8th Dec 6pm press conference

[PurpleDaisies]

Whitty
Vallance
Johnson

I wonder what they’ll say.

I don’t remember as many posts about vulnerable children pre-COVID as there were during lockdown. But many of those children were vulnerable pre-COVID.

I do remember quite a few posts during lockdown from furious parents when teachers were trying to phone them or even do doorstep visits, and they were complaining about invasion of privacy and refusing to pick up calls from withheld numbers (teachers mainly using their own phones to make the calls). So many refused to accept that these were safeguarding calls and schools were doing their utmost in difficult circumstances to try and connect with all families and check that children were okay (or to give hope to vulnerable children that someone out there cared about them). Wonder if these parents are also the ones posting on here saying we must think about the vulnerable children.

@rrhuth One refuge charity alone turned down 700 calls for help from DV victims last year. 4 out of 5 migrant women get refused help.

The Tories have cut funding to local councils and hence councils have to make cuts, refuges, social work, childrens services, social care.

What the fuck did tory voters think Austerity was? Yet still you all kept voting for it.. because it didn't affect you, so you didn't care.

but now worried that CV restrictions might affect their party/holiday plans, they scream "....but think of the women!"

[quote TheVampiresWife]@rrhuth as I've said, I have personal reasons for my position, too.

My point has nothing to do with any high profile case. It has to do with the shocking statistics regarding the increase of DA in lockdowns.

Please stop assuming people on this thread voted Tory. I'm a lifelong Labour member (disillusioned at the moment but that's another thread).

And it's not a 'covid position' (?!), it's an 'I'm concerned about the safety of victims of domestic abuse during lockdowns' position.[/quote]
I am not assuming YOU voted Conservative. I am not interested in how you personally voted.

I am saying it is not as simple as 'if we avoid lockdown all will be fine'.

Lockdown was necessary, it could be necessary again, and if we want to avoid a situation where a future lockdown causes a spike in domestic violence or in-home child abuse - we need to get something in place which requires proper preparation and investment. Because you can't allow hundreds of thousands of people to die because you don't have robust/funded systems in place to protect the vulnerable, can you?

My point is - anyone who does not support wholesale investment in the services we need can stop pretending they care.

Anybody with who supported lockdowns cannot genuinely profess to care about the poor and working classes. I live in a deprived area and have seen the impacts these policies have had on local small businesses, sole traders etc. Absolutely nobody I know is in favour of them. They are a stoical lot around here would rather take their chances with a disease which (repeat for the 1000th time) mainly targets primarily the elderly and vulnerable.

"It's so difficult to extrapolate where truth lies, because trust is completely broken down"

Ex-attorney general Dominic Grieve asks if Tory MPs will keep putting up with a PM "not fit for office"

Boris Johnson has apologised for video about No 10 party

twitter.com/i/status/1468605552217706505

herecomesthsun I am not a 'pile the bodies high' type either...I don't know any of those.

They voted to make him party leader and they have followed him so far.

He hasn't exactly been deceiving anyone about his personality and his modus operandi, has he?

@herecomesthsun

It's interesting that so much has been made of the mental health of children/ domestic violence issues etc- in the context of opposing restrictions which people find unpalatable for other, completely unrelated reasons.

Often - and I am not saying this pertains to anyone on this thread- the newfound champions of mental health and abused children etc have not done anything at all prior that involved effort and/or financial input to help these causes.

So it looks like a pretext, as though these individuals are using human suffering as an easy argument to further their own interests.

Not saying, of course, that anyone on this thread is doing this.

But I can understand the origin of some of the questioning responses to this line of thought.

Could say the same about people suddenly caring about CEV people to be fair.

With so many cuts to services, schools have had to take on so much more when it comes to child welfare. This is not right either.

@Happypootle

rruth I will happily listen to different opinions but I do dislike the way you conflate lockdown views with party politics. That is very simplistic and also inaccurate. I am a lifelong labour voter. I absolutely agree that public services have been decimated by the tories. But the lockdown thing is a separate issue because not only the rules in place but also the 'project fear' aspect prevented people from both seeking help and providing it. You will find many on the left who oppose strong lockdowns (I work with lots of them) because they have seen the damage caused. It's not necessarily outright abuse but poverty, misery, neglect, lack of access to education. I believe if we need further measures to tackle covid these should never again include banning family members from visiting each other, frontline services working from home, or schools being closed to most children. I don't believe any of those things should ever be reinstated and I am not a tory and never will be.

I am clearly not talking about you then - I am talking about people who do not see the root cause of the issues we face as being the long term under investment in services, and who claim to care about children whilst voting for cuts to the services they need. And then who wring hands about lockdown tragedies, as if only the additional problems caused by lockdown are tragedies, but the ongoing, year-on-year misery the cuts caused is something we were all fine with.

Many have made huge sacrifices for one vulnerable group for nearly two years

Now with vaccines and increasing damage - some extreme - we need to swing to protecting a very vulnerable group that has been de-prioritised

Not everyone will agree and won’t want that, but I very much hope we re prioritise them as a group.

@Happypootle

herecomesthsun I am not a 'pile the bodies high' type either...I don't know any of those.

It is an alleged quote from Boris Johnson. The context was that he would rather ignore scientific advice for a circuit breaker and plug on, watching the case rates and death totals mount up, for the sake of business, the economy etc.

It is possible that a circuit breaker approach would have meant a shorter overall time spent in lockdown (presumably the less time the better for children and children at risk of abuse).

It is not in children's interests either to have NHS services collapsing under the strain of an uncontrolled pandemic and this would risk further additional deaths in itself.

