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the UK under Lock Down

Snazzy said:
That's bad news for Spain then, as it's usually the number one summer destination for Brits. They could end up being more of liability to the Spanish coasts than the Madrileños.
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Well, Spain's current border closure (respectively enforced fortnight's quarantine of anyone arriving from outside) goes up to June-15 and may well be extended. They might even limit access (more or less) to specific countries if that country's figures appear to call for it.

Like Germany has done.
 
PeteEU said:
Religious institutions have been opened up in phase 1 in Spain, but with mandatory social distancing and no funerals I believe.

So got no problem with opening up religious sites provided they abide by social distancing, decontamination rules and common sense. So no giving holy wine and bread...

Sent from my Honor 8X
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It was mostly the sporting analogy the Cardinal used to prioritize Catholicism seemed especially spurious.
 
Chagos said:
Well, Spain's current border closure (respectively enforced fortnight's quarantine of anyone arriving from outside) goes up to June-15 and may well be extended. They might even limit access (more or less) to specific countries if that country's figures appear to call for it.

Like Germany has done.
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I have to admit, this 14 day quarantine business really has me stumped. It all sounds well and meaningful on paper, but the reality of it isn't.

It's a self quarantine, so it boils down to trust, or else how can it be governed? It's virtually impossible to keep tabs on everyone once they leave the airport after arriving.

Even the most law abiding citizens who would happily stick to the rules, why on earth would they visit another country for a holiday only to stay put in an apartment for the entire time.

I've searched around online and there's a piece about Spain's modus operandi -

"During the quarantine period, anyone coming into Spanish territory from another country will have to remain inside their home or rented lodgings. Trips outside will be limited to the purchase of essential products such as food and medicine, to seek medical assistance, and for other situations of urgent necessity. Face masks must be worn at all times."
 
Snazzy said:
I have to admit, this 14 day quarantine business really has me stumped. It all sounds well and meaningful on paper, but the reality of it isn't.

It's a self quarantine, so it boils down to trust, or else how can it be governed? It's virtually impossible to keep tabs on everyone once they leave the airport after arriving.
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Well, only way of monitoring I can think of is registration at arrival and the person-in-question encountering random checks in the streets against that register. In case s/he's flunked it, heavy fines laid on to discourage others.
Even the most law abiding citizens who would happily stick to the rules, why on earth would they visit another country for a holiday only to stay put in an apartment for the entire time.
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It's really more about those being either completely resident here or those owning a second residence to which they come for months. The average tourist would indeed shy away from this.

I've searched around online and there's a piece about Spain's modus operandi -

"During the quarantine period, anyone coming into Spanish territory from another country will have to remain inside their home or rented lodgings. Trips outside will be limited to the purchase of essential products such as food and medicine, to seek medical assistance, and for other situations of urgent necessity. Face masks must be worn at all times."
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basically same thing we all had to go through here before gradual phasing down of lockdown started.

In going out for "essentials" I suppose that meant going to the one shop and back home immediately, but on three occasions at least I went to 4 different shops in three different towns (close to each other but still in a radius of around 10 kms) to find what any one of them had run out of. Never ran into any "patrol" so I don't know whether they'd have shrugged that off or thrown the book at me.

Knowing the cops down here, probably the former.
 
Snazzy said:
I have to admit, this 14 day quarantine business really has me stumped. It all sounds well and meaningful on paper, but the reality of it isn't.

It's a self quarantine, so it boils down to trust, or else how can it be governed? It's virtually impossible to keep tabs on everyone once they leave the airport after arriving.

Even the most law abiding citizens who would happily stick to the rules, why on earth would they visit another country for a holiday only to stay put in an apartment for the entire time.

I've searched around online and there's a piece about Spain's modus operandi -

"During the quarantine period, anyone coming into Spanish territory from another country will have to remain inside their home or rented lodgings. Trips outside will be limited to the purchase of essential products such as food and medicine, to seek medical assistance, and for other situations of urgent necessity. Face masks must be worn at all times."
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The issue is really that at the moment air travel is limited to residents and Spanish citizens. They did not have a quarantine in place because it was not needed since everyone was in quarantine.

This has now changed so a new rule is needed for those few re-entering the country.

The phases will continue to a minimum of phase 3 in early June. That's why the current date of June 15th has been set.

By the 15th the European aviation system should have worked out a system that does not require quarantine. This can be perfected rapid tests to some sort of passport or something else.

Regardless this 24 day quarantine has been misunderstood by the media and others imo. Denmark has had and still has this 14 day quarantine for any resident or Dane returning home, because the border is closed. This will have to change if the borders are reopened.

It is also why the Boris version of this 24 day quarantine is laughable due to the exceptions. There are no exceptionsin Spain or Denmark.

