Illegal to sit in a park but ok to party on.

[Againstmachine]

I am not sure if timelines align but nonetheless we had a government at beginning of the pandemic Made it illegal to sit in a park. Bubbles for single people were only introduced in may.

But in may it was ok to have a party.

Its sickening.

@VikingOnTheFridge

I think Labour have generally been pretty weak as opposition here because their only policy seemed to be to "out lockdown" the Tories and because the Tories did quite a lot of lockdown they didn't have much to say. They should have been really strong on the issues of police abuse of power and disproportionate effect on BAME people. Even if they had wanted to maintain a pro-lockdown stance, there is lots of useful stuff they could have said about mitigating the harms of it. I feel they abandoned a key part of their core demographic or working class or marginalised / vulnerable groups.

I remember Keir saying in January 2021 that he thought nurseries should be closed too. I wasn't surprised that that was his opinion but he said nothing about how difficult that would be for people or the support that the government should be offering if it closed nurseries. What he was effectively asking for was a policy which took away childcare for young children and either left parents unable to work or trying to work while caring for a toddler, which is not safe, with no comment on how to mitigate the difficulty that would cause. One small example which stuck with me.

I certainly feel completely unrepresented in politics right now. I don't think I could in good conscience vote for anyone.

@Wreath21

I'm genuinely quite concerned that some posters are still trying to insist that the lockdowns were necessary and the only problem was disobedience. Is it that your lives are so comfortable that Covid was literally the only thing you had to be frightened of - ie you were not going to lose money, be miserably lonely or experience domestic abuse or a long wait to be diagnosed and treated for another dangerous illness? Is the solution to every problem more sacrifices on the part of other people? Or is it a matter of longing to see the unruly, not-like-you masses under much stricter controls all the time?

I was diagnosed with cancer in 2020. I had to wait almost 4 months for surgery (normally done within a month and usually within 2 weeks).

The delay was caused by Covid-19 patients using up intensive care and staff.

Please explain to me exactly how NOT having lockdown would have made my surgery happen faster?

It's odd how many were actually screaming for a lockdown as early as February 2020
Many threads on here about it. Many of them.
They did it to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed and to try and protect the old and the vulnerable , plus schools were still open for key workers and vulnerable children , they didn't shut up completely ( not where I live anyway )
Now it's all ' we didn't need it' despite the fact that there wasn't a vaccine and many more people might have died and the health service would have collapsed completely.
What were they meant to have done instead ?
You never hear about the alternatives to a huge death toll and suddenly everyone is an expert.

I feel unrepresented too Chessie. It's one thing for Labour to take a pro lockdown stance, but that nurseries comment was awful. Labour could also have gone harder on the reality that the fines approach basically meant people with money to pay for a quiet life and no criminal record could more easily afford the risk.

All the way through this, lockdown was driven by the usual metropolitan elite types who got scared something might actually get them so decided everyone had to do as they were told to stop that happening.

The journalists (if you can still call them that) stopped being journalists and only looked for info that showed what they wanted to see. Scientists, financial and economic professionals all did the same.

Anything that potential stopped them getting Covid got a big thumbs up and the opposite was instantly discredited and argued against.

They achieved compliance from the public through fear and dishonest behaviour of simply just deciding what the science was.

The politicians where forced down a path because one they are the same type of people and secondly have no backbone to stand any sort of ground.

The truth is slowly coming out now and the elite types know they got it wrong. So are now looking for someone to take the blame to make themselves feel better that it wasn't there fault and that's the politicians.

It's a case of "I know we where all screaming at you and forcing you to take a certain path and we probably wouldn't have let you do any difference. But you shouldn't have done it".

So now it's just a case of "look everyone it's there fault, look at how they didn't follow their own rules, look at how bad they are". All so the public doesn't ask why the politicians did what they did in the first place and who's really at fault for the shit we are in. - which is mainly the media and the type of people who run it.

@VikingOnTheFridge

I feel unrepresented too Chessie. It's one thing for Labour to take a pro lockdown stance, but that nurseries comment was awful. Labour could also have gone harder on the reality that the fines approach basically meant people with money to pay for a quiet life and no criminal record could more easily afford the risk.

If anyone wants to know how Labour would have dealt with the pandemic they just need to look at Scotland or Wales.

Not gonna lie, I do feel really daft! We went out for our once a day walk and walking past the shop and really fancying few treats, but we decided against it as it wasn't 'essential shopping'

Labour aren't in charge in Scotland, but I agree we would likely have seen many more restrictions. Not sure what Drakeford has been playing at lately either, his decision to introduce legislation allowing workers to be fined if working outside the home when it isn't deemed essential is just inexcusable.

