Westminstenders: No pubs till Christmas?

[RedToothBrush]

Today the news has moved towards acknowledging covid-19 reality: Nicola Sturgeon has explicitly stated that some social distancing will carry on until the new year in all likelihood.

When Matt Hancock asked if this was true for England too, he refused to say yes but he said that Scotland was working from the same framework as England.

In case anyone does still need this spelling out, this means the outlook for the hospitality and leisure industries is bleak.

There are extremely unlikely to be many enjoying a holiday in the sun any time soon, whether it be in Devon or Spain.

We won't be celebrating birthdays in restaurants nor having a pint in the pub.

Conversations on the doorstep from a couple of metres away is as good as it gets.

That means if you can't adapt you may not survive.

To add into the mix changes to customs to those companies who are operating seems insanity. But that's a political not a scientific decision to be made.

Whether reality in this will kick in, in the next six weeks or so before EU budgetary decisions relating to an extension have to be made remains to be seen.

Until then, there is no news but covid-19.

I've been commenting to dh that the "Led by Science" mantra used by the WM politicians is being used in a way that already suggests that they'll blame the scientists and sundry other "experts in the inquiry to follow.

I don't get that sense from Nicola Sturgeon when she says it Maybe because she acknowledges that they are doing their best in unprecedented times but will inevitably make mistakes . Maybe it is also because the tenor of her briefings are of treating those listening to her as "the grown ups she knows we are" rather than talking down to us.

When I saw DC up thread, i thought David Cameron? What has he got to do with it?
Agree Brexit and Covid is x all interlinked, just as the global supply chain is.

I don't have time to follow the thread right now due to work pressures but has this been discussed? Report from the Institut Pasteur in France of a serological study in an affected area of France. The results seem very bleak to me: even in a very young population, few infected people (17%) were asymptomatic, so the case count is probably less undercounted than we thought, and immunity levels in the general population are therefore very low.

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.18.20071134v1

LQ makes a good point: we are in danger of taking our eye off the Brexit ball. We maybe needed a reminder that negotiations are continuing (just) and the risks of no deal are probably not diminishing.

According to Barnier’s recent comments, I’d say No Deal risk is increasing.

Vagueness where there should be detail on fronts, yet no extension.

all fronts ^

Surely the disinfectant of choice to be ingested on MN would be Zoflora? There could be a special fragrance eg Covid Fresh.

In an effort to add more Brexity stuff, I idly wondered how much reporting had been done of yesterday's negotiations and stumbled upon a video of Barnier's statement the Sun hes posted on YouTube, with a twattish headline about "Moaning Michel Barnier" threatening to sink Brexit and a few lines of summary below.

Top-notch analytical journalism right there.

F* me, though, the comments on there...
I'm willing to bet that the people criticising Barnier's English just a few weeks after he had CV are the same (monolingual) ones saying that BJ is entirely justified in taking time off to wander around Chequers because the poor poppet was poorly.

Mistigri that is not good news at all.

Agree likelihood of no deal increasing not least because Govt reaction to the pandemic demonstrates their continued belief in the power of lies, obfuscation and magical thinking, now conveniently rebranded as “following the science”.

One health
www.bva.co.uk/news-and-blog/blog-article/covid-19-has-there-ever-been-a-more-critical-need-for-one-health/?fbclid=IwAR2BrGuazLpPWGQJuldXgIE1jBtgBmTZ-w23SHpiAKcca_PMl2bWAoYCcSk

From the Nick Gutteridge series of tweets about Barnier's press conference.

Barnier says he 'reminded David Frost again that the faithful implantation of the Withdrawal Agreement is absolutely central to our ongoing negotiations'.

To me that sounds like a thinly veiled threat advice that unless the UK is prepared to implement the Withdrawal Agreement which the UK signed off (cough, cough, procedures for NI; cough, cough, Level Playing Field ), then there is no point in continuing the negotiations.

Pandemic or no pandemic

Apologies- posted too soon.
We view the morals and ethics of disease in humans and animals differently (quite rightly imo) but unfortunately pathogens do not subscribe the same niceties.

Its anecdotal but lots of folk here seem to think that after the 3 weeks are up it'll be back to normal....

Convo with the vicar this week....he doesn't think the church will open by xmas.

Sobering to hear someone in the know say it.

I must admit after saying in DS's parent chat at the start of this that I was very down and trying to mentality prepare for what's ahead and how long it was likely to last I got very frustrated and have generally tried not to engage with anyone but the sane on Facebook and WhatsApp.

I was told by other parents to not be so pessimistic and was meet by shocked debelief when I said schools may be out for the whole of summer and some measures may be in place for 18months.

I have to say, that given the noise from government in the past day or two I'm reassured that I'm not crazy and do wonder if those people have heard what's now being said and how they are coping with it.

