I do not think it a good idea to say only those who can prove they have had the virus can go to work. The government clearly thinks a majority of the population have not had the virus, otherwise they would be relaxing anyway. Limiting going to work to the minority would be unfair and leave the country struggling to pay the bills. The right to work should not depend on a macabre disease based lottery.
Nor do I think it a good idea to have outright bans onĀ people based onĀ age. Of course all those whose age and other medical conditions puts them Ā at more risk from the disease should be protected if they wish. Many will want to be helped to stay at home and avoid potentially dangerous contact. TheĀ others should not be placed under house arrest against their will.
The country needs to get back to work, accepting that work patterns will be different. Employees will rightly want safer working methods, including protective clothing where needed, new shift patterns, more homeworking and freedom from congested public transport where the disease might circulate more freely.
May 5, 2020
I see that they are thinking of testing professional footballers to see if they have the virus so they can resume the football, no no no these are not special people just over rated bag of wind kickers, if they get āspecial ā treatment then everyone should be allowed to have the test no matter who they are
May 5, 2020
Well you can get a test if you pay for it. I assume they would be.
May 5, 2020
JR, explain to us why the govt let in 18 million people into the county while placing indeigenous people under house arrest. New Zealand plans to keep border controls for a very long time.
Tests, 3,4 and 5 of current govt principles not worth the paper written on, and deliberately open-ended based on what lies, spin the govt gives, because all tests overwhelmingly been shown to fail because of govt incompetence/negligence. R factor rate is a guess at best by our alleged experts. Fake Graphs with Angela McClean stating today died from virus when we know he truth is with Chinese virus.
Boris Johnson still giving away borrowed money like a drunk. Yesterday he gave EU Ā£754 million for vaccine research! This is taxpayers money, not his!
The govt reckless policy decisions caused the Chinese virus to flourish and get a grip on the population. If govt wanted to slow or prevent the disease border controls would have been implemented. How do the idiots think it can stop a second spike with open borders and wide spread health tourism!
Testing and tracing pointless with wide open borders! I agree with Con Woman time to ignore reckless govt, it has deliberately cost lives and suffering and now destroy the economy which it failed to repair with repeated promises over ten years.
Any idiot taking up the app. Needs their head examined. Tory Govt introduced Snooper charter for public sectors to look st your computers, alleged hate crime to control what you say and think, keep reports secret like grooming gangs, Pandemic planning, discipline of MPs, Conor Burn being the latest minister abusing his positioncontinuing after being warned not to do so, Jenrick, Johnson and summonses immune from house arrest imposed on the test of us. Trust Tory govt do it at your peril.
May 5, 2020
If their clubs pay for and buy the tests privately what’s the problem ?
May 5, 2020
Tested and then isolated for two months together to complete a season which their clubs need the money from.
Special treatment that I do not want thank you (although at their rate of pay I would consider it).
May 5, 2020
The normally weasel-like Starmer was actually spot-on this morning. Get proper rules so that everyone knows where they stand (sic). If it’s just left to employers’ and shop owners’ judgements, this will end up like a can of worms. For once, the H and S people can earn their crust rather than worrying about hot taps and trailing leads. You can see hot taps and trailing leads, but this virus is invisible.
May 5, 2020
you might be calling our next PM weasel-like!
May 5, 2020
Proper two metre rules will mean no public transport at all, no buses because people would pass people sitting at about 1m or less, the tubes etc would be out of bounds, the distance people have to walk past sit down colleagues is difficult to maintain when they say pass each other a drink.
It is never going to be safe again until they can treat it or vaccinate against it. Boris Johnson isn’t going to be making this decision alone, the furlough, full paid public sector not working can’t keep going for much longer.
Too many rules placed fully on the shoulders of business people and they won’t reopen full stop.
May 5, 2020
I think this is a good idea. I donāt like football but the absence of live sport to watch is a big loss in many peopleās lives. We should bring it back – even in empty stadia.
May 5, 2020
Andy, Shouldn’t you ask the EU whether we can have football back?
May 5, 2020
NickC
a typical example of your not worthy provocations as this is a national and not and EU matter. GROW UP
May 6, 2020
Bill, Andy wants the EU empire to decide everything for us, not me. Who governs us, and whether we control them, is a very serious matter indeed. So it’s time you grew up.
May 5, 2020
NickC
Still obsessing about the EU? Why when you got what you wanted? Very strange.
May 5, 2020
ah but we didn’t….don’t you ever read or listen.
We wanted immediate OUT.
And here we are now years down the line STILL pretending we can negotiate with the EU.
And still paying a Ā£bn a month to try and stay ‘friends’ with the noisy, irritating neighbours.
We need to issue an ASBO or something to them.
May 6, 2020
Margaret H, We are still governed by your EU empire. Just as you want.
May 5, 2020
My wife and I went on a cruise which took in Xmas and the New Year. We got back home on 8th January. A few days later we both had quite severe “flu” symptoms, which lasted two to three weeks. As we are both retired, we did not have to go to work so we have been locked down. We wonder if we had the conovid19, but we don’t seen to be eligible for the test. If a vaccine becomes available we may never know.
May 5, 2020
Good morning.
I have been critical of you in the past, Sir John on a range of issues but, when it comes to core values, you really are my kind of Conservative and MP. Pity there are so few of it like you in government and your party.
May 5, 2020
Well said. With teachers now looking to fine parents who do not send their kids back to school, the police setting up road blocks, dieing lakes, a snoopers phone line, what a narrow, petty minded vicious society this government has created. I know of a one person business selling celebration ballon shapes, ordered via Social media, picked up from her garden gate, plenty of distance. Guess what? Closed down by the local āstasiā too many people revelling in their power and using it disproportionately.
Sir JR retains my admiration. Many others I view with contempt..
May 5, 2020
I hope that the police are as strident with the next Extinction Rebellion protest.
Another 59 professionals shipped over the channel on Sunday.
Any comment John.
May 5, 2020
exercise
May 5, 2020
Indeed JR has the virus of being right on almost every issue. It is a great shame that so many in the Conservative party are essentially big government Libdims at best (in the Major, Cameron, Osborne, Hammond, May, Clarke x2 mode) they are wrong on almost every single issue. Real Conservatives should want lower taxes, cheap reliable energy, far less government and no EU, for real freedom and choice, fair competition and no climate alarmist lunacy.
I assume these Career Politician types just join the Conservatives as they have more chance of winning and can live in nicer Conservative constituencies. Like Cameron they usually pretend to be Cast Iron, low tax at heart, red tape cutting, EUsceptic Conservatives before elections then always kick their voters in the teeth post election.
May 5, 2020
Sorry has the virtue not virus!
May 5, 2020
An excellent post. One can only agree. And in a way, Sir John’s habitual rectitude might as well BE a virus, given the way it is treated by his party leaders. You mention the sorry litany of big state, unconservative “Tories” from Major on who have misled the public as to their real views. Isn’t it now time to include the current leader? I am repulsed by his willingness to plunge this country into the red once more, in spite of years of effort aimed at pruning the deficit. And he has the gall to speak of “not wasting sacrifice”! Hasn’t he just wasted the years of fiscal restraint? As for his handling of this crisis, I despair. From a lazy, unrefined attempt at “herd immunity” he has lurched, under the lightest pressure, into a ruinous lockdown from which it seems doubtful we shall ever recover. We really are at the nadir of democracy, when our choices lie between fanatics and fools.
May 5, 2020
Well Boris did rescue us from May and Corbyn/SNP. I will give him the benefit of the doubt for a little bit longer. But he has not even cancelled HS2 or Mayās moronic net carbon neutral agenda.
May 8, 2020
Percy you & the rest of us are witnessing the Decline & Fall of Europe brought about by the actions of feckless politicians for the past 75 years.
May 5, 2020
Sir JR
It is time for the country and the people gradually to go back to work
thank you
May 5, 2020
Modest PPE for the masses. Continued social distancing in confined spaces. An effective contact tracing app to facilitate mass testing. Continued personal care (washing hands and singjng happy birthday). A large dose of common sense. A medical solution wiukc also be good.
I am looking forward to supporting my favourite coffee shop when it is permitted to open, with all the inconveniences.
May 5, 2020
Totally agree. We now know the Sage committee has 50 members. 50! Does anyone think that a group that size can operate efficiently? And apparently no economists. All I guess risk averse, brains the size of planets and I guess many not grounded in our real world.
And PHE is an organisation that 70 separate entities were rolled into only a few years back. You can bet there is still duplication, the protection of personal fiefdoms and still many cultures.
No wonder the private sector has run rings round them all and as a reflection of how government āworksā overall, it is clearly why it there is so much inefficiency.
Michael Gove said HMG will reflect on any mistakes made. Code for no change, no responsibility.
May 5, 2020
No economists though and all receiving taxpayer funded salaries.
May 5, 2020
Well fewer economists, politicians or lawyers is invariably a good plan. The trouble is academic scientists can so often suffer from deluded group think too. We see this hugely with climate alarmism.
What is needed is one or two sensible and independent people preferably physicists or applied maths people. In the Richard Feynman, Freeman Dyson mode with access to some medical, virus or other specialists where some advice might be needed needed.
May 6, 2020
Yes, Lifelogic, I agree let’s get in a nuclear physicist running the country.
That will solve all our problems, like Jimmy Carter did.
Also, Merkel has a PhD in physics and I don’t hear you speaking well of her.
May 6, 2020
Chemistry I think, rather like Thatcher. Both of whom were rather successful though both made many avoidable errors.
Thatcher even appointed John Major (without even a maths GCSE) to be chancellor! Plus she closed loads of good grammar schools which was hugely damaging.
May 6, 2020
Merkel got a PhD in quantum chemistry in 1986, applying quantum mechanics to chemical problems. That is usually under the heading of Physical Chemistry.
āInvestigation of the mechanism of decay reactions with single bond breaking and calculation of the velocity constants on the basis of quantum chemichal and statistical methodsā. I will spare you the German title.
May 5, 2020
I’m relaxed about the absence of dismal scientists on the SAGE committee – but I hope that it has some experts on human behaviour.
May 5, 2020
” HMG will reflect on any mistakes made” – or the other one – “Lessons have been learned” – Both mean the same – “WE the govt – are ignoring you the public – you are only here to work and be taxed”.
May 5, 2020
review, reflect, must never happen again, consider, plan, take on board – – – all mean ooops, oh dear we ballsed up. Never mind sweep under the carpet.
May 5, 2020
Having no economists on SAGE is not really a problem for me (it’s not a science anyway), the government have economics experts. However, the bigger problem is there is not one person from the private sector on it either – just as an example I’m sure the big UK pharma companies have experts who at least match the academics on SAGE but who have real-world experience too.
May 5, 2020
@Roy Grainger; The “private sector” is not a science either!
How about these advisory groups stick to their fields of expertise. Should there be an NEDC type group so that govt can hear from the private sector, and the trade unions for that matter, certainly, but they should not make scientific nor medical recommendation any more than SAGE should be making economic recommendation.
The average person doesn’t ask a car mechanic for advice on decorating their house and conversely they don’t ask a decorator about getting the car fixed, but for some reason far to many commentators to this site think people should ask a business leader how to stay healthy -rather than a doctor!
May 5, 2020
Only allowing those who have had the virus back to work would likely fail anyway as a policy if the suspicion that someone can catch CV19 more than ponce is confirmed – the economy either needs to remain in lockdown or we need to find alternate ways of working (and socialising) until a vaccine is found or the virus dies out due to a very low R number.
As for those who need greater protection (fiscal security), they are not just the old and/or vulnerable, there is a section of the workforce who will have real concerns because they either live within a household group that has someone that’s vulnerable or they are the nominated first (civilian) responder to a non household vulnerable relative. Then there are those who have children.
May 5, 2020
It might also give an incentive for younger people to go out to catch it and get it over.
Better treatments can surely be found to lower mortality fairly soon before any vaccine. It is unlikely that many will catch it more than once I suspect. Plus if they recovered the first time they will probably do so again.
May 5, 2020
People will catch the virus on purpose to get their lives back. Easily done, just go to a hospital under any pretext.
May 5, 2020
what are all the staff doing/not doing that organised clinics, recovery wards, pre-ops, administration, reception, even A&E right down ….ought to be an awful lot of available NHS staff.
May 5, 2020
Fred H, It seems so. I hear of doctors saying they’ve never known the NHS be so quiet.
