Why is Boris actively advising people to go against his own government’s official message?

[Ethelfleda]

From PMQs:

“The prime minister also told the nation to go back to work, emphasising that the message to stay at home had outlived its usefulness and “people should try to lead their lives more normally”

From Govt website:

stay at home as much as possible
work from home if you can

So... are we expecting them to change the ‘stay alert’ message now??
Did he mean get back to work if furloughed or back to your place of work if you’ve been WFH?

I really wish the message was clearer

This has been the MO throughout this crisis. The written guidance, which has usually been crafted by civil servants based on expert advice as well as the will of their political masters says one thing and Boris and his chums verbally indicate another.

The whole point of this is to hedge their positions so they can claim credit for opening up the economy if it goes well and blame the public for ignoring the written advice if it doesn't. Cowardly and spineless.

As with anything. Abide by the written guidance, not what comes out of a politicians mouth. As well all know, even if you play the videos of them saying it afterwards, they'll still deny it and get away with it. Just look at all the Brexiters lying that they never said that getting a deal with the EU would be easy and that we would still be able to access the single market, despite the huge number of TV and print interviews and articles where they say exactly that.

The fact is that there is a good chunk of the British public who lack any sort of critical thinking skills and will just go with what they like the sound of. That is why Boris and Dom are in number 10.

Garage is a family owned business, both (late 60s?) parents & 2 sons work there plus some helpers. It's a small town, I know them & their kids & their wives & see them all around lot. It was risk aversion rather than all of them needed to stop work. They are very fine people who I would never slag off... but they didn't absolutely need to stop work. They just preferred to. I found another family-owned garage to get some work done, luckily, just 3 miles further away.

They may have found business was plummeting in late March anyway, to be fair, so a good business decision to wait for demand to return.

@CendrillonSings

If it helps, they didn't. The Tories got 44% of votes cast, which amounted to about a third of the adult voting eligible population. Although we're still lumbered anyway...

Which is a larger share of the vote than any winning party has had since 1979 - 40 years ago! If this government has no legitimacy in your eyes, then none has had any in most people’s adult lifetimes...

Depressing isn't it. Hope Brexit was worth it for them!

@CendrillonSings

If it helps, they didn't. The Tories got 44% of votes cast, which amounted to about a third of the adult voting eligible population. Although we're still lumbered anyway...

Which is a larger share of the vote than any winning party has had since 1979 - 40 years ago! If this government has no legitimacy in your eyes, then none has had any in most people’s adult lifetimes...

Which doesn't even pertain to, let alone rebut, the point that the British people didnt vote en masse for Johnson and his party.

Because the Govt. is running to catch up with it’s own seemingly off the cuff policy announcements. It’s dawned on someone that if everyone works from home, public transport and businesses that serve workers will quickly become untenable.
So many mixed messages atm. We must all loose weight so we’re prepared for a winter surge so to help us the Treasury is giving us all half price burgers and chips 🤷‍♀️

@Baaaahhhhh

ZombieLizzieBennet Peterbishopssarcasticsmile and others.

A generalisation maybe, but one that is very common in my group, so a personal observation.

We are in a group of fairly senior management roles. All fairly large houses. All have home offices. All have teenagers. So, someone, in my house, me, has the home office. DH has set up an office in his bedroom, DD1 has done the same in her room since decamping from London, DD2 is in her room studying. So four people in each of their own rooms, sleeping and working all day in the same room. The don't save on the commuting as they are working through that time, so working long hours, just at home. Our friends are the same. These are people used to being out and about at meetings, flying to customers, spending time away, living a life. Yes, they also used to wfh quite often, but not continuously.

So, of course it works for some. Probably it's great if you have younger children, although that comes with it's own challenges. But for us, we need to get back to something "other", even a couple of days in the office/out and about would help.

Equally, others might generalise completely differently from their circle's experiences.

I can see that lots of people have strong reasons to prefer not to wfh exclusively and indefinitely, but it's simply not the case that this model means people only spending time with their own families/households. It will depend entirely on circumstances, so I don't think generalisation is going to help us much here.

Which doesn't even pertain to, let alone rebut, the point that the British people didnt vote en masse for Johnson and his party.

Yes, it most certainly does - it was the most decisive victory by vote share in 40 years. That’s pretty ‘en masse’ by any historical standard. Or do you think that all the governments of your lifetime have been illegitimate?

