For once, I actually agree with Boris

[Racoonworld]

We cannot persist indefinitely with restrictions that have separated families and loved ones for too long, and threatened the livelihoods of millions, and kept pupils out of school.

Finally some sense. So glad this is the message from the government now.

@GiveMeNovocain

I'm with you. For the first ever time in my 42 years on the planet I will be voting conservative in the next election (Wales so May 2021). Drakeford has been so uninspiring and still won't even let us drive to exercise. He hasn't given a proper thought to the people Labour is meant to care about and instead shifted all the risk to people on the lowest pay while the rich get to sit at home getting stuff brought to them. At least Johnson seems to want to bring hope and restore freedoms.

He may be a dullard but he has done a better job in Wales than Bozo did in England. Followed the science, didn’t chop and change, reverse decisions, dither and backtrack. If you vote Tory in Wales you get RT Davies.

We cannot persist indefinitely with restrictions that have separated families and loved ones for too long, and threatened the livelihoods of millions, and kept pupils out of school

Boris is only able to say this now because of the incredible work of the scientists who developed the vaccine and the NHS in rolling out the vaccine programme. If the roadmap does pan out as everyone hopes it will be down to those people not to Johnson and co.

@OrangeBlossomsinthesun,

Paying people to stay at home is a non starter.

It risks Covid parties among the young (they have happened in the us) and also sick people trying to book multiple tests under different names.

They did think about it, but realised it was impractical.

I agree travellinglighter. Drakeford has not been afraid to make choices that have made him unpopular. He is a good man who has done his best for the people of Wales. It's a shame people carp about him being dull, I'll take dull over Johnson's blustering, u-turning chaos any day of the week.

@PracticingPerson

This is the only option he has, having fucked it up so badly. He has to brazen it out.

UK, most especially England, will be dealing with the fall out of Johnson's failure to react for years.

If people want to dress this up as a success to make it seems nicer that's up to them, but my view is the UK has been very badly harmed by our dreadful covid response and much of it was his fault.

This.

I am very pleased with today’s announcement
At last we can look forward to normality
Had my best sleep in months last night

[quote TheReluctantPhoenix]@OrangeBlossomsinthesun,

Paying people to stay at home is a non starter.

It risks Covid parties among the young (they have happened in the us) and also sick people trying to book multiple tests under different names.

They did think about it, but realised it was impractical.[/quote]
This is nonsense, they manage to do it just fine in Europe. UK has the lowest sick pay in Europe which has contributed a great deal to our covid problems.

Before we get too excited about Boris actually looking like he might have got something right, let’s look at what he got wrong.

Missed first cobra meeting
Missed second cobra meeting
Missed third, fourth and fifth cobra meeting.
Allowed Cheltenham festival to go ahead.
Allowed Liverpool Madrid game to go ahead.
Twickenham game, ditto
Shaking hands at.twickenham game and catching COVID, possibly still has long COVID.
Late into lockdown against scientific advice
Not enough PPE
Face mask dithering
Corruption in PPE scheme(giving contracts to mates)
Downgrading of virus status to cover lack of PPE.
Insufficient cover for all self employed.
Not extending SSP to those forced to self isolate.
U-turn on SSP.
Removal of elderly infected patients from hospitals to care homes.
Failure to join Eu ventilator scheme
Lying about missing an e-Mail regarding ventilator scheme.
Barnard Castle and Cummings
Failure to sack for Barnard castle.
Allowing Cummings to go on telly and lie about Barnard castle.
Attempted herd immunity policy.
U-turn on herd immunity
Denial of herd immunity policy despite cabinet notes confirming it.
Early release of lockdown (7 weeks instead of 10 weeks).
World class track and trace that neither tracks or traces.
Eat out to help out. More like eat out to infect.
Refusal to consider firebreak.
Ridiculing firebreak
U-turn on firebreak( A month instead of two weeks)
Exams fiasco. DfE refusing to accept teacher gradings.
U-turn on exams fiasco
School meals fiasco
U-turn on school meals fiasco courtesy of Marcus Rashford.
Insisting on uni’s opening
Students retuning for freshers week and holding mass super spreader events.
Locking uni students in halls.
Identifying new strain in September
Not telling anyone about new strain
Not doing anything about new strain
5 Day Christmas holiday.
Refusal to accept scientific evidence against 5 day Christmas holiday.
Late u-turn on 5 day Christmas holiday.
Monumentally late in opening covid isolation hotels.
Tory donors, peers and family members cramming their pockets full of government cash for PPE, PR contracts and anything they can get away with.
General communications policy that looks like it was made up on the spot and sometimes actually was.
Failure to brush hair on almost every occasion.

