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Never Again – politicalbetting.com
Never Again – politicalbetting.com
Here we are, nearly 6 months on from that tearful resignation by poor inaptly-named Allegra. Since then we have had the PM’s Captain Renault-like shock at the revelation of parties at No 10 during lockdown, leaked photos, apologies to the Queen, an internal investigation, an off-then-on police investigation, numerous apologies to Parliament, accusations of lies to the Commons, a PM and his Chancellor paying a fine after being served with an FPN over attendance at a birthday party in Cabinet, referral of the PM to the Parliamentary Standards Committee, an off-then-on police investigation (still continuing) into the Leader of the Opposition and, finally, the Met’s announcement that they have completed their investigation into 8 events in 2020-2021 and have issued 126 FPNs. The PM is – apparently – not getting a second one, much to the surprise of some, disgust of others and relief of yet others, mostly Tory MPs. The focus will turn once again to Sue Gray’s report, though it scarcely matters what she says as everyone has made their minds up about the PM.
Comments
I think one of the greatest unspoken deleterious effects has been on children. An entire generation was scarred by what happened.
I don't think lockdowns of some sort were bad per se. They saved lives, especially the most vulnerable. But they went out of all proportion with, as you suggest, some ludicrous over-enforcement and wild interpretation. The bans on outdoor mixing and exercise were unscientific and desperately damaging.
It's the propensity for this dystopian heavy-handedness, most redolent in the current Conservative Party, which alarms me most. The new laws prohibiting demonstrations are part of this nightmare. It's a bitter irony that those who often most proclaim their love of freedom are happiest to restrict it.
Everyone who loves freedom should stand against this, even if that means breaking the law. Where the law is an ass we need to stand up.
Take the booing of the National Anthem by 'some' Liverpool fans at the FA Cup final. A Conservative minister immediately said those responsible should be hunted down and caught.
Wtf????? What the hell are we becoming? I probably wouldn't boo the national anthem but only because it's too boring musically and lyrically to be arsed but if other people wish to boo it, bloody well let them. It's part of their democratic right if they wish to.
Like the DCL goal last night.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-61505842
Such a draconian stripping of our civil liberties was a monumental and catastrophic blunder and entirely unnecessary as Sweden showed who got through the pandemic without doing so.
Let those who want to shelter from a virus take actions if they wish to do so, and support them if they wish to do so, but absolutely never again should we strip people of their fundamental freedoms.
"Differently" would involve much more guidance and individual responsibility with the laws restricted to opening times and the ability to trade. This whole fiasco brought the law and Parliament into disrepute.
You will be fired if you have sex with someone for whom you have professional responsibility.
It is not entirely clear from the Sabatini article, but it seems as though this is what probably happened. She knew him as a grad student, she was hired by him (or encouraged by him to come to his lab as a postdoc). Remember, we just have Sabatini's version of events.
Sex with another academic, another staff member, is slightly different.
However, I personally have never slept with an academic. I recommend this course of action to everyone.
Small town in Yorkshire not on the list. Lol.
Better still, another town in Yorkshire is included.
However, Dunfermline buggers up ScotRails "Inter7Cities" branding.
https://twitter.com/GeorgeWParker/status/1527550143230246917
Execution of gmt policy over the last feww years, yes, arguable. But not the basic principle.
It opens the door to eco-authoritarianism. And not all of us see that as a bad thing.
You keep suggesting that she was his graduate student but as far as I can see, he didn't have any management responsibility for her at the time the events occurred.
I think the moral of the story is that it is a bad idea having any sexual relationship with someone you work with.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10834645/MIT-scientist-collecting-unemployment-fired-consensual-relationship-colleague.html
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
"The restrictions were announced four days before the laws were enacted with no Parliamentary scrutiny by simple Ministerial decree."
Is this not because Ministers used powers delegated to them by Parliament by the Civil Contingencies Act? Not sure how else it could have occurred.