CendrillonSings - If this government has no legitimacy in your eyes, then none has had any in most people’s adult lifetimes...

Never said this Government wasn’t ‘legitimate’...but I will say it’s incompetent.

If only we had a system of proportional representation, not a 2 horse race won by a donkey!

@CendrillonSings

Which doesn't even pertain to, let alone rebut, the point that the British people didnt vote en masse for Johnson and his party.

Yes, it most certainly does - it was the most decisive victory by vote share in 40 years. That’s pretty ‘en masse’ by any historical standard. Or do you think that all the governments of your lifetime have been illegitimate?

No, it doesn't. A third of the eligible adult population is not en masse by any non strangulated definition of the term. Your problem seems to be that you have confused citing of an undoubted fact about how many people actually voted for the current government with an argument nobody made or even implied about it being illegitimate.

Mumratheevergiving please respect donkeys and do not compare them to Mr Johnson.

inthelounge - Mumratheevergiving please respect donkeys and do not compare them to Mr Johnson.

Apologies, you are right, donkeys do not deserve that unfavourable comparison.

Someone on here likened him to a blancmange the other day and I will stick with that. Boris the blancmange - the UK's nonsensical leader.

Yes, I feel like I need to apologise to donkeys too now.

@lljkk

Garage is a family owned business, both (late 60s?) parents & 2 sons work there plus some helpers. It's a small town, I know them & their kids & their wives & see them all around lot. It was risk aversion rather than all of them needed to stop work. They are very fine people who I would never slag off... but they didn't absolutely need to stop work. They just preferred to. I found another family-owned garage to get some work done, luckily, just 3 miles further away.

They may have found business was plummeting in late March anyway, to be fair, so a good business decision to wait for demand to return.

This makes me so fucking angry. You don't need to slag them off, you are choosing to. In fb and MN in March there were endless posts about how people were going to punish, to remember the businesses that put profit before people and stayed open. Posts shaming business that were open despite being allowed to be open. Those that put up with that and stayed open then had all their business stop overnight. The garage for your example, MOTs given a six month extension, people told to not leave their homes, wfh etc so no car related problems. People terrified of being made redundant or being self employed and losing all their income so stop having routine work done. How the fuck were they meant to pay overheads/rents/insurance /heating/light/water/consumables etc and staff costs (including pension and employers NI) with no work coming in, or at best the odd job. Small business needs your support as they are the backbone of the economy.

Looks like Gove is at it too:

Earlier, Mr Gove told Sky's Sophy Ridge On Sunday that wearing a face covering "definitely helps you to help others in an enclosed space". He also urged people to return to work rather than stay at home.
"We want to see more people back at work, on the shop floor, in the office, wherever they can be," he said.

I’m no fan of Boris and I’ve never voted Tory in my life, but I’m not sure there is an answer right now.

They locked us down - most people agreed that was the right thing to do.
They spent money on big emergency hospitals - most agreed that was right.
They arranged a furlough scheme - most agreed that was right.
They paid grants to small businesses - most agreed that was right.

Everyone knew these measures would result in people being fearful of coming out of lockdown, and also would result in a massive financial shortfall. After all, the money was clearing being borrowed, we didn’t have billions just sitting waiting to be spent.

So now case numbers have dropped. It’s still not 100% to go out and get back to work and start shopping etc, of course it isn’t. But equally if we all stay in, stay furloughed, don’t shop or eat out, then we will have to borrow even more money, and eventually the country could become bankrupt.

What is the solution?

@Ducksurprise, fwiw, I have decided you're completely insane.

Bozo's government is being run by Mr Cummings, currently in charge of the Ministry of Truth, who is rapidly defenestrating civil servants in order to replace them with sycophants who reflect his views. Having done similar with the Tory party last year, government statements are intentionally vague mumblings by yes men, in order to avoid any blame for the recent, and yet to come, fiascos of Covid and Brexit. It will all be our fault as Jeremy Corbyn is no longer the handy kick me now underdog that was so useful for so long. So it's our fault now, all of it. Anything wrong? Nothing to see here, kindly turn your attention to the ill paid, ill used NHS and care workers, non mask wearers and mask wearers. Beach visitors and those who work from home. Pub goers and those flying in and out of the country. Blame everpyone who isn't part of the Orwell project. It wasn't intended as a blueprint.

