Rishi Sunak no more bailouts

[Elpresidente29]

He said government cannot go on like this...

I watched the briefing yesterday and what was being said about commuter traffic was never going to work. Eg in London many people take an hour to get to work it takes about an hour door to door by tube from my house on the tube, I have cycled down the A40 a couple of times and it takes about 90 minutes - it is all A road with not a single cycle track and it a horrible dire journey and then 90 minutes home so that's 3 hours a day - not really sustainable for most commuters. Obviously someone living ner Hyde Park can walk rather than get the tube but that is not most people working in London who live in Herts, Kent, Essex, and the outer reaches of the tube - Amersham, Harrow, Wembley.

The minister then said most journeys are 3 miles but that was misleading - he did not mean most commuting journeys are 3 miles. he was including Mrs Jones who is retired and drives to the supermarket every other day in normal times.

we nee d the full tubes running and if the drivers won't we sack them - they have been over paid and too unionised for years and bring in some of the 2m unemployed - it is not that skilled a job to drive a tub train or the army can do it until people are trained. We should also bring back the only just replaced old Met line trains I preferred -windows opened on those, each carriage was separate - now we have awful covid 19 dangerous air conditioned ones with no opening windows and you cannot avoid a carriage with a mad man in as it is all just one horrible single carriage.

Not that skilled to drive a tube train Xenia??

The Bank of England expects economic activity to be close to 30% lower in 2020 Q2. So it will take some massive recovery to get that back to single figures. They don’t this this has occurred due to furloughing people. They seem to fear its confidence of consumers. We have locked down on spending too!

Hmm! I’ve used that old rolling stock from Amersham! It was noisy, rattled a lot and awful. The newer trains are heaven! Unfortunately at the moment they might not be such a healthy option!

There are not enough soldiers to replace all the workers who might go on strike if pushed
plus all those who might be called out in sympathy:

train drivers, signal workers, rail maintenance workers, teachers, local government workers ....

They'd have to be trained - imagine the political fallout if there is a rail disaster

They still have to do their main job of defending the country from external enemies, here and abroad

And neither should they be used. People will have to accept that there is a risk to working. Most people will face a risk when travelling. Drivers are isolated from passengers are they not?

Consulting with all stakeholders and reassuring workers that it will be safe to return,
is much better than confrontation and force

The last thing we need in this crisis is a series of mass strikes

I remember the 1974 general election when Heath got himself into a contest of pig-headery / willy-waving with the trade unions

He went to the country with the slogan "Who governs Britain ?"
and the electorate answered "Not you, chum"

Well union membership was much bigger then! However it will have to be negotiation but union members will have to work to help others work. Or we all face ruin. The teachers do have full pay and a very generous sickness scheme. The self employed have neither right now. So we need unionised public services to work so everyone else can have a chance to get back. People will turn on government paid or employees refusing to work in critical services if they won’t work.

BigChocFrenzy Can I ask a question on the German local lockdown plan? I can see how it would work in areas where people live and work in the same town or city.

How will it work in commuter towns, where a percentage travel West to one city and a percentage travel East to another. Does that mean the town and two cities enter lockdown again?

Maybe Germany is more spread out so not really having that issue.

Blackbear afaik, it would be via registered address of the infected people

So whichever town / city / administrative district exceeded the criteria would lock down ,
or all of them would if they all did

Germany has always had a registration system that stores basic details of each resident

• photo, DOB, sex, place of birth and residence - and everyone has ID that contains these details

Everyone has to update their address promptly at the town hall whenever they move house,
so it is known who lives where

However, individual institutions and businesses would also be locked down if they hit this limit proportionately

However, each German state is likely to be very anxious about infection spreading further.

So in practice, I expect they'd choose to close down the largest area, i.e. the whole area containing the town and 2 cities,
rather than stick to the letter of the agreement

It is not that hard to drive a tube train - this song sums it up [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhJYJGm9zMo
]] The unionised tube drivers have been a major problem for years.

@Xenia Are you on glue? "Sack all tube drivers" - it takes months if not over a year to train up a tube driver, a random soldier can't just start operating any railway. Who do you think would train all these new drivers? (the people who teach the courses are also drivers and then trainees go out with instructor drivers for months).

Also the old metropolitan line train have been scrapped.

Every time you post, I’m more and more grateful you’re nowhere near the levers of power Xenia. You live in fantasyland.

So in practice, I expect they'd choose to close down the largest area, i.e. the whole area containing the town and 2 cities, rather than stick to the letter of the agreement

Now thats where it becomes difficult. I'm actually thinking Scotlands central belt. Just 44miles between Glasgow and Edinburgh, 3 seperate train routes, and about 20 towns inbetween. That plan basically puts the majority of Scots back in to lock down.

Blackbear V difficult set of decisions, but Merkel has said the situation is risky and we must be cautious.

It may be different criteria for Scotland's specific geography and low population,
but she has 83 million Germans to protect, with about 9 land borders

This is from the latest RKI (german public health) report:

https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/NeuartigesCoronavirus/Situationsberichte/2020-05-09-de.pdf??__blob=publicationFile

"Due to COVID-19 outbreaks in six retirement homes in the district of Greiz, Thuringia, a 7-day-incidence of 74 cases per 100,000 population was reported.

Last weekend 855 residents and employees from 6 retirement homes were tested and 47 have tested positive for coronavirus.

Since the end of April, COVID-19 outbreaks were also reported in meat factories in Baden- Wuerttemberg, North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein,
with 100 to 350 cases tested positive for coronavirus."