Bit disappointed!

[Twinklegreen]

Waiting for some guidance from the PM.... and... nothing! What does any of it mean? I'm not one to have any political leanings in any direction, just think we need a bit more of an actual plan 🙋🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️

What I took from it was the following

1. Unlimited exercise
2. you can now drive to carry out your exercise somewhere further
3. You should carry on working from home if you can
4. If you cant work from home you should go to work
5. Your employer should risk assess the work place and make adjustments to make it safe for you to to work there
6. You should avoid public transport, and preferably cycle to work or walk, otherwise drive
7. on 1st June if the R level is still under 1, year 1, reception and year 6 will return to school
8. You can sit on a bench
9. you can swim in a pond

10. In July if the R number hasnt risen lesire industry will start to open but with social distance measures in place 11. You still cant visit anyone outside of your household

The only thing I am uncertain of, is whether nurseries will open in June.

This was probably the most unnecessarily hostile bunch of responses I have seen on a thread, where even pundits on the 10 o'clock news on all major news channels were unclear.
What if you worked in non essential retail for example and you were furloughed, the communications wouldn't be able to get out in time to employees, on a Sunday evening. Do you turn up for work or don't you?? How do you go about planning your child care if you are meant to just wait to hear? I mean wtaf???

To be fair the issues with what he said are

1. If you are expected to go to work but have a child and no childcare how can you return to work until they do
2. If you work in London, but dont drive and live 40 minutes away how can you avoid public transport
3. How will your employer have had time to ensure your workplace is risk assessed with measures in place in the 12 hours since Boris advised this was to happen

Sorry for the numbered points, its to help me think clearly as I write it out. I am sure there are more issues but those are the ones I can think of

I would say that I was above average intelligence. I have a degree and post graduate qualifications. However, I couldn’t understand the stay at home message. It is NOT clear
In fact , my cousin owns a hairdresser and is opening up today because Boris said it was ok as she is unable to work at home.
What I am saying is that his stay alert message is open to so many interpretations which therefore renders it futile.
Agree that the government has left it deliberately vague, so that they can avoid criticism if there is a spike in numbers.
Definitely a political move.
Absolutely disgraceful

I mean stay alert message

I think the important part to most people, which wasn’t addressed, was when we can see loved ones again. If schools are going back (partly) in June then does this maybe indicate that that’s when we can see our family and friends again? Because primary school children will definitely not be social distancing.

Op, there is a detailed plan coming out today, he is also outlining it in the house this afternoon and then answering questions tonight at the press conference,

He did actually say that during his speech, but I think it confused a lot of people, basically last night was a high level summary overview and from today on the fine detail comes out.

I can see a lot of people misinterpreting the rules and ending up with a large fine

I am a bit upset about the schools going back, I dont have any school age children but I dont think the way they have done it will help anyone. Those with more than one child at home wont be able to work if their child isnt in the age group allowed to return and they will have problems dropping off and social distancing. I feel the families, teachers and children are sitting ducks and as someone else posted earlier part of an experiment.

Seriously, did you have a problem understanding what he said ?

By now I am used to having no guidance from the PM who is good at waffling.

you can now drive to carry out your exercise somewhere further

We've been able to drive short distances for exercise all through lockdown.

Has that changed to unlimited driving, eg to go to the Peak District or wherever?

It would have been better for the explanatory document to be issued at the same time as the Boris speech, to avoid all this confusion and speculation.

What a lot of nasty posts, defending the indefensible. @areyoubeingserviced has it exactly right. It was a wooly, inexact mess of messages and non-messages which basically lets people make up their own rules.

@PrimeroseHillAnnie- I had problems with the lack of clarity.
I am obviously not the only one

Ok so I don't know who's writing his speeches, or if he is, but as one of my children said - 'He's like one of those teachers, Mummy, who are nice but when they say something it just goes in one ear and out of the other and you can't understand what he's saying, even when he says it slowly'.

Yes. He is a kindly and entertaining but ineffective teacher. Quite a bad teacher. He's not clear.

Add to that, his speeches seem to be a mix of emotion, waffle, bogus 'facts', stirring rhetoric and the repetition of the latest key slogan(s) ... I always can't help seeing them sitting too close drinking coffee and enjoying the cucumber sambos the butler just brought in while they chew their pencils over what the next mantra should be ...

Stay alert. Aware? Can't remember.

What would have helped would have been:

'A document with full details of specific situations and rules will be published online tomorrow, but I'm going to give you a general overview of where we are now, and what the plan is for the next few weeks.' That would have got him straight off the hook with his waffle. And is indeed the case, so why not mention it?

And he 'explained' the crucial 'R' flimsily and then constantly referred to it, with everyone going what hey say that again?!