May 5, 2020
Well yes NickC, I suspect appointments for things like ingrowing toe nails have been cancelled, not sure a podiatrist would be much use in an ICU though…
May 6, 2020
Jerry, Quite serious illnesses such as cancer and aneurysms are not being treated, or even discovered, as they were before covid19. You should not trivialise this out of ignorance.
May 6, 2020
@NickC; I agree about people trying to trivialise (not that an ingrowing toenail is trivial), so best you take your own advice, stop trying to trivialise CV19…
But to the more substantive point you missed, many cancers and other (then preventable) illnesses almost certainly went undiagnosed and/or treated during WW2, it is what happens when other needs outweigh.
May 6, 2020
some excellent side-stepping of the point being idle NHS workers follows:
May 5, 2020
Good point Lynn. I wonder how many of the teachers who stayed on working with high risk potentially asymptomatic covid19 carrying children of front line healthcare workers have caught this in the last five weeks they’ve been on front line duty?
This surely helps to determine the risk to teachers of working with the children of people not on front line medical care with covid19 patients every day.
May 6, 2020
Or a nursing home.
May 5, 2020
What is the government estimate of the numbers who have had it?
In New York it seems only about 20% have antibodies. So circa 1.7 million infected has produced 25,000 deaths. If the rest caught it we might expect another 100,000 deaths just in New York. This 20% figure is (I hope) rather low perhaps because some % of the people are simply not susceptible to catching it at all and perhaps some false negatives in the anti-body test or perhaps some sampling errors.
We know we have had over 50,000 deaths from it in the UK already from the virus so on the same ratio it would suggest that only 3.4 million people have had it yet. So if everyone eventually caught it (and hospital treatment for it did not improve) we might expect about 1 million deaths in the UK. Though clearly it might die away without some people ever catching it before a vaccine comes available. It really is a rather a big problem if 1 in 70 who catch is are dying from it. The Diamond Princess had about one death per 50 infected (but in a fairly elderly population)
Better hospital treatments to improve survival rates and then a vaccine are what is needed and as soon as possible. Also some accurate figures on the numbers who have already had it. We have the 5.00pm press meeting and lots of childish waffle every day but no mention of the government estimates of those who have had it or the fatality rate per infection. Yet these are surely the most important figures to know?
May 5, 2020
The report that re-testing of old blood samples has shown that someone in France who died in December was already carrying CV-19 shows that the virus was already more widely present in the population than experts assumed.
May 5, 2020
I have friends that had very very heavy flu symptoms in November last year, so I’m sure that CV-19 has been around longer than has been suggested.
I would also be surprised if we didn’t find that a large percentage of the population have already had mild versions of it…
May 5, 2020
That would be very good news if true.
May 5, 2020
Half the people on Twitter reckon they have had it, everyone saying they had a really nasty bout of something. We will ignore the fact that ONS figures show less died than normal Jan to March, letās look at the other end of the spectrum.
The virus ranges from fatal to asymptomatic, so many people who felt quite well would also have had it, and worked in or visited Care Homes. Yet in the complete absence any social distancing or extra precautions not a single care home suffered extra deaths, despite this virus being merciless when it gets in a care home.
etc ed
May 5, 2020
and will a major effort be made to identify how the person came to be infected that early?
Personal travel returning from where, close contact with others doing travel? Links to China? – -how?
May 5, 2020
Then why didn’t the virus peak in France sooner than it did after China closed down? We were told one person was infecting more than 2 at that time.
May 5, 2020
well if they had the symptoms -they wouldn’t be out clubbing every night would they?
May 6, 2020
Then it wouldn’t have peaked in April either would it because they wouldn’t be out clubbing then. Everyone meeting up at Christmas hugging and kissing each other over the festivities and New Year it would have taken off big time come January but it didn’t!
May 5, 2020
But your hysterical argument supports an indefinite lockdown and sod the cost – āwhatever it takesā. What it takes is the sacrificing of the western world.
May 5, 2020
Not at all hysterical (I do not even possess a uterous).
Clearly a balance has to be struck I am just giving the numbers. We really need to know how many have antibodies. Plus we need to get some treatments that work.
Plasma infusion treatments from people with these antibodies perhaps?
May 5, 2020
Also it is very clear that the NHS is (despite what is claimed by ministers) not really coping. Many people are dying and only a small percentage seem to be being given full ventilation as a last resort about half are dying without even making it to a hospital or after being pushed out of one into a care home.
The NHS are also not coping with normal routine demands.
May 5, 2020
Lifelogic, Hospitals have become better at ensuring survival on traditional ventilators (yes, they’ve had to learn!), but they usually opt for CPAP (mask and oxygen) rather than traditional assisted breathing ventilators, because they’ve found it’s better.
Some, usually elderly, people with co-morbidities do not want to die in a hospital. In consultation with their GP, they opt to take their chances at home, or in a care-home.
It’s less the NHS as whole which is not coping, more the NHS management who have spectacularly failed. The very fact that ministers are having to front failure shows the NHS management is not fit for purpose.
May 5, 2020
Allowing (or insisting) on infected (or likely infected) patients going back to nursing homes to infect many other was totally idiotic. Surely criminally idiotic?
May 5, 2020
But what numbers are you giving? The government website has 288 additional deaths on Monday with a cumulative count of 28,734. Nowhere near the 50k you claim.
What is the source for your inflated number.
May 5, 2020
All the excess deaths are clearly nearly all due to Covid or accelerated by Covid what else? Indeed perhaps even more as other death will have declined due to cancelled other operations.
May 6, 2020
@LL
You said “we have had over 50,000 deaths from it in the UK already from the virus” you did not say attributable to lack of care or whatever.
So where is the data backing up your assertion which is nearly double the official number.
May 6, 2020
The death figure each weak compared to normal ones for this time of year. Add them up plus two more weeks in the system gives over 50k.
May 6, 2020
Your assertion does not match the data from ONS which shows an excess of 33.5k over the 5 year average at week 17 (2 weeks ago). That is not 50k.
The same data puts Covid-19 deaths at 27,330
ONS data at “Deaths registered weekly in England and Wales, provisional: week ending 24 April 2020”
May 5, 2020
No, we don’t know we’ve had over 50,000 deaths – you’ve just made that up, the comprehensive ONS data of all deaths does not support that guess at all.
May 5, 2020
Well, even the Daily Mail is writing of 45,000, so LL is in the right zone.
It tallies with what other European countries feared about the UK’s early lack of resolve, and why some countries were considering closing their borders against it.
This country has to galvanise itself to make up for lost ground. Unfortunately the fatalism and defeatism spread at the start will seriously hamper that, now that it has taken root widely.
May 5, 2020
Martin, Rubbish, The UK government imposed lockdown on the same day as Germany, 6 days behind France, and only 14 days behind Italy, despite their being well ahead of us on the infection curve.
The only government with any “lack of resolve” was the EU government. Not only did the EU continue trying to enforce the Schengen open borders policy when everyone could see it was wrong, it even failed when it came to the timely distribution of medical kit, and is still bickering over economic aid to the south of the EU.
May 5, 2020
Sturgeon said the full lockdown was coming on Wednesday 18th March and schools closed in England on 20th March but the London exodus had already happened for thousands from the 19th, the lockdown on restaurants, social gatherings etc. Started on Friday 20th March at midnight but places were already closing, my parents havenāt been out since the 16th March.
May 5, 2020
Lockdown is the easy bit. That just requires a one-page law to be passed.
The hard, effective part is mass testing, tracing, and isolation, as Germany did from the start but the UK gave up when the Government found it to be too much bother.
May 6, 2020
Martin, I was advocating sample testing (because of the shortages of tests; and using the polling companies for advice) weeks ago on here as an alternative to the lockdown you demanded as the sole strategy.
Whilst you were insisting on lockdown only (I even noted the strangeness of you supporting the government lockdown position!) I pointed out that lockdown was not an end in itself. You are changing your tune now, but without giving any coherent reasons for it, and without acknowledging you were wrong in the past.
May 7, 2020
NickC
this is not an EU decision and therefore you are again factually wrong as border policies are a domestic matter when special circumstances arise
May 6, 2020
Nick, just stop inventing rubbish about what people say or believe, there’s a good chap eh?
May 5, 2020
It certainly does – rather more infact now. What else do you think caused all these excess deaths?
May 5, 2020
11,500 excess death in just the week to 24th April reported today (about 1,643 a day). It is now 5th May so another 11 days have passed then add in those for the earlier weeks. Plus other deaths will not have increased, they will have almost certainly declined. This as cancellations of most normal surgery would have lowered other deaths in general in the short term so actually even worse than the above figure suggests.
May 5, 2020
Added it up do you mean?
May 5, 2020
Only when we have a suitable antibody test although this is taking longer than it should, and the government doesn’t seem in too much of a hurry as it uses this crisis to try and re-engineer society. If we get an antibody test, I think that it will show that a very large number of us have antibodies as this disease has clearly been operation since last year and had spread outside of China long before January, if, of course, you believe that it started in China as claimed. If that was the case, the government could no longer justify phase 2 lockdown ‘new normal’, so don’t hold your breath…
zorro
May 5, 2020
Let’s be honest about what we are seeing here. This is creeping authoritarianism. The CV-19 is manna from heaven for the British politicised State and those who support the two party status quo.
The UK has been deliberately infected by a political creed that abhors individualism, freedom and liberty and both parties have encouraged this and participated in its implementation
The British voter is NAIVE. They neither understand the damage they have done nor that they have been deceived by two parties that masquerade as something they’re not
We are being asked to finance our own subjugation through the payment of taxes to a political state whose intent has become decidedly intolerant
May 5, 2020
+1 again
May 5, 2020
Agreed Dominic – especially ” finance our own subjugation ” ( but it should be”made to” not “asked to” ). We are now being told to download an app to the phones WE have to pay for – so the govt can trace us.
May 5, 2020
The trouble is this authoritarianism has been creeping slowly into our society for decades. It became more apparent in the last two decades which is why so many were keen to leave the EU from where a lot of this authoritarianism eminated.
But sadly some of this risk averse, look to the state for guidance has taken a stronghold on the media, the civil service and they together have massive influence on the general populate.
Are these polls showing people are too scared to return to work even accurate? From what Iām seeing, the reverse might be nearer the truth.
May 5, 2020
Read Ayn Rand. Iām going to demolish my big shops on high streets that only Corporations can afford. There is nothing in it for me to transform them into housing and smaller start-up shops. So Iām not going to work and risk money to bale the Govt. out of its own stupidity. Stand back and let the Socialists eat each other.
May 5, 2020
I agree that our electoral system is rigged. From the two-party voting system to the way electoral candidates are selected. This allows Governments from all parties to carry out their own agenda rather than the will of the people. Anyone who speaks out is vilified by the media and Government. Just look at how Nigel Farage is currently being hounded for highlighting the numbers of illegal immigrants crossing the channel. We are told the French have to complete a form giving the reason for leaving their place of abode. Is there a box for crossing the English Channel? Why hasnāt the child grooming gang report been published? Why is our Home Secretary silent on these issues after she promised to clamp down on this abuse? Has someone got to her or is she just part of the problem?
May 5, 2020
and you only mention SOME of the issues. Alarming, isn’t it?
May 5, 2020
Dominic, Because nothing is perfect in society, it is always possible to criticise the government for failing in its duties. Modern cultural-marxism depends on that to spread its pernicious propaganda. Its aim is a monolithic authoritarian state (with them in charge, of course), and a docile, controlled population.
You can see it with the Remain hysteria about “cliff edges” etc, or the climate alarmists’ belief in CAGW. Always the answer is more EU, more state control. Yet a refusal to see the appalling results of historical precedence leads us blindly to dictatorship. And it is less to do with British voter naivety, rather more to the unchallenged “success” of left wing propaganda.
May 5, 2020
NickC
Can we have some concrete examples of this so-called propaganda?
May 5, 2020
Well, there’s nothing “creeping” about it.
It is abrupt and precipitous, but emergencies arise in that manner, and so the necessary measures will be alike in character.
People must however, not let the extraordinariness of the position fade from their minds, and require a full reinstatement of all rights and freedoms at the earliest reasonably safe time.
May 5, 2020
Martin, UK-US Free Trade Agreement negotiations officially started today 5th May, with 100 negotiators on each side in talks spread over the next fortnight. So the full reinstatement of all our rights and freedoms to negotiate as a sovereign nation is restored (even if we cannot sign until we leave on 31 Dec). Doesn’t that make you feel really glad?
