The ADs get ready to rumble then have a nice cuppa tea

[BogRollBOGOF]

Watch us wreck the mike, watch us wreck the mike, watch us wreck the mike.
Psych.

Now gather nicely in groups of no more than six...
Unless you're outdoors in Wales...

Oh well, come on in whatever the laws where you are. Plenty of space in this bubble of sanity

OH saw something funny yesterday we have outside seating/tables around the pub overlooking the marina it was a bit nippy one couple tried to move from their allocated table to one in the sun the waitress tore them off a strip. Another couple were sat down, friends walked up and started talking to them, they were scolded too. People do not realise how much goes into sanitising table and chairs between customers.

I spent a long time over the course of the evening yesterday trying to educate people on a local town’s Facebook page about mask exemptions. Despite me screenshotting the Government’s own guidance and a link to Liberty’s guidance on the Equality Act, there were still people who thought it was OK for a young woman with exemption to be told very rudely to get out of a shop for not wearing a mask.

It was like an horrific game of bingo, “they should stay at home”, “I can wear one and I have COPD”, the usual it’s better than a ventilator and that stupid cartoon about peeing on each other, they could wear a visor etc

About 5 of us seemed to be trying to counter half the town who saw no reason for anyone to have exemption at all. This is an affluent area full of highly educated people, who give generously to charities and volunteer in the community. Yet there is no compassion for anyone unable to wear a mask, they honestly don’t seem to realise that it would be a lot easier to be able to comply and not be singled out.

I liked an article about some disabled peoples experiences of being discrminated against for wearing masks and a radical feminist compared them to "violent" TRAS. She compared ppl with medical conditions who cant wear masks to TRAs Way to garner support.

Guess #disabledlivesmatter just aint trendy enough.

#linked an article

An escalator that only goes up and stairs. Its difficult navigating it in a mask that rides up.
I'm clumsy anyway & didn't crack getting off an escalator properly until I was in my 20s

In our John Lewis you are meant to count 8 steps between you & the person in front on the escalator. It's actually quite hard to do because they're moving.

In Next there was a member of staff stood at the top with an antibac wipe, holding it on the escalator hand rail, in an attempt to clean it. Not sure how he'd know when it had done a full rotation.

In another shop there was a poster which said, "No crossing on the stairs." Tickled me a bit, was tempted to add a few other old wives' tales underneath, "no opening umbrellas indoors," perhaps?

Masks definitely affect my vision! I can’t wear going up and down stairs. It gives me flashbacks to trying varifocals, that was a waste of £200.
I have 3 spots on my chin now!! I’m blaming masks. I know someone who has tested positive. It has taken 6 months.

Masks definitely affect my vision, when dh is at work and I take dd1 and 2 to the shops its impossible to latch dd2 onto the boob to stop her from crying whilst also keeping an eye on dd1 even without the blooming masks.
Today we've been told dd1 has to be set some targets for speech development at nursery and I really don't think the masks are helping her

I saw somebody made a good point somewhere that the government are behaving exactly the way you would behave if you didn't really want to get rid of the virus and just keep it circulating at a lowish level meaning you can keep the fear and panic up and keep bringing in draconian legislation

I can handle the mask lip service in McDonalds as it's quiet enough to not overwhelm me in the minute to get upstairs and sit down, remove and breathe but it's a PITA bending my head down seeing where I'm putting my size 2 feet to sucessfully navigate the stairs

Given that I've had glasses for over 20 years and they still annoy me, there's not much hope

On a positive note, BBC radio coverage is losing its "let's toe the party line" vibe. There was an interesting interview with the founder of Itsu on World at One, who basically tore a strip off the "six more months" line and said it was criminal to expect people to stay shut up and pause their lives for the next six months on someone's arbitrary say-so. He said they should be reviewing the data day by day and reconsidering restrictions on a weekly basis, as is their job.

