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Brexit

Westministenders: Reployed back to No Deal Planning

974 replies

RedToothBrush · 18/05/2020 22:52

Now Covid-19 is over (yeah I know right) lots of civil servants who were switched from brexit no deal planning to covid-19 planning have been switched back to their original remit.

For some reason this doesn't exactly fill me with confidence.

We've also seen yet another doubling down on the EU not being flexible and how they need to make a deal. And lots of rhetoric about being serious about no transiton planning.

Remember we have something of a deadline looming at the end of next month.

So before we are even out of this crisis, the government have lost interest. Today's press conference was an eye opener - Van Tam openly said that the time taken to get test results was too long and wasn't good enough yet and meant track and trace wasnt still operational despite it being such a crucial factor in being able to go into the next phase as planned on 1st June.

Another deadline we won't make - the Manchester Nightgale still has patients and the local authorities in the NW are going mental. So the government is playing more silly buggers over blame and villianising the evil workshy teachers. Noting the government guidance for teachers on how to teacher children at home says fuck all and the guidance on reopening schools makes a Theresa May dog ate my homework style document look positively well thought out, in terms of practicality. (Not even going to touch on the question of whether its safe - the whether its workable one is more important).

I guess that means things are getting back to normal at least.

A recession looms, but workers rights are now fair game and fully in the government cross hairs - as we see from a lack of PPE for the 'heroes' and the attacks on the teachers. As well as the carers who were sold down river. That'll be the ununionised carers...

Taking back control.

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OhLookHeKickedTheBall · 19/05/2020 22:51

yoikes sorry to hear about your SIL. Unfortunately I think it's dependent on where you are and how stretched they may be, but that is similar to how cases around my way have been dealt with. If you're not on deaths door you won't get tested. I hope she feels better soon Thanks

mrslaughan · 19/05/2020 22:51

((((((Bangs head against wall))))))) but many Covid patients don't get a fever....

mrslaughan · 19/05/2020 22:52

Has trump got shares in that drig🤔 he seems overly invested in it....

yoikes · 19/05/2020 22:57

I'm shocked tbh.

No idea if my bro should now isolate for 14 days? They have been given no advice.

We live in a very bad area for nhs services - our ambulance service is the worst performing in the country.

ListeningQuietly · 19/05/2020 22:57

MrsL
The farmers like to charge £55 a week for a bed in a caravan - they fit 6-8 Romanians into a caravan, docked out of wages.
They also run 'shops' selling food to the workers. At a mark up.
A nice little earner.

The Festival workers (of whom there are many, many thousands) are incredibly self sufficient
so the farmer would have to pay out the whole of the wages bill
AND have workers who know UK employment law Wink

Tied housing and essential accom eg on horse stud farms is superficially similar - but a lot less grim.

Auntlouisa · 19/05/2020 22:59

.

RedToothBrush · 19/05/2020 23:00

The local farm I've got my veg from for the past 6 years has been inundated with local teenagers looking for work. They have been happy to take them on and crucially train they up (and doesn't expect them to work as fast as Eastern European workers and has stressed this a lot). They've been 'playing games' to make it a competition to keep up moral and motivation and apparently those they've taken on have been doing really well and are enjoying it.

It's interesting to hear about. The farmer is a bit of an evangelist against large scale farming as it is and has been taken on by a college to try and teach some of his rather old fashioned skills to a new generation of farmers.

It's a real contrast to what's happening on a national level.

It's part of the reason we started to support them years ago. It wasn't just about the food, but the land management, skills and community aspect.

And that's where British agriculture is going to have to go. And fast.

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ListeningQuietly · 19/05/2020 23:03

RTB
And that's where British agriculture is going to have to go. And fast.
Hear Hear

Dontlickthetrolley · 19/05/2020 23:05

@mrslaughan last week, or possibly week before 3 players from Brighton Hove Albion tested positive

yoikes · 19/05/2020 23:08

I have 2 really lovely farms/farm shops fairly locally but by god, they are SO ££££!
Add to that the delivery charge or petrol....
But I suppose if we want decent food after 31st December we will have to get used to buying much less but it costing much more :(

OhLookHeKickedTheBall · 19/05/2020 23:13

yoikes if your SILs symptoms fit with covid even without a temperature, then your brother should isolate just in case. It really sucks. That said, they've said anyone over 5 can now be tested so she could (or maybe your brother on her behalf given she probably feels too terrible right now) try to get a test that way.

RedToothBrush · 19/05/2020 23:42

That's your main issue. Cost.

But we have to consider what we are paying for. We pay (paid) land owners for land management through the EU. So it's a hidden cost of farming we aren't seeing when we buy food directly. (And this is where Thatcher and the uk rebate was such a good deal...) This is going to change. There are arguable points in this area about how the EU hasn't necessarily been good for UK agriculture (yes I did say that), but this is where we need time to adjust to a new system and to have a robust plan for this.

We've got used to cheap mass produced veg and huge amounts of wastage, both at source and in our homes - something that certain celebrity chefs have made a song and dance about (including to the EU when it comes to fish). It is one of those things which is unsustainable in the long term regardless of our EU membership whether we want to admit it or not for bigger reasons.

In the short term we might have huge issues of our farming being undercut which could completely destroy the sector and make us extremely vulnerable in terms of food security.

But this is an issue which isn't going away either.

Longer term we might have bigger issues because of that food security issue, population growth around the world and climate change.

I don't know how you get through the intervening period whilst protecting UK agriculture (without potentially damaging and risky protectionism) but it is something we are going to have to give a huge amount if thought to. Axing farming and food standards isn't necessarily going to help that. (Though it will focus the minds of the better off seeking food which they trust the quality of - and maybe drive demand for high quality British grown produce. Whether there is enough demand is another matter).