Combine that with the highest death rate per head of population and the deepest recession (which might be due to an awful Brexit deal which he negotiated) then one decent press conference is hardly enough to change my opinion.

@travellinglighter quite happy with Andrew RT. At least he gets back to me and wants children back in school. I disagree with him on Brexit but that's fine now.

Drakeford has made the same mistakes in hospitals and care homes as Johnson and expects us to pay the price with our children. He's not some gentle full bloke or a nice grandpa figure. He's our first minister and he should have some ambition for the country he runs.

and yet apparently there are still some who want the roadmap to happen quicker.
they need to get a dose of reality.
slow and steady wins the race, am i quoting?
i didnt watch much of it

@Inthevirtualwaitingroom

and yet apparently there are still some who want the roadmap to happen quicker. they need to get a dose of reality. slow and steady wins the race, am i quoting? i didnt watch much of it

The modelling suggested 140k (iirc) additional deaths for the Steve Baker-style unlocking, with more in hospital than January.

You have to be deeply, deeply odd to think that's a good approach.

How anyone could use how the Tories have handled this as a reason to vote for them baffles me!

@OrangeBlossomsinthesun

The uk fucked up every lockdown by not using the time to get track and trace to work and not properly funding people to be able to stay home, not making masks compulsory, not making schools safe. If you don't do that then it doesn't matter how strict the lockdown is, the virus just resurges. Boris Johnson is an incompetent populist chasing votes.

I agree with you on track and trace. Our cases were so low over the summer, if we had a decent track and trace system in place we could have found the contacts of the few hundred positive cases, and isolated them, and possibly avoided or minimised the second wave. That and proper quarantine of international arrivals from the Summer.

[quote GiveMeNovocain]@travellinglighter quite happy with Andrew RT. At least he gets back to me and wants children back in school. I disagree with him on Brexit but that's fine now.

Drakeford has made the same mistakes in hospitals and care homes as Johnson and expects us to pay the price with our children. He's not some gentle full bloke or a nice grandpa figure. He's our first minister and he should have some ambition for the country he runs.[/quote]
So you agree with him on one issue schools but the fact he thinks your opposition to Brexit means you’re like the armed insurrectionists at the whitehouse doesn’t bother you. The mans a lizard, did you see him trying to give Boris credit for the fact the Welsh NHS is way ahead on vaccination? The irony is he’s all for the democratic will of the people when it comes to Brexit but he’s leading the charge to have the senedd abolished because it will never elect a Tory government. Bear in mind the people of Wales voted for the senedd. As for drakeford making the same mistakes, there is some truth in it but nowhere near as many mistakes as Bozo. He’s unpopular because he has stuck to the science much close than Boris did.

And yet if he had put some mitigating measures in place, schools wouldn't have had to close, bubbles wouldn't have burst (as often) and the mental health and the education of children would have been protected.

Yet here we are repeating the same mistakes.

@OrangeBlossomsinthesun
The uk fucked up every lockdown by not using the time to get track and trace to work .

most of the reason track and trace failed was THE UK POPULATION. Like any system it's only as good as the information that goes in.

people gave wrong contact numbers
people wouldn't answer unfamiliar numbers
people blocked every number but contacts on there phones

how would you suggest they deal with the above

Other countries the police confiscated phones and they retrieved info off it theres noway the uk would tolerate that.

Boris Johnson has been dreadful throughout all of this. His indecision and lack of leadership is why the death count has been so high.

The government have been incompetent and acted immorally and illegally throughout.

Do not be fooled by one sentence. One sentence which is "we can't be in lockdown forever". Well, duh.

The rest of the world has looked on in horror at our bumbling government fuck it up and cost people their lives, their livelihoods, their mental wellbeing.

Do Not Forget

[quote rwalker]@OrangeBlossomsinthesun
The uk fucked up every lockdown by not using the time to get track and trace to work .

most of the reason track and trace failed was THE UK POPULATION. Like any system it's only as good as the information that goes in.

people gave wrong contact numbers
people wouldn't answer unfamiliar numbers
people blocked every number but contacts on there phones

how would you suggest they deal with the above

Other countries the police confiscated phones and they retrieved info off it theres noway the uk would tolerate that.[/quote]
Except that Apple and Google had systems in place that could have delivered a track and trace system that other countries took advantage of. The U.K. went alone in trying to develop its own system so Cummings could give it to his mates. By the time they backtracked no one trusted them.

@PracticingPerson

And he's taking a massive risk with the vaccines too. He's a high stakes gambler, who apparently has to have things written 'in short sentences' because he doesn't understand.

