Westminstenders: Following the EU lead

[RedToothBrush]

Coronavirus poses a particularly Irish shaped question. How the UK responds to Irish plans for ending lockdown and whether Arlene continues to back an all Ireland plan will be fascinating to watch and see justified regardless of which way we go.

The UK for all its new found independence is looking very closely to the success / failure of EU strategies before making our own plan public. Mainly because we've yet to write one.

Johnson hasn't led much. He's delegated. Yet he gets all the praise for doing the sum total of fuck all and never being the bad guy. There always another fall guy to blame.

Economically we are stuffed and promises of a very quick bounce back don't look likely based on public confidence and willingness to return to places like pubs restaurants and shops.

Our ability to adapt to new conditions at short notice has been tested and businesses can not afford to do this again soon.

This is the background to which we go into talks. Both sides need an extension to serve their best interests. Johnson is determined to cut our nose of to spite our face for the sake of his legacy and to keep those paying the back handers and dodging tax happy.

fyi, Clavinova Swedish deaths are concentrated overwhlemingly in care homes and among the very frail & elderly

As with very recent immigrants everywhere, I would expect that Sweden's most recent immigrants are overwhelmingly young

Hence at v low risk of death and appearing in death stats

(they may be at higher risk of hospitalisation than others of the same age, but not at 85+ risk level)

Even in the UK, with BAME immigration from decades before Sweden,
care homes are disproportionately white
The average age of a COVID death in the UK is 80+
so ONS stats has deaths as over 80% white

Daily mail apparently very well informed..... know the new slogan and everything.
I would say we are racing out of lockdown - and even if they decided it wasn't the thing to do..... it's going to happen.

I have to say it's made me very hesitant about going out...... and am less likely to do stuff......

Local Tesco's apparently didn't limit number of people in the store today so there were queues up the aisles to check out 😱 the works gone bloody crazy

You consistently seek out any story to distort and blame immigrants for problems in Western countries.

No, I don't - I had no idea, "The far right in Sweden are blaming non-European foreigners" - you've read that - not me. I haven't distorted anything or blamed immigrants.

I'm aware who he is
You made no mention of Nuri Kino in your first post.

Clavinova On many threads, not just Westministenders, you keep raising issues about immigrants
and implying they are a large part of whatever "problem" is being discussed,
whether homelessness or now COVID deaths

It is a notable characteristic of your posting

"Not sure their immigrant population is very similar - more refugees in Sweden. Housing probably closer together as well."

You are obviously implying this small minority were the reason for death rates in Sweden being 10 x their neighbours

Posts by Clavinova, by a lurker...

1. C&P wall of text, usually propaganda or lies
2. blame minorities or "the left"
3. quote a poll
4. throw in something about their fictitious child to pretend they aren't a bot

MrsL That's irresponsible of Tesco
I wonder if that was one disorganised store, or new policy to make money quickly

The Republican leader in the US Senate has refused to pass a COVID bill unless it includes
legal immunity to businesses from being sued by workers or customers who catch COVID there

US law works more on the principle that people sue afterwards for damages,
unlike European / UK law which forbids firms in advance from taking certain risks - "the precautionary principle"

So rightwing US business donors are demanding they be allowed to open - but that they must have this immunity

UK businesses don't have such immunity

• and can't be granted it by the government during transition, because we are still bound by those pesky EU laws ....

BigChocFrenzy
And you posted comparisons between Norway and Sweden such as this;
"e.g. Norway, next door to Sweden and v similar ethnically" -

which is why I posted;
"Not sure their immigrant population is very similar - more refugees in Sweden. Housing probably closer together as well."

throw in something about their fictitious child to pretend they aren't a bot

I have 2 dc - I spent at least 5 years on the education boards.

Clavinova's post seemed to suggest that in Sweden, the death rate among immigrants was considerably higher because they tended to disproportionately work in care homes, where their risk of COVID exposure was much greater.

Though I'm not sure that was the intention of the post, given the history, and it doesn't account for the 10x higher death rate. Surely Norway has care homes too - so why is their death rate lower?

