Westministenders: A Year of Johnson

[RedToothBrush]

So having given the benefit of the doubt...

... whats your reflections?

Good (and yes do have some thoughts on the positive - challenge yourself on this one as its important) and the bad (and yes this is the easy bit but keep it within reason)?

Restrictions on meeting other households, but you can still go to the pub ....

Yes, very subtle.
Hancock is targetting Eid

Exactly BCF - family vs Weatherspoons.

Or it could just be that households meeting doesn't make money for business

So BJ wants them all at the pubs & restaurants

BCF but do you know what will drive this? Outrage. The govt doesn't have to say it, it will be all over the news and then those who had no clue about Eid will know and put it all down to "muslims again"

Yup. You can go down the pub. You may not have a socially distanced gathering in your garden.

Go out. Don’t stay at home.

He may have new scientific data that spending money works like a vaccine and protects people,
whereas meeting the same people in your home doesn't

With all the mixed messages, I wonder how good compliance will be in the North

I believe there’s also more data on alcohol + people you don’t know has protective measures and reduced the spread of Covid.

Its really bizarre and my facebook is full of utterly bewildered, confused and just pissed off people at the manner in which they have handled this communication exercise.

Some of us are within the affected area and some of us aren't.

We have no idea what this means in practice. Can one of us visit the other but not the other way around? Will everyone abandon the pubs and restuarants within the lockdown area and just go to the ones a couple of miles down the road in the area thats not under restriction?

If there is a local lockdown, the idea that the pubs and restuarants can stay open is utterly crazy.

Its bad enough that you can't have other households in your house and you can only meet one household at the pub but theres loads of strangers in there. (Unless you live somewhere everyone knows everyone else who is a Friday night regular because they are all mates anyway, in which case you end up playing a weird game of either pretending not to know anyone or shouting across the pub).

Bonkers. Just bonkers.

I wonder if there will be restrictions starting the week before Christmas and running over NY

This govt keeps pissing on local democracy - I keep getting shocked by this

(In Germany, it would be the individual state - there are 16 - and local authorities deciding and implementing measures, not the national govt, which just agrees broad policy with the states)

Lewis Goodall Retweeted‬‬ ‪‪Deborah Cohen@deb_cohen‬‬

‪‪Am hearing that directors of public health were not informed of covid measures being taken in Manchester, and parts of Lancashire & W Yorkshire ‬‬
‪‪prior to Matt Hancock’s public announcement.‬‬

No chance. The idea that they couldn't have announced it a few days ago rather than the night before Eid is unbelievable.

Its so cynical and not so much a dog whistle but a fog horn or should I say dog horn?

Public health should be agreed and implemented at local level, by people who know their patch and their residents

BCF I thought two weeks ago the government passed responsibility for local lockdown to local authorities to decide and manage. Clearly I was wrong.

I've friends due to travel to France to see family tomorrow. They live in Manchester. Its now not clear what will happen or whether they will be allowed in by France.

Jim Pickard @PickardJE
this feels like a shambolic way to announce a semi-lockdown of great swathes of northern England

Fionna O'Leary @fascinatorfun
Yes. Tried to find the regulations underpinning it.

There’s a reason why I couldn’t.

HofC Legal clerk here

Graeme Cowie @woodstockjag
If the Government has made a statutory instrument changing the lockdown laws, the text of it must exist, and must therefore be able to be made public.

If the Government does not have the text of it, then it cannot exist, and the law cannot have been changed.

Name cannot be blank @iamalsoabot
Or they will make the SI tomorrow, with retrospective effect.

That way the law can be (deemed to have) changed before the text exists.

Graeme Cowie @woodstockjag
Retrospective criminal sanctions, especially those in secondary legislation are (putting at its absolute lowest) problematic in terms of compliance with the Human Rights Act and Article 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Its not law. It didn't come into force at midnight.

The government is saying something is the law when its not.

I invoke the Cummings loophole clause and claim my £200 prize.

It's possible the govt had no idea when Eid was and somebody just told them

It's madness and will be chaos with just a couple of hours notice
Everyone will have made their arrangements, done all their preparation, organised travel ....

People needed at least a few days warning, to plan an alternative form of celebration,
just as you wouldn't cancel a couple of hours before Christmas Day

No wonder the govt want to dump the HRA and the ECHR

They're too incompetent to organise how to do things without breaking international law

Exactly BCF. The HRA and the ECHR keep on popping up don't they. Its uncanny.

That's 5 million people who suddenly have to change plans
Not just Muslims

That's a lot of people who planned to have their parents or friends visit etc

What about all the people OUTSIDE the restricted area who might have planned to see people INSIDE the restricted area? You need to add them in too. Its not just people INSIDE the restricted area who are affected.

Last week the government were saying that people who were working from home should return to the office. One of the reasons for this was because city centres were suffering from a particularly high drop off in footfall. Provisional town where commuters live have seen a shift in footfall patterns.

Now this.

Businesses will consider their duty to their shareholders, not BJ's wish for them to bring in workers to spend more

Back to the football chant

"What a load of rubbish"

If this govt were a football team, they'd be deafened by the chants and covered in bog paper

BCF DH's company have said from the word go that they will not be returning to the office until 'after everyone else'.

Strange feeling tonight considering how this affects us and what it means both in practice and how we will respond to it.

BJ said Coronavirus is 'bubbling up' in up to 30 areas

I wonder if there'll be more local areas restricted, or if they are all oop North