would be greatly enhanced by Kate Forbes coming to the fore.
That said she will take some damage, below ships. Boris will, thereby, quite easily fend off her demand for a new vote.
Britain will continue, plaguey, cantankerous and divided, but it will continue
I feel like I should be a lot more interested in this story than I am, but I just cannot work up the energy to develop a strong opinion about whether Salmond or Sturgeon are lying.
Of course, what happened was they got out there (having provided negative covid tests - not cheap), only for our government to impose a 14 day quarantine on people coming home from Cyprus. The husband ended up paying a lot to get home before the deadline so that he could go to work (he's an electrician).
Now, you might laugh at that (I did), but it's another example of where the government really ought to have protected people from themselves.
https://twitter.com/ianssmart/status/1363949766527381509?s=20
https://www.financialreporter.co.uk/later-life/government-to-remedy-public-pensions-after-landmark-ruling.html#:~:text="The McCloud judgment was a,in public sector pension reform.
Going to work this into my spreadsheet...
"No you can't get time off to go and get vaccinated - keep working or I will fire you!"
Nationalists veins burn with pulsating passion for independence. They won't give a toss what Salmond or Sturgeon did in the past, so long as either one of them can deliver independence.
Get a grip.
https://twitter.com/hendopolis/status/1363961587053318144?s=19
They're restrictions which are either little known about or widely ignored.
https://twitter.com/BBCBusiness/status/1363965195266179074?s=20
Nobody will resign.
I'm sure it is tough for people separated from their friends and family. But what we really needed was for our government to say "tough".
I think some on here fail to realise that the public in general don't have particularly high expectations of politicians anyway, and think they're as average as each other. Yes, they think Boris is a bit lazy and sloppy, and probably took a couple of decisions too late, but they also think that the care homes scandal would probably have happened under any PM, they notice nations struggling with this all over the world, and they're delighted the UK has finally got first out of the blocks with his vaccination programme. And they can detect Boris is taking it seriously, trying to learn from it, and the Government is trying to do the best it can.
So, no, he won't be defenestrated - and the best PM ratings are actually going in the opposite direction - because they don't think swapping out the PM is either warranted or necessary; nor that it'd make anything better if he was.
The only major fall out of the pandemic to endanger Johnson and the Tories is the economic impact and how well or not that is ameliorated. Blair survived an illegal war and the deaths of millions. It's all in the smile.