Hmm, I actually thought that if you think you can write your child’s history essay you clearly have not got a child in the UK school system. I have a (recent) Masters in History but I know enough else to know that I am not an expert in what is required by the National Curriculum / exam boards. It is like that small minority of parents who persist in trying to write their children’s personal statements for uni, the teachers soon put a stop to it, quite acerbically too.

When I was at school, parents were forbidden to even teach kids to read or write,
because it was thought methods could clash and confuse the child.

No homework, so none of these demands to learn things or build strange contraptions, as I read on MN
No non-uniformdays
Parents just sent kids off to school - on their own - and gave them tea when they returned.
No mobiles then either, so if a kid were ill, they stayed in school sickbay until hometime

Poor bloody parents now

I think the Government's end goal has switched back to herd immunity again as both the contact app and testing regime seem unlikely to succeed.

The mixed messages are helping beautifully; they want the worried well (and people who think they are immortal)to get it.

We can't kill off this virus within the UK. All it will take is one traveller from another country to start it off again. Therefore, it will be about exposing those with the least risk and urgently treating the sick.

No homework at primary school, that is
V unusual to help then with grammar school homework;

IF it gets killed off anywhere in Europe, I'd expect it to happen only if COVID dies off in summer - and no evidence that will happen

Unfortunately, even if that happens, it'd fly in again afterwards from somewhere

Emilyontmoor

Ds2 is aged 11 - year 7. I helped him with his essay - more than I should have but I'm not going to worry about that now. Ds1 has an Oxbridge offer (different subject/s) - he sat the admissions test/s under exam conditions at school.

Clavinova is definitely not a bot - she has been on the education boards a lot, evangelising about grammar schools.

evangelising about grammar schools

Indeed - I went to a grammar school myself - loved it!

I can't really object to grammar schools, since I went through the Dutch system and that is academically selective. I just think the UK way of doing selection is not fit for purpose and misses out a lot of talented youngsters, mainly due to the high levels of economic and social inequality here compared to other countries. It's a knotty problem without a simple answer.

Pointy things- I can't stand the grammar school system for just that reason - in our area (and my sisters) they are full of children from very wealthy families who can afford to and do, tutor the kids writhing an inch of there lives . Does nothing to promote social mobility (through education) - infact if anything hinders it, as the "regular" high schools have poorer funding.

If anything - upward mobility would be promoted by abolishing them and funding all high schools the same (at grammar school level).

Inspired by Lisa Stansfield ...

The true number of those who have died of Covid-19 in the UK is considerably higher than the number admitted to by the British Government. By Tuesday the Financial Times had put the estimate of those who have died from the virus in the UK at 53,800.

www.ft.com/content/e32ddbf7-0826-4cf7-9a73-18611eb29c23

...

The Portuguese daily Jornal de Noticías agrees that the crucial error of the British Government was to pursue the herd immunity strategy. However it considers worse still the attitude of a British Government which was more concerned with its battles with the EU. It says that even though the British Government officially denies that herd immunity was its policy, this was indeed the policy which the UK put into practice. The venerable Portuguese newspaper describes this as “the error which put a country in the worst ranking for Covid-19”. See (in Portuguese):

www.jn.pt/mundo/o-erro-que-pos-um-pais-no-pior-dos-rankings-da-covid-19-12135387.html

...

Meanwhile Spain’s El Confidencial describes the UK’s response to the coronavirus epidemic as a “British black comedy of covid” which the paper blames on the Prime Minister failing to introduce restrictions until everyone else in Europe had already done so. See (in Spanish):

www.elconfidencial.com/mundo/europa/2020-05-06/boris-johnson-neil-ferguson-reino-unido_2582247

...

In North America, the US digital publication The Intercept tells its readers that Boris Johnson’s lies are killing Britons. See:

theintercept.com/2020/04/30/boris-johnsons-coronavirus-lies

the rest of the world is looking to that Boris Johnson would have us believe it is. It’s being held up as a dire warning of what happens when a charlatan is allowed power.

mrslaughlan I agree - opportunities for academic excellence should not be defined by wealth. In the Netherlands sadly tutoring for the secondary school test (which every child sits) is on the rise. On the other hand allocation of school places works very differently, so the effect isn't as large, and there is more movement between different types of schools so children who are late developers academically still have chances.