Isn't that the sort of system we'd want for situations like this - a clear framework calmly debated and set out in law as to how exceptional measures might be taken temporarily to deal with a civil crisis.
I'm not really clear on what the alternative would have looked like. Is Cyclefree suggesting that Parliament should have spent April 2020 debating the restrictions to be imposed?
However, I am absolutely sure that in the US, sex with a grad student or postdoc gets you fired.
One of my friends was fired as Professor at Berkeley for exactly this reason, about 15 years ago.
He is now a Professor in a Mediterranean country where presumably these matters are looked at with a more lenient eye.
Sabatini will have known the risks.
Have better things to do with my day than discuss this case.
Good that we have people like Bari Weiss.
It's not only North Korea but all jurisdictions will have the facility to act by government fiat in particular emergency situations. I'm not sure Cyclefree fully acknowledges the significance of this.
Therefore to my mind the big issue is not that of big and arbitrary government - for which like Cyclefree I have no fondness. The use of emergency powers when faced with an unknown degree of disaster is unavoidable. Societal collapse did not happen, ghastly though all this was, and that in part is because government acted by decree.
No, the big issue, which should not be confused with the necessity of government decree in emergency is competence, consistency, moral leadership, lawfulness, the boring stuff of rapid drafting of rules in emergency, and the ability of those with state powers, police etc, to act as grown ups. And, as Cyclefree points out, here the fail was and is epic.
And finally Cyclefree, while hitting the target, does not, SFAICS, offer solutions to how, given the massive limitations of competence in our overgrown state, it could have been done better.
And if Labour knows they are not telling us.
Setting aside the morality, the questionable legal basis, the cost... Even on its own terms, the damn thing isn't going to work.
But there is a fundamental aspect of employment law which is that if one takes a job one accepts restrictions which do not apply to other people. For instance, if I become a trustee of a local charity I can't trade with it any more.
It is therefore irrelevant to apply the yardstick of the freedoms that other people have, and highly misleading to imply that [edit] the bsic dispute is all because of wokery.
Not just frightening to see how easily our liberties were removed - even more frightening to see how easily the large majority of the public accepted it. Populism inextricably links the two of course.
You talk about lack of scrutiny, but what would more scrutiny have achieved when parliament were continually bleating that the restrictions were not authoritarian enough!?
On the FPNs, I agree completely when you say "who knows whether all the FPNs which have been issued were correct?". I have little doubt that if he were not who he is (politically he had to accept the FPN) Johnson's fine (and especially Sunak's) could have been challenged successfully both on the circs of the case and also the retrospective nature of the investigation when the Met originally stated that they don't investigate Covid offenses retrospectively.
I generally agree with @Cyclefree on most of her headers but "Never Again" is too simplistic here.
For me the issue is not the principle but the practical application. Dependent on the virulence of any future pandemic I would support severe restrictions. However, we should learn from Covid and set up legislation now that can be quickly switched on, by agreement of Parliament, when required.
We need to recognise that there will be another pandemic at some point and it could well be more severe than Covid.
If you're a grad student and end up in bed with the professor, it's seduction not 'grooming'.
Your comment about "the massive limitations of competence in our overgrown state" betrays your bias, which is fair enough.
My bias suggests that hollowing out and constant undermining our public services over many years for purely political reasons, left them unable to to deal optimally with the pandemic. That and the poor cabinet-level decision-making let to the issues.
There are several elements:
1. Was it reasonable to impose restrictions at all, rather than rely on voluntary common sense? Surely yes - otherwise everyone would have been exposed to the most reckless person in their environment. There is doubt now about how much some of the restrictions were sensible - e.g. it looks as though surface contact was unimportant, so the table-scrubbing stuff was probably unnecessary. But there wasn't a consensus on that then, and being careful seemed preferable.
2. Were the rules confusing? Absolutely. Cyclefree makes the case clearly, and really the whole of Partygate ilustrates it - things that were illegal one week would become illegal a day later with inadequste publicity. There was huge popular willingness to comply and poll after poll actually called for stricter restrictions, but by the end people gave up trying to follow what the current regulations were. Fewer restrictions, more consistently advertised and enforced, would have been much better.