May 5, 2020
What has that to do with my comment?
The UK will have neither the weight nor the punch to resist onerous US demands as did the European Union’s parliament over TTIP.
Just look at the extradition treaty!
What a woolly scarf!
May 6, 2020
Martin, A “full reinstatement of all our rights and freedoms” is precisely why I voted to leave your EU empire.
May 6, 2020
we will not be signing fir another two or three years anyway
May 6, 2020
You hope, Bill.
May 5, 2020
I am well over 70 and get our food supplies once a week. There seem plenty of others like me doing the same in what I call “the old fogey’s hour”. They are all compos mentis, look fit and well, respect the social distancing precautions. The idea that such a group remains in lock down is anathema to all I have spoken to, would be very strongly resented and, in all likelihood , ignored by many of them.
May 5, 2020
And vast numbers of businesses like Garden centres are being ruined unnecessarily by a risk averse totalitarian regime frightened of itās own shadow. As this rolls forward we are seeing the folly of their actions.
May 5, 2020
precisely.
May 5, 2020
Could someone suggest to the Prime Minister that having Matt Hancock chair the PR presentation where he avoids answering interesting questions and tells us what we know already followed by his mantra of ‘stay at home and save the NHS’ twice.. Is deeply annoying. Especially when we all know that Hancock and his team have made mistake after mistake and it was the Lighthouse group of independent labs which dug the NHS testers out of their hole. That the NHS has been sending infected old people into care homes and denying them tests until the epidemic was rife. And that they got the army to build a 4,000 bed hospital and couldn’t find the staff or any use for it, then carried on building more. Hancock may think that he sounds like a font of wisdom but he comes across as pontificating salesman, interrupting anything interesting said by the scientists.
May 5, 2020
Yes. He is not up to a ābig jobā if he was, he wouldnāt be in politics but making a real difference in the private sector.
May 5, 2020
Nig1, The fact that Hancock is being held to account for PPE shortages demonstrates that NHS management (who are the ones really responsible for PPE) are not up to the job. If NHS management actually worked government ministers would not have to front all the failures.
May 5, 2020
My thoughts exactly. Such are most PPE graduates I find, he is a bit like Cameron but without the gift of the gab. They almost never have any real understanding of numbers, science, engineering, business, logic, human nature or sound economics. A bit like many CofE Vicars.
The Gresham College lecture by Chris Whitty the other day was quite informative I thought.
May 5, 2020
It is good that some MP’s are being thrust into the light. Moving forward on from this we now have a better idea of the scale of our administrative problems. For too long they have been sheltered behind the EU and various QUANGO’s. Now they are using ‘experts’ and, in this case, ‘the science’, as cover for their ineptness. But most people, much like yourself, can now see past the Potemkin Village that has become our government, parliament and Civil Service. Nothing cleanses more than the light of day.
May 5, 2020
He just seems a bit wet behind the ears.
May 5, 2020
Those 4000 bed empty hospitals will come in handy for keeping a roof over the heads of the Border Farce’s latest new additions to the population and Benefits bill. With the standstill on construction the planned million+ houses needed won’t be ready for them in time.
I see well over 100 attempted to get here yesterday – now even setting off from Boulogne as well as Calais. That means SERIOUS trouble = because our boat can’t be in two places at once.
May 5, 2020
Totally agree. I think he needs to go but left in place for too long so now difficult. He truly scared me a couple of weeks back when he justified the lockdown on the basis of the 500,000 figure. He seems to comprehend very little.
May 5, 2020
Why weren’t elderly patients sent to the Nightingale hospitals instead of care homes? Or into hotels in separate rooms with their own en-suite and meals served to the door with nurses allocated to those facilities?
Hancock is being set up for a big fall with these patronising slogan statements. We’ve had enough now! We want facts specifically: those workers working outside of their home bases that have worked for the past seven weeks how many of them are now infected and in a hospital, how many of them a) work on the NHS front line b) work in the close care sector c) have been teaching the children of these key workers especially those that have tested positive d) how many other occupations have created some of the new patients? If during the peak of the virus they have been working outside of their home bases how have they protected themselves?
May 5, 2020
That they couldn’t find use for the Nightingale Hospital is a good thing. Why are you moaning about it ?
May 5, 2020
Roy, It’s not about the Nightingale hospitals being unused, more about the lousy “science” that predicted the need based on worship of gigo computer models.
May 5, 2020
Roy
Assuming they do not want to use it for Covid cases at the moment.
Why not use it for simple day cases which have been delayed in the original hospital system.
Many day cases only need simple surgery with a local anaesthetic.
Install some simple operating equipment inside another enclosure to maintain a clean environment, and you could treat Cataracts, glue ear, trigger finger, Dupytons Contracture, Skin Cancer moles, in growing toe nails, and a host of other debilitating problems.
Involves no overnight stays, would get the waiting list down and give some people, especially those who are going blind, their lives back.
given no overnight stays hospital beds could be used for Covid in 24 hours if it returns in a second wave.
May 5, 2020
They should have used them for Covid-19, instead of making district hospitals unfit for purpose.
May 5, 2020
The generalised wearing of masks appears very effective, according to data from the places where this has been applied.
Also, there is no hard evidence to support the two metre rule, but common sense says that it’s better than nothing. It might need five, or fifty metres to be truly effective though, but this seems not to matter so much where masks are used.
Yes, I think that far more normal life could be possible with some imagination and application.
However, a properly organised state, with the necessary institutions will be needed to facilitate these things.
These slaves to the US socio-economic model should put aside their ideology for the present at least.
May 5, 2020
It always seemed to me that some face covering was surely better than non in many situations, finally it seems the government have nearly caught up. But even if you get into an empty lift, at work or a block of flats, you are often breathing air that others (who just vacated) have just breathed.
The ātwoā metres is also nonsense. I know of a girl with an allergy to horses who had to go be hospitalised when some horses ran past her well over ten yards away with the wind blowing their breath in her direction.
May 5, 2020
Fortunately it appears that it requires virus-laden droplets or micro-droplets to spread the infection, and that the virus itself does not become airborne, although that is not conclusively proven.
If so then masks would be very effective, and the evidence so far supports this.
Yes, even non-professional grade and improvised ones would give a worthwhile reduction in the probability of spreading infection.
The perfect should not be the enemy of the good.
May 5, 2020
I suspect it’s a matter of the amount of the virus we get exposed to. I have a good sense of smell and I can certainly tell which fragrances the lady joggers that I encounter on my daily walks are wearing at a distance of more than two metres – more like ten meters depending on the wind direction as per your example.
May 5, 2020
Oh yes!
And therein lies the root cause of this fiasco.
Boris will perhaps (?) rue the day of his 180 degree turn.
Throw the dice …Imperial College or Oxford. Oh..Imperial C it is!
Letās appease the Left which actually WANTS to see the economy wrecked (QED above).
Why would that be …because he shares their views or because he fears them?
May 5, 2020
But Martin we are exclusively in the hands of your dream State Institutions and have been for 7 weeks. Shall we carry on like this as you suggest? Many are enjoying the lockdown, we get to live the life of an unemployed person in the U.K. Not bad! If I get rid of my businesses which are a worry, I will be in heaven!
May 5, 2020
do you mean dead, or very happily rich?
May 5, 2020
There is not the systemic infrastructure, staffing, nor organisation of expertise and capacity required by any means.
Yes, the legal powers are there, but far, far more is required.
Depriving people of their freedoms by law is a cinch by comparison.
Government now needs to do the real work.
Yes, “work” – hear that, Alexander?
May 5, 2020
What, you’re want systems, institutions, infrastructure, to be staffed for a 100 years waiting for the next pandemic? What we really need is resilience and flexibility. That means agile businesses both small and large, in-nation manufacturing, with excellence and honesty in academic work. Not your big state, centrally planned, 1950s Soviet style monstrosity, ready to fight the last pandemic.
May 5, 2020
What sort of businesses?
May 5, 2020
WHO says wearing of masks is ineffective. Still, I’m sure you know best.
May 5, 2020
Yes, but they are using professional standards as to effectiveness as needed for clinical staff.
I.e. – stops 100% of transmission – effective. Stops 90% of transmission – ineffective.
That would still have a decisive effect on R0 however.
May 5, 2020
The medical opinion seems to be that masks are probably ineffective but if they are effective they should be reserved for medical and like staff.
Other places emerging from lockdown have commonly made mask-wearing on public transport compulsory for a reason. Whether that reason is strictly medical or to allay people’s aroused fear and stress is a secondary concern. It is necessary to aid a general return to work and chimes with people’s common sense.
May 5, 2020
The WHO need to produce some evidence for what it claims to be true about coronavirus otherwise we might as well note that its Director General was appointed on the basis of Affirmative Action and look no further.
May 5, 2020
Generally agree with you today Martin š
Two metre rule is nonsense, if you are out on a windy day it could be 20 metre and you still get a face full of what the person in front of you is exhaling…
Masks in shops and public transport seems sensible plus hand sanitizers on entry and exit of shops, only pick up an item if you intend to buy it…
Correctly worn masks more than likely protect those around you rather than yourself…
May 5, 2020
In Germany, the “social distance”, (it is rather unsocial), is 1.5 metres, in Austria, it is one metre. Wales have put into law that employers should ensure 2 metres between employees, a nonsense task.
In any enclosed area a micro-climate ensues, because of human respiration and emitted heat. Within an hour everyone will be breathing the same homogenised air. There is no safe 2 metre bubble in which employees can be “safe” from any infection introduced by someone else.
May 5, 2020
Martin, Your previous enthusiasm for lockdown was always politically motivated, giving you a ready excuse to attack the government. But now your new advocacy of lifting lockdown means either that lockdown was a hysterical over-reaction, or that herd immunity is real. Otherwise, by lifting lockdown, we’d still be in as much danger as before.
In either case centralised state control is the problem not the answer. After all, you’ve spent weeks attacking state control – the very thing you’re advocating.
May 5, 2020
I have no enthusiasm for it, but it is worlds better than doing nothing effective at all, which was the previous position.
It’s time to get down to the real work now though, like less deluded countries did in eastern Europe right from the start, and who are deservedly not suffering anything like the problems of the UK and the US.
If the UK still does not do that, then lifting the strictures is, I think, criminal madness.
May 6, 2020
Martin, I am glad that you now agree with what I have been saying on here consistently from as early as 14 March. For example, on 25 March I stated: “Therefore testing ā both for symptoms, and for antibodies ā is vital. Short of a vaccine, testing is the key. … Testing is the only tool we have. Decisions must be taken with facts.”
But your view, since you don’t accept the concept of herd immunity, is that nothing has changed. So you have no logical position to base any lifting of your praised lockdown strategy.
May 6, 2020
I want the UK – for practical purposes – to eliminate the virus. That is, to reduce daily cases to the odd one.
As have done
NZ
Aus
S Korea
Greece
Taiwan
Hong Kong
Japan
Singapore
Vietnam
China
And other countries.
And as most countries in Europe intend to do, and are making real progress in doing.
Understand?
May 5, 2020
Absolutely NONE of this is a āgood ideaā.
It is a catastrophe of Biblical proportion…or maybe worse.
What will the newly-released feel like when they realise that nothing is left?
And that only the rich will be flying!
May 5, 2020
Things will be back to the 1950’s. Some say that that is no bad thing.
May 5, 2020
“Things will be back to the 1950ās. Some say that that is no bad thing.”
The things we had in the ’50 that we don’t have now.
Population 49 million.
Ability to produce 228m tonnes of coal 1952
producing 70 – 85% of our electricity.
A police force that was respectful and disinclined to exceed it’s lawful authority.
May 5, 2020
A population well educated enough to know that the pronoun ‘it’ does not have an apostrophe when it is used as a possessive pronoun.
May 5, 2020
Equally that it’s 1950s and not “1950’s”.
May 5, 2020
Agreed…some aspects but in the 1950s jobs were not a problem and nor, for most, was personal debt.
May 5, 2020
The rich will only be flying on one way tickets out.
May 5, 2020
ah well – a silver lining.
May 6, 2020
And only in private jets.
May 5, 2020
The single most depressing survey I have ever heard was the one that said that 76% of people were in favour of the lockdown. The majority of people are so easily scared by a virus that has a mortality rate of the same as flu have believed all the scare mongering and fake death rate numbers to the extent that they want to be locked up and their livelihoods destroyed. Incredible. I give up. I’m not even going to point out all the flaws in the narrative anymore but just concentrate on making money from the disaster everyone apparently wants. When people don’t have enough to eat and the country looks like communist Romania after a hurricane I shall take pleasure in saying “Told you so”.