Sent from my Honor 8X
 
Covid is the first test for UK , the great old empire dreamers, to show us how strong they are, and if they can survive as the 5 th largest economy . They should thank their language and the mainly English , mainstream media, which gives them preferential coverage
 
And.... the reopening of school plan is falling apart at the seams already.

The government has set out plans to begin a phased reopening of primary schools in England from 1 June.

But the plans have been challenged by teachers' unions, who have disagreed with the Department for Education over whether it is safe to return to school.
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Not just teachers but the British Medical Association saying not safe to reopen.

Elsewhere, I read that the North East was seeing an explosion of new cases - 4000 in a day or so in that region.

_112289775_r_regions_v2-nc.png


However the picture is not quite as rosy as suggested as the picture is still bad in Northern Ireland and Scotland - regions in England by other calculations suggested to be higher than the govt graph.
 
Infinite Chaos said:
And.... the reopening of school plan is falling apart at the seams already.



Not just teachers but the British Medical Association saying not safe to reopen.

Elsewhere, I read that the North East was seeing an explosion of new cases - 4000 in a day or so in that region.

_112289775_r_regions_v2-nc.png


However the picture is not quite as rosy as suggested as the picture is still bad in Northern Ireland and Scotland - regions in England by other calculations suggested to be higher than the govt graph.
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I don't believe that chart for a second. It looks similar to Spain's with a hard lockdown. Ours in fact has risen above 1 now in certain areas due to easing of the lock down, but it was expected.

Now if there was a 1 instead of a 0 in front of the dot, then I would find it more credible.

Sent from my Honor 8X
 
PeteEU said:
I don't believe that chart for a second ~
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A wide range of sources have similar figures. University of Cambridge, London School of Hygeine and Tropical Medicine etc - what makes your guess more acurate than models by people here?
 
Infinite Chaos said:
A wide range of sources have similar figures. University of Cambridge, London School of Hygeine and Tropical Medicine etc - what makes your guess more acurate than models by people here?
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The source material most likely comes from the Boris administration... The same administration that claimed victory on 100k tests but failed to mention that this included 30k sent in the mail, and then the number of tests done fell dramatically the next day. The same government that shows more tests done than people tested....

It is not the fault of the University of Cambridge and so on..they can only work with the numbers given to them. And if they question the material given too much, then they could be target for retribution. Yes it sounds a tad paranoid but we are talking about the most corrupt and incompetent Tory government in history.

Sent from my Honor 8X
 
PeteEU said:
The source material most likely comes from the Boris administration... The same administration that claimed victory on 100k tests but failed to mention that this included 30k sent in the mail, and then the number of tests done fell dramatically the next day. The same government that shows more tests done than people tested....

It is not the fault of the University of Cambridge and so on..they can only work with the numbers given to them. And if they question the material given too much, then they could be target for retribution. Yes it sounds a tad paranoid but we are talking about the most corrupt and incompetent Tory government in history.

Sent from my Honor 8X
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Paranoid is right - please don't make me defend BoJo's government but you're completely wrong on the bodies doing the leg-work to get stats.
 
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What is clear is that the UK’s response so far has neither been well prepared nor remotely adequate (see infographic). The weakness of the preparations was exposed in 2016 by Exercise Cygnus, a pandemic simulation, and the necessary remedial steps were not taken.3 On 30 January, the World Health Organization declared a public health emergency of international concern and governments were urged to prepare for global spread of covid-19 from East Asia.4 Detailed case studies followed showing the need for high levels of mechanical ventilation and high death rates.56 But the UK ignored these warnings.

Link.
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British Medical Journal telling it like it is.

Boris effed up the UK's response to the virus, especially having run the Cygnus pandemic shakedown in 2016 which showed we weren't prepared should one come along.
 
Lol. Between him and Neil Ferguson it really is 'one rule for them, one rule for us'.
 
[h=2]Dominic Cummings (Mary Wakefield)[/h]I’ve gone back to work, so I’m not locked down with Mary any more, but at the end of March and for the first two weeks of April I was ill, so we were both shut in together.
The word I’d use to describe being stuck indoors with Mary is: sticky. Everything is covered in a layer of spilt Ribena, honey, peanut butter and playschool glue. Mary has made a castle out of polystyrene and cardboard; she pretends it’s for our son, but it isn’t. She spends most of her time staring at it and chewing her thumb, lost in thought, wondering whether to stick on more sequins. I have to talk a lot more at work than I like — I like quiet. Being with Mary in lockdown means I think I am talking all day and Mary thinks she’s starved of conversation. But I like listening to her and our four-year-old. They bicker like an old married couple and discuss what the birds are thinking.
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Mr Cummings made no mention of his 400 mile journey there and 400 mile journey back when he wrote this "heroic" piece about his experience of suffering Coronavirus.
 
