Westministenders: The Virus

[RedToothBrush]

Its like living in a Bad Disaster B Movie.

If you thought Brexit on your TV every day was Bad, The Virus is a whole new level.

The 5pm broadcast with Johnson and friends, and the public infomation video with the unblicking Chris Witty (who has such unfortunate mannerism he makes me think he's me a Dr Who alien akin to the Slitheen).

Who knows what will happen. Just that everything has changed and our entire economy is now on life support whilst we figure out how to deal with the crisis and what on earth our exit strategy is.

Johnson has however refused to join a joint EU purchase scheme designed to assist countries through the crisis.

Meanwhile the US is about to go nuts... so what does that do to a trade deal?

More money for the NHS? More hospitals?

Well its possible that might just happen...

After Pence, next in line is Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi
Not spectacular, but sane
Being a Democrat is incidental

Questionmark what you say is absolutely spot on. I just don't see our current political leaders as ever having an interest in leading such a discussion. You talk about the difficulties in getting one vested group to see and acknowledge the concerns of a different vested group.

What, in any possible way, have our current governmental leaders ever done to indicate that it is within the realm of their ideological beliefs to view the economic, political, or sociological landscape other than their own extremely narrow perspective? Politicians like JRM and Farage have spent their entire adult lives adhering to these narrow beliefs. This pandemic is not going to make them change their mind.

It is only at the level of the electorate that such a conversation could be had, but we've seen how we'll that's gone in the past few years. We desperately need leadership with precisely this kind of conversation in mind. Where will it come from?!

Trump's real views are as scary as Pence's in my view, he actively assaults women, he supports white supremacy, he is totally disinterested in providing support to any needy group.
He is also inconsistent, provides dangerous advice and pivots wildly under stress.

It truly is a testament to how awful Trump is that Pence seems a more reliable leader at this time. But it really is a shocking choice.

LedByDonkeys are back

It is of course a sign of rigid and inflexible thinking to see things in terms of lockdown/no lockdown as equating to prosperity/no prosperity. There will be a few people whose lives are actually better off under lockdown - which isn't a great advert for the pre-C19 operation of the economy at all.

Rather than framing the issues in terms of "lets end lockdown or we'll lose money", a much better use of peoples minds, debating abilities and imaginations might be to ask "what could we do differently ?". Although it's not really something the UK ever did, so no point starting now.

The UK is much like the media it has spawned. Very good at punching a headline into the narrative so the casually engaged think "great, that's all sorted then", and then following through with the exact opposite, safe in the knowledge people will only remember the headline.

Take airline bailouts, for example. It sounded like Dishy Rishi had the mood of the nation when he announced - to headlines - no bailout. When he inevitably U-turns, all people will remember is the headline, and how the airlines were not bailed out, as you need JCBs to shovel the cash into Bransons ever-open pockets.

@DrBlackbird, the next generation of politicians.

I am not confident that any of our political parties are ready for that conversation, right now. The Tories are still obsessed with Brexit whilst Labour needs to be rebuilt and the Lib Dems barely exist.

the next generation of politicians.

Haven't been born yet.

With an 80-seat majority until Dec 2024,
the UK system does not allow the Opposition to do much, even if they become brilliant

The Furlough scheme looks and sounds great but the reality
www.gov.uk/guidance/claim-for-wage-costs-through-the-coronavirus-job-retention-scheme
is that businesses will see no money till the end of May at the earliest
which will be too late for many.

I hope that Rishi uses this opportunity to push through transparent share registers in tax havens and transparent LLP registers in the UK.
Its a seemingly trivial move that will massively increase the tax take of governments down the line
and big business dare not howl at the moment .....
Beardie is a particular target of that move

The new 2010 intake into both Tory and Labour has been described by many political observers as the most talented for 30 years

They would be the new generation, maybe along with any then young MP who arrived after 1997

I don't know how many of the Labour 2010 newbies are left though

The Furlough scheme looks and sounds great but the reality www.gov.uk/guidance/claim-for-wage-costs-through-the-coronavirus-job-retention-scheme is that businesses will see no money till the end of May at the earliest which will be too late for many.

I didn't need to read the link to know that. Cynicism is it's own efficiency ...

I've thought all along that the govt should pay 80% of NMW - without checking accounts or savings - to anyone registered as SE

Precisely because it could be done comparatively quickly, no need to check & treat individual cases differently

Reportedly ⅓ of them only get 10k annual profit or less, anyway,
There could be recalculation up to 2.5k in June for the better off

AND of course, drop the ridiculous cutoff of zero money for those SE on 50k+

This would also be extended fairly easily to those who are a Ltd company, if they paid themselves any salary at all

Ignore the amount of salary, just pay 80% of NMW

2010 newbies
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPs_first_elected_in_2010_to_the_55th_UK_Parliament

The new 2010 intake into both Tory and Labour has been described by many political observers as the most talented for 30 years

I hope those political observers were sacked soon after ?

I think the reality is that the 2010 intake described itself as "the most talented for 30 years" and the arslikan media uncritically published that as "fact".

In reality, the 2010 intake was the dregs of the dregs of the dregs of the post WW2 lineage - the brightest and best having been unceremoniously sent to die.

Bigchoc
You socialist you, that's a UBI

I'm a pragmatist

It was obvious immediately that it's better to get some income asap than the perfect solution later

The poorest have no savings and live paycheck to paycheck, whether employee, gig or SE

Checks on savings & earnings, handling cases individually would obviously take months

So just treat everyone the same

and then scale up to 2.5k later, if need be

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/eu_referendum_2016_/3869149-Westminstenders-A-test-of-logistic-planning?watched=1

How can they write off debt?!

Do you mean:

"Daily coronavirus briefing: £13.4bn of NHS debt to be written off to aid coronavirus fight"

That just means the NHS doesn't have to pay it back out of their budget
i.e. they have effectively received £13.4 bn more money from the Exchequer

Thanks @BigChocFrenzy

I'm just viewing Brexit as it being 'furloughed' whilst CV19 is of paramount importance to most governments - especially right now in Europe (inc UK, etc).

Very probably there are 'skeleton staff'' in the backrooms contemplating/working on Brexit - but no one, anywhere can do more than speculate on anything right now.

"Daily coronavirus briefing: £13.4bn of NHS debt to be written off to aid coronavirus fight

That's not even a year of £350 million a week.

Compare and contrast the coronavirus briefings in France.

The FR govt makes some errors early in the crisis (allowing local elections and football matches to go ahead) but their handling of the epidemic has been admirably transparent.

In addition to new (confirmed) cases and hospital deaths, they are now publishing not only deaths in other settings but also an estimate of excess mortality, and an estimate of milder cases that resulted in a medical consultation but no hospital admission.

There's also a government website where you can use a map to get local data (so I now know that 17 people are hospitalised in my département, 6 in intensive care, no deaths).

(Link here for Auld: geodes.santepubliquefrance.fr/#c=home)

Good news is that new cases are down sharply in France - which applied a range of measures all at once about 18 days ago (rather than the more gradual approach seen elsewhere). Too soon to call a trend though.