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.
Maybe, but if they bring back something horrible they might end up home schooling again for the rest of the year.
Edit: Sorry if that's initially somewhat blunt. Just very surprised to see something which has that data on as I'm not aware of the expected provision schedule being public - so an underlying source would be great if possible.
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.
Trouble is, how many people have taken on board that the UK has done badly, let alone connected that to decisions the government did (or didn't) take? And how many of them are swing voters, as opposed to wouldn't-vote-for-him-anyway or will-continue-to-vote-for-him-despite-this?
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.
Watching Coronation Street or Eastenders seems very boring too me but millions enjoy it and I think it would be absurd to justify it being illegal simply because some find it boring. Not sure why you think your view on how boring golf is, is relevant to it being banned.
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 haven’t got the numbers in front of me, but France, Spain and Italy are the most popular countries for UK holidaymakers I’d guess. None of those is likely to be open for tourism until maybe September?
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.
My guess is 70-85,000, if everything that was reasonably practical had gone right, which of course it'd be impossible to know at the time and ignores wider rules of human error and politics.
And he'd still be criticised for that too.
Worth noting of course it could have gone massively in the other direction too: an overwhelmed NHS, 500,000+dead, a collapsed economy and no vaccine in 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
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.
Trouble is, how many people have taken on board that the UK has done badly, let alone connected that to decisions the government did (or didn't) take? And how many of them are swing voters, as opposed to wouldn't-vote-for-him-anyway or will-continue-to-vote-for-him-despite-this?
It's a fair point, but I'm still presently of the view that the economic impact coming in 2021 onwards and the chance to reflect back once we're out of crisis mode will see a backlash against the government, as I don't think voters do gratitude. However, the positive vibes from the great vaccine rollout has made me less certain of that outcome than I was, as the end impression may be coloured somewhat.
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.
The hearing might be box office though, precisely because he’s better than anyone questioning him. It’s making me think of when Galloway went to a US Committee Hearing. It changed nothing but it was amusing to see him enjoy himself.
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 haven’t got the numbers in front of me, but France, Spain and Italy are the most popular countries for UK holidaymakers I’d guess. None of those is likely to be open for tourism until maybe September?
Why will it be worse than last year when it was June?
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.
Trouble is, how many people have taken on board that the UK has done badly, let alone connected that to decisions the government did (or didn't) take? And how many of them are swing voters, as opposed to wouldn't-vote-for-him-anyway or will-continue-to-vote-for-him-despite-this?
It's a fair point, but I'm still presently of the view that the economic impact coming in 2021 onwards and the chance to reflect back once we're out of crisis mode will see a backlash against the government, as I don't think voters do gratitude. However, the positive vibes from the great vaccine rollout has made me less certain of that outcome than I was, as the end impression may be coloured somewhat.
I can’t shake the feeling that Biden, the EU, and China will all want to create a global boom that takes us through 2024. If he gets to latch on to those coattails, Boris might get away with it.
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?
I’m very glad I don’t have to disentangle this kind of mess any more! The courts have been tightening up their approach to age discrimination. I have some sympathy for the government on this, because the decision makes it harder for employers to cushion the blow of changes.
I can’t say their latest solution particularly impresses me though.
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.
He's keeping the borders open on the orders of.....God?
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!"
It's obviously a supply problem (perhaps, though not certainly, exacerbated by holding back some to ensure that second doses of the right vaccine can be given on time). It was widely trailed, particularly by the devolved administrations, that this would happen and would be very significant, and I'm rather surprised that anyone is surprised by it.
Supply projections are, apparently, confidential, so we can't expect to get too much detail. The fact that the government has confidently sped-up their group 1-9 target strongly suggests that they know that the supply problem is temporary, though.
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.
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...
Yes. That was me. The 2 biggest outbreaks in my village were both traced back to large, maskless non-distanced groups spending long periods of time in the golf club car park.
The Graun may have decided to become the voice of the zero Covid extremists. It's an opportunity to open another front against the hated Tories, and the opposite, lockdown sceptic tendency probably isn't particularly well represented amongst its readership.
It's an easy enough position to justify. If things go badly, they and their readers can hold a massive, told-you-so smugfest, and claim their approach would've prevented it. If it all goes swimmingly then they can still claim that, if Government had only listened to their pleas to lock everyone up for another six months whilst enough hazmat suits were made and distributed for the entire population to wear whenever they leave the house, fewer people would've died.
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!"
It's obviously a supply problem (perhaps, though not certainly, exacerbated by holding back some to ensure that second doses of the right vaccine can be given on time). It was widely trailed, particularly by the devolved administrations, that this would happen and would be very significant, and I'm rather surprised that anyone is surprised by it.
Supply projections are, apparently, confidential, so we can't expect to get too much detail. The fact that the government has confidently sped-up their group 1-9 target strongly suggests that they know that the supply problem is temporary, though.
--AS
I think there were comments today from Scotland and/or Wales that the vaccination rate was going to increase again soon.
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.
What appals me is that partisan government supporters like you exult that it might shrug off the avoidable deaths of tens of thousands caused by negligence.
In the real world, these people are dead. But that doesn’t matter in the slightest to you. Your attitude is despicable.
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.
Trouble is, how many people have taken on board that the UK has done badly, let alone connected that to decisions the government did (or didn't) take? And how many of them are swing voters, as opposed to wouldn't-vote-for-him-anyway or will-continue-to-vote-for-him-despite-this?
Few indeed, I suspect. And if, after the UK opens up for a glorious summer, they're still reading months later about how other countries are still in relative lockdown because their governments have taken so long to vaccinate them, then that will be the lasting impression of how well the UK did in the Great Pandemic.
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.
But nobody in Europe or America did that either. Not one country outside of the Asia/Oceania region.
And we're not like Oceania at all.
Was it a mistake? Yes, probably, in hindsight. Are they learning from the mistake - yes, eventually.
And they got other things right, including the one issue more important than quarantines - vaccines.
No country is ever going to get everything perfect but both Hancock and Boris have clearly learnt a lot on the job in the last year and while mistakes were made last spring and summer they seem to be getting the big decisions right now. Including refusing to buy into the Zero Covid dogma.
Realistically that's as good as we could ask for. That people do their best and learn rather than doubling down on mistakes trying to dig their way out - as the Europeans have done with the vaccines, feeding antivaxxers in order to try and dig their way out of failed procurement.
An alternative reality with no vaccine, i dread to think what would todays press conference would be....
Astronomical death figures, probably. In a world with no vaccines and no prospect of them, the best the Government could've done is build about a thousand tent hospitals and let nature take its course.
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?
I’m very glad I don’t have to disentangle this kind of mess any more! The courts have been tightening up their approach to age discrimination. I have some sympathy for the government on this, because the decision makes it harder for employers to cushion the blow of changes.
I can’t say their latest solution particularly impresses me though.
My back of an envelope sums seem to work out more or less even between schemesfor myself, but with all the millions in the public sector schemes, the financial implications are potentially huge.
And Crown Office. What the hell were they doing threatening the Parliamentary Committee with prosecution if they published it?