However much I read about the psychology of boosterism I still feel very watching people get sucked in by it.

You are a wise and brave person to be calling this out. And more patient than me.

In terms of suicides it's correct that ONS will release data shortly but this real time study from the University of Manchester is the best data I've seen and does not show a rise: <a class="break-all" href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=documents.manchester.ac.uk/display.aspx%3FDocID%3D51861&ved=2ahUKEwjJgLyvvv_uAhW4TBUIHTJQDf4QFjALegQICRAC&usg=AOvVaw27OMByoUjN-_tgez8VUAKA" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">this paper - as @FishWithoutABike says, what is it about our pre lockdown life that lockdown and reduced access to in-person mental healthcare did not produce a rise?

I think the people that hate Boris are furious that he stays at 40% in the polls and they can’t understand it. They shout Do not forget into the wind as in real life people don’t actually blame Boris for Covid much at all and this really annoys people who insist we do.

As for the rest of the world looking on in “horror”, that was April 2020’s argument. It’s not applicable now.

I agree with OP. It's not being dressed as a success, just moving on. Hindsight is a wonderful thing that makes great PMs out of everyone.

@travellinglighter

Before we get too excited about Boris actually looking like he might have got something right, let’s look at what he got wrong.

Missed first cobra meeting
Missed second cobra meeting
Missed third, fourth and fifth cobra meeting.
Allowed Cheltenham festival to go ahead.
Allowed Liverpool Madrid game to go ahead.
Twickenham game, ditto
Shaking hands at.twickenham game and catching COVID, possibly still has long COVID.
Late into lockdown against scientific advice
Not enough PPE
Face mask dithering
Corruption in PPE scheme(giving contracts to mates)
Downgrading of virus status to cover lack of PPE.
Insufficient cover for all self employed.
Not extending SSP to those forced to self isolate.
U-turn on SSP.
Removal of elderly infected patients from hospitals to care homes.
Failure to join Eu ventilator scheme
Lying about missing an e-Mail regarding ventilator scheme.
Barnard Castle and Cummings
Failure to sack for Barnard castle.
Allowing Cummings to go on telly and lie about Barnard castle.
Attempted herd immunity policy.
U-turn on herd immunity
Denial of herd immunity policy despite cabinet notes confirming it.
Early release of lockdown (7 weeks instead of 10 weeks).
World class track and trace that neither tracks or traces.
Eat out to help out. More like eat out to infect.
Refusal to consider firebreak.
Ridiculing firebreak
U-turn on firebreak( A month instead of two weeks)
Exams fiasco. DfE refusing to accept teacher gradings.
U-turn on exams fiasco
School meals fiasco
U-turn on school meals fiasco courtesy of Marcus Rashford.
Insisting on uni’s opening
Students retuning for freshers week and holding mass super spreader events.
Locking uni students in halls.
Identifying new strain in September
Not telling anyone about new strain
Not doing anything about new strain
5 Day Christmas holiday.
Refusal to accept scientific evidence against 5 day Christmas holiday.
Late u-turn on 5 day Christmas holiday.
Monumentally late in opening covid isolation hotels.
Tory donors, peers and family members cramming their pockets full of government cash for PPE, PR contracts and anything they can get away with.
General communications policy that looks like it was made up on the spot and sometimes actually was.
Failure to brush hair on almost every occasion.

Combine that with the highest death rate per head of population and the deepest recession (which might be due to an awful Brexit deal which he negotiated) then one decent press conference is hardly enough to change my opinion.

This. I get people are feeling relief that things are opening up. But it has been a spectacular cockup for the last year.

It took nearly a year to check people coming into the country. Even at the beginning in the absence of tests, other countries were checking temperatures at airports and ensuring quarantine. We just let people walk right in and go where they wanted with no checks.

I know hindsight is a wonderful thing. But with a different strategic approach, we could have had things back to almost normal a long time ago.

I don’t feel relief or gratitude to the government for having a plan to open things up. I’m angry that they will not be held to account for their appalling mismanagement and unlawful management of funds and contacts, enriching their friends while people lose their income.

@Gerberageri

I agree. It's a sad day when you rely on Boris Johnson to speak for you. What the f* has happened. Will anyone even notice? Because some people have been trying their best all year to say what damage is being done and we've been completely ignored.

That fucking ignorant virus.

It is very easy to look back with the benefit of hindsight
People need to be responsible for their own actions as well , could all the people who have not bent the rules in any way please sit down

Imagine what a shot show this would have been if Corbin and Abbot had been running it all