Could say the same about people suddenly caring about CEV people to be fair

This.

I'd still like to know for certain where this damn virus came from. I know it wouldn't change where we are now, but it would be very satisfying to know.

You can argue about people's motivations til the cows come home, it doesn't actually change anything.

The bottom line is that lockdown has significant and profound consequences for all of society, particularly the most (non covid) vulnerable. We need to face up to those and factor them into decision making. Simply sweeping them under the carpet as many seem to continue to want to do, is not morally justifiable.

I don't think anyone has claimed to "care" about CEV people.

They just didn't want them inconveniently dying all at once and / or disrupting the health service and the rest of society with thousands of severely ill people.

A thousand or so extra people dying per week, presumably many of these CEV, is apparently just fine and dandy.

anyone who does not support wholesale investment in the services we need can stop pretending they care
@rrhuth - here is an economics lesson for you. The current UK gross debt stands at 106 per cent of gross GDP (annual government revenues, essentially). And yes, this is as bad as it sounds. To give some context, in 2009, in the wake of the 2008 bank bailout, this figure was 63 per cent.
This debt is at this level because of lockdowns. It will increase more with further lockdowns. It will also increase more as more small businesses go to the wall due to WFH policies etc.
Who pays for all this? The fucking money fairies?

I completely agree we need to take all factors into account re decision making.

That's rather different to saying that because of 1 very sad case, we are going to blame a whole lot of social problems just on lockdown and therefore can never have a lockdown again (when it seems likely that we will have a wave of infections hotting in January that could apparently involve millions of people).

No one would want a lockdown per see - I was very happy for about 2 days looking at some positive figures for the winter, before omicron came along.

But it just might turn out expedient to have a circuit breaker or something like that in January, and it is more complicated than saying "never again".

Who pays for all this? The fucking money fairies?

When the penny finally drops for people about what this means for public services (and yes, public sector jobs), all hell is going to break loose.

I agree with this The bottom line is that lockdown has significant and profound consequences for all of society, particularly the most (non covid) vulnerable. We need to face up to those and factor them into decision making and I rarely agree with @TheKeatingFive as I think we are often at opposite ends of the spectrum on measures needed for covid.

Yes these impacts must not be swept under the carpet. My views is lives should not be traded off, you can not trade one right against another.

I guess the question I am asking is 'if we (UK society) were happy enough with x domestic violence cases pre-covid, sufficiently happy to have cut the refuge support and services available so that more people were being harmed in an average year, why are we more concerned about y additional domestic violence cases caused/exacerbated by lockdown?'

The government WAS happy with x domestic violence cases pre-lockdown, and they were happy with that number going up, so why are they concerned about the extra percentage caused by lockdown?

Why is an extra domestic assault caused by lockdown worse than an extra assault caused by cuts to services? It is the hypocrisy, I can't bear the hypocrisy of Conservative government members and those who vote for them not caring about additional assaults caused by cuts to refuges/services but suddenly caring about women assaulted during lockdown.

The whole thing has been dreadful but UK services were dreadful before. I would like to tackle the ongoing issues in a meaningful way, rather than obsess about lockdown. I think another lockdown could be needed, one day.

Has a 'circuit breaker' ever actually achieved anything? Any that I recall were totally pointless. And these were in the context of less transmissible variants.

I think we need to be more realistic about what we can do about spread. I just don't know that there is much in the tool kit. The focus needs to be on preventing serious disease.

@churchofthepoisonmind

anyone who does not support wholesale investment in the services we need can stop pretending they care *@rrhuth* - here is an economics lesson for you. The current UK gross debt stands at 106 per cent of gross GDP (annual government revenues, essentially). And yes, this is as bad as it sounds. To give some context, in 2009, in the wake of the 2008 bank bailout, this figure was 63 per cent. This debt is at this level because of lockdowns. It will increase more with further lockdowns. It will also increase more as more small businesses go to the wall due to WFH policies etc. Who pays for all this? The fucking money fairies?

If our economy is so fucked we might want to address Brexit which is going to cost far more than Covid will.

If the government can afford Brexit, it can afford anything.

@herecomesthsun why do you keep calling for the same policies which are clearly not making one iota of difference? Jesus wept, it is like banging my head against a brick wall. Circuit breakers??? For the love of god, this diseases is ENDEMIC!!! You can't push water up a hill. A circuit breaker - ridiculous phrase btw - will not change anything (at best kick the can further down the road while costing a few more billion).
Mass psychosis - that is the only possible explanation as to why people truly believe that hiding away in our houses is going to solve this.

@herecomesthsun

I don't think anyone has claimed to "care" about CEV people.

They just didn't want them inconveniently dying all at once and / or disrupting the health service and the rest of society with thousands of severely ill people.

A thousand or so extra people dying per week, presumably many of these CEV, is apparently just fine and dandy.

Well, they do on here. Plenty on MN supporting restrictions because they "care about other people", the insinuation being that those who are against restrictions don't care about others.

Fact is, most people have their own interests at heart. Someone who has a vulnerable family member, who is comfortably off and can WFH might be happy with restrictions. Someone with children at school who struggled to work and homeschool will likely be against school closures.

All this arguing about who cares most about others is a veil for the truth, and the truth is that the vast majority are keen to do what will be best for them personally. I include myself in that.

Yeh we really can’t afford anything. It’s not just us but next generation paying for it - those that benefit the least.

Unfortunately there’s not much people can do - write to MP, protest if allowed, voice on SM but hopefully the message is getting through. Most people are aware of the damage by now and choices from before are different now.