Steve Baker

[Ridcully82]

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/boris-johnson-leadership-baker_uk_6000785ac5b697df1a03ca28

So Steve Baker not only wants to know when we can lift lockdown before this wave has peaked (can see an argument for setting out the levels of various factors that would trigger going back to tiers, but people who call for this often want promises written in blood in such a fluid situation),but he's also demanding a "guarantee" we won't have a lockdown next winter: only a frigging child begs for promises that they know,deep down,that such promises are not the word of God,and doesn't mean it will be so,but they just want the false comfort.
I'd rather be honest,and get on with this so that we actually don't need much in way of restrictions next winter.

Steve Baker is not the sharpest tool in the box, so this doesn’t surprise me.

@RafaIsTheKingOfClay

Steve Baker is not the sharpest tool in the box, so this doesn’t surprise me.

Agreed,but he has form fir marshalling troops and punching above his weight. I just feel the country could be better served then threatening one of the most self serving PM's ever into putting his career over tough but necessary decisions.

He’s entitled to an opinion

Steve Baker is right wing idiot.

@hamstersarse

He’s entitled to an opinion

He is: and I'm entitled to the opinion that it is selfish, juvenile, and unhelpful.

Not everybody is a fan of lockdowns so it’s unreasonable to complain when somebody asks for a roadmap out of them. It’s hardly ‘juvenile’ 😳

From European Research Group to Covid Research Group . Maybe one day he might actually look up what research actually means.

@FreshFreesias

Not everybody is a fan of lockdowns so it’s unreasonable to complain when somebody asks for a roadmap out of them. It’s hardly ‘juvenile’ 😳

As I said in the op,I understand sharing what measures will be part of the decision making process:asking for promises and guarantees in a once in a century pandemic is juvenile.

Never fear, he's backtracked at a pretty fast pace:)

Sorry for my excessive use of actually.

The same group that insisted Christmas shopping go ahead and look how that ended for London. Where the hell is the accountability?

@FreshFreesias

Not everybody is a fan of lockdowns so it’s unreasonable to complain when somebody asks for a roadmap out of them. It’s hardly ‘juvenile’ 😳

It’s unreasonable to insist on a date. Targets, yes. So if cases drop below X amount.

@Em777

The same group that insisted Christmas shopping go ahead and look how that ended for London. Where the hell is the accountability?

Oh they don’t want any of that, takes all the fun out of pointing out what other people are doing wrong.

He’s calling for exactly what happened with our second lockdown isn’t he? Well that went well didn’t it? Still, at least others can learn from our mistakes.../s

He was one of the ones calling for the end of the second lockdown and moving into tiers wasn’t he?

Or did object even to tiers. Annoyingly it would probably have got through Parliament without that but with the support of Labour and they could have just left the Covid research group to have a bit of a strop on their own.

Steve baker is a twat but I think it’s good that the government think they can’t necessarily get away with never ending lockdowns without some MPs kicking off.

To be honest I agree with him. This has to be the last lockdown and we have to have a roadmap out of it. It is not sustainable and not necessary once the vulnerable have been vaccinated. We simply cannot shut down society indefinitely. It’s also beyond a joke that any one who expresses an opinion that doesn’t support lockdowns or restrictions are called juvenile or a covid denier. This is not a long term solution and despite what most mumsnetters seem to think it is not our job to protect the NHS forevermore and saving lives should not be at the expense of us living! This cannot become something we do every winter.

Opening up on an arbitrary date because you've promised Steve Baker is why we're in this mess.

That's what happened on December 2nd even though cases still running at 100,000 a week, and deaths at 3000 a week.

Then it built upwards from there.

And here we are.

Where we are today is Steve Baker's fault.

And he wants to do it again?!

I hope the Tory grandees kick his boney whiney arse.

Where we are today is Steve Baker's fault

I didn’t realise he was instrumental in railroading the government into setting a lifting date for the last lockdown. What a tool.

It’s so obvious why numbers have sky rocketed (yes I know they never would have gone away completely but we could have prevented the worst of it). Now we’re paying more economically than we would have been if we’d stayed in lockdown a few weeks longer.

Bravo! Nothing like creating the very chaos you claim to want an end to.

I don't agree with Baker but am glad he's asking questions, making govt accountable.

We do need a roadmap out of lockdown though, schools do need to reopen and businesses open up again. It is good that their are opposing views to lockdown that the government have to consider. At some point soon the conversation will turn back to the economy just like it did back in early Autumn. The official opposition Labour are even more pro lockdown (Keir calling for nurseries to close is a terrible decision in his part imo) and so without that scrutiny it is a good thing there are other voices out there. At the moment, the public’s appetite is for lockdown but that will change going into spring and early summ

He’s a dick but it’s useful to have him and his mates to point to when conspiracy theorists claim that we’re going to be locked down forever because Covid will never go away and the all-powerful Chris Whitty won’t let the government relax the rules until every case is eliminated and we’ll still be in lockdown by the time of the 2024 Olympics.

Anyone who thinks that this government will keep legal restrictions in place longer than necessary has not been paying attention to the politics.

I don’t disagree @sashagabadon but I don’t think definitive dates are workable. What I would suggest is a fairly simple analysis of hospital admissions vs case numbers to a identify approximately where our boundaries are. We have the rough data.

If hospitals can cope with around admissions at around 17k cases per day then allowing for exponential growth we need to aim for a plateau of 10k cases with the ability to tighten restrictions at signs of growth in the early teens.

Numbers are pulled out of my backside based on what I’ve observed but the general concept stands. You can’t put a date on things like that because it’s just not viable to predict how people and the virus will behave in real life.

@Cornettoninja

Where we are today is Steve Baker's fault

I didn’t realise he was instrumental in railroading the government into setting a lifting date for the last lockdown. What a tool.

It’s so obvious why numbers have sky rocketed (yes I know they never would have gone away completely but we could have prevented the worst of it). Now we’re paying more economically than we would have been if we’d stayed in lockdown a few weeks longer.

Bravo! Nothing like creating the very chaos you claim to want an end to.

Why don't they understand that not putting the brakes on the virus hard enough soon enough leads to more chaos? Why can't they learn - if not from the experience of other countries like poor godforsaken Brazil right now - then from our own.

Remember when the PM was really late on the tv? It was because he was talking Rishi Sunak, Steve Baker and a bunch of other Tory maniacs who still don't understand why we can't "just go back to normal" into supporting the November lockdown. And they did. On condition of the hard and fast December 2nd end.

Said Tory maniacs are the reason we didn't have a circuit breaker in September, too.

It's a bit concerning that the Chancellor of the Exchequer clearly doesn't understand that the untrammelled virus would spread exponentially since it's not at all complex maths.

@PrincessNutNuts

Opening up on an arbitrary date because you've promised Steve Baker is why we're in this mess.

That's what happened on December 2nd even though cases still running at 100,000 a week, and deaths at 3000 a week.

Then it built upwards from there.

And here we are.

Where we are today is Steve Baker's fault.

And he wants to do it again?!

I hope the Tory grandees kick his boney whiney arse.

Special place in the afterlife for those with blood on their hands like this