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.

Public confidence in the media has collapsed during this emergency partly because of ludicrous stories such as this

They are so full of shit. Public confidence is rapidly collapsing all right, but not in the media.
That's such a Trumpian thing of them to say.

I really appreciate the Westminstenders wit and wisdom on the current Covid carnage, so wouldn't want it to be 100% Brexit.

Out of all the government staff that could sit in / on sage, No 10 decides that an unelected SPAD and a data analyst 'consultant' who helped orchestrate the leave campaign are the best people to do so? This speaks volumes as to who is pulling the levers of power. IMO, Cummings went to those meetings because they'd be right up his street and Johnson couldn't be bothered.

"these threads should revert back to Brexit issues only
I hope they never do, because they've never fully been about brexit at all. I call these my politics threads although I have thoroughly enjoyed the conversations that touch on the most random of things. Probably that's because that's when things aren't going to shit but still. The depth of knowledge here on all manner of stuff is phenomenal.

Rattled, aren't they? The simply thing would be to publish a list of who attends SAGE.

Public confidence in the media? More like public confidence in a Government of spin, which when members get caught out, start lying their way out of it. Surprise, surprise, no one believes them anymore.

Possibly Hancock isn't a liar - probably someone who is just out of his depth but like all of them, toes the party line above all else.

Belated PMK. Thanks as always for these threads, always insightful. Have read for ages before posting & are as relevant now as they’ve ever been. Brexit was always about more than just leaving the EU and the political machinations, which continued into the last election & (from the SAGE committee revelations) continue even now.

Westministenders are Politics & Current Affairs threads imo,
with occasional posts about the USA too and any disaster or terrorist attack

So Brexit was the dominating theme for years, with UK politics

but now COVID dominates everything
Normal politics, even Brexit, has been dumped on a shelf, with little happening

However, we discuss the political side of COVID, the Brexit bunglers theme carried on by the same cast in govt

Every time I think we've reached Peak Trump ....

These responsible adults having to rush out warnings against injecting or ingesting bleach:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/24/trump-disinfectant-bleach-coronavirus-claims-reaction

Harvard’s toxicology Twitter account felt the need to issue medical advice online following Trump’s statement, giving a scientific reason for why you shouldn’t swallow bleach (you know, for when common sense won’t suffice
.....
Celeste Ng@pronounced_ing

I have a lot of sympathy for every PR people at every single disinfectant company who was told yesterday,^
“Look, we need to you write a serious non-profane press statement telling people not to inject bleach - in the next 10 min, please.”

https://www.ft.com/content/e6f53b73-2fd4-486d-a24b-fa4e050ddc39

Reckitt Benckiser, the UK maker of household cleaning products like Lysol, issued a statement on Friday saying
“under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body (through injection, ingestion or any other route)”.

Falkirk Council did well.

I feel like Brexit and the covid response from the government are inextricably interlinked.

• Brexit kept the govt from paying enough attention to the pandemic threat initially

-the pandemic has implications for deciding on a transition extension -the same type of attitudes are causing the same type of mistakes

Chris Grey is as always incisive on this topic: chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2020/04/coronavirus-and-brexit.html

Plus this is a cats and garden thread, the politics is just for fun

I love this thread it's the only sensible and in depth and intelligent one whether it be Brexit or Covid it's still all about politics and taking this government ( and others) to task. I think I'd go insane if I didn't have this thread for want of an intelligent conversation! ( Plus the people are lovely).💐

There are some truly lovely gardens on here.

I think the USA is coping, largely by treating the Presidential briefings as a sideshow and focusing on their own Governor/Mayor/local leaders. Trump is making himself irrelevant by gutting his administration of anything resembling competence and then giving crazy advice in public.

www.rte.ie/news/world/2020/0422/1134054-autopsies-reveal-us-virus-deaths-earlier-than-reported/?fbclid=IwAR3WVb6Ldnn2wjXzF6o7Qed5wpjQjWk02-GlEKk1W_g4zT-WjdEaUsedg2k

Meanwhile, in California:
Health experts say a shortage of test kits means the US may be underestimating the extent of the virus outbreak.

A study this week indicated that the coronavirus was likely far more widespread than official figures suggest.

Blood samples taken from 3,300 volunteers in Santa Clara County showed the true number of Covid-19 cases was at least 50 times higher than the number of confirmed infections in the county, according to the study by Stanford researchers.

You know how certain posters were gladhanding Boris and co. because "no one could have predicted this might happen" /

Well it turns out not only did someone predict it might happen. They came up with a serious of recommendations to prepare for it.

• ensuring supplies of PPE
• damage to economy
• track and trace contacts ..

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/coronavirus-government-warned-pandemic-action-plan-cabinet-office-a9483291.html

So we can forget any pretence this came as a surprise. The bigger question is why were the recommendations of the 600-page report clearly not only unimplemented, but almost counter implemented ?

...
Tellingly, the report also warned of significant public outrage over any perceived poor handling of the government’s preparations and response to the emergency.
...

That dossier, DGR, was "signed off by the chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance" and of course the government maintain they are ""guided at all times by the best scientific advice". Apart from the small matter of ignoring the report Sir Patrick signed off. He must be livid.

Meantime, I wonder what other meetings DC has attended that he has no business attending ?

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. The working class don't like being told how to behave 'properly' by middle class professionals who look down on them with contempt. The working class did not have a problem with the section of the upper classes which had an anti intelligentsia attitude because they a) had limited direct contact with them so weren't being told what to do b) had a shared level of conversation.