May 5, 2020
There are many who feel like you, including me….unbelievable that so many people are so daft. I am in despair also; I’m just about retirement age and I see the rest of my life being gobbled up by having to dodge round other folk, watch where I stand in shops, and face restrictions on where I go and who I visit. My little family has been painfully separated, physically, by all this rot. We just want to live, see our relatives and if we get ill, then we do. Instead we now face tracking apps (I won’t be downloading it on my non-existent mobile phone) and heaven knows where that will lead. The Brits have welcomed slavery. Utter utter fools.
May 5, 2020
āvirus that has a mortality rate of the same as fluā – alas it does not.
May 5, 2020
It doesnāt have a mortality rate the same as flu. If you are over 70 and get it the mortality rate can be as high as 1 in 5. Flu doesnāt do that.
May 5, 2020
You don’t know how many over 70-year olds have contracted CV-19.
You don’t even know how many of the population at large have contracted CV-19.
You don’t even know whether CV-19 was prevalent in the population last year or not, with deaths being attributed to pneumonia.
May 5, 2020
Andy: “If you are over 70 and get it the mortality rate can be as high as 1 in 5.”
Your sudden conversion to caring about the elderly doesn’t have any credibility.
Besides, life has a 100% mortality rate.
May 5, 2020
Andy, Not entirely true. A study (Journal of Infection, April 2014) showed death rates from flu (2000- 2007) in the 65+ at risk group to be 15% (or 1 in 6) annual average. So not that much different to your 1 in 5 figure. Flu (actually a range of mutating viruses) is much underrated.
May 5, 2020
Jeff12,
The culture of fear has been written about for three decades in the UK. One of the consequences is that many under the age of mid-50s have formed opinions within this background and therefore act as though an exaggerated worst case has probability 1. The Govt can use this to control people, or some ministers may suffer from it themselves.
It may take a generation of educational change to get out of it, and there is no one driving this, the numbers who can get fewer and fewer.
May 5, 2020
An old fable:
Death is walking towards a town. He meets an old man.
āWhy are you going to town?ā Asks the old man.
āTo collect 100 souls dead of the plague ( nb. not āwithā)ā replied Death.
The two meet again as Death leaves the town with his harvest of souls.
āBut why do you have 1000 souls?ā asks the old man, counting the souls Death is carrying.
āOhā replies Death ā 100 died of ( nb. not āwithā) the plague….the rest died of ( nb. not āwithā) FEAR!ā.
As those in control know….FEAR…will achieve many ends.
May 5, 2020
Very good.
May 5, 2020
You seem to be terrified of not being able to go to a football match, on the other hand.
May 5, 2020
I never thought I would say it but having weaned myself of watching football over the last season or two, except for maybe a dozen matches with ‘my’ team playing, I feel cured.
The cost to support, the appalling behaviour on the pitch and off, the outrageous contracts to players and managers, the fees paid to commentators etc – what a n awful ‘sport’ well business.
Other sports are mostly more acceptable, have better skills, watched by better audiences, commanding less airtime.
May 5, 2020
It would be harsh to ban those who havenāt had the virus from working, when millions of people have continued to work pretty much as normal throughout the crisis so far, whether or not theyāve had the virus. Iāve been working throughout, due to the industry Iām in.
Letās get the country moving, albeit with PPE where needed and some social distancing.
May 5, 2020
A conversation with my daughter in law last evening .
She was telling me of some of the measures being considered by her American owned health insurance company for staff to return to work. Because of the rules on health and safety the measures being considered sounded very much like paranoia on steroids! Should staff take a shower on arrival at the office? Should staff have a one way route for walking around the office marked out? And so on…
These health and safety rules Iāve thought for a long time to be unrealistic and impractical to live with. Yesterday, a Sky engineer came to install a new Sat dish. She had to wear a crash hat, ear muffs and to tie her ladder to the house….
These absurd rules of H & S are going to severely hamper getting back to work in any sensible way.
Coupled with this kind of mentality and the fear mongering from media and the government slogan, itās no wonder 80% (or whatever the figure is) are too fearful to return to work.
God help us should there ever be a war to be fought…
May 5, 2020
One lesson to take out of this is that if you wish to live in a bankrupt, authoritarian state then let healthcare officials run the country.
May 5, 2020
MG, Just so.
May 5, 2020
so you’d happily go up an unsecured ladder with no helmet, use pressure to drill fixings to wall, wobble about struggling to secure the oval dish, hope no gust of wind caught it etc…..or be liable when installer falls off, breaks limbs and off work for months?
May 5, 2020
Fred, I would wager that you regard your financial situation as fairly secure? Unlike a large amount of the population.
May 5, 2020
MG – and your point is?
-well whats secure these days? My SIPP has taken a hammering if that makes you feel better. I’m not on bread and water – who is? We have 1 old car – out of principle. No mortgage. But I brought the TIMES article on the plight of people in Blackpool ( and elsewhere) to this diary Christmas time – and made my own humble donation.
I’ve 3 children with 3 partners all were working, mortgages, cars, their children in state education. I worry myself sick about their future – do you?
May 5, 2020
No, she’d be happy for someone else to do that.
May 5, 2020
Fred
Only those who have worked or fell from a ladder know how dangerous they are if not secured properly or footed by someone else.
Seen rather too many people over the years limping about who thought nothing about their own Health and Safety at the time.
May 5, 2020
Alan,
And a few years ago I painted the rendered outside of my largish house, and the one next door, but anchored the extended ladder all the time, and lodged weighted garden tables etc at the foot. Bloody nervous the whole time, took days and days but got there. Saved me some Ā£ thousands – but didn’t want to pay for the so called pro.
I can’t stand and watch people shinning up ladders unsafely I have to go away.
May 5, 2020
Health and Safety rules of engagement would mean that any fighting would be deemed too dangerous. Every cloud has a silver lining. No more war! Yippee!
May 5, 2020
“I do not think it a good idea to say only those who can prove they have had the virus can go to work. The government clearly thinks a majority of the population have not had the virus, otherwise they would be relaxing anyway. Limiting going to work to the minority would be unfair”
The problem John seems to be that you are in the minority in thinking the solution to this “unfair” situation is to allow everyone to go to work – polls show a majority seem to think that the solution is that no-one should go back to work. And, for swathes of the public sector, why should they ? Their salaries and pensions are protected either way.
May 5, 2020
We should do what gives the best balance between health outcomes, not overloading the NHS too much and the economy. This might well be āunfairā but life is unfair so we must get over it.
What is fair about nearly twice as many men dying from Covid as women for a start?
May 5, 2020
Or some people getting a mild flu while others are dying from it.
May 5, 2020
Well if the government stopped borrowing and printing then the only alternatives would be to raise taxes and cut public spending. Neither of which the public sector likes as equally affects them as well as those in the private sector who, are the ones carrying the greatest burden in all respects.
May 5, 2020
Those who chose to work in the public sector are not your enemies!
Do you think that they ever got bonuses? Hampers at Christmas?
Of course not! And those jobs were and are open to ALL.
Or maybe those who failed to be accepted into such jobs are the ones spreading divisive nonsense?
Nobodyās pension is protected.
Nobodyās salary is protected.
May 5, 2020
Everhopeful:
Quite correct! Many people are under a misapprehension when it comes to the Public Sector.
The pension was tinkered with several years ago. It is not āgold platedā any more. There was also pay freeze for at least two years,
Much of the work is stressful, and involves insults and threats by the āclientsā one is trying to help. One needs to have very strong mental health to handle some of the abuse.
There are no hampers and bonuses at Christmas , and very little thanks for the job you are doing.
I know all this because I have a close family member who is a Civil Servant. They appreciate having a job, but donāt understand all the snide remarks that the public sector gets.
May 5, 2020
Everhopeful, Actually Roy Grainger is correct: during the lockdown swathes of the public sector have their salaries and pensions protected. And someone closely related to me left a job in NHS management (at a fairly low level) due to disgust at the sheer wastefulness and incompetence.
May 5, 2020
explain to me because I missed it, when public sector workers did NOT have their pension protected. When did they have salary reduced, what percentage of all public sector workers had a cut in salary or made redundant?
May 5, 2020
I think that you will find, when we are finally released and the economy is ārecalibratedā, that what I am saying will prove to be perfectly correct.
NOBODY is protected. Nobody will be protected except the very rich …who will absolutely clean up.
May 5, 2020
Roy – are the public sector really protected fully?
Just one e.g. If we can do without libraries for over three months and they cost Ā£1.5m per annum per Council and poor people who had no computer have been given laptops now like Michael Gove said at the weekend they can download books now, why should rate-payers pay for a service they’ve not had access to for months? Could we just not look at who uses the libraries and see how connected they are, could we eventually download books onto smart tv screens? Where I live people have started putting books out in trays saying help yourself as they’re having clear outs.
These people working from home in London now, do they really even need to live in expensive London bases if they don’t need to go to the office at all? If public transport is cut down they will stop enjoying City life, services would be cut further people laid off in this transport sector. Councils can’t just keep expecting ratepayers to pay in millions to top up their falling pension investments when ours have collapsed, they cut other services but not their pensions put them on nest like the rest of us then the government might not be so keen to cut into shareholders returns.
Could the wealth of the City be shared out more with distance working? Cloth will have to be cut and furloughed workers (outside of the closed down completely businesses because of crowds) just don’t even realise they’re first in line for the cut.
May 5, 2020
Dear Sir John–Both of your “should nots” need an “ideally” placed in front of them, but unfortunately we are very far indeed from an ideal world and there may simply be no choice.
May 5, 2020
Good morning
In spite of now clear evidence from other island nations (Taiwan, N Zealand, HK, Isle of Man etc) that it is possible to eradicate the Chinese plague virus without excessive disruption to their economies, we, like the lemmings running over the cliff, persist with the globally discredited “herd immunity” strategy. Sweden is the only other country following it and their death rate is now mounting quite quickly.
Employers want assurances that if they end the lockdown and restart their businesses, they will not be open to legal action should one of their employees – or customers – catch the virus.
The bottom line is that as the number of “offficial” fatalities approaches 30,000, in spite of speculation in the press about vaccines and cures, the government will have to decide how many deaths would be acceptable to end the lockdown and restore our shattered economy. That will be Whitty and Vallance’s legacy.
May 5, 2020
You don’t seem to understand. We are a ‘global, trading nation’. We can’t cut ourselves off! Where would we be then? Even now we are not testing and quarantining people entering the country. WHY WE AREN’T is a mystery to me. And why the media aren’t shouting the odds on this is a mystery too. Perhaps they are all addicted to their endless travelling.
May 5, 2020
Mike Wilson, Indeed it is crazy to lockdown the nation and not lockdown our borders.
May 5, 2020
Re Sweden: I’m afraid your information is out-of-date, Ms Gold. Sweden’s death rate has been declining since a peak on 24th April (Worldometer). Good point about employers, though.
May 5, 2020
Sakara Gold, Don’t be silly – “herd immunity” is not discredited, it is standard epidemiology. The UK is in lockdown and is not following the herd immunity strategy – or haven’t you noticed? You’re only 7 weeks behind the times. In contrast, Sweden, Japan, Taiwan, etc, have all followed sensible precautions with testing and tracing, rather than the hysterical lockdown agitated for by the MSM and the likes of you.
May 5, 2020
NickC
stop these personal attacks you should know better
May 6, 2020
Bill B, Stop your personal attacks bereft of even any factual response.
May 6, 2020
It is morally discredited where there is any significant mortality with an infection for obvious reasons.
That’s not a consideration for you though is it?
May 5, 2020
‘The government clearly thinks a majority of the population have not had the virus.’
I expect the government has been badly advised yet again, and too willing to be led by such advice, without sufficient critical thought – just follow the media-led demands. A new report from Germany suggests that 10 times the number of people were infected rather than reported. On the Unherd website the Ferguson report is rubbished by a nobel-scientist on the idea of exponential growth. Too, the Bakersfeld (California) doctors demonstrated, from practical results rather than academic theory, that actual death rates were little different to flu death rates in a community – for their troubles, their report was censored and taken off youtube. Today, Sweden with limited lockdown, has had a large fall in active cases. We are only getting information that the BBC and the Government wish us to hear – to control us. This UK lockdown policy has been a disaster – all panic, shambles, and chasing their tail – the trashing of the economy an avoidable failure.
