The Tierany of Tiers

[dancemom]

Teirtastic times ahead ....

@WouldBeGood

** I honestly do wonder how little basic geographical knowledge yiur average central belt based SNP MSP supporter has about other parts of Scotland too. Sturgeon certainly seems fairly clueless about daily life for many people who live in the Scottish Borders.**

@GreenlandTheMovie I genuinely think this is a serious problem. The SNP is very central belt centric (I used to live in D&G) and they just don’t seem to understand how life works “down south”

Its actually bloody disgusting. There is a village near me which is 1/2 mile from the English border and 2 miles from the nearest English town with a supermarket, yet 17 miles from the nearest Scottish town with a supermarket. In fact with a shop, never mind a supermarket. It has a lot of elderly people living there. The bus service to the Scottish town is poor but to the nearer English town it is quite frequent by comparison.

Sturgeon obviously doesn't care about banning people from shopping 2 miles away and preventing them going out for a walk (not that anyone is paying any attention to the borders closed nonsense thing anyway here).

Of course, these areas don't tend to return SNP MSPs so tend to get ignored.

[quote WouldBeGood]@UnderHisAye people have had enough. Obedience is done. The vulnerable are vaccinated, people see that, and want normality back.[/quote]
Brilliant, it's not like we need restrictions to end so that businesses can get back to making money or anything.

I think that’s what it is @GreenlandTheMovie.

Even if you live in Dumfries your nearest big shopping town is Carlisle, and the nearest Asda or cinema or concert venue.

Restrictions should end anyway now as case numbers now are not the critical numbers.

It doesn’t matter how many people have it if there’s not a hospital problem. And people feel they’ve done their bit.

😂 It's not just "down south" it's also up north too! Aberdeen has long running arguments with SNP government same with Aberdeenshire but not to the same extent.
The August Aberdeen lock down and then the same not applied to Glasgow lost the SNP a lot of support up here but its never been a massive SNP stronghold and they don't seem to care about that fact!

Yes @WouldBeGood but restrictions are not going to be ended by this government based on hospitalisations, so it's pretty self-defeating to behave otherwise.

All the people on here who moan the most about restrictions seem to be the ones who are happiest to keep them going for longer. It defies logic.

@UnderHisAye I don't believe in all the rules I see sense in some of them but also many do not make sense simply because there are legitimate ways to get around them if you so wish and can be bothered to investigate.

There is zero difference between 3 or 4 households meeting outside yet this is banned but put a covid officer (free course) set a start and end time for a walk and you can have 15 people.....

Do I think meeting friends from the city for a walk is magically going to spread covid if they venture 7 miles into our council area rather than 5.....nope.

People follow rules which make sense (I don't go into peoples houses) but people are rightly questioning the reasoning behind many of them given the time they have been in place because the actual risk of that spreading covid is incredibly low of outdoors and keeping a sensible distance

I think it's become a giant game of chicken, really. "The People" know that the restrictions can't last forever. At some point the SG is going to have to release them. Furlough will end, the rest of the uk will reopen and people will holiday and do business there and Scottish businesses will lose out.

While this happens, yes, cases may increase, but hospitalisations and deaths (theoretically) won't - regardless of how much Scotland is open. At some point the SG will have to capitulate to accept living with the virus circulating, but not being so disruptive and dangerous.

People disobeying the "rules" at the moment I think have realised that nothing they do or don't do will affect how quickly that happens - so they've just decided to do as much as they can and minimise the misery to them! Even if their actions increase cases, it won't lead to substantial numbers of deaths once the vulnerable are vaccinated, and it won't affect how quickly we move out of lockdown, as that will largely be driven by the UK government, which has the power to extend furlough, open eg hospitality and retail for the larger part of the UKs population and so on. Scotland could of course open before England, theoretically, if cases were significantly better, but I think the SGs past actions suggest this is unlikely, so not worth aiming for!

I'm not saying it's right, but I can understand the thinking.

I understand the frustration but what a spectacular self-own of a protest

I don’t want to protest. I want to live.