Deeply concerning.
It does seem that some folk are utterly shitting themselves at one possible outcome - and are doing EVERYTHING, however unwise, to prevent that outcome.
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.
That's true.
But it can also be quite misleading as there can be very substantial differences inside states. Florida, for example, has very few statewide restrictions. But at the individual county and city level, there can be extensive ones. Some counties have had schools closed pretty much continually since last March; others have had them completely open.
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.
He's keeping the borders open on the orders of.....God?
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.
What appals me is that partisan government supporters like you exult that it might shrug off the avoidable deaths of tens of thousands caused by negligence.
In the real world, these people are dead. But that doesn’t matter in the slightest to you. Your attitude is despicable.
And Crown Office. What the hell were they doing threatening the Parliamentary Committee with prosecution if they published it?
Deeply concerning.
It does seem that some folk are utterly shitting themselves at one possible outcome - and are doing EVERYTHING, however unwise, to prevent that outcome.
Unfathomable.
I am really unhappy and uncomfortable about this. I would really like to think better about Crown Office than this. But the more this goes on the harder this gets.
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.
He's keeping the borders open on the orders of.....God?
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!"
It's obviously a supply problem (perhaps, though not certainly, exacerbated by holding back some to ensure that second doses of the right vaccine can be given on time). It was widely trailed, particularly by the devolved administrations, that this would happen and would be very significant, and I'm rather surprised that anyone is surprised by it.
Supply projections are, apparently, confidential, so we can't expect to get too much detail. The fact that the government has confidently sped-up their group 1-9 target strongly suggests that they know that the supply problem is temporary, though.
--AS
I think there were comments today from Scotland and/or Wales that the vaccination rate was going to increase again soon.
An alternative reality with no vaccine, i dread to think what would todays press conference would be....
Astronomical death figures, probably. In a world with no vaccines and no prospect of them, the best the Government could've done is build about a thousand tent hospitals and let nature take its course.
It is still a possible outcome - if there should be a mutant strain that can circumvent the vaccines.
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).
Dear god no. I can accept not everyone agreeing on 1st June as the start, and some preferring 21st June, but surely no one other than you advocates the 11th of June?
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.
It is said that the govt has blood on its hands because old people were put back into care homes from hospitals before they were Covid free. Surely it isn’t as simple as that, as had they stayed in hospitals they would have spread it there?
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.
What appals me is that partisan government supporters like you exult that it might shrug off the avoidable deaths of tens of thousands caused by negligence.
In the real world, these people are dead. But that doesn’t matter in the slightest to you. Your attitude is despicable.
Your attitude is despicable, trying to pointscore a vendetta because of sour grapes from losing a public vote.
Back here on Planet Earth there's a global pandemic going on.
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.
You certainly manage a lot of posts about something you're this indifferent about.
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).
Dear god no. I can accept not everyone agreeing on 1st June as the start, and some preferring 21st June, but surely no one other than you advocates the 11th of June?
Surely, if June 21st is mid summer than the beginning and end of summer are 6 and 1/2 weeks on either side of it?
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).
Dear god no. I can accept not everyone agreeing on 1st June as the start, and some preferring 21st June, but surely no one other than you advocates the 11th of June?
June 11 to September 10 would actually adhere to the thermal season believe it or not. So it’s a purist’s view albeit a niche one!
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.
But nobody in Europe or America did that either. Not one country outside of the Asia/Oceania region.
Not quite. Within the British Isles the Isle of Man and Guernsey did. Jersey didn't - and has had two to three times the deaths of either, proportionately.
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).
Dear god no. I can accept not everyone agreeing on 1st June as the start, and some preferring 21st June, but surely no one other than you advocates the 11th of June?
Surely, if June 21st is mid summer than the beginning and end of summer are 6 and 1/2 weeks on either side of it?
On the running order for the vaccinations after getting to age 50. I'd go:
1. Over 40s attending a workplace / educational establishment with other people per regulations. 2. Over 30s ...... 3. Over 16s (or whatever she we're going to) 4-6. All others in the same agree groupings.
I do not think we should be differentiating between occupations here - we shouldn't especially be putting teachers or police or soldiers first when there are clear higher risk groups. Everyone in any job that requires contact should be offered a jab, whether it's a cold chain factory worker, a nursery nurse, a distribution warehouse worker, shop staff, a licensed taxi driver, or eventually bar staff.
I think by singling out teachers and excluding blue-collar workers, Starmer made a rare misstep with his red wall credentials.
Practicalities: It needs to be made as simple as possible to sort out who gets workplace priority, perhaps at the expense of some accuracy. A literal card from your employer to drop / send in to your surgery for putting in the priority group perhaps, so they can mark a check box on your patient record, available 2-3 weeks before your allotted time.
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.
What appals me is that partisan government supporters like you exult that it might shrug off the avoidable deaths of tens of thousands caused by negligence.
In the real world, these people are dead. But that doesn’t matter in the slightest to you. Your attitude is despicable.
I beg your pardon? Perhaps it doesn't even occur to you that I may have lost a family member to COVID and yet I realise that a) Johnson and no other person is responsible for their death - that was the virus and b) no matter how hard we try death is something that happens.
I find it so reassuring that you evidently mourn every death of every person every day across the globe, it must be a terrible burden for you. Much like that bloke out of the Green Mile. You are Sir, a Saint beyond compare and obviously eligible for some kind of elevation to holiness for your unending compassion.
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.
You certainly manage a lot of posts about something you're this indifferent about.
I manage a lot of posts about a lot of things.
I didn't say I was indifferent about it - I simply cannot develop a strong opinion over which one is lying, and therefore the specific story about Salmond's comments interests me, but not as much as I feel it probably should (which is what I said, not that I had no interest) given the nature of the allegations being thrown about.
You are presumably aware people can be interested at different levels, not a binary interested/not interested situation.
And Crown Office. What the hell were they doing threatening the Parliamentary Committee with prosecution if they published it?
Deeply concerning.
It does seem that some folk are utterly shitting themselves at one possible outcome - and are doing EVERYTHING, however unwise, to prevent that outcome.
Unfathomable.
I am really unhappy and uncomfortable about this. I would really like to think better about Crown Office than this. But the more this goes on the harder this gets.
The entire Scottish Establishment has been co-opted, corrupted, and pointed in the direction of Nationalism. Sometimes to the point where apparently decent people skirt illegality. Or worse.
Is that seriously questionable? It seems obvious, south of the border
It’s not unique to Scot Nattery. It is what always happens in militant, one party states. I think the UK as a whole came fairly close with New Labour - “the political wing of the British people”: T Blair- during their 13 year, ever-increasing dominance of media, arts, charities, quangos, etc. The difference is that the SNP also have a burning, overriding cause, which means sensible Scottish folk get frightened, and shy away from dissent, amidst the anger and ardour
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.
But nobody in Europe or America did that either. Not one country outside of the Asia/Oceania region.
Not quite. Within the British Isles the Isle of Man and Guernsey did. Jersey didn't - and has had two to three times the deaths of either, proportionately.
