Guilt Free Railing 18

[WouldBeGood]

Will it ever end?

Are they trying to keep the focus on Covid to steer minds away from the rest of the shit show?

But yes to the point kids are being used as pawns in a game.

@Lockdownbear

Are they trying to keep the focus on Covid to steer minds away from the rest of the shit show?

But yes to the point kids are being used as pawns in a game.

Yes, is the answer to that.

Yes - the whole focus on "taking the virus seriously" (i.e. the SG are doing this, and the opposition, rUK and basically everyone else aren't) is so blinkered. They seem unable to understand that "taking it seriously" doesn't mean keeping every single restriction possible in place and never removing them "to be on the safe side". There are several different, possibly even conflicting ways of "taking it seriously"! The SG doesn't have the monopoly on Keeping Us Safe, regardless what they want to imply...

The way NS speaks to opposition MSPs at FMQ and similar if they question the decisions made is awful - "not listening to what I'm saying...not taking it seriously...saying the pandemic is over...infantile question..." Of course she thinks the decisions the SG are taking are right, for whatever reason, but surely she has to recognise that it is normal and fair to question those decisions, and that doesn't make them Bad, Uncaring people who want everyone to catch covid and die..

I note the Message on the door cutting is now that it may be necessary due to changes in air pressure caused by some of the other things proposed. Wonder how long it took a researcher to come up with that one...Can't say its convincing me.

Less than flattering review of Nicola Sturgeon by Murdo Fraser in the Scotsman today. He's obviously got a political angle to push but I have to say I do find myself agreeing with the core premise - I had always thought that NS was smart, even if I also thought she was duplicitous and dishonest and misrepresenting figures to make political points. I am wondering lately though whether she is literally just taking 'advice' from whoever at face value and not really understanding it (everything has uncertainties after all), let alone putting it into context with all the other things that she's supposed to be balancing. It might explain some of the weirder restrictions/plans that she's stubbornly pushing despite the data, and despite it just pissing off an ever increasing number of people.

I think she, and the other SG members, are pretty thick, and that shows in their unwillingness to take these big decisions by looking at and weighing up evidence. Instead they knee jerk, muttering “common sense” “safe side”.

Oh Boris PMQs just had a go at SNP over the DIY ventilation doors

Just been reported that, providing the encouraging data continues, England could scrap the legal requirement to isolate within weeks. I could be wrong, but I think that is the last thing that was legally enforceable (obviously people are free to wear face coverings etc. if they choose to). Wouldn't it be something if England was fully back to normal (and least in law) and Scotland was still running the health service on an emergency footing, masking children in classrooms and making healthy people isolate because they happened to pick up a positive line on the test (with higher excess deaths as our reward).

t's the slow creep of 'we encourage you to .. ' that then becomes normalised that is so worrying IMO. So during most of 2020/21 the line was primary school kids didn't need to test unless symptomatic / close contact and then it was get a PCR. Then LFT came along and it was you might want to test your child before meeting someone vulnerable etc, , and now we have had letter saying they want us to LFT our primary aged kids. The majority of DS class are LFT twice a week, in some cases every day. We are never going to get out of this hellish loop if people just don't stop and think about what they are doing and why ...

Lfts for primary age? And no consideration of the mh effects of that for kids who are already struggling at school.

I have to chuckle - dh hasn't even finished his isolation yet and if it's scrapped in feb it'll be hilarious. So much money and work good will lost due to covid this month!

I reckon the issue is the snp have pandered to people with (understandable) covid anxiety and stoked it, and now they can't change horses. It's not clear how the snp can now change the message so that people now feel safe after a two year drip feed of you aren't safe.

I reckon you're probably right @mapleleavesreturn, although surely even the most ardent supporter is noticing a mismatch between the rhetoric of England being reckless and irresponsible (in July and over Christmas apparently) and the reality which is absolutely no difference in outcome. We were told by Jason Leitch (so it must be true) than omicron was going to continue climbing until somewhere in Feb, when in actual fact it peaked around New Year after the modellers yet again were found to be massively pessimistic.

Ironically, according to the figures, Scots are actually less safe than the English (at least in terms of our overall death rates), despite (or maybe because of) all these measures to 'keep us safe'.

But of course the snp will anyway still cry victory for their prudence somehow!

@2022HereWeCome

t's the slow creep of 'we encourage you to .. ' that then becomes normalised that is so worrying IMO. So during most of 2020/21 the line was primary school kids didn't need to test unless symptomatic / close contact and then it was get a PCR. Then LFT came along and it was you might want to test your child before meeting someone vulnerable etc, , and now we have had letter saying they want us to LFT our primary aged kids. The majority of DS class are LFT twice a week, in some cases every day. We are never going to get out of this hellish loop if people just don't stop and think about what they are doing and why ...