3. Did the police apply the rules consistently? No, but it was undoubtedly difficult. We here about the extreme cases - two people on a bench, or having a sandwich in a park - but not about the average, which was probably not that crazy.
4. Was the Parliamentary process adequate? No, and that's where a fundamental rethink is needed. This is going to happen again, inevitably - indeed, it hasn't entirely gone away now. Next time, we need detailed briefings for all MPs and free votes before each stage of decisions. And, deviating into even more controversial territory, that doesn't just apply to pandemics. We are currently seeing with Ukraine that rights which we thojught were unquestioned are discarded casually without serious debate. Not important rights for most of us - the right to see crap Russian TV, the right of oligarchs to due process over their vulgar luxury yachts and property, meh. But restricting what we're allowed to see and having property subject to arbitrary seizure are departures from the norm which deserve more debate than they're getting. Essentially, we're learning that in a difficult situation, the Government will move swiftly to do what it damn well likes.
That, rather than arguing over how many people can sit in a bar, is a fundamental issue which should give us pause.
Crace in the Guardian has commented how well Partygate has worked out for Johnson. Investigated and penalised for the most minor of offences which handily brought down Sunak, and not even investigated for the more egregious breach events he attended.
Gray would have seen Johnson off in January, but Met intervention (not investigation) into Johnson's conduct has neutralised that problem five months later.
Even better, the LOTO has been investigated and will have to resign on the issuing of an FPN.
Johnson either has friends in high places or he has sold his soul to the Devil 😈. Probably both.
Sure, the government saw how in northern Italy people were almost literally dying on the streets but there was always another route short of legal enforcement (with all the pitfalls that @Cyclefree correctly points out).
And then literally one by one on PB people realised that all along it was the principle that was the danger. And now everyone is applauding this article who were huge lockdown fans at the time.
And of course, when reviewing the largest restriction on liberty in living memory, someone is going to say seatbelts.
My personal view is that, as a democracy, we should trust that a well-informed, responsible population will be able to follow public health guidance to avoid physical contact with people outside their households, if that is necessary to prevent the spread of a deadly airborne infection. We should keep that guidance as simple as possible to make it as easy as possible to follow.
A democratic population then has to be prepared to tolerate a small minority not following these guidelines, while attempting to persuade them to do so. A democracy shouldn't be in the business of placing its entire population under house arrest.
When it comes to regulating businesses, the government has more of a duty to enforce laws to ensure that businesses do not put public health at risk. This is why the government regulates hygiene in the kitchens of restaurants, but not in private homes.
What was very clear was that the British public have very limited toleration for dissent. That was a feature of the clap for the NHS, as well as supporting draconian legislation.
The good old categorical imperative should have saved us from this. How can it ever have been illegal for a parent to see their child? or for citizens to leave the country? Fundamental principles come before the all-conquering culture of safety.
Also I wrote it to make the point that it's not just Boris's failings which are the objectionable thing about these rules.
But some thoughts:
1. Use the legislation already there for such a purpose ie the Civil Contingencies Act and not some new legislation which no-one has debated or scrutinised. Critically, this meant the powers had to be reviewed every 30 days and not kept in place for months. This change might well have avoided the endless changes and confusion.
2. Clear consistent communication about what the laws say - none of this mixing up of rules and guidelines.
3. Clear consistent policy on enforcement to be published and applied and reviewed by the CPS.
4. Legal advice on the interpretation of the rules to be made public.
I understand that not everything can be got right on Day One but we had some warning about what was likely and this went on for 2 years.
The issue is not just the nature of the restrictions but also the process of how they were put in place - how the sausage was made, if you will. And, as others have said elsewhere, how the sausage was made shows us how feeble our processes and institutions are in the face of panic and determination to bulldoze decisions through.
It must look like a shrivelled and rancid walnut, giving off a strange odour.