The Isle of Man and Guersey aren't proper countries, you can't seriously try and compare us to them?
On the running order for the vaccinations after getting to age 50. I'd go:
1. Over 40s attending a workplace / educational establishment with other people per regulations. 2. Over 30s ...... 3. Over 16s (or whatever she we're going to) 4-6. All others in the same agree groupings.
I do not think we should be differentiating between occupations here - we shouldn't especially be putting teachers or police or soldiers first when there are clear higher risk groups. Everyone in any job that requires contact should be offered a jab, whether it's a cold chain factory worker, a nursery nurse, a distribution warehouse worker, shop staff, a licensed taxi driver, or eventually bar staff.
I think by singling out teachers and excluding blue-collar workers, Starmer made a rare misstep with his red wall credentials.
Practicalities: It needs to be made as simple as possible to sort out who gets workplace priority, perhaps at the expense of some accuracy. A literal card from your employer to drop / send in to your surgery for putting in the priority group perhaps, so they can mark a check box on your patient record, available 2-3 weeks before your allotted time.
Just make it simpler. Once below 60, just open booking to all over 16's. Rack up the numbers and get herd immunity
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.
My guess is 70-85,000, if everything that was reasonably practical had gone right, which of course it'd be impossible to know at the time and ignores wider rules of human error and politics.
And he'd still be criticised for that too.
Worth noting of course it could have gone massively in the other direction too: an overwhelmed NHS, 500,000+dead, a collapsed economy and no vaccine in site.
There’s a danger of refighting the Nazi assault on Russia, and not making the mistakes and thus Germany winning the war In the analysis of the uk performance over the pandemic. It’s very clear now what should have been done, it was less clear at the time. I think it is striking that many people genuinely assumed it was over during the summer, including some in government. Max is surely right that no foreign travel from may would have saved very many lives and the economy. But this is clear in hindsight.
On the running order for the vaccinations after getting to age 50. I'd go:
1. Over 40s attending a workplace / educational establishment with other people per regulations. 2. Over 30s ...... 3. Over 16s (or whatever she we're going to) 4-6. All others in the same agree groupings.
I do not think we should be differentiating between occupations here - we shouldn't especially be putting teachers or police or soldiers first when there are clear higher risk groups. Everyone in any job that requires contact should be offered a jab, whether it's a cold chain factory worker, a nursery nurse, a distribution warehouse worker, shop staff, a licensed taxi driver, or eventually bar staff.
I think by singling out teachers and excluding blue-collar workers, Starmer made a rare misstep with his red wall credentials.
Practicalities: It needs to be made as simple as possible to sort out who gets workplace priority, perhaps at the expense of some accuracy. A literal card from your employer to drop / send in to your surgery for putting in the priority group perhaps, so they can mark a check box on your patient record, available 2-3 weeks before your allotted time.
No, that's just complicated. Better to just do it by age and do 4m doses per week so everyone gets done in 5-6 weeks. Ultimately the difference is really tiny and we're talking about people who are already very, very unlikely to end up in a hosptial.
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).
Dear god no. I can accept not everyone agreeing on 1st June as the start, and some preferring 21st June, but surely no one other than you advocates the 11th of June?
June 11 to September 10 would actually adhere to the thermal season believe it or not. So it’s a purist’s view albeit a niche one!
Does thermal winter sit directly opposite thermal summer though? In accounting for thermsl winter, you might have to split the difference to even out the seasons.
I find myself in the rare position of being broadly supportive of the plan to end lockdown restrictions.
It all seems very sensible, measured and reasonable and even though I've had three cold showers and still feel terrible, I can't shake this feeling the Government has probably got it about right.
I can of course console myself with the notion even a broken clock is right twice a day.
I am still concerned about the vaccination programme roll out and the apparent inconsistencies in various areas. I've heard today of two colleagues who, having had their first vaccinations, have been invited two or three times each to get their first vaccination and it seems, and perhaps someone will correct me here, there is a nuance between a vaccination at a GP's surgery, for which the surgery will get a payment and a vaccination at a mass vaccination centre which by-passes the surgery.
Meanwhile in Ireland, it's the tea that is doing for them...
"Earlier the HSE chief executive said visits to other households to watch sports matches or for a cup of tea, rather than large parties, were responsible for increasing Covid-19 cases among younger people.
Speaking on Monday, HSE chief Paul Reid said progress tackling Covid-19 had become “stuck,” despite several weeks of strict lockdown measures.
“We are seeing growing cases now in younger people, from all the evidence we have it’s not house parties,” he said.
People were visiting other households “to see football games, Superbowl, a Premiership match, even people moving between homes for a cup of tea, just having that quick catch up,” he said."
That is the story I am referring to. If she actually had a zero covid policy why would people be urging her to adopt one?
Sturgeon and Sridhar have both mentioned “zero COVID” several times - the Nat Onal was crowing about how Scotland’s zero COVID approach was superior to England’s. I guess we’ll see tomorrow what her long term plan is.
If she goes for zero Covid she can expect not to be in power after May 6th.
Colour me skeptical she could do anything to prevent that.
If she keeps Scots locked up for significantly longer than the rest of the UK I would expect
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).
Dear god no. I can accept not everyone agreeing on 1st June as the start, and some preferring 21st June, but surely no one other than you advocates the 11th of June?
June 11 to September 10 would actually adhere to the thermal season believe it or not. So it’s a purist’s view albeit a niche one!
I am going to have to offer a thread header on this...
That is the story I am referring to. If she actually had a zero covid policy why would people be urging her to adopt one?
Sturgeon and Sridhar have both mentioned “zero COVID” several times - the Nat Onal was crowing about how Scotland’s zero COVID approach was superior to England’s. I guess we’ll see tomorrow what her long term plan is.
If she goes for zero Covid she can expect not to be in power after May 6th.
Colour me skeptical she could do anything to prevent that.
If she keeps Scots locked up for significantly longer than the rest of the UK I would expect
Maybe - I'm just sure lockdown anger cancels out all the reasons people vote SNP, or rather don't vote SLAB, SCON or SLD.
The Guardian prefer a zero virus strategy (final sentence). So would I except that nature and the fabric of reality may take a different view.
Indeed. The very obvious logical flaw with the Zero Covid fanatics is that it also implies Zero Influenza and Zero Pneumonia should be the strategy too. Why stop there? Zero Common Cold also sounds brill.
And Crown Office. What the hell were they doing threatening the Parliamentary Committee with prosecution if they published it?
Deeply concerning.
It does seem that some folk are utterly shitting themselves at one possible outcome - and are doing EVERYTHING, however unwise, to prevent that outcome.
Unfathomable.
I confess I have completely failed to get to grips with the Salmond issue.
I am aware he was tried and acquitted of some serious charges.
I am aware that there are rumours of something yet to emerge that could be deeply damaging to Sturgeon and/or the SNP. But is that wishful thinking by unionists?
A thread header by someone who understands the issue would be welcome.
Meanwhile in Ireland, it's the tea that is doing for them...