May 5, 2020
I am with you Sir John but no one to date has come up with a solution for public transport.?
If we all pile on then we are back under each other’s armpits and breathing in everyone’s germs (and viruses). If we ration use then the capacity to move large volumes of commuters is not there. Even with staggered work times (am I expected to commute and hour and a half from 10.30 to 12 and then returns from 8 to 9.30?) there will still be more commuters than 2 meter areas on public transport.
Without a solution for public transport we are back to herd immunity (or gas masks)
May 5, 2020
These next set of steps to be taken by the government to navigate us out of this pandemic are going to be the most difficult encountered by any government since WW2. They will not get it all right at the outset and changes will have to be made to rectify mistakes and make adjustments to cater for population reaction as we move back to work.
The degree of difficulty was illustrated yesterday after the unions and employers had been invited in for consultation. Several union leaders immediately took to the airwaves indicating that they would not agree to anything and what was going to be decided was going to be wrong.
This attitude aided and encouraged by a biased BBC and a hostile C4 News needs to get a strong, sharp dose of Thatcherism and be put back in their boxes
They have no idea what the ‘road map’ is going to look like and neither do the media so let’s wait until Sunday when we might see a few tiny green shoots.
May 5, 2020
I’m 75. I think I come into the autoritarian/totalititarian Tory state’s definition of vulnerable and must stay at home. (Which I reject and resent)
I went to the supermarket again yesterday in my small market town. It has screens around the tills which are useless and a waste of money because they only separate customers from the cashier where neither face each other ie. where the customer moves from depositing goods on the belt to the loading area. there’s no screen where I fill my bags and where the cashier and customers are very close. It can’t be any other way.
I read today that Hancock plans to punish employers who don’t follow draconian rules on separation. Will these also apply in the situation described. Just how much does your government want to order every aspect of life. I suspect here isn’t enough paper to list them. Hancock has got a taste of power and he loves it.
May 5, 2020
and still in the big Government job by standing there in front of the nation and LYING about the 122,000 tested….NO THEY WERE NOT and still haven’t been.
May 5, 2020
Sir John
The coronavirus outbreak is a disaster, but adapting our behavior to it may bring better ways of working, many of which are yet to be discovered.
Take education for example. Massive advances in online human teaching and also IT assisted teaching have already been made.
The world’s largest language school is Duolingo, available online. No human teacher is involved and it is far more effective than traditional methods. This is just one of many free programmes. Lectures in STEM subjects from the world’s leading universities are available to all.
However barriers to qualification remain and some state-run online institutions are excessively beurocratic and expensive; here I have in mind the Open University.
Unless the pathways to qualification are freed up, ordinary people cannot reap the full benefit of online education to obtain employment. We must grasp the opportunity of new ways of working in education and many other sectors.
Thank you for your efforts.
May 5, 2020
The govt should take credit for having clearly avoided the crisis in the NHS which was loudly and confidently predicted (& I fear hoped for by a small minority of the shouty left). Itās clear people understand what social distancing means and hygiene standards should be much improved as a result. We need to get back to work – the costs of the lockdown now vastly exceed the benefits and surely also include much worse healthcare outcomes for every condition other than Wuhan virus. It is also abundantly clear that the study by the academic prof Ferguson upon which assumptions have been based is seriously flawed.
Get the economy moving again starting with the coming bank holiday weekend.
May 5, 2020
Richard1,
I have some worries about your first sentence. There are large numbers of excess deaths outside the NHS, this looks like the NHS has been protected by simply not treating people (telling them to stay at home / scaring them away). Yes this can look a political success when there are no news videos of overwhelmed hospitals but it does not mean it is a life-saving success. There is nothing to say that an overwhelmed hospital is not saving more lives than a stay-away model.
May 5, 2020
The first stage must be to stop the furlough payments, extending this Government patronage scheme until the end of June remains a mistake which should be corrected immediately. A UBI* should be introduced (for all over 18s). This will then allow the price mechanism for resources to work whilst providing a fair safety net to all; if labour resources are too unused then the Govt could still become an employer of last resort (as some MMTers like) so that there is at least some kind of economy backing up people’s income. The UBI model gives individuals some support in walking away from a job if they do not feel sufficiently safe; it gives them choice. The current patronage model favours middle income people, who have had more opportunity to save for a rainy day than the lower income who have not, this is absurd, vindictive and spiteful. (If the Govt feels a need and ability to act on AD by additional gifting it could be given to those who have not received such freebies through the epidemic, savers who have been punished for over a decade, WASPIs, or the ex-civil servants whose pensions were CPIed by Osborne i.e. the historical ones not the current high pay ones … there are probably manynother groups.)
If the Govt continues to run high expenditure with nothing behind it then a Venezuelan like collapse will happen. This will be a sudden event without early signals (think earthquake), the UK needs to get out of its stupidity urgently. The Govt’s further antiliberty move towards apps and tracking people is a very dangerous precedent; as mentioned several times before design of the testing regime (not the self booking randomness of the current scheme) and appropriate types of tests based on risk and economic value can have a huge effect, where is this planning?
*My UBI bias as mentioned way before the epidemic is that it could be made of 3 parts – an unfunded money creation part (Clifford Douglas national dividend / Corbyn people’s QE), a progressive consumer tax (increase VAT and redistribute the increased collection evenly, the redistribution is then based on consumption not income) and a carbon tax with dividend and border adjustment.
May 5, 2020
Hear a lot about imprisoning 70 year olds when the lockdown is released, but nothing about areas. As I have pointed out here the SW of England has little or no disease, as confirmed by the ONS map the Mail published the other day. It seems yet again we are being ruled by what is good for London, not what is good for other areas of the country. Just because London elected an incompetent Mayor who laid on over crowded disease spreading tube trains, so that means the rest of us should be held hostage. As there are only a few routes into the SW I see no reason for the area to be kept in the lockdown.
May 5, 2020
Sir John,
I make is a strict rule with myself – especially on this blog where you have asked us to refrain from putting up links to other websites – never to be a “whatabout this site then?” bore.
I am now going to break my rule with a website which I know you dislike and from which I have been permanently excluded (for praising the current Prime Minister!)
Please have a look at this, just once, because the man is a specialist in public health and knows what he is on about:
eureferendum.com
May 5, 2020
Mike S, Lots of “experts” have very different opinions. That’s the point. It’s no good citing one expert above another. In a novel situation like this political judgements have to be made.
May 5, 2020
Unfortunately the people making political judgements are rarely experts in anything much at all. I pondered yesterday (give that MPs are nearly all art graduates or not graduates at all) how many have even got any maths or physics beyond GCSE level? It is hardly any wonder we are so badly governed. We have even had a chancellors and PM who failed them.
May 5, 2020
It is reported that the NHS have insisted that the govt develop a U.K. only NHS app as opposed to using the international one being developed by Google and Apple. Apart from the high likelihood of Google and Apple being better placed to develop an app than the NHS, even it it uses private experts and suppliers (Q: presumably leftists would be against that?), UK citizens will obviously have to download both in order to travel.
It would be good to understand how this decision was made. Itās incredible these over-rated mainstream media journalists donāt ask questions like this – nor indeed how it is that Sweden has managed so well with no lock-down at all.
May 5, 2020
fearing misuse of the data provided to Google & Apple. Pretty reasonable grounds I would have thought.
May 5, 2020
You can’t trust anyone with your data. I seem to recall Labour misusing cancer patient data a few GE’s ago when they sent targeted scare mails to patients to stave off a Conservative victory.
May 5, 2020
Google and Apple have a much better provisions to protect privacy. This has been reported on in the tech press. Unless the code is open source i would not trust it.
May 5, 2020
Interesting comments this morning,
Should all really come down to education about the virus, and common sense.
Problem is we all have different ideas and levels of common sense, hence the reason why Government have had to put in place some rules.
Like most nationalities, the people and businesses in the UK will find a resolve and a way forward, which politicians and the experts would never contemplate.
Let us hope common sense prevails with regards to work, health, and financial security for all involved.
May 5, 2020
I hope people realise and remember that we are one of the most densely populated Countries in the World, and an easily transmitted and spread virus from person to person, will be far more difficult to control in such conditions, than in areas where distancing is rather more easy.
May 5, 2020
We are number 32 on the list. Russia is 181. They’ve had quite a lot of cases. Despite the population drinking a bottle of neat vodka each day. Australia is 192 on the list – despite everyone drinking 8 pints of Fosters each day. In Dorset we have 328 confirmed cases out of a population of 376,484. Which means 1 person in 150 is a confirmed case. Why on earth are we locked down?
The problem – obviously – occurs in large cities. The major cities in this country should have been locked down and the rest of us left in peace to grow your food.
May 5, 2020
Bristol, not so far from you, has about 500 cases.
May 6, 2020
Up to date figures after more tests are:
162 deaths
626 cases
May 5, 2020
How tiring!
Singapore 8109 /km^2 , Hong Kong 6677, Taiwan 658, South Korea 512,
Netherlands 409, Belgium 380, UK 279 /km2.
Singapore, HK, Taiwan, SK have had a much better response to Covid-19 than the UK.
Number of deaths per million:
Singapore 3, HK 0.5, Taiwan 0.3, South Korea 5, NL 302, UK 423.
Belgium 692, Spain 544, Italy 481.
All figures available from worldometers.
AJ, so your argument is rather weak: in London, parts of the South East, and around UK big towns, the population density is high, but I guess not worse than in Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan or South Korea.
May 5, 2020
Hefner
You have just proved my point to a degree, in London where the density is higher they have had many more cases.
Commuters also travel to and from London and other major Cities, hence the reason for more widespread cases near to those centres.
Governments in Asia are rather different to those in Europe.
Our lockdown has also been less severe.
May 5, 2020
England is 430/km2
May 6, 2020
Youāre absolutely right. And I had forgotten I was on a āSpeaking for Englandā blog.
May 6, 2020
Hefner, How tiring!! You make the same automatic, unthinking, assumption that the BBC did. When someone talks about “my country” being the most densely populated in Europe they may be meaning England, not the UK. Ask, don’t lecture. As Dixie says – England 430/km2.
May 6, 2020
It is a fact that Singapore, HK, Taiwan and South Korea with higher population densities than the UK have been more successful at dealing with this infection than we have.
And AJās argument that governments in Asia are rather different from those in Europe is rather a superficial one. It is also a question of how quickly these governments were on the ball and how much trust the populations having had SARS in previous years showed their governments. Maybe Britain will do better next time.
May 5, 2020
I totally agree, Sir John.
Any discrimination, be it on the grounds of age, where people live, what they do for a living or how infectious they are perceived to be would not only be wrong, but would create lasting resentment.
We need a complete end to this lockdown soon, but if that is to happen gradually then any modified rules while it lasts must have the merit of simplicity so as to be fair and enforceable.
May 5, 2020
Its naive to think a partial relaxing of the current lockdown is going to work
If you only open primary schools people will shout why not secondary
If you only open the north east people will shout why not the south west
If you only open for the young people will shout why not the elderly
If you only open for construction people will shout why not retail
Its all or nothing
May 5, 2020
So when people ask why not, the Govt needs transparent reasonable answers. Admittedly it has had none of these so far.
May 5, 2020
Doesn’t seem to be in some countries.
May 5, 2020
Mainly those who can secure their own borders, have sparse and mono-cultural populations and better if they manufacture their own PPE and test kits.
I prefer to live in multi-cultural Britain than Australia which is why I chose to stay here.
May 5, 2020
Andy envies New Zealand but does he really want us to become New Zealand? I certainly don’t.
May 5, 2020
it helps if you really like sheep.
May 6, 2020
OK, how about Germany, Norway, or Greece, then?
May 5, 2020
We where placed in this lockdown by politicians, by a cabinet political decision
Only a political decision can reverse the lockdown decision
The governments 5 measures and/or taking into account the science is purely smoke & mirrors
OR
The news media will tell the Prime Minister the schedule to changing the lockdown
May 5, 2020
glen
Sorry, I think it’s you who have got it wrong.
Just my opinion.
Seems to me all many people want to do is blame the Government for everything, no matter what they do, or do not do.
May 6, 2020
Alan
Thats okay….thats what debate is about
May 5, 2020
The scare stories we get day in and day out have had their desired result.
