Westminstenders: Operation Shock and Awe

[RedToothBrush]

The government is launching its get ready for the end of transition campaign which has been dubbed a 'shock and awe' campaign.

In this campaign we will learn all about what Brexit means and what amazing opportunities lie for having increased customs and borders, beaucracy and increased costs. Bet you are all really excited and looking forward to this.

We will also get a 'Farage Garage' in Kent to cope with these wonderful opportunities in traffic jams. This will be something that businesses throughout the country will be super excited to plan for in their socially distanced Zoom meetings or across warehouses with their face masks on. And banks will be delighted to see an uptick in applications in CCJs and debt reconstruction plans.

It will be a super fun time for the under 30s who have zero hours contracts, worked in retail or hospitality. Or should I say 'worked'.

Meanwhile the right to a jury trial has been binned due to 'long covid delays' which are shorter than they were several years ago. The NHS isn't getting the funding it expected, and waiting lists are longer than ever with no way to clear them. The plan to build more hospitals seems to have disappeared with the Nightingales. Many councils are about to go into insolvency and be taken over by accountancy firms. The civil service is being dismantled and conservative loyalists with no experience being put in charge of important functions of state. Communications with the press are being 'streamlined' to make them incredible of holding power to account and only able to repeat government public announcements.

Anyone looking forward to Christmas? When you write a letter to Santa remember to add 'visa application form', 'a sleeping bag for use at Dover', 'tinned tomatoes' and 'packets of seeds to grow your own' to the list.

I wonder if we could offer Boris and the boys a courgette sandwich (those feeling smug about their allotments might want to check this out).

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8529641/Mother-38-rushed-hospital-poisoned-courgettes-grew-lockdown.html

"Toxic squash syndrome" eh ? Every day is a learning day.

All the supposedly billions extra money that Rishi announced, isn't Colour me surprised

The Scottish Government had pointed this out, because they'd worked out that they were only getting £21 million in Barnet consequential, for which Kate Forbes got excoriated by the Scottish Conservatives and some of the MNers on Scotsnet , who claimed that the Scottish Government were wrong/wasteful/incompetent/not planning on passing on the consequentials/ungrateful (perm any combination of the preceding choices ).

Turns out they were right after all

https://twitter.com/pjtheeconomist/status/1283689556236283904?s=21

I could see that happening mrslaughlan certainly. IMO lockdown was the right strategy and if anything we have been a little slow going into it and a little hasty in coming out. If the deaths figures are dramatically wrong though then the judgements being made on the back of them will be challenged.

What is happening in certain parts of the U.S in terms of cases rapidly rising is concerning and I hope we don’t get anything like that here.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-53443724

Counting seems specifically an English / PHE problem (hence incl Wales) as that article confirms

"Scotland and Northern Ireland, for example, only include deaths in their daily count if someone died within 28 days of a positive test."

Why didn't anyone in PHE bother to check what the other Uk nations weee doing ?

I thought that 28 days was the normal global standard

• still includes the v small % of active cases of people hospitalised / ICU for longer than 28 days

I worked out a very rough ballpark figure on the stats thread that 300k cases would average about 7.5 "normal" deaths per day

Even though I don't have the media or mean age for UK cases (Germany's is 49, as infection age has dropped sharply the last several weeks)
it looks like this PHE carelessness isn't yet significant when averaging nearl 100,
but will be later if deaths hopefully go quite a bit lower

I was thinking more from a pollution POV about aviation DGR but you make a very good point about pandemic control being incompatible with high volumes of international air travel.

I hope Hancock's review will also lead to the UK publishing numbers of recovered and hence active cases,
like almost every other country in the world

I see no reason why we don't have this offical data / estimates

The UK has 293 cases - 45k deaths - xxk (20k ?) active cases
So about 230k recoveries

At least when travelling by car, but to a lesser extent by rail,
you aren't in a terminal at each end for several hours total,
or locked in a single compartment for hours with 100, 200, 300 ... 850 people

Bike tours are the best

@LouiseCollins28

I was thinking more from a pollution POV about aviation DGR but you make a very good point about pandemic control being incompatible with high volumes of international air travel.

Not just air travel. Any travel.

Air is probably the worst - it outpaces the development of symptoms.

But the alternatives - cruise ships - are even more problematic. What do you do once you are at sea and either there's an outbreak on board or the country of origin and/or destination report an outbreak ????

For all this talk of "back to normal", a lot of people (some of who you'd think are fairly intelligent) miss the fact. It's "normal" that got us here. By all means, go back if you like. But don't be surprised when there's another pandemic. And another. And another. And they won't all come from China.

My courgettes are safe - I'll take a picture later

DGR Leaver Who Will Not Wear Mask has just asked where she can go on holiday without having to wear one. Doesn't want to go to Spain as "they are worse than us!". I know I'm poking the bear but have just suggested America, in particular the Trump supporting states . My comment on her wall has got 3 'likes' already!

BA retiring it's 747s; I'm still saying we passed peak long haul. No going back to how it was

The BA 747s going isn't an indicator that airlines are giving up on long haul forever.

BA's 747 fleet was on the decline anyway due the age of the hulls and the introduction of more fuel efficient/less polluting types - the crisis has moved up fleet retirement but BA are still taking delivery this autumn of some more 777-300s and have just taken delivery of their first A350-1000.

Leaver Who Will Not Wear Mask

If it's mandated, I'll wear a mask, but it won't be with sincerity ...