"Earlier the HSE chief executive said visits to other households to watch sports matches or for a cup of tea, rather than large parties, were responsible for increasing Covid-19 cases among younger people.
Speaking on Monday, HSE chief Paul Reid said progress tackling Covid-19 had become “stuck,” despite several weeks of strict lockdown measures.
“We are seeing growing cases now in younger people, from all the evidence we have it’s not house parties,” he said.
People were visiting other households “to see football games, Superbowl, a Premiership match, even people moving between homes for a cup of tea, just having that quick catch up,” he said."
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).
Dear god no. I can accept not everyone agreeing on 1st June as the start, and some preferring 21st June, but surely no one other than you advocates the 11th of June?
June 11 to September 10 would actually adhere to the thermal season believe it or not. So it’s a purist’s view albeit a niche one!
I am going to have to offer a thread header on this...
The Definition of Summer has potential to be the new AV on PB.
On the running order for the vaccinations after getting to age 50. I'd go:
1. Over 40s attending a workplace / educational establishment with other people per regulations. 2. Over 30s ...... 3. Over 16s (or whatever she we're going to) 4-6. All others in the same agree groupings.
I do not think we should be differentiating between occupations here - we shouldn't especially be putting teachers or police or soldiers first when there are clear higher risk groups. Everyone in any job that requires contact should be offered a jab, whether it's a cold chain factory worker, a nursery nurse, a distribution warehouse worker, shop staff, a licensed taxi driver, or eventually bar staff.
I think by singling out teachers and excluding blue-collar workers, Starmer made a rare misstep with his red wall credentials.
Practicalities: It needs to be made as simple as possible to sort out who gets workplace priority, perhaps at the expense of some accuracy. A literal card from your employer to drop / send in to your surgery for putting in the priority group perhaps, so they can mark a check box on your patient record, available 2-3 weeks before your allotted time.
No, that's just complicated. Better to just do it by age and do 4m doses per week so everyone gets done in 5-6 weeks. Ultimately the difference is really tiny and we're talking about people who are already very, very unlikely to end up in a hosptial.
Left field suggest but despite being in my thirties I'd bump us down the list and do plague carrying teenagers and young adults first. This was actually my wife's idea.
So go: 40s 16-25 25-30 30s
Logic of jumping past my bracket to go straight to teenagers and uni ages is these are the groups that mingle far, far more and spread the plague far, far more. Whether it be in high schools, universities, bars, clubs, raves or just parks or wandering aimlessly down streets.
While far more people in their thirties are at home with children, glory days of raving behind us but not yet vulnerable to the plague.
I'd have no problems waiting while the spotty teenagers and young adults get theirs first and it would squash transmission much more.
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 haven’t got the numbers in front of me, but France, Spain and Italy are the most popular countries for UK holidaymakers I’d guess. None of those is likely to be open for tourism until maybe September?
As discussed this morning, Spain is first by miles, France a clear second, and Italy, Ireland and the US tussling for third.
Case rates are falling in most places now, vaccination or not. There is every chance that Europe will be back in business for the summer. Indeed, even in heavily locked down places like Italy, many hotels are open even now.
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).
Dear god no. I can accept not everyone agreeing on 1st June as the start, and some preferring 21st June, but surely no one other than you advocates the 11th of June?
June 11 to September 10 would actually adhere to the thermal season believe it or not. So it’s a purist’s view albeit a niche one!
Does thermal winter sit directly opposite thermal summer though? In accounting for thermsl winter, you might have to split the difference to even out the seasons.
I understand that it does, approximately yes. Roughly 11 Dec to 10 March.
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).
Dear god no. I can accept not everyone agreeing on 1st June as the start, and some preferring 21st June, but surely no one other than you advocates the 11th of June?
June 11 to September 10 would actually adhere to the thermal season believe it or not. So it’s a purist’s view albeit a niche one!
I am going to have to offer a thread header on this...
The Definition of Summer has potential to be the new AV on PB.
Bring it on.
Summer can be anything from a weekend to a few weeks, normally in July.
On the running order for the vaccinations after getting to age 50. I'd go:
1. Over 40s attending a workplace / educational establishment with other people per regulations. 2. Over 30s ...... 3. Over 16s (or whatever she we're going to) 4-6. All others in the same agree groupings.
I do not think we should be differentiating between occupations here - we shouldn't especially be putting teachers or police or soldiers first when there are clear higher risk groups. Everyone in any job that requires contact should be offered a jab, whether it's a cold chain factory worker, a nursery nurse, a distribution warehouse worker, shop staff, a licensed taxi driver, or eventually bar staff.
I think by singling out teachers and excluding blue-collar workers, Starmer made a rare misstep with his red wall credentials.
Practicalities: It needs to be made as simple as possible to sort out who gets workplace priority, perhaps at the expense of some accuracy. A literal card from your employer to drop / send in to your surgery for putting in the priority group perhaps, so they can mark a check box on your patient record, available 2-3 weeks before your allotted time.
No, that's just complicated. Better to just do it by age and do 4m doses per week so everyone gets done in 5-6 weeks. Ultimately the difference is really tiny and we're talking about people who are already very, very unlikely to end up in a hosptial.
On the running order for the vaccinations after getting to age 50. I'd go:
1. Over 40s attending a workplace / educational establishment with other people per regulations. 2. Over 30s ...... 3. Over 16s (or whatever she we're going to) 4-6. All others in the same agree groupings.
I do not think we should be differentiating between occupations here - we shouldn't especially be putting teachers or police or soldiers first when there are clear higher risk groups. Everyone in any job that requires contact should be offered a jab, whether it's a cold chain factory worker, a nursery nurse, a distribution warehouse worker, shop staff, a licensed taxi driver, or eventually bar staff.
I think by singling out teachers and excluding blue-collar workers, Starmer made a rare misstep with his red wall credentials.
Practicalities: It needs to be made as simple as possible to sort out who gets workplace priority, perhaps at the expense of some accuracy. A literal card from your employer to drop / send in to your surgery for putting in the priority group perhaps, so they can mark a check box on your patient record, available 2-3 weeks before your allotted time.
No, that's just complicated. Better to just do it by age and do 4m doses per week so everyone gets done in 5-6 weeks. Ultimately the difference is really tiny and we're talking about people who are already very, very unlikely to end up in a hosptial.
Left field suggest but despite being in my thirties I'd bump us down the list and do plague carrying teenagers and young adults first. This was actually my wife's idea.
So go: 40s 16-25 25-30 30s
Logic of jumping past my bracket to go straight to teenagers and uni ages is these are the groups that mingle far, far more and spread the plague far, far more. Whether it be in high schools, universities, bars, clubs, raves or just parks or wandering aimlessly down streets.
While far more people in their thirties are at home with children, glory days of raving behind us but not yet vulnerable to the plague.
I'd have no problems waiting while the spotty teenagers and young adults get theirs first and it would squash transmission much more.
Yeah, I'm just not sure it makes a huge difference tbh. Whether we get it in week 2 or week 5 of the under 50s programme the actual level of national restrictions are already pretty much set. I want the vaccine from a personal perspective to ensure my parents have got maximum protection from catching it from me, they are less likely to catch it and I'm less likely to transmit it. I'm not particularly worried about catching COVID so waiting a couple of extra weeks isn't big deal.