Pretty much the only way to have it on individual responsibility would be to somehow criminalise the effects of poor individual choices on others. As it's impossible to go: "You infected a bunch of people, some of whom died; although you were fine with the disease's effects on you, those to who you passed it on were not."
And that can't happen. You don't leave it to personal choice whether or not you quarantine to things, or whether Mary Malone is allowed to work as a chef. You can't.
The coherence, consistency, and process of the legislation were a ball of chalk, and that's where the Government should have got it right. Yes, it was confusing as to what was happening, but that doesn't justify making inconsistent decrees and incoherent ones.
At the end of the day, we did get huge and unsustainable pressures on the healthcare system. When England has capacity for around 100,000 acute and general patients, runs at 75,000-95,000 by default, and then gets a flood of thousand of extra patients coming in, growing exponentially, you can't sit back and say, "Oh, chaps, please try to avoid spreading this thing."
At the first wave peak, England had 3,000 new patients per day. It peaked at 19,000 covid patients. Fortunately, it wasn't running exceptionally hot to start with and did what it could to reduce other patients (and we'll experience the impacts of that for a while) so it survived. Had we decided to let that 3,000 per day continue doubling a little while longer, it wouldn't have worked out well.
At the second wave peak, we exceeded 4,000 new covid patients every day. The total of covid patients maxed out at just under 35,000, and at a time when the health service runs hottest - at its highest loading. Unsurprisingly, the death rate increased as patients were triaged, other patients had cancellations and reduced care, and we will see the knock-on effects from that for years.
They took huge and draconian steps to stem the spread of the virus that was causing this. I hated that and I'm still convinced that the Tiers system could have been made to work if people had gone for the higher tiers sooner and we hadn't had all the carping about it being unnecessary/false positives/it's dropping/you can't have a second wave/etc.
The limits of individual libertarianism are where and how it affects others. In a pandemic, people AREN'T just making choices for their own health and family health, but for that of everyone "downstream" of themselves. And yes, even if you make the right choices and comply, you may well pass it on, but you'll have done whatever you can to reduce that. Safe drivers can crash, but that doesn't excuse reckless drivers.
A little time ago, I saw an academic paper on the varying responses to COVID. The authors were of the Beat-On-Sweden persuasion. One of their metrics was that, horrifyingly to the authors, Sweden had used voluntary rules rather than legal enforcement of COVID rules.
One thing they didn't look at was the effectiveness of voluntary advice vs legal rules. How much (if anything) did we gain by making lockdown a legal matter?
NOTE: The header breaks Section 14.3.1.2 (Schedule 23) of the Amended Regulations For PB Headers On Legal Matters (2021). There is no inclusion of the phrases "Lessons Will Be Learned" or "For The Greater Good".
The USA can be supremely Puritan at times. Surprising "interventions" from concerned folk when you order a third glass of wine.
Relationships at work simply aren't treated the same as here. They are generally frowned upon, if not specifically outlawed completely. You can't argue it was consensual between colleagues. That isn't looked on favourably either.
It's impossible to view it through our cultural lens, where meeting at work is one of the leading ways to form a relationship.
America is simply a different society to the UK (and Europe) in this regard.
It has nothing to do with "woke" whatsoever.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
They were a bad defeat.
In many, many places in the UK, a work relationship with a close colleague will have one of you moved sideways rapidly. If you are lucky and do the right HR dance.
Seemed a sensible way of doing things.
The Civil Contingencies Act - passed to cover situations like this - was not used at all, AFAICS. One assumes because it had an in-built review mechanism and the government wanted to avoid that. There was some criticism of this at the time, including by me - here - https://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2020/10/10/hollow-men-the-sidelining-of-parliament-during-the-biggest-health-economic-crisis-in-modern-times/ and here - https://www7.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2020/04/01/taking-liberties/.