In a similar vein our local farm has done better than some farms locally in recent years when there's been weather problems because its more like a small holding with a range of crops rather than having risk stacked up in a a single crop. It's also asked for investment from its customers in innovative ways so it could avoid going to the bank (and paying interest in that way).

So I do think there are things that can be done but it's certainly not going to be easy.

For us we took the conscious decision when we started buying from them that it wasn't just about the food that we were buying. It was a lot of other aspects to it - particularly the community aspect. It's certainly paid off for us as we've had greater food security and convenience during lockdown and of course there us still Brexit cliff edges looming.

Our investment (and that's how we've viewed it for a long time) is starting to pay off for the farm. They've expanded hugely and they started several community related projects as part of the business. And there's the employment factor - which for local teenagers unable to do anything else this summer has been brilliant.

The money staying in our local community rather than being sent to Eastern Europe makes a difference.

This is one if the few areas I perhaps start to sound more Brexity, but I do think there are major structural problems with our agricultural industry fir a large number of reasons which Brexit might make us face up to. Covid-19 certainly has exposed some if these issues.

And yes food insecurity and just general poverty play a big part in this huge problem.

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RedToothBrush · 19/05/2020 23:47

Sorry to bang on about it but our local farmer has a real bug about skills in farming and how we lack them as a country and are losing them is a really important thing here. And that does play into the thing about us not having skilled agricultural labour anymore.

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JeSuisPoulet · 19/05/2020 23:50

Just got a chance to catch up - about to read this thread so PMK!

I've had a surprise visit by a vet friend (I had thought one of the perks of lockdown was NOT having people turn up unannounced, but hey, it was the longest adult chat I've had since it started so...)

Interestingly she said that she as a vet has been made aware of a saliva test, trialed in Italy I think, which has a very high accuracy (I think she said 99.8?!) and has results in 11mins! Anyone else heard of this?

JeSuisPoulet · 19/05/2020 23:52

I should add our conversation took place on my porch with the required 2meters distance although my dog loves her and pushed past me to sit on her feet, demand a belly rub and do a zoomie around the front lawn

JeSuisPoulet · 20/05/2020 00:17

Halfway through catching up and had to post re picking. A friend of mine posted on her social media about being shown a secret field of asparagus "left to rot due to COVID"...where she and her friend seem to have merrily picked about 40 bunches. Now, immediately I was thinking this is a Brexit issue and not COVID related but secondly, she clearly didn't ask the farmer's permission. This is what farmers will have happening if they don't drop their insatiable need for extra profits/charging for a bed rather than using furloughed workers who may need training and staggered hours. They won't last long.

HoneysuckIejasmine · 20/05/2020 06:49

Red DH and I have agreed recently that if our meat standards are lowered in line with US, we will stop buying it except from the farm shop where we will know it's providence. Much more expensive but we'll just eat less of it.

AuldAlliance · 20/05/2020 07:23

PMK with a (blurry) pic DS2 took yesterday not far from here.

Westministenders: Reployed back to No Deal Planning
squid4 · 20/05/2020 07:57

Policy is that we are NOT ALLOWED TO TEST people we are not admitting to hospital
So I see lots of almost certainly COVID patients but because they don't need oxygen/ hospital admission, I send them home untested
I advise them to self isolate for 7 days or until asymptomatic and family for 14
I have been kicking off about this a lot but
We do not have the contract tracing service set up to offer them correct support so this is the situation currently
Everyone who gets admitted to hospital (for any reason) is tested currently

@yoikes, I'm sorry
Can she order a test online, I thought anyone with symptoms could now (fuck knows if it will work)

I actually cried the other day because I feel like I am complicit in this governements fuck up of this situation

squid4 · 20/05/2020 07:58

I want to add I work in an area which is WAY ahead of the curve in testing, we were testing staff a good month before anyone else and at one point my hospital was responsible for 10% of the tests in the UK

and still

HoneysuckIejasmine · 20/05/2020 08:09

I was reading a thread yesterday and the gist was "if infectious people were moved in to care homes from hospital, isn't that the doctors fault? What were they thinking?!" And that is just so depressing.

mathanxiety · 20/05/2020 08:09

But then tons and tons of strawberries are grown for Wimbledon, which isn't going ahead, so they won't be required, so it won't matter that the strawberries don't get picked, because the pickers haven't come. Yes, it's a shocking waste of a good crop and a shocking waste of money, but deterring immigrants is what people voted for.

But what about British Jam? It was going to take over the world.

prettybird · 20/05/2020 08:09

Just watching the BBC Breakfast News, reporting that there were 6 positive results in the Premier League, out of the 748 people amongst players & staff from 19 clubs.

So how come they were able to get tested? ConfusedHmm

squid4 · 20/05/2020 08:10

Everyone at work has just basically accepted we're all going to catch it (about a third of the department have tested positive at some point so far)
The complacency is doing my head in
Yeah most of us will be ok
Yeah we have no other option
People are so angry
But we just get on with it
A nurse I know said he shouted at someone he overheard in the supermarket the other day that was saying they didn't know anyone who had been ill and was it really that big a deal. Told them our consultants have been on ITU, nurses on ITU, paramedics have died

I feel like the public just DO NOT GIVE A SHIT that we're going to die. It seems no amount of deaths will register. I'm sure in decades to come we will look back in horror, but right now half the fucking country is supporting this.

urgh.

squid4 · 20/05/2020 08:11

@HoneysuckIejasmine that's what I've been saying to my DP for weeks, am I no better than a fucking nazi soldier

"oh I was just following orders"

Sad Sad Sad