You’ve just this week been asked to LFT? It coincides nicely with a campaign that I’ve seen on social media to pick up test kits- my council (previously of dirty tier 3 status) have been tweeting where to pick kits up from etc. The dentist of doom back on the radio again today reinforcing the fear message. Meantime, the rest of the U.K. makes progress in moving forwards and ‘living with’ and not ‘living in fear of’. I say again for the people at the back, watch things lift just in time for May elections…

More testing! Ironic too as they ban single use plastic cutlery…

I think we got a letter from public health last week which now includes a line about supporting your child to LFT to keep the virus under control, and there's been stuff from the Council to all parents about continuing to follow restrictions and LFTing too. I don't read it properly any more tbh as DS comes home and tells me who's got Covid and who is LFT every day as a matter of course

Dentist of doom on the BBC website saying the pandemic is not over .... I've just booked a week in England at easter time to get away from this nonsense.

2022HereWeCome we're off to the Lakes next month. Cannot wait.

Yougov survey yesterday was asking about attitudes to isolation and to paying for lateral flows.

I think NS feels guilty about some of the decisions she made in early 2020, eg discharging hospital patients into care homes without testing them. Now she's determined to be seen to be caring/protecting/more cautious than rUk.

Re the ridiculous door chopping, I'm fairly sure she told Douglas Ross that fire doors wouldn't be chopped. Though obviously chopped doors will facilitate the spread of fire.

I think I have well and truly given up caring what the SG say they aren't going to change their stance as they want to appeal to voters who believe she has done a brilliant job in "protecting us" (with terrible death stats from other things)
They are massive hypocrites using long covid as one of their excuses for their protections whilst still refusing to adequately address the serious lack of services. Or constantly moving goal posts, not providing evidence sources to their statements or using out of date and selective stats.

@2022HereWeCome

Dentist of doom on the BBC website saying the pandemic is not over .... I've just booked a week in England at easter time to get away from this nonsense.

I’m not even waiting that long, we are away there for the Feb half term. 😷 ➡️ 😊😁

I would be off to England at half-term if (a) we could afford it and (b) I hadn't already booked DS into holiday club. Enjoy everyone who is heading off to to BorisLand ....

I'm off to England for the long weekend. So looking forward to being free of all this mask-wearing nonsense. We're still having kids eating their lunches in classrooms yet our rates among pupils are the highest they've ever been. Yet nobody seems to be saying - THIS IS NOT THE ANSWER.

I can fully imagine we'll still be putting up with all this shite in a year's time. However if NS gets her Indy wish, it will not be a surprise to see restrictions magically lifted as a vote sweetener.

V jealous of all the escapees down south!

I'm just so confused by all the rhetoric. We are constantly told that The Scottish People have been so good and caring all the way through..that no-one minds wearing masks, that we WANT to protect others and are much more willing to stay at home and test and not go out licking grannies than those dirty feckers down south. This seems to be the argument for masks in schools - that the kids don't mind it, and it's just a little thing, so we'll keep doing it because it may do some good (ignoring the evidence for the opposite, but hey).

So surely, if NS believe this, that we're not all straining at the leash to be allowed some normality, there will be no need to relax restrictions to ensure good election results, or support for indy or anything. In fact, if she believed it, she should market Scotland as a land of milk and honey and eternal masks and PROTECTION to the people in the rest of the UK who are worried about the changes and would rather everyone is kept masked, working from home and ideally not leaving the house apart from for essential journeys...

ScotRail are already recognising that they are not going to revert from their pandemic timetable any time soon. We could be perma-covid-land here. Wouldn't that be nice?

'Scottish Covid powers to be extended by six months' www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-60320827

"Mr Swinney stressed that this did not mean curbs "would necessarily remain in force until September", and that they would continue to be reviewed on a three-weekly basis."

Exactly what is even happening at these reviews? They've consistently refused to set out what criteria they want to have in place in order to lift anything, and no matter how much better anything gets the message is always "ooooh well coronavirus is still here and we can't have people getting ill you know."

Just leave us be! Let people wear masks if they want to, provide decent masks for free for anyone vulnerable, have tests for anyone who wants them and keep the support pay in place and then leave us ALONE.

Another six months. FFS. They're not giving those powers up without a fight, are they?

I don't think they should actually keep handing out tests tbh. People need to move on from their OCD behaviour now.