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.
The irony is, by banning golf for another 5 weeks, Covid infection rates are more likely to rise than fall.
The reason: rather than do my preferred form of exercise, the only access to green space is now amidst the throngs in the local town park or nature reserve, where social distancing is very difficult on footpaths as unmasked heavily breathing joggers and cyclists repeatedly zoom close by you with no regard for any distancing at a rate of about 1 per minute. People queue up for takeaway coffees and pretend to be taking exercise when stopping to drink them (and chat). Parkrun runners just all happen to turn up on Saturday mornings as they would have anyway, and just happen to talk to all their mates when doing so. The outdoor tennis courts are padlocked so no respite from a socially distanced game of singles tennis either. If it were the case that outdoor activity were dangerous, the park would not be the place to be.
Golf by contrast is naturally socially distanced and safe. You can play it with one other person or even test your skills on your own. It's played on otherwise deserted open space. We do not go around a golf course in random directions passing each other, but in a one-way system over 18 holes, each group staying out of range 200 yards behind the one in front. It's best to stand more than 2 metres away when someone is swinging a golf club. You use only your own equipment. Rules have been changed so that there is no need to touch any course equipment such flagsticks (which stay in) and bunker rakes (removed). And so on. But I can't play golf, so I just have to exercise in the park with everyone else.
It's not even particularly middle class any more, at least by comparison to tennis or cricket. It's a pretty diverse crowd. Most of the members of my club are white van man self-employed tradesman, the sort who play football until they get too knackered and then take up golf into middle and old age.
I can't tell you how angry I am about the continuation of the ban on socially distanced outside sport.
Strikes me the major news of the day just isn't being highlighted by the media.
The PM has said there will be no zero covid strategy, the disease will be endemic and we will need to live with as we do with flu.
This is a massive development. And very welcome imho. We can finally put out to grass any ideas about keeping lockdown going for months and months in a pointless attempt to get case numbers down towards zero.
Seems to me that this is much more important development than the precise date on which the pub gardens will be open.
On the running order for the vaccinations after getting to age 50. I'd go:
1. Over 40s attending a workplace / educational establishment with other people per regulations. 2. Over 30s ...... 3. Over 16s (or whatever she we're going to) 4-6. All others in the same agree groupings.
I do not think we should be differentiating between occupations here - we shouldn't especially be putting teachers or police or soldiers first when there are clear higher risk groups. Everyone in any job that requires contact should be offered a jab, whether it's a cold chain factory worker, a nursery nurse, a distribution warehouse worker, shop staff, a licensed taxi driver, or eventually bar staff.
I think by singling out teachers and excluding blue-collar workers, Starmer made a rare misstep with his red wall credentials.
Practicalities: It needs to be made as simple as possible to sort out who gets workplace priority, perhaps at the expense of some accuracy. A literal card from your employer to drop / send in to your surgery for putting in the priority group perhaps, so they can mark a check box on your patient record, available 2-3 weeks before your allotted time.
No, that's just complicated. Better to just do it by age and do 4m doses per week so everyone gets done in 5-6 weeks. Ultimately the difference is really tiny and we're talking about people who are already very, very unlikely to end up in a hosptial.
Left field suggest but despite being in my thirties I'd bump us down the list and do plague carrying teenagers and young adults first. This was actually my wife's idea.
So go: 40s 16-25 25-30 30s
Logic of jumping past my bracket to go straight to teenagers and uni ages is these are the groups that mingle far, far more and spread the plague far, far more. Whether it be in high schools, universities, bars, clubs, raves or just parks or wandering aimlessly down streets.
While far more people in their thirties are at home with children, glory days of raving behind us but not yet vulnerable to the plague.
I'd have no problems waiting while the spotty teenagers and young adults get theirs first and it would squash transmission much more.
It’s a lot simpler than that. Once I’ve had one, I’m ok, so we can open everything up. We just need to get me done.
On the running order for the vaccinations after getting to age 50. I'd go:
1. Over 40s attending a workplace / educational establishment with other people per regulations. 2. Over 30s ...... 3. Over 16s (or whatever she we're going to) 4-6. All others in the same agree groupings.
I do not think we should be differentiating between occupations here - we shouldn't especially be putting teachers or police or soldiers first when there are clear higher risk groups. Everyone in any job that requires contact should be offered a jab, whether it's a cold chain factory worker, a nursery nurse, a distribution warehouse worker, shop staff, a licensed taxi driver, or eventually bar staff.
I think by singling out teachers and excluding blue-collar workers, Starmer made a rare misstep with his red wall credentials.
Practicalities: It needs to be made as simple as possible to sort out who gets workplace priority, perhaps at the expense of some accuracy. A literal card from your employer to drop / send in to your surgery for putting in the priority group perhaps, so they can mark a check box on your patient record, available 2-3 weeks before your allotted time.
Just make it simpler. Once below 60, just open booking to all over 16's. Rack up the numbers and get herd immunity
Over 50s are already on the listing, so will already be going first aiui. And to what extent are people being called in turn, not booking, switching round to pure recipient initiated would itself be complicated and maybe trigger a rush.
I see the merit in the simpler counter suggestions. Perhaps a mix, go down the age groups as per now, but maybe let those in contact workplace/study settings put themselves forward for advance appointments as 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.
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.
But nobody in Europe or America did that either. Not one country outside of the Asia/Oceania region.
Not quite. Within the British Isles the Isle of Man and Guernsey did. Jersey didn't - and has had two to three times the deaths of either, proportionately.
The Isle of Man and Guersey aren't proper countries, you can't seriously try and compare us to them?
That's why I compared them to Jersey - of similar scale to them, but which more closely followed the UK approach and had three times the deaths. Controlling borders works.
On the running order for the vaccinations after getting to age 50. I'd go:
1. Over 40s attending a workplace / educational establishment with other people per regulations. 2. Over 30s ...... 3. Over 16s (or whatever she we're going to) 4-6. All others in the same agree groupings.
I do not think we should be differentiating between occupations here - we shouldn't especially be putting teachers or police or soldiers first when there are clear higher risk groups. Everyone in any job that requires contact should be offered a jab, whether it's a cold chain factory worker, a nursery nurse, a distribution warehouse worker, shop staff, a licensed taxi driver, or eventually bar staff.
I think by singling out teachers and excluding blue-collar workers, Starmer made a rare misstep with his red wall credentials.
Practicalities: It needs to be made as simple as possible to sort out who gets workplace priority, perhaps at the expense of some accuracy. A literal card from your employer to drop / send in to your surgery for putting in the priority group perhaps, so they can mark a check box on your patient record, available 2-3 weeks before your allotted time.
No, that's just complicated. Better to just do it by age and do 4m doses per week so everyone gets done in 5-6 weeks. Ultimately the difference is really tiny and we're talking about people who are already very, very unlikely to end up in a hosptial.