Equally damagingly, his wife's Spectator article also makes no mention of their lockdown-busting journeys:

Getting coronavirus does not bring clarity | Spectator USA

"After the uncertainty of the bug itself, we emerged from quarantine into the almost comical uncertainty of London lockdown."

It's hard to see how he can survive this; outside the Johnson cabal he can have few supporters even in the Tory ranks.
 
politicalbetting.com >> Blog Archive >> Who loves Dom?

Cummings has burnt too many bridges to survive committing the cardinal British political sin: hypocrisy

25 January 2016 is not a date that has gone down in history. Despite that, the events of that day were critical to Britain voting to leave the EU, with all that’s meant since. That morning, Dominic Cummings was summoned to a meeting that was intended to remove him from running the Vote Leave campaign.

The meeting did not turn out as its board intended. Cummings responded by asserting that key senior Vote Leave staff as well as a good deal of the rest of the office, would walk were he sacked; assertions that a few quick phone calls validated. In the face of losing pretty much their whole staff less than five months before the referendum day, they backed down. The rest is well known: the data mining, the social media campaigns, the £350m/week, the signing up of Gove to Leave, and the Boris Johnson – without Cummings at its head, there’s every chance that Leave would have lost (probably not by much but lost all the same).

The crucial point here though is that Cummings needed leverage to see off the coup, in the form of support from his Vote Leave colleagues; support he was confident he would get. It was all very well him being rude to the MPs who were notionally his bosses because ultimately, they didn’t have the power to remove him and once the point had been proven, he could ignore them at will.

This is a lesson he appears to have forgotten. Since ascending the heights of Boris Johnson’s key advisor, he’s retained his legendary rudeness and contempt for norms but without any obvious sign of building up the sort of Praetorian Guard that saved him at Vote Leave. He has a patron, of course – and a very powerful one at that, in the form of the Prime Minister. That, however, may not be enough for at least three reasons.

Firstly, a political patron has to balance the value of retaining their valued adviser against the damage that keeping him does. Johnson’s own political position is strong for now and he won’t be brought down even if he retains Cummings. Doing so, however, would spend valuable political capital with both the public and with MPs; capital the PM might not want to spend.

Secondly, neither the PM nor Cummings seem on top of their game at the moment – perhaps for health reasons. Cummings may well have come up with the “Stay home; protect the NHS; save lives” slogan: it certainly has his feel about it. There would be a deep irony if so. But that apart, the government hasn’t been co-ordinated recently, messages have been mixed, policies have had to be U-turned (the NHS immigrant charges, for example – an obvious bad policy to anyone with any political nous), and the media game is slipping badly. Any Odyssean Project seems still-born. So if he’s not doing much useful, is the pain worth it?

But most of all, Cummings is guilty of that greatest of British sins: hypocrisy. When people are prevented from attending the funerals of loved ones, from meeting critically ill family members, from all sorts of normal interactions in the interests of preserving the nation’s health, he – who quite possibly wrote the slogan that sums up the government’s strategy in eight words – not only didn’t stay home but didn’t stay home when he had Covid-19 symptoms. That kind of hypocrisy is not forgiven by the public.

Nor will forgiveness easily be extended to a protective patron who grants his friends special favours when livelihoods (and indeed lives) are being lost on a great scale. Such matters are not always critical but nor are they necessarily forgotten and they will continue to weigh in the balance.

The only way people usually survive such scandals is if they are effectively unsackable, as Cummings was in January 2016. He no longer has that ultra-loyal bodyguard – and even if he did, he’s in a different position now and is less important to Number 10 than he was to Vote Leave. I don’t see how he survives this. And I don’t see why he should.
David Herdson
 
Sven Karma said:
Well, BoJo's nailed his flag to the mast of his cheapskate Rasputin:

Boris Johnson backs key aide Dominic Cummings in lockdown row - BBC News

It seems to me a serious misjudgment, but I guess that's par for the course.
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Cummings absolutely has something on Johnson, even hard Brexiters like Steve Baker have called for Cummings to be sacked.

Whether Cummings went on a jolly to Barnard Castle is another thing which maybe CCTV will expose but there are two clear lies the PM's office have supported..

1) claiming the police did not speak to Cummings or his family. Durham Police confirmed yesterday they spoke with Cummings father. Even down to reports of Abb playing in the background while Cummings wandered around the estate at the gate.
2) He had no family nearby to help - Cummings wife has a sister who lives 2 streets away in London from Cummings home.

That's some serious s**t to be covering up.
 
Even the Daily Mail is unequivocal in its coverage (although it was pretty obvious to the rest of us long since what planet they were on):

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Clearly Cummings and BoJo were not going to confess that he went to Barnard Castle on his wife's birthday so they have come out with the lamest excuse I've ever heard.

Horrible, horrible... horrible.....

We have over taken Trump and his bleach injections as the world's laughing stock if No10 get away with this.
 
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