I'm broadly in favour of having different types of education, but the UK system is just appalling: it rewards wealth and cultural capital, it values academia above all else, it is rigid and target driven. My two have coped because we're middle class, academically inclined and well off, but I see too many young people turned off with nowhere else to go.

Just watching the French PM and other ministers tslking about detailed arrangements for the end of lockdown on Monday. Care home workers in areas where the virus is active will get a 1500€ tax free bonus and in non-active areas a 1000€ bonus.
Are you listening Boris?

The true number of those who have died of Covid-19 in the UK is considerably higher than the number admitted to by the British Government. By Tuesday the Financial Times had put the estimate of those who have died from the virus in the UK at 53,800.

The article is behind a paywall but how do the stats fit with this article from 2018?

"Ineffective flu vaccine added to 50,000 extra deaths last winter, ONS says."

www.independent.co.uk/news/health/flu-vaccine-deaths-nhs-ineffective-crisis-bad-weather-illness-2017-a8660496.html

Clav Once your DCs are in their late 20s and have made their own way in life along with their peers from all sorts of backgrounds you will realise how sad that post is.... especially at the moment when it is the ones volunteering shifts in care homes, hospitals and research labs /Covid testing centres who impress, and all sadly badly let down by government. The Crick is now furloughing scientists because much of its funding comes from charities, particularly Cancer Research UK, and they are struggling for donations, so they need to plan for a shortfall in funding next year. The testing initiative has more than enough volunteers braving the commute but how bloody ridiculous that the government has wasted time and money on their "superlab" initiative and are now paying scientists who have the skills to help to stay at home doing nothing.......

I do my weekly shop on a Wednesday afternoon and drive past the drive through testing centre, last week there were 50+ cars queuing back onto the road, yesterday it was deserted. That is certainly not true of the British Library testing centre the Crick is supporting. It's a complete failure of logistical planning where it does not support the governments agenda.

I was not impressed by the jingoistic rubbish posted by the northern Brexit cult in my life celebrating the 100,000 target being reached. I was told that now the remoaners (who include the BBC apparently) would have to shut up, the pandemic was 'unprecedented", that it was wrong to criticise with "hindsight" and that "we" had made amazing progress mapping the genome in 5 months (clearly the wuhan scientists who managed it in January and published in the Lancet don't count). I actually couldn't make it up....

Back in the land of reality I had not quite appreciated that Taiwans response to the pandemic kicked off in December before Xi was even aware of it, the state processes meant that ownership was very much left to the regional leadership to devise a plan. They saw what was coming out of Wuhan, slapped in travel controls and activated their SARs testing, contact tracing and quarantine and alerted the Hong Kong civil service. It put Carrie Lam in a very difficult position but even she managed to act. Meanwhile when Xi did find out what was happening, he convened a Cobra type committee, no scientists, three propaganda chiefs....... The sad thing is that being such an exemplar is probably going to mean that Xi will try even harder to make life hard for Taiwan, as they already are for Hong Kong democrats. It will be interesting to see how WHO respond.....

The article is behind a paywall but how do the stats fit with this article from 2018? [] "Ineffective flu vaccine added to 50,000 extra deaths last winter, ONS says."

Oranges are a citrus fruit, while strawberries - despite the "berry" appellation are drupes, where the seeds are found on the outside of the fruit. If you have friends that are impressed with familiarity with foreign languages, you might want to note that "drupe" comes from a Dutch word meaning "tear" (as in teardrop). A close examination of a strawberry would reveal why.

Clavinova - but people are still dying - so if based on ons data ( based on trend ) we're at 55k at the moment, and people are still being admitted to hospital it's going to continue..... and then of course there's those deaths in care homes that because there old that aren't being admitted to hospital ..... well it's hardly like they have a handle on the spread is it...... in 5 weeks if we're lucky we may only have 75/80k...... but if it's 100k we know they really fucked it up and the extent of the lies and deception...... because you know ONS data doesn't lie (well except that we can only look at excess deaths as GP's etc has been told not to put COVID on the death certs if there isn't a positive test.... and well we all know the story about testing...)