Left field suggest but despite being in my thirties I'd bump us down the list and do plague carrying teenagers and young adults first. This was actually my wife's idea.
So go: 40s 16-25 25-30 30s
Logic of jumping past my bracket to go straight to teenagers and uni ages is these are the groups that mingle far, far more and spread the plague far, far more. Whether it be in high schools, universities, bars, clubs, raves or just parks or wandering aimlessly down streets.
While far more people in their thirties are at home with children, glory days of raving behind us but not yet vulnerable to the plague.
I'd have no problems waiting while the spotty teenagers and young adults get theirs first and it would squash transmission much more.
Yeah, I'm just not sure it makes a huge difference tbh. Whether we get it in week 2 or week 5 of the under 50s programme the actual level of national restrictions are already pretty much set. I want the vaccine from a personal perspective to ensure my parents have got maximum protection from catching it from me, they are less likely to catch it and I'm less likely to transmit it. I'm not particularly worried about catching COVID so waiting a couple of extra weeks isn't big deal.
Fair point.
Doing spotty kids before thirty somethings probable would give a marginal boost but it would be very marginal, probably not worth the aggro.
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 haven’t got the numbers in front of me, but France, Spain and Italy are the most popular countries for UK holidaymakers I’d guess. None of those is likely to be open for tourism until maybe September?
As discussed this morning, Spain is first by miles, France a clear second, and Italy, Ireland and the US tussling for third.
Case rates are falling in most places now, vaccination or not. There is every chance that Europe will be back in business for the summer. Indeed, even in heavily locked down places like Italy, many hotels are open even now.
Greece is planning a vaccine passport system apparently.
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!"
It's obviously a supply problem (perhaps, though not certainly, exacerbated by holding back some to ensure that second doses of the right vaccine can be given on time). It was widely trailed, particularly by the devolved administrations, that this would happen and would be very significant, and I'm rather surprised that anyone is surprised by it.
Supply projections are, apparently, confidential, so we can't expect to get too much detail. The fact that the government has confidently sped-up their group 1-9 target strongly suggests that they know that the supply problem is temporary, though.
--AS
Big batch of Pfizer arriving here locally for 2nd doses of Groups 1-4 from 8th March. I'm pretty sure slowdown is to ensure 2nd dose supply.
The Graun may have decided to become the voice of the zero Covid extremists. It's an opportunity to open another front against the hated Tories, and the opposite, lockdown sceptic tendency probably isn't particularly well represented amongst its readership.
It's an easy enough position to justify. If things go badly, they and their readers can hold a massive, told-you-so smugfest, and claim their approach would've prevented it. If it all goes swimmingly then they can still claim that, if Government had only listened to their pleas to lock everyone up for another six months whilst enough hazmat suits were made and distributed for the entire population to wear whenever they leave the house, fewer people would've died.
Yet it ignores the fact that most Guardianistas are sick to death of lockdown, just like everyone else. Thankfully, not even Guardian readers read Guardian leaders so they are probably safe.
I find myself in the rare position of being broadly supportive of the plan to end lockdown restrictions.
It all seems very sensible, measured and reasonable and even though I've had three cold showers and still feel terrible, I can't shake this feeling the Government has probably got it about right.
I can of course console myself with the notion even a broken clock is right twice a day.
I am still concerned about the vaccination programme roll out and the apparent inconsistencies in various areas. I've heard today of two colleagues who, having had their first vaccinations, have been invited two or three times each to get their first vaccination and it seems, and perhaps someone will correct me here, there is a nuance between a vaccination at a GP's surgery, for which the surgery will get a payment and a vaccination at a mass vaccination centre which by-passes the surgery.
They haven't got the continued ban on golf and outdoor tennis right.
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!"
It's obviously a supply problem (perhaps, though not certainly, exacerbated by holding back some to ensure that second doses of the right vaccine can be given on time). It was widely trailed, particularly by the devolved administrations, that this would happen and would be very significant, and I'm rather surprised that anyone is surprised by it.
Supply projections are, apparently, confidential, so we can't expect to get too much detail. The fact that the government has confidently sped-up their group 1-9 target strongly suggests that they know that the supply problem is temporary, though.
--AS
Big batch of Pfizer arriving here locally for 2nd doses of Groups 1-4 from 8th March. I'm pretty sure slowdown is to ensure 2nd dose supply.
Yep, I reckon the Pfizer is now being held for the second doses, and the slowdown in new vacs may be because the Pfizer centres have stopped doing them. That is certainly the current situation on the island.
On the running order for the vaccinations after getting to age 50. I'd go:
1. Over 40s attending a workplace / educational establishment with other people per regulations. 2. Over 30s ...... 3. Over 16s (or whatever she we're going to) 4-6. All others in the same agree groupings.
I do not think we should be differentiating between occupations here - we shouldn't especially be putting teachers or police or soldiers first when there are clear higher risk groups. Everyone in any job that requires contact should be offered a jab, whether it's a cold chain factory worker, a nursery nurse, a distribution warehouse worker, shop staff, a licensed taxi driver, or eventually bar staff.
I think by singling out teachers and excluding blue-collar workers, Starmer made a rare misstep with his red wall credentials.
Practicalities: It needs to be made as simple as possible to sort out who gets workplace priority, perhaps at the expense of some accuracy. A literal card from your employer to drop / send in to your surgery for putting in the priority group perhaps, so they can mark a check box on your patient record, available 2-3 weeks before your allotted time.
No, that's just complicated. Better to just do it by age and do 4m doses per week so everyone gets done in 5-6 weeks. Ultimately the difference is really tiny and we're talking about people who are already very, very unlikely to end up in a hosptial.
Left field suggest but despite being in my thirties I'd bump us down the list and do plague carrying teenagers and young adults first. This was actually my wife's idea.
So go: 40s 16-25 25-30 30s
Logic of jumping past my bracket to go straight to teenagers and uni ages is these are the groups that mingle far, far more and spread the plague far, far more. Whether it be in high schools, universities, bars, clubs, raves or just parks or wandering aimlessly down streets.
While far more people in their thirties are at home with children, glory days of raving behind us but not yet vulnerable to the plague.
I'd have no problems waiting while the spotty teenagers and young adults get theirs first and it would squash transmission much more.
Yeah, I'm just not sure it makes a huge difference tbh. Whether we get it in week 2 or week 5 of the under 50s programme the actual level of national restrictions are already pretty much set. I want the vaccine from a personal perspective to ensure my parents have got maximum protection from catching it from me, they are less likely to catch it and I'm less likely to transmit it. I'm not particularly worried about catching COVID so waiting a couple of extra weeks isn't big deal.
Fair point.
Doing spotty kids before thirty somethings probable would give a marginal boost but it would be very marginal, probably not worth the aggro.
The organisation hassle would outweigh any gains made by changing the order IMO as it would inevitably lead to a slowdown in the rate. Just stick with the JCVI recommendation and burn through it as quickly as possible.
Which reminds me, I need to register with a GP here!
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.
But nobody in Europe or America did that either. Not one country outside of the Asia/Oceania region.