I've largely got my head around the reality of the situation now and find the news gradually revealing this and telling us our progress in the process as useful as I can see progress rather than a lack of end which is where other people seem to be now.

I'm missing people but my close circle of friends seem to be adapting to that now. We've had a couple of on the doorstep brief chats when we've dropped food at each others and it's become clearer that we are more or less on the same page even though we weren't saying that explicitly before lockdown.

I can not be doing with the stress of explaining in detail how and why covid-19 measures are going to be ongoing to people who are not yet in the head space to deal with reality if I'm honest.

Brexit was based on the concept of the public having 'had enough of experts'.
In reality this is a reflection of social attitudes and a middle class v working class conflict.

Except that Brexit isn't just a (northern) working class phenomena. It's also the choice of many of the smug comfortably off Tories of the South East of England.

The Brexit message was about the need for more health care and the Covid-19 messaging centres around preserving and saving the NHS. By a group who want Brexit to exploit NHS privatisation for financial gain.

But boy oh boy, didn't Johnson know this? Hence the £350 million a week for the NHS. Not a slogan asking to improve buses, or sort out the housing market, or sort out school places. He knew exactly what he was doing - although he hoped not to win, so that he could have seen Cameron off without any more effort on his part.

Fuckwit though he is I’d have thought Boris would have been more likely to go with medical consensus without those two goons around.

Remember what Heseltine said of him: "He sees the way the crowd is running, darts ahead and shouts, 'Follow me.'" He will see the way the crowd is running now alright, in support of the NHS. He probably knew that the crowd is against Cummings, so kept his involvement with the medical committees secret. Now the cat's out of the bag, so some quick back pedalling or just plain lying is in order. "Oh he [Cummings] needed to listen to the arguments." Yer, right!

To me that sounds like a thinly veiled threat advice that unless the UK is prepared to implement the Withdrawal Agreement which the UK signed off (cough, cough, procedures for NI; cough, cough, Level Playing Field hmm), then there is no point in continuing the negotiations.

How will this be spun? No prizes for guessing - "Nasty EU won't negotiate." Not, "UK reneges on the Withdrawal Agreement that they signed."

mathanxiety that article is exactly why I think the UK government doesn't want to test. They don't want to know the true extent of the spread. I'll bet the scientists are aware.

Meantime, the current policy is led by eugenics, apparently., not "following the science".

"thinly veiled threat"

Barnier just calmly stating the facts, which don't change:

If the UK govt reneges on the WA it signed and / or still wants cake
then it's No Deal

La fin, mes chéris

and any foreign govt would be very dubious about signing a new trade deal, or even stating negotiations,
with a govt that broke its most recent international agreement

This weeks New Scientist has the outcomes of the STEM jobs survey that they do every year.
Up to a third of UK STEM workers are considering leaving the UK to improve their career prospects if Brexit goes wrong.

Most UK STEM workers think that the £30,000 cap will damage UK science.
Most think that the groovy new visa scheme will not work.

How would the UK fight another COVID type disease if the brightest and best have left after Brexit

Barnier just calmly stating the facts, which don't change:

Oh Absolutely, but you know what our right wing Press are like.
The best they and the Brexiters will manage is that it would all have been wonderful if it hadn't been for the corona virus.

and any foreign govt would be very dubious about signing a new trade deal, or even stating negotiations, with a govt that broke its most recent international agreement

No, I would not necessarily agree. I think you need to qualify this with any normal foreign Government. A trade deal wholly in the favour of the US is one which the Trumpites would embrace gleefully. And they would still hold more of the cards.

More traffic on the roads today than in any of the previous 5 weeks. Not sure what that means, but DW and are are like clockwork on a shopping run, and leave the house at the same time, so it's a direct comparison.

Also had to queue to get into Sainsburys - first time.

Was more traffic on the roads last night too (we hear it going past).

So I'm guessing people have made their own minds up.

More traffic here too.
More people in the village (drove past main shops)
Lots of people/kids out

No, I would not necessarily agree. I think you need to qualify this with any normal foreign Government. A trade deal wholly in the favour of the US is one which the Trumpites would embrace gleefully. And they would still hold more of the cards.

From memory, the proposed US trade deal gives the US a veto on any further UK trade deals. So it'll probably be the last deal we ever sign. Which musty simplify things surely ? Could certainly save a small fortune on negotiators and buy some (US supplied at 10x price) PPE ?

Pmk

There will be no negotiations before November that might anger the Irish-American vote enough to come out in droves to vote against Trump

after which any proposed US trade deal has to get through the US Congress

.... which it won't without the stipulation that the UK must fully implement the NI Protocol in the WA

iirc, the US Congress voted unanimously to protect the GFA & NI Protocol
and ensuring no goods barriers within the island of Ireland, no reduction in cross-border work