Labour have consistently called for more restrictions, brought in sooner and lasting longer, along with more public spending - which is either a good thing or a bad thing depending on your viewpoint. Labour would also have gone along with EU vaccine programme rather than going it alone.

@VikingOnTheFridge

Being angry about the restriction on socialising outdoors and being angry that the people responsible for it didn't observe it themselves is not an either/or. It's just plain wrong to present it as such.

I don't have the energy for anger at a party. Learning from the harm done by rules that weren't needed and the way we've been manipulated to follow them is where my focus lies. Ensuring it doesn't continue to be perpetuated is even more important. At the same time the news was reporting on parties this morning, there was a rolling headline that care homes are in a crisis because of lack of staff. Staff that have been made to leave because of govt policies. It's the turn of the NHS workers next.

We need to put a brake on and look at whether the best decisions are being made all around.

By all means focus wherever you think best, but many of us are angry on two fronts and we've every right to be.

I'd also argue that we have to consider whether such strict restrictions would ever have been implemented if those in government intended to be bound by them too. We already knew they weren't going to be the ones suffering due to lack of access to outside space, insufficient devices for homeschooling, denial of access to keyworker places, police misuse of new powers etc. That was always clear. It's now important to spell out that this extended to other measures too. The introduction of these restrictions and the refusal to adhere to them are totally intertwined and come from the same place.

Care homes treat staff like poo ( I have observed this myself with relatives in them )
Lovely caring people who have horrible managers and it is all about the money too ( for the owners)
Long hours, min wage and it is hard work. You can earn the same money elsewhere for less stress and responsibilities. I don't blame people for not wanting to work in them to be honest
I am dreading getting older , I really am:(

@Wreath21

I'm genuinely quite concerned that some posters are still trying to insist that the lockdowns were necessary and the only problem was disobedience. Is it that your lives are so comfortable that Covid was literally the only thing you had to be frightened of - ie you were not going to lose money, be miserably lonely or experience domestic abuse or a long wait to be diagnosed and treated for another dangerous illness? Is the solution to every problem more sacrifices on the part of other people? Or is it a matter of longing to see the unruly, not-like-you masses under much stricter controls all the time?

Indeed I totally agree @Wreath21

*It's odd how many were actually screaming for a lockdown as early as February 2020
Many threads on here about it. *

By March I felt it was necessary. I felt we needed to buy time and understand what we were dealing with. Not so much three weeks to flatten the curve but three weeks to gain more understanding and plan.

I expected busy places to close but never to be told to 'stay the fuck at home' and never to be told we could not see family.

Once it happened, while people were cheerfully baking bread and playing zoom bingo, I was grieving for the loss of being able to get into wild spaces and the loss of every single healthy coping mechanism that I'd worked hard to develop.
I watched the numbers peak and couldn't understand why we were still under such harsh restrictions.

Then we had Summer 2020 with lighter restrictions but the constant threat of them being reinforced and this time during a long winter. I woke nightly with a start and my heart thumping at this threat.
Of course, we went back to rule of 2 outdoors that was never ever necessary.

[quote LadyPenelope68]@Wreath21
I’m genuinely quite concerned that people like you continue to spout such utter rubbish and have this cure so ingrained in their minds that it’s failing to allow them to have rational opinions.[/quote]

And yet you are the one who is sounding irrational. Where is your counter argument or can you only froth like that?

[quote Flyonawalk]@Wreath21 it was clear to many of us in March 2020 that lockdowns were likely to be cruel and ineffective. People angry that the government broke the rules should really be angry that the government ever imposed those rules on anyone.[/quote]
Precisely

@VikingOnTheFridge

By all means focus wherever you think best, but many of us are angry on two fronts and we've every right to be.

I'd also argue that we have to consider whether such strict restrictions would ever have been implemented if those in government intended to be bound by them too. We already knew they weren't going to be the ones suffering due to lack of access to outside space, insufficient devices for homeschooling, denial of access to keyworker places, police misuse of new powers etc. That was always clear. It's now important to spell out that this extended to other measures too. The introduction of these restrictions and the refusal to adhere to them are totally intertwined and come from the same place.