Not quite. Within the British Isles the Isle of Man and Guernsey did. Jersey didn't - and has had two to three times the deaths of either, proportionately.
The Isle of Man and Guersey aren't proper countries, you can't seriously try and compare us to them?
That's why I compared them to Jersey - of similar scale to them, but which more closely followed the UK approach and had three times the deaths. Controlling borders works.
Yes but its not even apples and oranges, its an apple seed versus apple orchard comparison.
How many people enter the UK every day on essential visits that can't realistically be quarantined? Like HGV drivers etc?
How many for Guernsey?
Sure it works, but there's a reason last summer no actual countries in Europe tried it.
Strikes me the major news of the day just isn't being highlighted by the media.
The PM has said there will be no zero covid strategy, the disease will be endemic and we will need to live with as we do with flu.
This is a massive development. And very welcome imho. We can finally put out to grass any ideas about keeping lockdown going for months and months in a pointless attempt to get case numbers down towards zero.
Seems to me that this is much more important development than the precise date on which the pub gardens will be open.
Even bigger than that for me was Whitty nonchalantly explaining why R going above 1 in the future is not something to worry about.
Not just not having zero covid but not panicking if cases are going up rather than down. That is a humongous development today - and very welcome too.
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 haven’t got the numbers in front of me, but France, Spain and Italy are the most popular countries for UK holidaymakers I’d guess. None of those is likely to be open for tourism until maybe September?
Why will it be worse than last year when it was June?
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.
Trouble is, how many people have taken on board that the UK has done badly, let alone connected that to decisions the government did (or didn't) take? And how many of them are swing voters, as opposed to wouldn't-vote-for-him-anyway or will-continue-to-vote-for-him-despite-this?
Few indeed, I suspect. And if, after the UK opens up for a glorious summer, they're still reading months later about how other countries are still in relative lockdown because their governments have taken so long to vaccinate them, then that will be the lasting impression of how well the UK did in the Great Pandemic.
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.
The irony is, by banning golf for another 5 weeks, Covid infection rates are more likely to rise than fall.
The reason: rather than do my preferred form of exercise, the only access to green space is now amidst the throngs in the local town park or nature reserve, where social distancing is very difficult on footpaths as unmasked heavily breathing joggers and cyclists repeatedly zoom close by you with no regard for any distancing at a rate of about 1 per minute. People queue up for takeaway coffees and pretend to be taking exercise when stopping to drink them (and chat). Parkrun runners just all happen to turn up on Saturday mornings as they would have anyway, and just happen to talk to all their mates when doing so. The outdoor tennis courts are padlocked so no respite from a socially distanced game of singles tennis either. If it were the case that outdoor activity were dangerous, the park would not be the place to be.
Golf by contrast is naturally socially distanced and safe. You can play it with one other person or even test your skills on your own. It's played on otherwise deserted open space. We do not go around a golf course in random directions passing each other, but in a one-way system over 18 holes, each group staying out of range 200 yards behind the one in front. It's best to stand more than 2 metres away when someone is swinging a golf club. You use only your own equipment. Rules have been changed so that there is no need to touch any course equipment such flagsticks (which stay in) and bunker rakes (removed). And so on. But I can't play golf, so I just have to exercise in the park with everyone else.
It's not even particularly middle class any more, at least by comparison to tennis or cricket. It's a pretty diverse crowd. Most of the members of my club are white van man self-employed tradesman, the sort who play football until they get too knackered and then take up golf into middle and old age.
I can't tell you how angry I am about the continuation of the ban on socially distanced outside sport.
Is it true that you aren’t supposed to remove the pin when putting now? I always do, I didn’t know it was banned under COVID.
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.
My guess is 70-85,000, if everything that was reasonably practical had gone right, which of course it'd be impossible to know at the time and ignores wider rules of human error and politics.
And he'd still be criticised for that too.
Worth noting of course it could have gone massively in the other direction too: an overwhelmed NHS, 500,000+dead, a collapsed economy and no vaccine in site.
There’s a danger of refighting the Nazi assault on Russia, and not making the mistakes and thus Germany winning the war In the analysis of the uk performance over the pandemic. It’s very clear now what should have been done, it was less clear at the time. I think it is striking that many people genuinely assumed it was over during the summer, including some in government. Max is surely right that no foreign travel from may would have saved very many lives and the economy. But this is clear in hindsight.
But likewise you can't just throw up your hands and say "nothing can be known"
In March we went to full lockdown a week too late. The government swit he'd stance from "life carries on as normal we must protect the free market capitalist economy" to " shut it dow we are all Communists now" with nothing more than cases growing at exactly the predicted exponential rate.
And then, armed with that knowledge what did the government doi g in September when deaths started growing at an exponential rate. With the benefit of hindsight from the disaster in March/April? They let it grow out of control through October?
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.
Outdoors should have been rule of six throughout.
That it isn't is sheer malevolence on the part of a government that felt it should be seen to be doing something, even though it was obvious to everyone that what it was doing was useless and cruel.
Comments
Edit: Sorry if that's initially somewhat blunt. Just very surprised to see something which has that data on as I'm not aware of the expected provision schedule being public - so an underlying source would be great if possible.
And how many of them are swing voters, as opposed to wouldn't-vote-for-him-anyway or will-continue-to-vote-for-him-despite-this?
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-56158160
And he'd still be criticised for that too.
Worth noting of course it could have gone massively in the other direction too: an overwhelmed NHS, 500,000+dead, a collapsed economy and no vaccine in site.
Who'd have thought it.
I can’t say their latest solution particularly impresses me though.
Supply projections are, apparently, confidential, so we can't expect to get too much detail. The fact that the government has confidently sped-up their group 1-9 target strongly suggests that they know that the supply problem is temporary, though.
--AS
Deeply concerning.
It's an easy enough position to justify. If things go badly, they and their readers can hold a massive, told-you-so smugfest, and claim their approach would've prevented it. If it all goes swimmingly then they can still claim that, if Government had only listened to their pleas to lock everyone up for another six months whilst enough hazmat suits were made and distributed for the entire population to wear whenever they leave the house, fewer people would've died.
In the real world, these people are dead. But that doesn’t matter in the slightest to you. Your attitude is despicable.
And we're not like Oceania at all.
Was it a mistake? Yes, probably, in hindsight. Are they learning from the mistake - yes, eventually.
And they got other things right, including the one issue more important than quarantines - vaccines.
No country is ever going to get everything perfect but both Hancock and Boris have clearly learnt a lot on the job in the last year and while mistakes were made last spring and summer they seem to be getting the big decisions right now. Including refusing to buy into the Zero Covid dogma.
Realistically that's as good as we could ask for. That people do their best and learn rather than doubling down on mistakes trying to dig their way out - as the Europeans have done with the vaccines, feeding antivaxxers in order to try and dig their way out of failed procurement.
Unfathomable.
But it can also be quite misleading as there can be very substantial differences inside states. Florida, for example, has very few statewide restrictions. But at the individual county and city level, there can be extensive ones. Some counties have had schools closed pretty much continually since last March; others have had them completely open.
--AS
Less likely to be a successful one.