This is also found in studies in voting patterns in the US and the Trump support phenomenon.

Eg Trump is regarded as lacking approved middle class taste (his gold gordy furniture isnt out of step with 'tacky bling') and the way he speaks is at the level of how an 8 year old child speaks and has the same level of logic. This meant there were certain groups who felt alienated and left out of political discussions could now identify with a leader who was 'just like them'.

The irony with covid-19 is the 'revenge of the expert' and how the UK government is now desperate to demonstrate they are 'following the science' and we have the guardian story from last night debating whether Dominic Cummings - the inventor of the 'had enough of experts' sales pitch - is an observer to SAGE or an active participant or whether his mere presence is an ominous sign of intentional design to sabotage scientific messaging.

The clash of reality with political rhetoric is coming to a head internationally with covid-19 in a way that anti-intelligentisa cheerleaders are struggling to cope with. It reverses the trend of the past 4 years where they are now on the back foot and have lost control of narrative setting and public sympathies.

In the UK this really crystallises around the cannonisation of the NHS. 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.

In the US it crystallises around the destruction of 'ObamaCare' and the relationship between employment and health insurance. And associated race issues. And how all around good public health has to be government led rather than purely an individual responsibility.

Brexit has never been an issue in isolation. Brexit has always been a symptom of wider political issues not a driver of them. These threads have always been keen to point out how they are representative of the growing culture war and how that screws the general population stuck in the middle of that and how it serves oligarchs (of multiple political leanings). Leading figures who are regarded as left leaning have capitalised financially through branding and virtue signalling for profit in far too many cases whilst failing to practice those ideals in their workplaces (see trendy apple with its all inclusive ideology and branding - until it gets to the thorny issue of iPhone production in China and the environmental damage of production / consumerism)

There is public desire for change. There is also a disconnect between how the world works and lifestyle. There are vast parts of the population who haven't been able to join dots where they should. Covid-19 is doing a great deal to focus minds in the right areas in different ways and forcing people to think about things in a different way to they have before.

Of course there are still those caught up in the culture way and unable to see how they are being manipulated and how some political leaders really don't have their best interests at heart.

And on that note I give to you the attached image of how 30 people in one state have been reported to have injested bleach.

Short version of this post: if you don't want covid-19 talk on this Brexit thread anymore, you haven't been paying attention to the problem of Brexit properly and the wider problems in society that Brexit encapsulates and worsens rather than 'cures'.

Covid-19 discussion is essential to the next steps of Brexit negotiations. It is not separate from it.

"Following the science" is yet another 3-word slogan for the BrexiTory faithful to parrot, which conveniently deflects the blame (if/when the reality is ever acknowledged by them) away from the BrexiTory prophets and followers.

(See also "don't need testing" vastly popular on MN from a few short weeks ago, which disappeared like magic when the government announced more fictitious testing capacity).

(I'm expecting "don't need masks" which was in the starting line-up but got left on the bench to wait for the opportune substitution moment, to feature very soon).

The question of whether Whitty, Vallance, Harries and others knew they were being lined up as human shields, and whether they were complicit and/or actually believed in any of the strategy, "data" and spin, will be a very interesting one to investigate in the coming months.

I'm thinking that Cummings was going to write DC but that would be casting aspersions on Darling Children everywhere now perfectly exemplifies the Peter Principle.

Hmm, on reflection that principle probably reflects the whole of the current crop of government ministers. Not reassuring in a pandemic.

One thing that I have observed (yes, this is glorious anecdata!) is that fewer people seem to be isolating due to new persistent cough/fever.

Last month, there seemed to be loads of people on SM and in my wider circle that were fully isolating because of this - particularly those with young kids who after all are prone to random fevers, coughs and what have you.

Now no one seems to be.

Is it simply because we have moved on from the winter illness season and anyway there's noone to catch routine bugs from?

Or are people just not bothering now we're in lockdown?

If the latter, this needs to be sorted out before we start lifting things.

I think Cummings exemplifies the Rasputin Principle, and could do with a walk down to the (metaphorical) canal.

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.

clash I've noticed that within my own online friendship groups. Normally because they've isolated once due to someone having a fever or cough in the household already so they think they don't have to do it again. It's often pointed out that they don't know if it's covid now, was covid then or whether neither was.

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

I hope they didn't hear Trump talking about bleach .....

A thought:

Many US rightwinger say "don't drink the KoolAid" to dismiss any Democrat posting

Maybe Democrats should riposte with "don't drink the bleach"

Brexit kept the govt from paying enough attention to the pandemic threat initially
-the pandemic has implications for deciding on a transition extension
-the same type of attitudes are causing the same type of mistakes

Agreed. It’s clear Brexit ideology came before intelligent, informed handling of the pandemic.

Now we know of Cummings and Warner’s presence the original tack based on data modelling rather than medical protocol, so criticised by medical advisors, makes more sense.

It explains the ideologic refusal of the EU procurement scheme, the heinously naive ventilator request of Dyson and Red Bull Formula One, relying on Burberry for PPE when they could have had 16 million face masks shipped in by 2 other companies. (Burberry has produced just 100,000)

Fuckwit though he is I’d have thought Boris would have been more likely to go with medical consensus without those two goons around. Cummings is the ideologer in Chief. And clearly massively out of his depth.

At a guess in the early days of the crisis Cummings and Warner dominated the agenda, and now their incompetence has been so devastating, the medics and scientists have gained ground.