As I said in the former -
"Good governance is not just some technical process issue. When it doesn’t exist, it leads to unwise or bad choices; it results in decisions, even good ones, having no or inadequate consent. Its absence frays the bonds of trust with voters necessary for difficult measures to be taken, to be followed and work. Above all, it reinforces a government uninterested in the hard work of effective policy-making and accountability in its arrogance, its disregard for any check or balance, whether from Parliament or the law."
So lock them down. Voluntarily. Compensate them.
But the principle is more important than the outcome. The country is now accustomed to what were hitherto unprecedented restrictions on liberty. When else might such laws be deployed. We don't know but it's a known unknown or an unknown unknown but it's out there.
He was of course being guided "by the science". Which was massively pessimistic, once the nation was getting vaxxed.
The laws were rushed, for obvious reasons. The guidelines were incoherent and often nonsensical. I remember going for a walk with my father in law and my son while my wife went for a walk with my mother in law and our daughter, along the same road, a few tens of yards apart because that was, I believe, the law at that point. Clearly that was no difference, from a disease spread point of view, to us all walking together.
I have a lot of sympathy with rushed laws and guidance at the start of the first lockdown. Arguably they should have been drafted and debated early in the year, but I don't think any of us really believed it would get so bad at that point. For the later lockdowns (partly with hindsight) there should have been proper debate and scrutiny in advance of a range of restriction options, from which the government could then choose as needed. Any deviation should require full debate or have a very strict time limit.
Now is the time to do these things, while they are fresh in the mind. Get the epidemiologists to write up some options for different kinds of pathogens, airbourne, surface-spread and sensible restrictions in various levels. Get those voted on and put into a set of restrictions that can be triggered as needed, with a strict time limit before a vote is needed to maintain them. They should also be reviewed with each new government, perhaps. We were caught unprepared, which was understandable, but now is the time to ensure we are better prepared next time and to have the debate about what is and is not acceptable. The epidemiologists should inform that debate, so should the NHS leaders, but also advocacy groups for those who were worst hit by lockdown, those who live alone, who are elderly - or young - and isolated without going into work and socialising. When all that is done, we need the police and CPS to agree guidelines on enforcement and have thes reviewed, to stop the ridiculous harassment we saw of people doing lawful things this time round. Guidance, if issued, should be made clearly distinct from the law: "In addition to the things restricted by law, we also ask you to avoid the following, as much as you can, to reduce spread..."
What "rebalancing measures" can the EU do? Build a land border? I don't think so.
If there's no Irish Sea border, no land border and we are out of the EU then the so-called "unicorn" exists and all we are left with is a trade dispute with the EU going against the Good Friday Agreement because they want to build barriers (in the Irish Sea) and we don't.
All the weaponising of the GFA for the past few years is turned around. Every month that passes in the dispute is another month where the "unicorn" is real and normalised and not a threat to peace, the only threat to peace is the EU wanting a trade dispute.
And we get to keep our solution until an agreed solution is reached. So as long as we are willing to ride out the rebalancing measures, yes we win. We either get our unilateral solution, or we replace it with an agreement we have reached at the point that we are the guardians of the GFA.
Aware of the taboo of using the word "flu" in any discussion about Covid, nevertheless "influenza and pneumonia" kills thousands of people every year. We didn't impose any restrictions for that. The issue was always hospital capacity. Otherwise we would arrest everyone who had the flu (knowingly or unknowingly and went on the tube in London).
It's worth pointing out, however, what it doesn't contain - any comment on why the government could implement these disastrous restrictions on our freedoms - and that was because both the official opposion and the media demanded not only whatever we ended up with, but more. I fear that if the same thing happens again, the same mistakes will be made because they will be able to dismiss the small number of people opposed to them as nutters, just like they did last time.
But I still prefer guidance, nudges, education, and appropriate compensation rather than laws. Once the lockdown genie is out of the bottle (too late, I appreciate) then that becomes a policy tool for any number of situations. Ask Walter Wolfgang.
Quarantining the sick or people arriving into the country has happened since Medieval ages. Locking down the entire bloody country in peacetime was unprecedented and must never happen again.
And PB contained some of the most vocal lockdown cheerleaders.