I also recommend Newscast, as I like Adam Fleming. He was quite critical of the Whitty/Valance press conference, as they only shared one model and didn't give details of any alternatives (or, indeed, advise that there could be alternatives). They had an interview with an epidemiologist who said that the actual rate of doubling could be as long as 20 days rather than 7, which would obviously result in very different data. There was also no info given as to whether improved treatments and so on will have an impact on the death rate.

I actually think that the doom fest scientific briefing was intended to freak out the public so that they'd be more likely to comply with the new restrictions. It's classic behavioural psychology...

Notice that BJ was actually quite vague in his "six more months" wording and I suspect that it is expectation management. He didn't say "this is it for six months", it was more like "and it may be that these restrictions will continue in some form for six more months". That could mean anything from masks and full social distancing till March, or it could just mean no full football stadiums and huge rock concerts until next summer. I very much doubt that the government intend to keep the rule of 6, work from home, etc. in place for six months. But BJ's advisors have obviously told him not to be too optimistic, because people get pissed off when it doesn't work out.

I'm hopeful that they will have issues with the Emergency Powers renewal next week. The parliamentary party are far from on board and Labour surely can't be seen to vote to give the government total control without scrutiny.

HMO are not helped by having the likes of Angela Rayner and Jon Ashworth trotting out "only a 0 death rate is acceptable". Perhaps they'd like to extend that to all illnesses - we could achieve total immortality!

I dont remember anyone coming on tv and saying only zero deaths from flu are acceptable?

@Willow2017

I dont remember anyone coming on tv and saying only zero deaths from flu are acceptable?

I kind of want to like Angela Rayner, but she's such a dimwit sometimes. This interview (with Sarah Montague, I think, in Today?) was cringey.

The thing is the cold virus went through twelve of us three families in our bubble within ten days. How the heck we will avoid all the germs swirling around this winter is anyones guess.

I think the drip drip of covid is the way the governments are thinking, do not overwhelm the NHS, just keep them busy enough, lob positive case numbers at the public to keep them on their toes and hope in five years it will be history. I am not holding out much hope of a vaccine. Governments worldwide are kneeling on the necks of their people frankly.

www.braintreeandwithamtimes.co.uk/news/south_essex_news/18742266.asda-introduces-1-000-covid-19-marshals-make-sure-customers-follow-rules/?fbclid=IwAR1D39C_cS_f7JP99UWeSNW3jajnnPF9jTP21biMorolpsyyi6YWmG41Ak4

i can see whats going to happen with these Covid marshalls. The 5 foot 4 possibly menopausal woman who isnt wearing a mask or struggling in one, will be much more likely to be confronted about it than the 6 foot man or groups of teenage lads that are unmasked. Id lay money on it. And i bet exemptions will be ignored.

This "job" will be likely to attract men who like to bully women.

I've just done a predicted life expectancy exercise which I found amusing. The average life expectancy for a female at birth is just under 82.

I am 65 and my life expectancy is 87. If I input my age a 87 my life expectancy is 90 something. I kept on feeding in the given life expectancy as if I was that age.

I need to get to 106 before my future life expectancy is less than a year.

@RealityExistsInTheHumanMind

I've just done a predicted life expectancy exercise which I found amusing. The average life expectancy for a female at birth is just under 82.

I am 65 and my life expectancy is 87. If I input my age a 87 my life expectancy is 90 something. I kept on feeding in the given life expectancy as if I was that age.

I need to get to 106 before my future life expectancy is less than a year.

This is one of the weirdnesses of statistics. It's because it gives you the average age at which you'd be expected to die, calculated by assigning a probability of death to each year, then multiplying each year by its probability and adding all of those up. If you've just been born, there's a chance you could die at any point, including all the years up to 65. Once you're 65, we already know that all years less than 65 are out as your year of death, so they get excluded from the calculation, the probabilities of all the other years increase (probabilities must add to 1), and voila - your life expectancy rises.

Basically what you're getting is the age to such you might expect to live, given you've made it this far.