It seems that everyone is prepared to take extreme precautions just to stay alive – Is life that precious? If so, why don’t we hear more about the injustices to white people around the globe, or get excited about how many die every day for many different reasons … ah but that’s natural, a cycle of life…./
CV is infectious we keep being told, but only to some people – We are in the dark about so much and panic rules heads. We have to wonder how far this will go if unreliable statistics don’t improve… Once we start down the path of paramilitary lockdowns then we might as well all give up and surrender ourselves to the virus, because life will have lost it’s meaning if authoritarian methods take over.
The only answer is to normalise life as quickly as possible and prepare to fight the virus rather than the establishment.
May 5, 2020
I am growing a beard until I can drink a pint of beer in my local pub.
I look ridiculous!
Will my pub survive Boris’s shutdown?
Will my mental health survive?
May 5, 2020
Turkey cannot export food products free of tariffs into the EU therefore the customs Union is only partial
May 5, 2020
Good morning,
The only precedent that we have for this situation is the Spanish Flu and it came in 3 waves. The first wave in the early summer of 2018 was the smallest – the second wave starting in Autumn was the real killer and the third, not as high as the second still higher than the first. Understandably the government is going to be very cautious. I have just seen the UK now has the worst death toll in Europe.
All the things we talk about now were tried 100 years ago – compulsory mask wearing, staggered hours, deep cleaning etc. Amazing when they did not even know it was a virus – but they did know how it spread.
Just reading about what is going on in the US now and looking back at history – definitely history repeating itself.
We have to hold on and not be impatient – and accept we are not going to return to the world of 2019 any time soon.
May 5, 2020
I’d be careful about those figures. There is a big difference between dying with, and dying of an illness.
It also suggests that the measures were not as effective and may prove to be more harmful than the virus. But we will see.
May 5, 2020
They didn’t have contact tracing apps.
Oh, sorry, this country’s not doing that in any meaningful way.
May 5, 2020
Martin, You spent weeks on here praising the government’s lockdown strategy.
May 5, 2020
A troll’s purpose is not to engage in meaningful debate but to disrupt it.
May 5, 2020
It is important to note that the ONS has stated that their figures are drawn from deaths certificates that INCLUDE the presence of covid19; this does not mean that all the deaths are attributable TO the virus.
Perhaps, thinking ahead to a possible second wave, it should also be noted that thoracic and cardiac specialists are now seeing different presentations of the infection that include bronchial thrombosis. Given the huge advance in medical science in the last 100 years, this could mean that some hospitalised patients might be treated in a different way, giving better survival rates.
May 5, 2020
some date typos in there.
May 5, 2020
I don’t wish to sound heartless but the Spanish flu attacked mainly the young.
At least this one targets mainly men over 65 and those with known comorbidities. A lot easier to selectively lock-down people who are less economically active while the rest of us try our best to salvage the economy.
In 1918 they started with a tough people, a war ravaged economy and ended up with a booming one – we started with a soft people, a booming economy… I don’t want to even think about where we’re going.
May 5, 2020
‘stay at home and save the NHSā .
becoming the most irritating, oft repeated inaccurate slogan for years.
May 6, 2020
100% correct
May 5, 2020
Set the people free!
May 5, 2020
I think that took God sending ten plagues.
Weāve just got the one!
May 5, 2020
As a direct result of this continued lockdown, and reported by the BBC yesterday as a passing sub-note, the number of new claimants this period for Universal Credit has increased by almost 2 millionā¦..2 MILLION !!!
And the government didnāt even blink
May 5, 2020
The government creates chaos rather quickly and finds undoing its negative work a problem.
It’s a question of mental outlook. Think “If people do not go to work as soon as possible, they will be struck down by an evil virus!”
That should clear government minds to stop swinging the lead.
Are they afraid of a physical roll call of bums on seats when perhaps they are seated on some distant beach abroad and just don’t wish to return to work? Sounds like it. Sounds like teenagers with MP cowboy hats writ large,making excuses to their mother for not going to work and so staying in bed.
Send the RAF to bring them home. A Shakelton would be poetic.
May 5, 2020
Continued social distancing means the end of life as we know it. It will or even has bankrupted the country. Democracy is at risk. It will end the conventions, traditions and glue of society. Thankfully our natural gregarious instincts are beginning to question the extent of this draconian lockdown.
It has been very disappointing to hear Mr.Johnson leading the mantra of “following the science”. We are now hearing well argued opposing views to our multi headed health bureaucracy.
The introduction of the tracking app is months late and should be the focal point of managing this disease.
May 5, 2020
How do we prove we’ve had the virus?
How do we prove we’ve got natural antibodies against this virus that have caused people to be carriers but not affected?
May 6, 2020
a ducking stool of being exposed to the virus once again?
May 5, 2020
The lockdown should end completely now. It was imposed to make sure that the NHS would not be overwhelmed. This has been achieved comprehensively. The Imperial College forecasts have been so far out both here and in Sweden to be laughable. Professor Isaac bin Israel predicted the virus would run its course irrespective of any kind of lockdown and, so far, he has been proved right. The virus is awful but the death toll is no worse than that suffered with flu outbreaks in the 60s and 70s and not so different even from recent flu epidemics. Letās get back to normal now.
May 5, 2020
The lockdown should have been in place earlier. I wonder why ever the NHS needed saving. Was it to plant the seed of creating an alternative.Was it to create public fear and even more insidiously demonstrate that we needed the private sector. At the beginning of the problems the secretary of health said that we would be lucky to get away with 20,000 deaths , so they knew what the capacity was likely to be.
The NHS will survive but unfortunately up to now 30.000 people haven’t.
May 6, 2020
How would you have managed to impose a curfew earlier? And how would you have kept it up?
May 6, 2020
managed and specific areas of lock down rather than generalised tar brushing.
May 5, 2020
The trouble is that the Government keeps lying to us or treating us like children who can’t handle the truth. I know they justify this all as being for our own good, but in the end we don’t believe a word they say, and that comes at a heavy cost.
So they need to step back from trying to micro-manage us, and treat us as adults who are capable of making our own decisions as to the risks we are prepared to take in our own individual circumstances.
I envy the Germans in this crisis. They have a Champions League government, we have a bunch of football Conference hackers.
May 5, 2020
How about allowing under 50 out to work. Pass laws to protect the over 50’s.
Enable HCQ with Zinc to be taken as a preventative, at a low dose or at the earliest sign of infection, like paracetamol OTC.
Masks and more cleaning , filters etc please on Public transport.
May 5, 2020
Iām over 50 and have been working full time for seven weeks outside home during the peak of this virus with four other over 50ās are you suggesting we now get imprisoned in our own homes? For how long? Who are you expecting to do the work weāve been doing?
People that have been off on furlough and full pay are just unreal! All this because our health system canāt cope for seven weeks.
May 5, 2020
A-tracy, “People [who] have been off on furlough and full pay are just unreal! All this because our health system canāt cope for seven weeks”. Indeed so. Though the supposed lack of capacity in the NHS was only a guess. And as it turns out, probably very wrong.
May 5, 2020
Ultimately i am free choice.
Over 50’s can make there own decisions and be given all the facts. The good, bad and ugly. No compulsion,unless people are proved contagious.
Particularly where the UK establishment management seem so inept and potentially criminally negligent in its policy and practical response. Its not joined up or logical between transport hubs and lockdowns. It’s about numbers.
If we were SK , i would side with the government in the short run!
May 5, 2020
Damned if you do and damned if you don’t go back to work…..
Unlike cars where we know by their registration, model and condition their status we as people are an amorphous mix of visual traits that can give false indicators of our health and CV19 status.
If we were robots this could be indicated by some colour coding like red, amber and green.
However since most of us are not robotic (unlike many in the BBC /MSM) and abhor being labelled or stereotyped I think that if future pandemics are the new reality we may end up being micro-chipped similar to our furry friends ! How Orwellian that would be …..?
May 5, 2020
In Spain free masks are being given out to people and it is now mandatory to wear one on public transport. Meanwhile in our country we are still assessing whether they are of benefit. Surely it doesnāt take over three months to assess the benefit of wearing a mask? The country needs to get back to work with social distancing and masks in place until we get this pandemic under control. Those in the vulnerable category can remain in lockdown if they wish to. Looking at the worldwide numbers the virus seems to be dying out but we need to prepare for a future wave.
May 5, 2020
The Government says it is ‘guided by science’ then ignores the principles of good science.
For most of us we were not concerned about the make up of SAGE, and understood the premise that not identifying the individuals meant they couldn’t suffer outside influence. However science is only science when the workings, theories and conclusions are exposed for a ‘peer review’. When this doesn’t happen it is not science it is a political stand point, a political decision – nothing else.
The Government should be honest, own their decisions and not hide behind some new interpretation of science. They keep falling into the trap of appearing incompetent.
May 5, 2020
Ian@Barkham,
It is the half-way house position of the Govt that shows it clearly cannot be trusted. Every so often the SAGE page [www.gov.uk/government/groups/scientific-advisory-group-for-emergencies-sage-coronavirus-covid-19-response] is updated. There is a list of papers presented (Excel file currently only showing presented papers upt0 16th April, the completeness of which we don’t know). More bizarrely only a subset of those papers are then put on the SAGE page, and some of those have blacked out sections.
As you say anonymising the authors is one thing but delaying and hiding the papers is not science and not transparent government, made even worse by intentionally acting in this suspicious way.
May 5, 2020
Ian – – possibly also falling into the trap of actually being incompetent.
May 5, 2020
Sunderland is a bit of an iconic city for Brexiteers. It heralded the start of their dream.
It will probably be sometime until Sunderland AFC play a football match in a full stadium in the city.
But when they do marvel at the 49,000 capacity crowd at the Stadium of Light and remember this.
That full stadium still contains fewer people than we need to fill all the new Brexit bureaucrat jobs we are creating for you.
We need 50,000 state funded pen pushers – at a cost to the taxpayer of Ā£1.5bn – to apparently cut red tape.
May 5, 2020
Well, the Leave voters now know what real restriction on freedom is as opposed to the imaginary kind.
And it was ALL imposed by national governments.
The European Union has absolutely zero power to restrict people’s freedoms in this way, and so it is clear where the real power is and has always been – with national governments.
So all that stuff claimed by the Leave campaigns to the contrary turns out to be untrue after all.
Doesn’t it?
May 5, 2020
No one voted to leave the EU because they thought it had too much power to restrict our freedoms during a pandemic.
I’ve looked through the reasons for leaving the EU as set out by the various Leave campaign literature and it wasn’t mentioned.
Bit of a strawman argument from you Martin.
May 5, 2020
Is that the “real restriction on freedom” supposedly to be caused by Brexit, Martin?
May 5, 2020
Odd that EU countries were first to restrict freedom.
May 5, 2020
No, I think that China got there first, Fred.
May 6, 2020
No, in Europe, Martin.
May 6, 2020
They don’t just restrict freedom they incarcerate anybody who dares express a different view to the Party. Even when a potential virus that might wipe out Wuhan is discussed they cart the medical witnesses off to die of the same virus. Having the early warning the Party could then begin shutdown having allowed thousands of spreaders to fly all over the globe. Maybe THAT freedom should have been restricted?
May 5, 2020
Nope.
It was imposed by a virus that came out of Communist ruled China which we now know they declared to the WHO 4 days after the first victim appeared in France.
This is why everyone has had their freedoms curtailed, whether in the EU or not.
May 5, 2020
Just as I have said on this site before; alas, leavers never read and learn.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The top U.S. business lobby on Monday urged Britain to conclude a bilateral trade deal with the European Union as quickly as possible to remove uncertainty that is limiting investment flows and could pose risks to its trade talks with the United States.
The Chamber of Commerce, in a series of recommendations issued ahead of the start of U.S.-UK trade talks on Tuesday, said U.S. firms had invested more than $750 billion in Britain, in large part to secure access to the larger EU single market before Britain voted to leave the bloc.
The group said London should redefine its ties to Brussels before working out trade deals with other countries, and said there were opportunities for Britain and the United States to advance global standards in the digital economy, financial services, and emerging technologies.
May 5, 2020
They are just like our CBI
They are not in favour of a deal.
They want us to remain
They like mono blocs and find it easier to make their big multi national profits in that way.
Fortunately the White House isn’t interested in their partisan views.
May 7, 2020
Edward 2
You are drawing conclusions based on lack of facts again (including on Nick C)
May 7, 2020
Wrong bill.