Back here on Planet Earth there's a global pandemic going on.
1. Over 40s attending a workplace / educational establishment with other people per regulations.
2. Over 30s ......
3. Over 16s (or whatever she we're going to)
4-6. All others in the same agree groupings.
I do not think we should be differentiating between occupations here - we shouldn't especially be putting teachers or police or soldiers first when there are clear higher risk groups. Everyone in any job that requires contact should be offered a jab, whether it's a cold chain factory worker, a nursery nurse, a distribution warehouse worker, shop staff, a licensed taxi driver, or eventually bar staff.
I think by singling out teachers and excluding blue-collar workers, Starmer made a rare misstep with his red wall credentials.
Practicalities: It needs to be made as simple as possible to sort out who gets workplace priority, perhaps at the expense of some accuracy. A literal card from your employer to drop / send in to your surgery for putting in the priority group perhaps, so they can mark a check box on your patient record, available 2-3 weeks before your allotted time.
I find it so reassuring that you evidently mourn every death of every person every day across the globe, it must be a terrible burden for you. Much like that bloke out of the Green Mile. You are Sir, a Saint beyond compare and obviously eligible for some kind of elevation to holiness for your unending compassion.
I didn't say I was indifferent about it - I simply cannot develop a strong opinion over which one is lying, and therefore the specific story about Salmond's comments interests me, but not as much as I feel it probably should (which is what I said, not that I had no interest) given the nature of the allegations being thrown about.
You are presumably aware people can be interested at different levels, not a binary interested/not interested situation.
Is that seriously questionable? It seems obvious, south of the border
It’s not unique to Scot Nattery. It is what always happens in militant, one party states. I think the UK as a whole came fairly close with New Labour - “the political wing of the British people”: T Blair- during their 13 year, ever-increasing dominance of media, arts, charities, quangos, etc. The difference is that the SNP also have a burning, overriding cause, which means sensible Scottish folk get frightened, and shy away from dissent, amidst the anger and ardour
REALLY unhealthy
I find myself in the rare position of being broadly supportive of the plan to end lockdown restrictions.
It all seems very sensible, measured and reasonable and even though I've had three cold showers and still feel terrible, I can't shake this feeling the Government has probably got it about right.
I can of course console myself with the notion even a broken clock is right twice a day.
I am still concerned about the vaccination programme roll out and the apparent inconsistencies in various areas. I've heard today of two colleagues who, having had their first vaccinations, have been invited two or three times each to get their first vaccination and it seems, and perhaps someone will correct me here, there is a nuance between a vaccination at a GP's surgery, for which the surgery will get a payment and a vaccination at a mass vaccination centre which by-passes the surgery.
"Earlier the HSE chief executive said visits to other households to watch sports matches or for a cup of tea, rather than large parties, were responsible for increasing Covid-19 cases among younger people.
Speaking on Monday, HSE chief Paul Reid said progress tackling Covid-19 had become “stuck,” despite several weeks of strict lockdown measures.
“We are seeing growing cases now in younger people, from all the evidence we have it’s not house parties,” he said.
People were visiting other households “to see football games, Superbowl, a Premiership match, even people moving between homes for a cup of tea, just having that quick catch up,” he said."
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/coronavirus-686-new-cases-and-one-further-death-reported-as-14-229-more-vaccines-given-1.4491622?localLinksEnabled=false
I am aware he was tried and acquitted of some serious charges.
I am aware that there are rumours of something yet to emerge that could be deeply damaging to Sturgeon and/or the SNP. But is that wishful thinking by unionists?
A thread header by someone who understands the issue would be welcome.
Bring it on.
So go:
40s
16-25
25-30
30s
Logic of jumping past my bracket to go straight to teenagers and uni ages is these are the groups that mingle far, far more and spread the plague far, far more. Whether it be in high schools, universities, bars, clubs, raves or just parks or wandering aimlessly down streets.
While far more people in their thirties are at home with children, glory days of raving behind us but not yet vulnerable to the plague.
I'd have no problems waiting while the spotty teenagers and young adults get theirs first and it would squash transmission much more.
Case rates are falling in most places now, vaccination or not. There is every chance that Europe will be back in business for the summer. Indeed, even in heavily locked down places like Italy, many hotels are open even now.
The reason: rather than do my preferred form of exercise, the only access to green space is now amidst the throngs in the local town park or nature reserve, where social distancing is very difficult on footpaths as unmasked heavily breathing joggers and cyclists repeatedly zoom close by you with no regard for any distancing at a rate of about 1 per minute. People queue up for takeaway coffees and pretend to be taking exercise when stopping to drink them (and chat). Parkrun runners just all happen to turn up on Saturday mornings as they would have anyway, and just happen to talk to all their mates when doing so. The outdoor tennis courts are padlocked so no respite from a socially distanced game of singles tennis either. If it were the case that outdoor activity were dangerous, the park would not be the place to be.
Golf by contrast is naturally socially distanced and safe. You can play it with one other person or even test your skills on your own. It's played on otherwise deserted open space. We do not go around a golf course in random directions passing each other, but in a one-way system over 18 holes, each group staying out of range 200 yards behind the one in front. It's best to stand more than 2 metres away when someone is swinging a golf club. You use only your own equipment. Rules have been changed so that there is no need to touch any course equipment such flagsticks (which stay in) and bunker rakes (removed). And so on. But I can't play golf, so I just have to exercise in the park with everyone else.
It's not even particularly middle class any more, at least by comparison to tennis or cricket. It's a pretty diverse crowd. Most of the members of my club are white van man self-employed tradesman, the sort who play football until they get too knackered and then take up golf into middle and old age.
I can't tell you how angry I am about the continuation of the ban on socially distanced outside sport.
The PM has said there will be no zero covid strategy, the disease will be endemic and we will need to live with as we do with flu.
This is a massive development. And very welcome imho. We can finally put out to grass any ideas about keeping lockdown going for months and months in a pointless attempt to get case numbers down towards zero.
Seems to me that this is much more important development than the precise date on which the pub gardens will be open.
I see the merit in the simpler counter suggestions. Perhaps a mix, go down the age groups as per now, but maybe let those in contact workplace/study settings put themselves forward for advance appointments as well.
Doing spotty kids before thirty somethings probable would give a marginal boost but it would be very marginal, probably not worth the aggro.
NEW THREAD FOLKS!!!
Which reminds me, I need to register with a GP here!
How many people enter the UK every day on essential visits that can't realistically be quarantined? Like HGV drivers etc?
How many for Guernsey?
Sure it works, but there's a reason last summer no actual countries in Europe tried it.
Not just not having zero covid but not panicking if cases are going up rather than down. That is a humongous development today - and very welcome too.
In March we went to full lockdown a week too late. The government swit he'd stance from "life carries on as normal we must protect the free market capitalist economy" to " shut it dow we are all Communists now" with nothing more than cases growing at exactly the predicted exponential rate.
And then, armed with that knowledge what did the government doi g in September when deaths started growing at an exponential rate. With the benefit of hindsight from the disaster in March/April? They let it grow out of control through October?