The 747's were already due to be retired - the date has just been brought forward
Lovely old planes
I got to ride up and down in the lift to all 3 floors as a kid

To be honest if anyone is willing to get on a plane the mask is redundant anyway.

I think it is purely common courtesy to wear them in shops/enclosed spaces. It shows you at least think about others. I'm not sure many of them will make huge differences but it's got to be better than what I've seen in shops with men coughing all over produce, for example. I really wish they had done a proper PH campaign on types of mask and how to use them effectively though.

The BA 747s going isn't an indicator that airlines are giving up on long haul forever.

I didn't say it was. Obviously airlines would do all they can to keep the concept of mass long haul alive as long as possible.

But that may simply not be possible if the world decides pandemics aren't a good thing. I know the jury is out at the moment, so it's too soon to tell. But every country in the world is now going to have to make a determination as to where they want to balance a virus free country, and letting in Tom, Dick and Harriet to traipse around.

A lot of long haul was predicated on economies of scale. If the industry starts to contract, then without some market correction, a lot or activity will simply become uneconomic.

Same, domestically, with public transport. If the need to travel declines by much, a lot of buses and trains will need propping up. Or in the UKs case more propping up.

Even if the WFH shift eventually only sees 10% of those that could actually doing, then how many second cars won't be needed ? With the associated reduction in premium for off road parking ?

Everything is connected to everything else in unseen and unrecognised ways, and the long term societal and economic effects of the past 6 months haven't even started yet. But we won't realise that until we're 10, 20 years on.

Just had my hair done.
1st time in 6 months.
Wore a mask as mandated. No issues.

DGR - couldn't agree more.
The new spin on hauwei being a 'security' threat because the supply of US chips may fall under sanctions is just that, spin. I've had lots of involvement with telcos in the past and a big driver of early hauwei kit adoption was actually getting some (price, feature, delivery) leverage against Ericsson. In 5g it was more the early availability and the feature set.
If our telcos end up single sourced again its a problem (single attack surface) just as much as hauwei being involved.

(and hauwei kit has been subject to a more rigorous, in depth analysis of hardware and software than any other vendor:
www.gov.uk/government/publications/huawei-cyber-security-evaluation-centre-oversight-board-annual-report-2019

• the risk to hauwei if anything was ever discovered is so high it just doesn't make sense that they would do anything naughty.)

Louise - I completely agree - lockdown needed to happen , along with things that should have, but didn't.

The whole strategy of this government seems to be a half way house to keep the economy going.... but we have just ended up with it limping along. DH office isn't going open - because the gov wants it too. They see it as too much risk at present to their employees. They have been working well remotely. What they are starting to look at doing is have small groups meet up for a socially distanced coffee....to keep morale and the human connection going. But this is going to happen on the fringes of London...... and I can't see it having huge benefit to the economy

Whatever numbers PHE have got 'wrong'. ONS figures are correct. From Guardian live at 10:09

"The Office for National Statistics has just published its latest coronavirus death figures. They say that between 1 March and 30 June, there were 50,335 deaths involving Covid-19 in England and Wales. 46,736 of those deaths had Covid-19 assigned as the underlying cause of death.

Some 26% of those who died had dementia and Alzheimer’s, the ONS said.

It’s worth noting that these figures are not based on the same apparent anomaly as the Public Health England figures mentioned earlier, and simply count deaths recorded as being caused by coronavirus on death certificates – which means that the example of those who “had a heart attack or were run over by a bus” being counted as coronavirus cases does not apply.

It will also have to be GDPR compliant

Sorry late and catching up, but in future do we need to be GDPR compliant, in theory we could ditch it no?

They have been working well remotely.
Thats the frustration - instead of seizing the green opportunities of keeping home working the crazy gang are now trying to get people back into offices. Hopefully doomed to failure, I know lots of people who are saying they don't see why they should ever go into the office again.

Ok 'our service' economy is built on servicing clusters of people in towns that can't be a sustainable model.

• the effort and thought should be going into finding the best examples of what firms have done and promoting that around the country, potentially huge growth and cumulative health benefits being ignored because of vested interests in the status quo. ( I've seen mobile sandwich / coffee vans pottering round the estates - green shoots?)

The whole strategy of this government seems to be a half way house arsed way to keep the economy going.... and give bungs to their wealthy friends.

Fixed a mistake there.

do we need to be GDPR compliant, in theory we could ditch it no?
Of course we could - just repeal the UK DPA.

But that would block much of the 'service economy' from dealing with the EU - exchanging/storing personal data is kind of fundamental to 'service' .

The DPA is there to try and ensure that individuals 'own' their data - I can understand why corps and HMG might prefer not to comply but I want them to be held to the letter and spirit of the DPA.

Yes, firms that linked worked out home delivery have done well; for services that translates to adopters of deliveroo (for eg Marks & Spencer) are still functioning whereas Pizza Express has had to cut stores. Pubs that did this are also thriving. Long term though I do wonder the impact this will have on new developments - we've been over the poor standard on here before, but with being home becoming more necessary eventually people will want more for their £.

For years I had been resistant to home working, I actually liked the separation of work and home and being in an office to work gives that. I have changed my mind when I’ve realised how much I can do from home and I hope I won’t be going back to 5 days in an office.

Going back to so much unnecessary travel post lockdown when our environment and our health (less car travel particularly = less pollution in big cities) desperately need us not to is bordering on criminal IMO.