What I said was based on facts and the experiences of my business dealings with America over several decades.
May 5, 2020
Yes, why should the US see things much differently from Japan, whose government clearly thought that the UK had lost the plot completely?
May 6, 2020
Acorn, Just as I have said on this site before: alas, Remains never read and never learn.
The USA foreign policy for a long time has been that they prefer to deal with one European government. That’s to suit the USA, not us.
You should get out of the habit of always advocating, and with such relish, what other states or empires want us to do.
May 5, 2020
only if the EU decide to start a trade war
May 5, 2020
Andy, Ā£1.5bn for UK bureaucrats is only 10% of the money it cost us (is still costing us!) to be run by your EU empire. So it’s a snip. And actually we will be saving on all the bureaucrats that we once used to implement all the crazy EU rules that you drool over, but which we won’t need when we leave.
May 5, 2020
Ā£1.5bn is just the cost of your customs Brexit bureaucrats. It will be many years until we know the true cost of all of your extra Brexit bureaucracy.
May 6, 2020
Andy, There is no reason to suppose there will be any “extra Brexit bureaucracy”. Most countries in the world do not have any, so why should we? And you persistently “forget” that c88% UK GDP will no longer have to perform to your EU bureaucracy. That will save a fortune.
May 7, 2020
NickC
that assumens you know which standards we will apply and ewe still do not know
May 7, 2020
We do bill.
We trade now with nearly every nation and the standards are known.
May 5, 2020
4x that number of stadia was coming to live in a country that did not have enough PPE to cover the true cost of outsourcing manufacturing work.
May 5, 2020
Well there we have it. We are being held under house arrest because our Health Secretary is frit. According to the Daily Telegraph today he has admitted he is not comfortable with the idea of going into a crowded room even though he has already had coronavirus.
I am not a doctor, but I understand that I have 2 immune systems, my cell-mediated immune system which is responsible for eliminating intra-cellular (meaning inside the cell) organisms that have been infected with a virus or bacteria. It mainly works through the production of white blood cells that digest and then excrete these cells. This process makes me sick ā I get a fever, rash, cough, mucus and so forth, but these are not caused by the virus, but by my bodyās response to the virus.
In contrast, my humoral immune system targets extracellular (i.e. outside the cell) infecting agents (such as worms) and produces antibodies that call for a killing response, before the offending agent gets into my cells and makes me sick.
With every naturally occurring infection both my immune systems respond, first the cell-mediated to clear the virus, then the antibody or humoral system to make antibodies to remember what happened, so my cells donāt get infected with the same pathogen more than once.
The cell-mediated response usually lasts a week to ten days and then the virus is cleared, I make antibodies and am immune for life. The saying āgive me a fever (that is, the cell-mediated response) and I can cure any diseaseā speaks to the power and efficiency of my cell-mediated immune system.
With all this in mind, Mr Hancock should have some faith in his amazing immune system and go boldly forth, and allow us to do the same.
Is it too much to expect that our Health Secretary and the Scientists advising him actually know something about how our bodies work?
May 5, 2020
Fear rules.
May 5, 2020
Yes. And very easily and effectively. That is why Remainers used it in their campaign.
May 5, 2020
ian: “Fear rules.”
Yea, thanks to the BBC.
It really needs to be shutdown after this. We won’t be able to afford it anyway.
May 6, 2020
Fear and never dispute your peers
Yeah you’re correct fear does indeed rule
May 5, 2020
JR, You are quite right to call for an immediate relaxation of lockdown.
Covid19 is a serious disease for those vulnerable people with co-morbidities, but is no worse than seasonal flu for the majority of the population. We do not shut down society or the economy for flu, even though it can be a killer.
The experiences of Japan, Taiwan, and Sweden, show that sensible measures have helped to reduce infection rates whilst encouraging herd immunity. This was the government’s strategy until it was bounced into total lockdown mode by the hysterical MSM and the usual coterie of Remain and CAGW doom-obsessed extremists.
With no cure, yet plenty of spare NHS capacity and mothballed Nightingale hospitals, it is time to accept that the hystericals were wrong. And pack Prof Fergusson off to the Falklands where he can do less damage.
May 5, 2020
There.
Is.
No.
Such.
Thing.
As.
Herd.
Immunity.
Without.
A.
Vaccine.
You mean “survivor immunity”.
And there is not yet any evidence that Covid 19 infection confers lasting immunity on its survivors either.
May 5, 2020
get. your. fullstop. key. sorted. – it. looks. stupid.
May 5, 2020
Martin,
Herd.
immunity.
Is.
A.
Standard.
Accepted.
Term.
In.
Epidemiology.
“Herd immunity can only be reached by widespread vaccination … or by individuals falling ill and recovering thereby developing natural immunity against the virus“. (Science Media Centre). Get over it.
May 5, 2020
OK, please name a disease, to which a society has achieved “herd immunity” without a vaccine?
You can name anything that you like, from smallpox and polio, through measles, to the common cold, and they never have.
Have they?
May 6, 2020
Chickenpox is one of many.
May 6, 2020
Martin, Everyone else knows what herd immunity means; and they know it can be acquired either naturally (by recovery from the disease), or by vaccination, or by a combination. I even helped you out with the definition from the Science Media Centre.
Until the advent of modern vaccines, every society was protected by natural herd immunity. Or it ceased to exist at all. Natural herd immunity is all we have with covid19, once it has spread, because we don’t have a vaccine for it yet. Herd immunity also occurs in animals where it is mostly natural.
You’ve been so keen to score a political point against the government’s original herd immunity strategy, you’ve tripped yourself up.
May 6, 2020
Edward2, do your homework, only people who had it (usually at a young age) or were vaccinated are immune. So āherd immunityā to chickenpox is, as NickC quotes, is only reached by widespread vaccination or by individuals getting the disease and recovering from it. Even so so-called chicken pox immune people can get shingles from the same virus later on.
May 6, 2020
So you are agreeing her.
You get chickenpox at an early age, which was the most common time to get it, and you become immune from getting it again.
I recall parents deliberately taking their children, when pre school, round to parties in order to become infected before they got older and the illness was more impactful.
This is before they did their homework.
May 5, 2020
Waiting for a vaccine which may be sometime never, according to Imperial.
And your “…without a vaccine” at least admits that countries that have this disease under control can’t come out of lock-down until there is a vaccine either.
I have a horrid feeling we are going to end up having to live (or die) with this one.
In the meantime (if we aren’t allowed to say this was a Lab cock up) the wet markets are up and running again.
What’s the next one going to be like ?
May 5, 2020
Of course they can come out of lockdown, just like China has, now that it has reduced infection rates to the occasional few every day or two, and which can be controlled by thorough contact tracing and isolation.
Others are following on too.
The whole world is not like this shambles of a country and Trump’s US, you know?
May 6, 2020
So, if China is so commendable compared with the UK, why did it spread in China in the first place, Martin? You don’t want to lockdown our borders, so without herd immunity we are open to re-infection at any time from abroad, too. Oh, I remember, you want the whole world run on centralised authoritarian lines.
May 5, 2020
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8289921/Scientist-advice-led-lockdown-QUITS-breaking-restrictions-meet-married-lover.html
And here’s the ****head whose economy wrecking advice we have been taking.
It appears some animals are more equal than others in this not-so-Brave New World.
This is utterly UTTERLY outrageous.
May 5, 2020
Well exactly, why havenāt the Chinese killed the bats that are carrying sars/covid19 and closed down the wet markets? Why havenāt the WHO asked them to?
May 6, 2020
Chileans eat guinea pigs, Thais eat dogs, French delight in snails and dismembered frogs. In the Arabian peninsula sheep’s eyes are given to the guest of honour. Each to his own.
May 7, 2020
None of these other animals have been repeatedly accused of infecting humans with a deadly untreatable disease that closes down world economies?
May 5, 2020
you have no idea what you are talking about. it is not good to be so strident when speaking on something on which you have no knowledge or expertise. the state epidemiologist in Sweden has stated that he expects Stockholm county to achieve herd immunity by mid-May (without a vaccine).
Thanks
May 5, 2020
NickC
all your talk about extremism one way or another is really funny, considering coming from you with your extreme points of you
May 5, 2020
There is nothing extreme about the facts the Nick gave us.
You keep calling things you disagree with as extremist.
May 6, 2020
I have never mentioned extremism it is usually not a word I use, except when dealing with NIck C
May 6, 2020
Bill B, You “never mention extremism” except when you do, is that it?
May 6, 2020
Which is a strange way of saying you actually do call people you disagree with extremists.
May 5, 2020
I wonder how much of this is Government hype to appear in control. How much of it is MsM hysteria. Create fear and you are in the driving seat, or so they believe.
As yet no vaccine as proved more the 58% effective against this type of virus. With the worst performers being around 10% effective.
That is not to say we shouldn’t try and it is not to say that any percentage is better than none. The best defense is as it has always been – the humans own immune system.
The Spanish Flu(H1N1 ) of 1918 knocked out some 228K of the UK population. Russian Flu(H1N1 )1977 saw its re-emergence(just a new name) a lot of illness, but for most our immune system inherited the protection from our forbearers so no massive death toll.
Similar with Asian Flu 1957/58 not so aggressive but still causing 33K deaths, it re-emerged more aggressively as Hong Kong flu(still the same strain family) causing 80K deaths. That was considered to be a low outcome as we had an immune system able to cope. Yet in all situations with similar knowledge as we have today, there were no lock-downs, no infringements on freedoms. People got on with life.
Viruses are known to morph. It is part of their own survival, if they keep killing their host they kill themselves, so they adapt to survive. Todays vaccine will not save tomorrows victim
That is why the only real honest protection against a virus other than surviving its onslaught is to avoid its transmission (distance from its carriers). If it cant find a host it just dies, a vaccine cannot do that with any certainty.
The Government and its messengers in the MsM have created an hysteria that is promising a perfect out-come. Its working for and against its self. Government will be blamed for creating Corvid. The Government will be blamed for punishing’s its survivors with as yet untold debts, that in themselves could exasperate the death rate. They took to much on, on the basis no one could solve the situation but ‘them’ and promised so much while trying to hide from the fall-out. It isn’t Government or Guidance it is de facto rule when you don’t engage.
We are not all in this together – we are expected to be the puppets in a game of politics. Just an experiment based on control
May 5, 2020
The only comment I would say about age is that some pensioners forget it is the younger folk going out to work and pay taxes that funds the NHS and state pensions that OAPs rely on, even in normal times.
May 5, 2020
and the only comment I would make is that current taxpayers forget who paid for benefits, education, pregnancies, childbirth, roads, rails, armed forces etc etc. before becoming pensioners drawing on the money paid in for perhaps 50 years.
May 5, 2020
OK. We all stay in lockdown then.
May 5, 2020
Men ,fat people, and ethnic minorities are particularly at risk.
Sensible pensioners are far less likely to spread the virus. They/ we don’t go out into crowds as much.
May 6, 2020
Even if covid doesn’t get us oldies, we don’t have that many more years left. But you? quite a few? Then I suggest you should want to get back to work for your future.
May 5, 2020
That’s the subtle difference, those that financed the system, never get their equal payout. Those that have never payed get basically a free ride.
May 5, 2020
And some forget that old people receiving state pensions have paid taxes all their life that paid for the pension of those before them.
May 5, 2020
Martin
Absolutely true, the working generation have always paid for those in retirement, as that was how the scheme was set up.
Us older ones paid for our parents and grandparents, when we were working, so the point you are trying to make is ?
May 5, 2020
OAPs pay tax on their investments, savings, private pensions investments, stamp duty (if they move home), fuel & alcohol duty, VAT and still get 40% robbed off them on death. I pay many times the tax (in the UK) that an average worker pays in the UK. But as I live abroad I do not even get free NHS treatment (or much else) back.
Not that I am an OAP or retired. Very many OAPs still work too or look after grandchildren free of charge.
May 5, 2020
I’m lucky. I don’t pay tax on my ‘investments’. At least, not any that have ever been made in the stock market. I recently relied on Neil Woodford’s reputation to invest some money in my SIPP into his Income Focus Fund. Like other investments (Friends Provident endowment, Equitable Life pension) – it lost money. Plenty of money.
One little investment I had – with the CoOp – a bit of life insurance with some sort of endowment attached did a bit better. I paid in Ā£4 a month from the age of 22 until I was 65 – and paid in a total of about Ā£2k. It paid out Ā£17k when I was 65. Was that any good? We had high inflation in the 70s and 80s. I wonder how much I would have earned if had paid Ā£4 a month into a building society savings account for 43 years.
