Has Boris got the balls to cancel Xmas for London?

[Gobacktothe90s]

Obviously the answer is no, but the huge increase in cases in London should tell anyone it's not a good idea for Xmas mixing. How high will the rates go before he has to step in?

I think rather than cancel Xmas for the worst hit areas the only thing he would do is cancel Xmas mixing for everyone and do a complete u turn rather than single London out.
If however the North west still had high rates he would have no hesitation In stopping the north west mixing at Xmas but allowed other areas to mix.

In some ways I wish he had banned mixing households . It’s sadder to have to pick family and then watch others not caring and just doing what they want to .

Mentally I am not up to know what is right.

I have heard of a patient who has died of covid after being put in a covid ward by mistake .

We are all tired but we have been careful and I don’t want to do all the stress for nothing and risk too many households mixing .

[quote Luckyrabbitfoot]@kittensarecute but what’s the alternative?[/quote]
The alternative is to let Covid do what viruses have always done, while we get on with it , so far as possible.

The horrendous over-reaction to Covid has only been possible as a result of social media and the internet. If we didn't have any of this, Covid would have been another (horrible) pandemic, of the type which has done its worst throughout history.

Without the internet, nobody could have worked from home, so we would just have to have got on and worked. Nobody could have had online deliveries, so we would have just had to go shopping.

This would have been better than these bastarding lockdowns. I have lost pretty much everything since March. It has all been as a direct result of lockdowns.

You can't enforce a lockdown of 65m people, they have to do it by consent. I think it's completely normal that compliance will reduce over Christmas.

I also hope there is a u-turn on the mixing. We need to try and avoid another wave and better to save the economy than letting people socialise. The single person bubble rule will means no one will have to be alone.

It may be a bank holiday but he could still ban household mixing.

I’m actually quite anti- lockdown. I’d rather sustainable long term measures that we all bought in to. We can’t keep locking down, then opening up. Cases fall then rise massively. Huge economic impact, massively uncertainty.

January is going to be a disaster for many people for the sake of a few days of Christmas.

@etopp

But Sweden are now in such a state that they are having to ask neighbouring countries to help as IC wards are full .

They have s high a rate of infection per 100000 as a lot of other countries.

I
Look at the USA a country with a low density of population over all and 3000 deaths per day .

I am sorry but I don’t think there is an easy answer.

I’d much prefer we were more even keeled.

And yes thanksgiving should give us pause for thought

Big I still think it’s too late. I wasn’t behind the policy in first place and have just resigned to it. What I want is neither here nor there - unfortunately!

It is beyond me how any body could have voted for the public school clown and professional narcissist that is J. ( I refuse to call him by his chummy name).
What a creature we have representing us.

who on earth would take any notice anyway! He is so on borrowed times as it is...he is not going to u-turn on this as it will simply be ignored ( and I would be one of them).

They are panicking now because they know what’s coming. School children are spreading the virus asymptotically and they are letting everyone have a free for all for Christmas.

There are 2 reasons they won’t cancel. The first is because we have a populist PM. The second, they know we literally don’t have the people power to police all the mixing going on anyway.

It will all go to shit approximately 2 weeks into January anyway, which is why they are now panicking about testing children in schools to try and keep them open.

My husband is very precious about mixing at Christmas. I’m not, I work in a school and if I’m able to work in those circumstances I can bloody well mix over Christmas. Although would I mix with the elderly? No.

@etopp: yes, yes yes. So right

Sorry but there is no way the country as a whole would have complied with a no mixing at Christmas rule. So they set some boundaries. Which will have been worked out by people much cleverer than anyone (or lost) on here as to what would be the best balance. This is what they have come up with. Not many will fully comply but it will bring the overall mixing down and will bring those more likely to have a massive bash closer to the line. It's a game of percentages.

and if he doesnt think people will be mixing for new years parties he's laughing!

Nye is so overrated. Not many give a shit about that in England and Wales. Scotland should have separate roles around Hogmanay which is their bigger celebration.

infecting one group for christmas,then off to another to merge more for new years...

@user1936863452

You're talking about a man who's happy to fuck the entire country up for his own ego. Why would he do anything that doesn't serve his own self-interest?

This.

People will continue with their Christmas plans no matter what anyway.

@Brunt0n

The only people who are going to be stupid enough to mix in ‘Christmas bubbles’ are those who would have done it anyway, regardless of the rules. They’ve only made the exceptions so they don’t look fucking stupid when people realise they don’t have the man power to enforce any of it

This is incorrect. I have stuck to the rules. As have my parents, and my sibling. We will be mixing our 3 households together for Christmas.

The surge is schools. That is why we will have a lockdown in January, not a few families getting together.
But alas, schools will remain open (education is important) and covid will continue to spread.

The sceptic in me says it's no coincidence they are rolling out mass testing in schools in London next week.........

By any chance because there will be a shit load of positive asymptomatic cases and then all those families will be told to isolate over Christmas?

We are already know we’re going straight back into Tier 3 from Tier 3 next week.

Am totally totally worn out with it. But will still comply. We seem to have been in lockdown since March.

Mr Johnson of course judges parts of the country differently and will treat London in a different way. If London does not move to tier 3 next week, I expect hospital capacity will be used as the reason.

If Damien Green's view about restrictions by district/borough prevailed, then it would only be 7 London Boroughs, the ones where school mass testing is supposed to take place. Boroughs I expect where fewer people are able to work from home, and the only parts where you see photos of tube trains with standing people.

Of course he hasn't. He's hanging by a thread so will have to do everything in his power to retain what public support he has left.

@Redcrayons

He should do but I don’t think he will. I also agree about the north. Lockdown will be back in January.

I think that too if people are not careful.

@Polyxena

For fuck’s sake.

All this hand-wringing and hysteria about ‘cancelling Christmas’. It’s fucking ludicrous and absolutely pathetic. For one thing, Christmas is not ‘cancelled’. It will still continue to be on the 25th.

Eid and Jewish new year had to be celebrated under restrictions, but the world could stop revolving if great auntie Mavis, 17 cousins twice removed and some guy who isn’t related but always comes for Christmas dinner can’t come and have a slice of overcooked turkey and watch the Queen’s speech.

But let’s just put everyone into strict lockdown for the weeks either side then let them out of COVID prison for a week to infect each other because as we all know, lumpy instant gravy and shit cracker jokes are a fail safe protection from getting COVID just so we can say we’ve had Christmas.

I agree with all of that except for lumpy instant gravy. Perish the thought.

@etopp with the greatest respect your historical knowledge is definitely letting you down.

The 'Honk Kong' flu in 1968 killed 80k the first winter and 110k the next year.

Without lockdowns hundreds of thousands of people more would have died. If your parent or child was so ill they needed help the hospitals probably would have had to turn many people away. How awful that would be - to know that your loved one might have survived if a hospital had been able to help.

And how awful for the drs and nurses to have to choose who has the chance to live, who doesn't.

Then of course, with so many ill and dying, essential services such as water purification, refuse collection, burials, food deliveries etc start to fail. Rioting and anarchy are a real threat etc etc

Is that really what you want? If we do have to have another lockdown in Jan (very likely imo) then at least we know there's an end in sight. IBy summer we should all be getting back to near normal.