@Mintychoc1 One thing that might have given the people more respect for the government would have been if they'd been honest about not knowing things. I might have respected them more if they'd had the guts to say some of the following:

We don't know whether masks are effective or not.

We know that this lockdown is going to cause great hardship and economic damage, but we believe it is the right thing to do.

We don't know how long lockdown will last: we are closely monitoring the situation all the time. We do not want it last any longer than necessary.

And we'll never hear them say "we were wrong to impose lockdown" while they're in government. It's the pretending they know the answer to everything which is hugely belittling: to me, this is worse than making meaningless noises to try to reassure us. They rely on the public having short memories; they think we've forgotten the "stay home" stuff already. As for me, I haven't forgotten about Blair's weapons of mass destruction.

Well I have felt healthier than I ever have since working from home. It has downsides ( I am.a person who needs others to bounce ideas off at work) and I will be happy to go back ,.at least for 1-2 days a week (employer.says January at the earliest) but it is really good to have more time frame to exercise and to cook and eat without it always being a rush.

Despite it being a very stressful time.and being quite depressed anyway over a situation that predates Covid,.I do feel I feel much more centred and less rushed. At first I found this difficult but as time has gone on, I quite like the simple routine of it. I know not everyone is lucky enough to be able to work from home and for those people I think it has been a very very difficult time..For those of us able to work from home, notwithstanding the difficulty with childcare for many, we are pretty privileged. I'd love for it to continue but I don't imagine it will to the same extent.

I agree though that it is so hypocritical.to want people to go back to rushing around, grabbing food on the run because it makes the economy better and at the same time berating people for not cooking from healthy food at home and eating junk ( leading sometimes to weight gain
Also to tell people people mo stay home to protect others then to go to work to get the economy going. Whatever choice we make we will be called irresponsible by someone

It's because of the effect on city and town centres of workers not being out shopping/eating etc. All about the economy. Apparently he was "aghast" at empty town and city centres . He's just incompetent I think he can only think of one thing at once and can never anticipate the consequences of anything

longwayoff I mainly want to high five you for using the word ‘defenestrating’

@Ghostlyglow

It's because of the effect on city and town centres of workers not being out shopping/eating etc. All about the economy. Apparently he was "aghast" at empty town and city centres . He's just incompetent I think he can only think of one thing at once and can never anticipate the consequences of anything

It’s like he’s surprised that having built his entire career on lies people don’t trust him. The same thing happened the other end of lockdown when he said it was fine to keep going out and everyone stayed at home.

Perhaps he should just open everything up and tell people not to go.

@PerkingFaintly

What are the figures like in your country, Goosefoot?

Still going down, or pretty level? (Or god forbid going up?)

Oh, I'm late to get back to this, sorry.

Doing well over all. My province has had no real community transmission for about three weeks - most days no new cases, I think the one or two there have been were travellers coming from away.

Canada is quite large and health is a provincial responsibility, there are some provinces doing worse - Ontario and Quebec in particular. They are also the most populated which seems to be a pattern I'm told, more populated places in general are having a harder time controlling spread. BC was the first province to have cases, a month before we did on the opposite coast, and now seem well past community spread.

There are still some restrictions on travel in Canada, we've just bubbled with all the other Atlantic provinces, and I think the west coast has doe something similar. Large gatherings are now allowed as long as social distancing can be maintained, and groups of 10 or less may meet without distancing.

It’s because Boris Johnson doesn’t know his arse from his elbow.

@longwayoff

Bozo's government is being run by Mr Cummings, currently in charge of the Ministry of Truth, who is rapidly defenestrating civil servants in order to replace them with sycophants who reflect his views. Having done similar with the Tory party last year, government statements are intentionally vague mumblings by yes men, in order to avoid any blame for the recent, and yet to come, fiascos of Covid and Brexit. It will all be our fault as Jeremy Corbyn is no longer the handy kick me now underdog that was so useful for so long. So it's our fault now, all of it. Anything wrong? Nothing to see here, kindly turn your attention to the ill paid, ill used NHS and care workers, non mask wearers and mask wearers. Beach visitors and those who work from home. Pub goers and those flying in and out of the country. Blame everpyone who isn't part of the Orwell project. It wasn't intended as a blueprint.

👌