Is there a London bias involved in government decisions?

[CurlyhairedAssassin]

Just looking at the graphs of current hospital cases. It was quite startling looking at London’s curve downwards and comparing it to all the other regions which are barely heading downwards. I’m in the NW and from what I’m hearing from friends and family there’s plenty of severe cases here. People who have lost relatives in the past few days. I don’t think we are the same as London, our graph is not going down quick enough.

Makes me wonder if decisions are made based on what ministers are experiencing in London ignoring what’s going on in the other regions

Makes me wonder if decisions are made based on what ministers are experiencing in London ignoring what’s going on in the other regions

Isn't that how the gov in Westminster usually makes its decisions?

More people in London= more votes.

Where I live we had 6 days of no deaths at the local hospital followed by a day of 1 death then a day of 2 deaths but I heard/saw on SM a lot of VE partying so am nervous about a sharp increase in 2-3 weeks

People in Wales, NI and Scotland must be pissed off how London /England centric Westminster is. I know that England has the majority of the population but even when Boris spoke on Sunday it was not clear that he meant England only

London will come down for at as it went up first, although I get what you're saying.

@Veterinari, well i know they operate in a very London central way usually. But Boris claimed on Sunday that they would be looking at regional variations when looking at what measures are in place, and maybe having some regions doing things differently to others.

He’a Just telling the country to do the same thing. Makes you wonder if we’d be better off having regional in charge.

Sorry, better to have regional ministers in charge of what each region does.

There are more people living in London that Scotland and Wales combined, and a quarter of the nations GDP is generated there. It will always be higher up the agenda than other places.

@inwood. I know what you’re saying that they will have the biggest drop as they started high. But it really bothers me that the NW now has the highest number of hospital cases in the country, beyond London even. And our graph is not dropping sharply. Things are still not great here. Returning to work and school does not feel like a safe idea at all.

I don’t get why it has to be the same for the entire country. Surely we should lift restrictions in areas with low infection rate first and do good surveillance, community testing? If cases go up, theN We know that other places need to wait until they have less cases than this pilot area before starting to relax restrictions.

Consider having road blocks to block off areas so that spread can be contained to an area. You could have travel passes for those who require travel outside (eg medical treatment at bigger hospital or care for frail relatives).

Isn’t this common sense?

Off at a bit of a tangent, there are more people on the shielding list now (critically vulnerable) than the size of the population of NI

But we’re regularly told that keeping up banged up indefinitely (despite the cost to our MH, and usually overlooking that this category is not defined by age and the vast majority are not terminally ill nor so decrepit we are expected to conk at any time)

Basically, the majority population and the economy win over lives and quality of lives. Whether that’s regionally or some other reason

They said at the beginning London was two weeks ahead

But they should be taking account of the rest of the country - can't imagine what would happen though if they told regions not to go out and Londoners could sit down in parks

London is primarily Labour supporting- the reason London’s curve is dipping is because it was ahead in contagion.

There are more people living in London that Scotland and Wales combined, and a quarter of the nations GDP is generated there. It will always be higher up the agenda than other places.
I hope Boris' memory hasn't been impaired by Covid19. Do you remember all the way back to December and his "borrowed" northern votes?

There is mention in yesterday’s document that they can remove/impose different measures in different parts of the country (as in within England, not just different countries as it is now). Although obviously not something they’re doing yet.

@Namenic
Isn’t this common sense?

You would think, wouldn’t you?

But why am I not surprised that this government doesn’t want to do things that way?

@DamitJanet “Although obviously not something they’re doing yet”

And you’re confident that they may do this at some point BEFORE lives and health have been put at risk? Because at the moment, the way it is here where I am, I’m feeling like a guinea pig heading into the unknown.

I have lost trust in the government since the Boris handshake/contracting covid debacle. if they can’t take their own advice or inwardly deride it for being overcautious then how can trust what they’re telling us now? “Do what I say not do as I do”, is it? Or is it hecause none of them died they’re deciding that the herd immunity thing is a go-er after all? They don’t want to keep us safe, anymore. They just want us to keep alert. That’s what they literally are now telling us. So that if we go to work and develop symptoms we can be alert to the fact that we need to get tested. Or be alert to the fact that in some situations outside the home we need to wear masks.

Slogan is now extends from “save lives” to Save lives and livelihoods”. Making it very clear that this is an economical decision.

@LaurieFairyCake.
They said at the beginning London was two weeks ahead

Quite. So why not send London back to work and school 2 weeks ahead of the rest of us? The rest of the country just isn’t there yet.

I think that's why they mentioned splitting up areas. London will be all go whilst everywhere else is in lockdown.

A quarter of the nations GDP is generated in London, it is usually the largest financial centre in the world although it has recently dropped behind NY but this is expected to be temporary. Of course it's all about London, most regions are not self-funding London needs to go back to work.

@CurlyhairedAssassin they specifically said prior to lockdown that they wouldn't lock London down and not other regions. They can't really un-lockdown London now and keep everyone else in.

@HunterHearstHelmsley I think they are quite able to emphasis the 2 weeks ahead thing and say that London schools can open first while travelling to London for work should be kept to a minimum also.

I think it’s the opposite

We have the lowest R rate

We’re told to avoid public transport and have a relatively low number of car owners

Police were checking use of transport at the start, claiming “key workers only”

But car owners can drive as far as they like from tomorrow

This whole time, park benches etc have been taped off and we’re the most likely to not have gardens.

I think we’ve got more hospital capacity

I can’t see anything London centric about how it’s been working so far.

I actually think London is a terrible place to pilot the lifting of lockdown. High population density and public transport will mean that infections have potential to rocket again.

I would choose a rural place with low infections. I would send extra public health experts there and get a system to record people with corona symptoms for a few weeks before lifting restrictions. Then keep measuring as restrictions are lifted.

Namenic “ High population density and public transport will mean that infections have potential to rocket again.”

That’s going to happen whenever lockdown is lifted. I don’t include leisure in that btw. I don’t think London has much chance of leisure opening properly for years.

Lilactree - if you start from a lower base, the Absolute effect of a spike is smaller. Let’s say, s. Korea or Australia have a spike. Their spikes will be like 30 cases per day.

So if you wait until daily new cases has gone down to a level of below 100 for the country, then spikes are going to affect fewer people in total. If dividing up the country geographically - you could wait til cases per capita in a given area gets down below a certain level.

Now if you are saying that the only way out of this is herd immunity (which is a possibility) - then I would expect UK to have high Infections and deaths in the coming months and then reduce as more people become immune. Some other countries may manage to open up and keep low numbers by surveillance and restrictions for a longer period. But they have the option of taking the herd immunity strategy at any point.

Furthermore - it is not entirely clear that there will be long-lasting immunity after infection. In which case I guess it might be a yearly thing like a more deadly flu???