Very much this. One of the major purposes of the most arbitrary restrictions (remember the police announcing that they were going to start searching people's shopping bags and confiscating anything 'non-essential' if there was more disobedience?) was to keep the public occupied with denouncing one another, in a state of confusion but aware they could be arrested or fined or otherwise punished at any time because that left the Government free to get on with the things they really wanted to do. Like Brexit, which was in a large part about stripping away human rights and workplace protections, for instance. Like running the NHS into the ground so it could be broken up and sold off to private companies - Covid was great for this; they could blame it all on public disobedience rather than years of underfunding.

And yeah, sure, other governments whose agendas were not quite so corrupt or malevolent also imposed restrictions (which were often unreasonable and also accompanied by moral panic), particularly at the beginning when no one was sure what to do. Overall, though, most people who aspire to positions of power tend to be convinced that the solution to any and every problem is more punishment, more surveillance and more control of the peasants.

A lot of cases and deaths early on were because of the virus running rampant in care homes, this is completely down to government policy at the time.

Locking down in the manner we did wouldn't prevented that from happening.

*wouldn't have prevented

@Bordois

A lot of cases and deaths early on were because of the virus running rampant in care homes, this is completely down to government policy at the time.

Locking down in the manner we did wouldn't prevented that from happening.

True. Also the complete abandonment of testing and contact tracing in early March 2020, the refusal to consider quarantine in February for international arrivals - and the later exemption to travel restrictions for 'important business travellers'...

Interesting debate. I think we needed restrictions to prevent Covid completely getting out of control at a time when there was no imminent chance of a vaccine. People were starting to restrict themselves well before the government did because they were prioritising their own health over the economy. Johnson initially wanted to carry on regardless but had to come in line with public opinion with a lockdown that certainly saved lives.

But I think the way it was implemented was what you get from headless chickens running around panicking and not thinking it through. Anyone with an authoritarian streak really went for it - remember Derbyshire police following dog walkers with drones? The women who were arrested for meeting for a walk with a coffee?Taping off park benches? Hancock was getting his info from Contagion ffs.
And the worst, making hospitals send people who might have covid into care homes.

By this time last year we were starting to ignore some of the more ridiculous rules, taking kids to the park and happening to bump into their friends. But if you stuck to the rules to the letter then you had a very lonely time.

Completely stupid for the PM to have hosted this party - and other parties - at the same time as all that - and what you get from people who don't think it through.

Biggest story yesterday was court ruling that the VIP (Tory donors and mates) lane for procurement was unlawful, though.

@AlecTrevelyan006

20 May was not the "peak of lockdown". The first wave peaked in early April by cases (though this was limited by testing capacity and many believe it peaked in late March). By mid May there was never any danger of the NHS being "overwhelmed", or even being busy. The next wave started in late autumn as you would expect for a seasonal virus.

We had an early heat wave that year and most people wanted to head to the beaches/countryside by 20 May and hospitality businesses could have been making a killing.

Why were restrictions still in place?, because the government did not want the political flack of releasing restrictions so close to a considerable number of deaths in hospitals and care homes, such deaths lagging date of infection by some time.

That is basically it and each month of lockdown probably cost the economy £30bn- £40bn or so.

Notwithstanding the above - Johnson should definitely resign

I felt exactly the same; the first lockdown went on far too long. I think the aim of lockdown had changed from "flatten the curve" to try to eliminate the virus, although that was never articulated. Failing to get all children back to school for a bit before the summer 2020 holidays was a huge mistake imo.

But I was a real outlier saying this, amongst my friendship group at least (who were mostly who at that time). Lots of them were saying they thought it was too early to release restrictions and were glad their kids weren't in the years allowed back to school, as it was safer for them to stay at home till September.

Biggest story yesterday was court ruling that the VIP (Tory donors and mates) lane for procurement was unlawful, though.

Only half of the story though;

Mrs Justice O'Farrell ruled that while the use of the VIP lane - officially known as the high priority lane - was unlawful, she found that both of the companies' offers "justified priority treatment" on their merits and were "very likely" to have been awarded contracts even without it.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59968037

who were mostly wfh then

[quote Clavinova]Biggest story yesterday was court ruling that the VIP (Tory donors and mates) lane for procurement was unlawful, though.

Only half of the story though;

Mrs Justice O'Farrell ruled that while the use of the VIP lane - officially known as the high priority lane - was unlawful, she found that both of the companies' offers "justified priority treatment" on their merits and were "very likely" to have been awarded contracts even without it.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59968037[/quote]
@Clavinova Have you in your busy schedule of posting squirrels had a chance to watch the Downing Street briefing from 20th May 2020?