Well we're not going to get there faster if loads of people push case numbers up 🤷🏻‍♀️

The nature of the virus is that it's going to continue it's not going away it now never will.
Unfortunately a lot of misinformation early on means that their is still a lack of understanding with it and people still finger point and blame if others get it. It's not only having a house party which causes outbreaks and it's not only "rule breaking" which results in the risk of catching covid. Yet society still blames the individual. Its a virus it does what a virus does!
Magically staying 2 metres away from everyone doesn't make a blind bit of difference if you have poor ventilation and low temps (hence the biggest outbreaks associated with meat and fish processing places).
Parents standing at the school gate doesn't create a cloud of covid.

You are always going to have cases it's way too virulent and mutates quickly so we need to learn to live with it in a sustainable way.

Getting cases to zero is great at that point in time yet because its a virus it will get back in!

I do believe in letting restrictions up in a measured way but it's never going to stop so as humans we adapt like we have done with many many other viruses.

My concern is just that different variants will come in from Europe. I believe that those with family in Europe should be able to visit them but really wish people could forgo their abroad holidays for a year.
I do, however, hope that we can travel freely within the UK. I read that Wales are banning English travellers, for now anyway.

I am desperate to go abroad and will go the second I can.

I think most people will forgo their holiday abroad this summer purely down to cost it's an extra £200+ per person for testing (one out one back) not many families have a spare £800-£1200 add in quarantine hotels and its 4k extra!

I do think that people with families in Europe should be a valid reason but have to self isolate on return. But large parts of Europe also won't accept UK visitors for tourism at the moment anyway!

Scotland is doing way worse than England in cases just now. Where Emmy sister lives in Yorkshire they are less than 20 per 100,000. Where I am in Scotland is about 80 per 100,000. I’m worried at this rate England won’t let us in rather than the other way around.
I’d really like to know why England’s case rates are going down so much faster than ours. Scotland is the worst in the U.K. now by quite a high margin according to ons. I wonder if it could be because the really depressing original route map we were given just made everyone give up? Or if we’re not controlling outbreaks in hospitals etc as well. There must be some reason 🤷
On the plus side both English and Scottish death rates are looking so much better now and hospital admissions still going down. Just trying not to feel depressed by the constantly rising figures in my local authority 😕

Emmy? That should say my

@Icannever it is depressing that our numbers of infections aren't coming down, despite having a harsher and longer lockdown than England.

I suspect they do know what's causing the higher numbers, but don't want to tell us as may be an unpopular message.

I had a couple of friends in the house on Friday night. We all work from home. I don't really care any more, this seems endless and as a 50 year old I should have had my vaccination by now and indeed would have if I lived in England.

Same here icannever our rates are slowly rising in our local authority

It maybe is because people aren't keeping to restrictions any more. When lockdown ends, regardless of when, cases will inevitably go up. That's why they endeavour to wait till cases are as low as possible before opening up. People taking matters into their own hands mean numbers aren't quite as low as they would have been at the end of April had people stuck to their guns for another few weeks.

We're also getting to the point where a few localised outbreaks can skew numbers - the one in Dundee for example.

And the one at st.Andrews uni. Quite a lot of cases in schools in Fife too unfortunately

@icanboogieboogiewoogie. I really do think the messaging was all wrong in Scotland though and the case numbers compared to England and Wales kind of prove it. I have been pretty rule abiding but I felt such despair at the first routemap announcement and the thought nothing was going to change for the foreseeable future that I did just give up and let kids have friends round to play. They weren’t at school, parents were working from home, shopping online, there was very little risk and it made such a huge difference to their mental health which was seriously struggling.
If the announcement had been less gloom and doom I would have stuck with it for longer. I know this is possibly self defeating etc etc and maybe not logical but sometimes you just reach breaking point or your kids do and the Scottish government should think about that in their messaging more

The higher rates, while not that important in themselves, are really surprising given our harsher/longer lockdown and the English schools going back in full a fortnight ago. It's not because of more testing either. Maybe it's linked to our slower vaccination programme leaving people unprotected for longer, or problems with infection control in hospitals. Or maybe it is purely because NS has pushed us all too far over the past year and the route map to nowhere was just the final straw for everyone. After all the harsher lockdown last summer we now know did not lead to near elimination as we were told, and all the extra 'work' we've put in has got us not just to the same place as rUK but actually to a slightly worse position somehow!

I agree @Icannever

It gave the feeling that we were not to be allowed basic freedoms for the foreseeable future.

And it’s been demonstrated worldwide that harsher lockdowns do not lead to better outcomes.