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.

DGR now you're even further down the list for testing

shrug ... It's hard to be cut up about it. If the tests are in anyway reflected in the organisation surrounding them, mine would probably come back as pregnant with kittens.

....as opposed to your employment drawers inside your tights?

Queen 👀 😂 !

I haven't worn tights or a skirt / dress since a job interview in 1993
and since I'm now retired, I never will again

Back to Brexit for more incompetence

RafaelBehr@rafaelbehr

UK gov seems strongly influenced in current Brexit talks by belief that brinksmanship
- looking reckless enough to do no deal; burning boats to more aligned destinations -

delivered better deal for Johnson than was on offer for May;
that Boris won a game of chicken in 2019...

Can see why PM and others want that to be true (and it contains a grain of truth, to extent that EU allowed more uncertainty into deal than was previously comfortable with),
but dominant dynamic was that Johnson's posturing covered a retreat ...

The brinksmanship worked in terms of the domestic political narrative

• a Boris-branded was better than a May one because it delivered more pristine sovereignty over trade, albeit at the cost of market access and decades of pain in NI ...

But it didn't actually change the calculus on EU side, so the essential premise - we showed our muscle, they blinked - is just wrong.

Now that miscalculation is compounded by a feeling that EU will have even less stomach for WTO terms later this year than it did in 2019 ...

So assumption must be that core EU red lines will dissolve because Britain has something Europeans want so bad they will distort the essential legal structure of their project to accommodate it ...
which has pretty much been the argument since 2016.

And the options for UK will also be pretty much the same

• cave and try to brazen it out as a kind of victory (Johnson's speciality) or actually go ahead with a WTO Brexit. (Maybe trying to swerve political fall-out from cost by blaming it on coronavirus economic meltdown.)

It is very hard to get off this trajectory, because accepting the need for extension means admitting that there is a cost to abrupt cliff-edge Brexit,
and since Johnson's Brexit has one of those built in,
it means conceding that the great deal was not so great after all.

Once the fiction was established that Boris got a better deal by threatening something stupid, it became impossible to improve on the deal by retreating from stupid.

So stupid is now the default setting, and stupider is the way to get there.

Well done everyone. /ends

The Saga of Stupid

Now bloody weatherspoons getting ready to open in June!

Weatherspoons getting ready to open in June!

It's a social Darwinist's wet dream.

In theory wetherspoons should be able to manage it better than a lot of pubs - fewer tables and the app for ordering (the staff are, of course, cannon fodder here....)

In practice it will be packed full of pissed up idiots the minute it opens its doors.

Although will people want to go to the pub?

I am looking forward to some relaxation of the rules as much as anyone but can't see it feeling 'safe' come June.

My first thought is you sneaky, conniving bastards. Rewriting the narrative that government did everything they could to save lives, but they were following the scientists, who couldn't be swayed. Not the governments fault that so many died.

DC as the hero!? That he was the one to insist on lockdown against those naught scientists... wow, such creative re-writing that you have to admire the work of Batman and boy wonder Robin.

I am sitting back with popcorn to enjoy the crunch moment when Johnson announces what will happen with Brexit.

Both the US and the EU are backing Ireland in this and they will want Britain to honour the Good Friday Agreement. I can't see Congress approving any sort of trade deal without it.

www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/NeuartigesCoronavirus/Situationsberichte/2020-04-29-de.pdf?

Germany's estimated R0 is down to 0.75 (95% confidence interval: 0.64- 0.87)
(RKI report 29/04/2020, 12:00 am)

After being at 1.0 for the previous couple of days, with no dramatic changes in either new cases or deaths, just the same gradual reduction trend,
I have to wonder how meaningful these theoretical calculations are 🤔

Anyway, everyone here will be watching the curve of daily new cases very carefully next week,
when the effects of the relaxation measures should start to show up, if significant

Although will people want to go to the pub?

Pub.

Wetherspoons.

You say this as if the two are the same thing.

BCF at the press conference today they talked about how infections are increasing in Germany again, but that R0 would suggest that's not true. Raab would never lie I am sure What's going on?

Infections are not increasing again

• well, the daily new cases and deaths have been on a gradual decline for weeks now

They probably meant the theoretical R0 number had risen to 1.0 on about Monday,
theoretically meaning cases should be neither increasing nor decreasing

However, the R0 had fallen to 0.75 by the time of their press conference, so they were out of date
as well as using the wrong terminology

However, R0 is actually complicated to calculate accurately and there are often debate about it

So for someone who had to become Brexit secretary to learn where most of our fresh food came from .... all that is probably way over his head

I am so mad tonight - the complete bulk shut over the figures of deaths in care homes - but have only counted those who were tested...... never mind the fact they refused to test...... it's all so bloody cynical and dishonest.

The DC thing with SAGE - I will watch that with interest....... I think we will see leaks from the scientists refuting that.

Then there's the guardian article about NHS frontline deaths, with Coroner's advises not to look at provision of PPE - absolute fuckers . So much for independence. It's a new low.

Sorry bulk shut = bullshit

I am sorry but I cannot get worked up about the care home numbers
they have never been hidden

dying under palliative care in ones own home is much better than the brutal alternative of a ventilator in ICU
and for those with dementia / alzheimers massive medical intervention would not have benefited them OR the greater NHS

several of my friends parents have died my family are not in that scenario and are happier that hospitals were not involved

it was a mild winter
its been a brutal spring
but nobody is immortal

It's all become a bit normalised now, it seems to me. We know we won't get PPE before the figures have dropped to a point it will be almost worthless. We know the figures themselves are wrong and we won't know the true extent of them for weeks after deaths have occured (and even then only by trawling ONS) and we have no idea who is making or has made decisions on behalf of our nation.

Meanwhile we see chancer traders starting up - people booking dog friendly cottages on my social media for August and owners falling over themselves to offer their properties. I'm wondering if we've hit a numb point, where people are now saturated on the news because nothing is changing. We are doing the same that we were 6 weeks ago; promising tests and PPE that never arrive whilst people die and the figures plateau.

UK at 4419 deaths in the last 24 hours ?

UK at 4419 deaths in the last 24 hours ?
que ?
is that the catch up figure ?

I am sorry but I cannot get worked up about the care home numbers

You, Dominic Cummings, and the person who decided to ‘stiff broom’ covid patients back into care homes to infect everyone like wildfire.

dying under palliative care in ones own home is much better than the brutal alternative of a ventilator in ICU and for those with dementia / alzheimers massive medical intervention would not have benefited them OR the greater NHS

What of the alternative of not dying of Covid at all?

Tatiana
the person who decided to ‘stiff broom’ covid patients back into care homes to infect everyone like wildfire.
Is there any evidence that this happened ?
THere is lots that it did not

What of the alternative of not dying of Covid at all?.
Nobody is immortal.
Care homes are geared up to providing peaceful caring deaths in a home environment.

"I am sorry but I cannot get worked up about the care home numbers"
" the brutal alternative of a ventilator in ICU"

Listening In Germany, very few - at any age - of those treated at home, or even in hospital end up on a ventilator
Early treatment e.g. giving O2, can often avoid ever getting to that stage

Treat people with breathing difficulties instead of just letting them turn blue
Give them O2, like BJ had
Test and give meds for the other infections that often tag along after COVID has weakened the immune system

BigChoc
The German and UK hospice system is the very best
but people do not live for ever
Cold winters kill the elderly
Flu and pneumonia kill the elderly
Nobody is immortal
but everybody deserves dignity at the end of their life