'R' is just such an unhelpful 'term'.

It was, as ever, pretty shambolic. I don't know whose mind is behind all this, but I'm sorry to say I wouldn't spend good money employing them. Affable as he is.

I understood that mainly they're panicking about nobody wanting to go back to work. Who would want to, now garden centres and B and Q are open? Far too much to get on with at home!!

Well excuse me for not being on Mumsnet at all times..there was I thinking it was a vehicle for us women to chat with each other at a time when we could freely speak after we had put our LO's to bed hmm

Exactly.

I was just saying the same thing over the fence to Ada-next-door when I was pegging out the washing.
After I adjusted the curlers in my headscarf and hooked my bosom up in my overall.

Then I realised that "us women" are allowed to "freely speak" even if our "LOs" haven't yet been "put to bed".

I think the OP is getting flak because she sounds like a made-up "woman" for journalistic purposes.

There you are :)

I think the OP is getting flak because they're are a lot of arseholes on here who have nothing better to do

I did get what he was saying (on the whole) but its definitely vague and people will definitely misinterpret parts of it, not entirely if their own fault as some of it was contradictory

A document is coming out and he specifically did say he would provide more details today in the house and then this evening at the conference.

He didn’t say document but he specifically said they would provide more details, apparantly there is a massive document to be issued,

I think people just didn’t hear it, they were so focused on the plan and wanting answers, what he’d just said about providing more detail today went out everyone’s mind.

My main problem with it is that he said that people are fine to go to work from today but didn't say which people. There wasn't much notice. Surely it would have been better saying next Mon.

By him saying 'if you can't work from home go to work' does that mean all shops workers, hairdressers, cleaners, tattooists, beauty therapists, builders, tradespeople, etc all have to go to work. He said bars and restaurants won't open until July at least but what about clothes shops for example. He didn't mention them.

What if you have children, who is going to be looking after them, especially if you usually rely on family for childcare

Also I can go to work, go to the shops, go out as many times as I want to exercise, have a picnic, play football in the park but I can't see my family.

I thought the speech was fine and provided a good overview of the general timeline the government is working towards and key landmarks along the way. Of course he wasn't going use a ten minute announcement to go into all of the detail that would be required for people to understand exactly how these changes would be implemented and affect our day-to-day lives. This would have been impossible as we all have such different and often quite complex scenarios that any further detail would be bound to generate more questions. I'm hopeful that many of the key questions will be answered as further clarity emerges over the next few days.

It's frustrating because I truly believe the government is in a no-win situation. Like it or not, some of us have more to fear from the virus itself whilst others are more fearful of the consequences of long-term lockdown. The risk of both elements aren't evenly spread throughout society and it is extremely difficult to ask great swathes of the population to act against their own interests for the benefit of others, especially if this essentially means asking others to risk their health/lives or the financial future of their families. Whatever Boris does, there will be people on either side criticising him and accusing him of being feckless and ruining their lives.

I don’t understand what was difficult to understand to be honest?

Did you watch it?

Oh for goodness sake, don’t be so patronising to OP. Nicola Sturgeon and some fine political and journalist brains couldn’t understand it - glad you find it so easy

The problem is that a lot of people don’t WANT to get what he’s saying. They had hopes of a greater degree of relaxation of lockdown than we have been given, and are desperately looking for chinks of light. Sadly, there weren’t many of those as the lockdown is effectively continuing in pretty much the same way for another 3 weeks. No-one wants to come out and say this though.

I think the people saying it is perfectly clear are missing the point. Of course he clearly said "go back to work if you can but try to avoid public transport" for example. But what does that mean in reality?

Like someone said which people does that include? As a previous poster said, a hairdresser is interpreting that to mean her. They can't work from home, so does it include them?

How many people will be able to use public transport? There are likely to be thousands who are unable to use their own transport. Is there to be social distancing on public transport? What happens if they physically can't get to work because there are no buses/trains or no room? Are they in breach of their contract? Do they just turn up at the station and hope for the best? What if they can't get childcare, will they be in breach of their contract? What are businesses doing to ensure safety? They only had 12 hours to put plans into place. What constitutes safety? Increased cleaning? Who does that? Desks at 2m apart? Has that all been organised overnight?

What about schools? Are we ensuring that 4 year olds socially distance? How many in a class room? Will schools have enough rooms to socially distance the numbers involved? We haven't in our school. If not do we stagger places available? How would it be best to do that? Do teachers teach young children from 2m? If not, is that considered safe? If yes, then is that effective teaching especially if they cannot use many of the resources which they usually share? My school has already raised the question of workers requesting a place in school for children in other years because they now need to get back to work.

That's just a small fraction of the questions raised by his message and it's why people think it's not clear.