(That's probably now either clear as mud or something you already understood.)

@HeIenaDove

I liked an article about some disabled peoples experiences of being discrminated against for wearing masks and a radical feminist compared them to "violent" TRAS. She compared ppl with medical conditions who cant wear masks to TRAs Way to garner support.

Guess #disabledlivesmatter just aint trendy enough.

Wow. Nice to know she's on the side of all women.

I doubt that many non maskers want people's choice to wear a mask taken away so it's a false comparison anyway.

Tbh, I have actually been fairly disappointed by the lack of feminist discussion about how these draconian measures affect women and especially mothers. But I think there is an extent to which, even in feminism, mothers past the baby stage are considered a sort of irrelevant annoyance. And I don't know what to do about that.

@Supermarketworker06, I see. You're talking about the ones who cause the anxiety and fluster by being unable to wait for 2 seconds while someone does their best.

[quote ISaySteadyOn]@Supermarketworker06, I see. You're talking about the ones who cause the anxiety and fluster by being unable to wait for 2 seconds while someone does their best.[/quote]
Yes, there the ones! I've got lots of lovely customers who come to me especially, I love them but interspersed amongst them is arseholes!

@Willow2017

I dont remember anyone coming on tv and saying only zero deaths from flu are acceptable?

@Willow2017 indeed. And an increase in stillbirths? Oh that’s just fine.

I had a horrible thought last night. When I was pregnant I had a chance conversation with a midwife at the hospital around 36 weeks and she saw me scratching my hands. She asked if they were itchy and I said yes, a bit, and she said she’d like to get me in for a blood test. It turned out I had obstetric cholestasis and was induced the next week. The risk may not be huge (they’re not sure) but if a baby is allowed to go to full term while the mother has cholestasis then there is an increased risk of stillbirth. A midwife wouldn’t notice a woman scratching over a Zoom call. I couldn’t sleep for thinking that this might have happened to some of these women and their babies.

I'm glad to see that there is an immediate backlash, of sorts. The Mirror headline is "The blame lies here", as said by Labour, with a picture of angelic Saint Boris outside number 10. Compare with March, when Boris could do no wrong, and it was "Boris said this, Boris said that...". Perhaps I'd better stop calling him Saint Boris, now that his own party is starting to turn on him. I haven't caught a flavour of the public reaction yet, but I don't think the public are going to be so docile this time.

When are the MPs actually voting on the emergency powers, or has that already happened? I can't seem to find that information on the internet. Last night I drafted an angry MP letter, but haven't sent it yet.

I really hope we don't get the old routine of clap for the NHS, but I'd gladly take part in a "Boo for Boris".

@AgentCooper I know I've been thinking about that too.

A friend has just posted on FB urging everyone to download the tracking app. She says that having lost her mother to Covid she has no time for people dismissing it as a ‘little flu’. Her mother was well into her 90s and had been in a nursing home with dementia for more than a decade...

Hi everyone.

Playgroup has started for my two and it's brilliant.

Not so good news, hubby has to close his business. Kind of related to covid and kind of not. I don't think it helped. I can't be a sahm anymore. My plan was to be there for the kids until we get the 30 hours. Which is only a few months down the line.

I just don't want gps taking over. They are lovely but they take over. I hope I don't sound like an ungrateful cow when I say this.

I just feel we are being squeezed as a family and baby boomers are increasing their power.

Feel bad for everyone suffering in this. I genuinely feel people have turned their backs on others though. For fear of a very real virus.

But I would rather die than let my kids suffer like this. People are stupid thinking it won't affect their family as they have enough money. It will. We all affect each other. Imagine when my two start school. Increasing numbers of children with problems due to low income etc. Everyone is related. We can't turn our backs on each other. Which is what everyone is doing. But it is sold as, "we are all in this together." It is the opposite of that! It's infuriating.

👏 (that's the closest symbol to applause I could find).

they're not there! Sorry guys