May 5, 2020
On the other hand, most pensioners will remember their own working lives when they did precisely the same for their parents’ generation.
And most of my fellow-pensioner friends believe their children’s and grandchildren’s future is very much more important than prolonging their own lives at great expense (in all senses).
May 5, 2020
I doubt, however, that OAPs forget the 40 odd years they have spent working and paying into the system. Forced to pay into what they thought was an insurance scheme against old age but was actually a ponzi scheme ( or possibly downright theft on a huge scale).
May 5, 2020
The only comment I would make about age is that some younger folk forget that it is today’s older folk who went out to work and paid taxes throughout their working life to fund not only the NHS, but to provide for all the other systems that rely on taxation to fund them, past generations included, while also contributing to their own state pension that they hoped they would live long enough to enjoy.
A state pension is not a benefit; it is an entitlement by contribution. Many people die long before then get to receive their pension, but contributed to it regardless.
Most people in receipt of a pension still pay taxes today, on their savings and investments, if they’re lucky enough to have had enough to save (money not squandered on frivolities, but saved for that rainy day) and all the other stuff that LL mentioned above.
Many members of the older generation are now providing care for their parents, free of charge, saving the economy Ā£132 billion a year or more by now. About 2 million carers are over the age of 65. Carer’s allowance is a measly Ā£67.25 a week but you only get it if you provide care for more than 35 hours a week. Carer’s allowance is taxable too. That’s why many carers are struggling to survive. They’re not living a life of luxury. Just about managing.
May 5, 2020
We now work on and on and pay higher taxes as we also draw a pension . Many are working until 80 yrs
May 5, 2020
I read that of the 18.1 MILLION people that entered the UK in the 3 months before the lockdown, only between 2 and 3 hundred were quarantined. Most of that enormous number had no checks and were just allowed in.
Are we being governed by idiots? Why was this allowed. Surely at the first whiff of a global pandemic you should SHUT your borders – only allow UK citizens to return – and test them all when they land – and quarantine any that need it.
May 5, 2020
Mike Wilson, Indeed we should have shut our borders at the first whiff of a global pandemic. It was only the doom and panic mongers shrieking about “xenophobia” (like Andy on here) who helped to block it.
May 7, 2020
NickC
you are again making assumptions based on no real facts
May 5, 2020
and I saw many of them!
May 5, 2020
Where as before BREXIT we would have just blamed the EU. š
I’d call that progress š
May 5, 2020
273 were quarantined and even with that low number other people had to be evicted to accommodate them. Where on earth would you have put the rest? We are talking about one and half million Britons who came back and about three million who might have wanted to. Most of the one and a half million will have gone home and kept to the rules like everyone else. The media are painting a picture of them all swanning around while the rest of us are at home. I know there are some groups who aren’t keeping to the guidelines but they wouldn’t be anyway, not just because they have just flown back.
The advice was that the Wuhan virus had already taken hold in the country and that screening this one and a half million wouldn’t have made much difference. As the rate of infection comes down, screening might have to be introduced.
May 5, 2020
And why isn’t this new tracking app on GitHub? So that any and every developer in the world could have a look and make improvements? And make sure there is nothing sinister going on. Is the next thing that we’ll be fined if we go out without a smart phone. I often forget mine.
May 5, 2020
They don’t want you to understand how much of your personnel and your contacts data is collected and collated.
There can be no other reason.
May 5, 2020
The links to the two highly significant statistics and papers that I commented on above are below. The information within these documents is critical to an understanding of COVID-19 disease control and they should be required reading for all politicians involved with control policy:
CDC statistics: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/health_policy/Provisional-Death-Counts-COVID-19-Pneumonia-and-Influenza.pdf
HCQ research papers summary and conclusion:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1545C_dJWMIAgqeLEsfo2U8Kq5WprDuARXrJl6N1aDjY/edit
May 5, 2020
Honest to goodness supermarkets put all our health at risk with their nhs and carer early priority opening hours. So 3-4 mornings per week the potentially most infected, infectious of us go into the nice overnight cleaned stores, handle all the goods whilst everyone else queues up outside waiting to hold on to their shopping trolley handles and pick up food they may have touched after treating covid19 patients all night!
Why werenāt front line medical people who weāve been told have been tested and are by far the most infected/infectious asymptotic carriers given the home deliveries?
May 5, 2020
It is probably the same reason that NHS etc. don’t practice social distancing when seeking media attention. Until you all have it are we bothered.
May 5, 2020
Or doing the Haka.
May 5, 2020
This is a problem during this crisis and prior to this period, I have written to the Royal College of Nursing re the thoughtless and unprofessional pathogen carrying wearing of indoor uniforms inside supermarkets and public places. Many staff go straight out of work into food stores and take their days contamination with them. Dr’s in general practice are worse as they don’t wear uniforms which can be changed on site and their clothes are worn day after day.
Of course we must realise that many other workers now wear similar uniforms and like to display their tight badly laundered, scruffy mimicry of a uniform in these places also.
May 6, 2020
MBJ
Agreed
Have said this for years, incomprehensible in todays situation.
May 5, 2020
I think you mean I just added it up!
May 5, 2020
I wonder how a totally non scientific leader chooses which scientific advice to follow…especially as now such advice has become very politicised.
I personally would look back over past performance…you know…to see how much a particular scientific body had got right in the past….or not!
May 5, 2020
I am given to understand from other sources that those on the SAGE are all on the government payroll. It is my view that this is a mistake as these individuals are incapable of looking at the bigger picture.
May 5, 2020
OFF TOPIC
I noticed the Remoaner 5th Column, aka ‘The Dinosaur Brigade’, was out in force in the House yesterday. Dutifully stepping up, each making the same pointless demand that the transition period be extended beyond 31st December. HMG has been resolute in saying “NO!” I sense it says “NO” with a degree of ‘pay back’ for the insolence it received from the 5th Column stalking behind the ‘Benn’ Act!
Why can’t these people move on, or move out? Given the current majority it is likely that, barring doing something crass, this government and its successors should still be incumbent after certainly 2 more GEs. That, with the almost 5 years of this parliament still to run could mean 15 years of uninterrupted office!
The Remoaners argue that the present demographic is that the young, are more kindly disposed to the EU than the older generation, who will die off in fairly short order – then we will return to the land of dictatorship by the unelected! No democracy – No accountability – Surrender of sovereignty!
What the Remoaners seem blind to, is that after 15 years – 15 years of new voters, who will have only known of life outside the EU, that this ‘young’ demographic will change! Also, when the impact of the effects of the considerable disquiet welling up within the EU at this moment is manifest, many erstwhile EU supporters will be of the opinion that: “We are glad we are not part of it! In 15 years The EU may not exist!
Remoaners, there is much more to life than being a cynic for at least 15 years! Get a life!
May 5, 2020
Everyday the BBC covers what is no More than a daily SNP Party Political Broadcast at 12 30 hrs,Give the BEEB a call John and ask why the English Have this Broadcast in their Country, its like having to listen to Lord Haw Haw.
May 5, 2020
Boris was scripted, destined to be a disaster for the greatest globalist good. No amount of common sense will change his mind.
May 5, 2020
UK now has Europe’s highest date rate we still have to be very careful
May 5, 2020
The UK also has the most incompetent government in Europe. I wonder if thereās a link?
May 6, 2020
ah. something sensible to discuss.
May 6, 2020
Andy, No, the high death rate comes from two main factors: the high population density in England; and the centralised, top-down, 1950s Soviet-style, incompetent NHS management. And you want more of both.
May 5, 2020
UK has 2nd highest obesity rate in EU, third in Europe (Turkey, Malta, UK) but hasn’t been careful about it.
May 5, 2020
You assume other countries count as we do and they do not. You also have to factor in
population and population density.
All those who pushed for free movement leading to massive population rise have deaths on their hands.
And as to testing capacity Germany protected their capacities yet our “region” wasn’t supposed to need it.
May 6, 2020
Frances Truscott,
Please, kindly explain to me , what impact free movement over the past 20 years has had of implications for Covid , if this is the case at all?
May 6, 2020
18 million people arrived in the UK in the 3 months before lockdown. Are you sure they were all disease free, Bill? Not much point locking down the country when the borders aren’t locked down.
May 7, 2020
NickC
Blame the government and how many of the arrivals live in the UK the vast majority
May 7, 2020
Open borders is an EU policy.
May 7, 2020
How many of these 18 million people are British or residents in Britain? That they were not tested (I was not tested returning from France on 19 March) is the real problem showing the lack of preparation of the Government and of its agencies. On 31 January we were (almost) all out celebrating another step in our exit from the EU and the politicians who should have been at least aware of what was happening in China and of the cases appearing in Italy, Spain and France clearly could not care less about that.
May 5, 2020
Check deaths per million population bill.
More realistic a measurement.
May 5, 2020
I was just beginning to see the death rate down on two consecutive days and thinking about a little normality and then blast ! up again today.Talk about false endings of this life story.I am not sure about staggered return to work. I think we need to put a little fairness aside and concentrate on practicalities and re infection rate which also could bring businesses crashing,
May 5, 2020
Taking a 7 day moving average of Covid19 deaths in NHS England hospitals seem be decreasing by about 20 per day
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-daily-deaths/
May 5, 2020
It goes up every Tuesday due to the lag in reporting over the weekend, compare each day with the previous week, we are down nearly 33% on last Tuesday.
May 5, 2020
How many of those admitted into hospital in critical care this last week have been working outside their home?
Doing what occupations?
May 5, 2020
I am at a loss how the government can make sensible decisions on the poor quality of statistics published. Yesterday 288 deaths were reported, today 693, a statistically impossible swing. Boris told us a few days ago we were at the point of maximum risk when other figures showed the peak on April 8th. We have an Office for National Statistics – are they incapable of producing proper data?
Is there any good reason why garden centres, which are largely outdoors, cannot open immediately, otherwise an entire industry will be destroyed? Why can we buy plants in B&Q but not in a garden centre?
May 5, 2020
I need to be able to hug my adult children and my chap. We all live in separate homes and have obeyed every rule.
I am under 70 but over 65.
Someone asked me to do a task today using the computer and I cannot. I have not been in the company of another human for 8 weeks.
Just talking on the phone or computer just isn’t good enough.
May 5, 2020
As usual, John is right in all that he has written and that is to keep him and us on this blog in financial good health whatever and no slacking, max effort from all workers and no excuses and people over sixty if retired can do whatever they like without question.
May 5, 2020
Neil Ferguson has had to resign!
Heās been found BREAKING THE RULES OF LOCKDOWN!!
Personally I am too scared of the virus to do that…but then what do I know? Iām not a government scientific adviser.
May 5, 2020
Update from yesterdays aviation discussion -Job cuts
British Airays 12,000
Virgin Atlantic 3,000
Ryan Air 3,000
Rolls Royce upto 8,000
GE Aviation Wales consulting on job cuts
Suppy Chain jobs unknown
May 6, 2020
they may be headline numbers but what about the single person jobs, the 2 to 10 businesses folding with no sign of possible recovery. They amount to massive unemployment, debts, economic meltdown for months if not years ahead.
May 6, 2020
Yeah Fred H you’re correct
I understand that during the past recording period there has been an additional 1.8 million universal credit cliamants
Say goodbye to the skills and expertise within the tier 2&3 supply chain
May 5, 2020
“The others should not be placed under house arrest against their will.”
Was this ever on the cards? Lady Altmann has been very naughty in working people up into a state of anxiety and threatening civil unrest, suggesting old people might go to prison. She is just another remainiac, using old people as cannon fodder in her vendetta against the Government. She should be ashamed of herself but she won’t be as they never are.
May 6, 2020
of course ‘old people’ are prepared to go to prison. Lives are becoming meaningless and miserable for far too many OAPs.
Empty lives, almost no social contact, not seeing family, missing important days in the family lives etc.
Fear raised to the point of sleep-walking their existence while awaiting a miserable death constantly harrangued at them on television and radio.
May 5, 2020
I am completely with you on this.
Firstly, it would punish those who have taken care not to get infected and cause the NHS problems.
The idea that a system where someone would remain locked down in their home, and have to watch a neighbour going off to work or down the pub, or have his family round would work is for the birds.
The temptation for fraud would be enormous, either getting someone else to take the test, or forging a certificate, on top of that we would be providing a perverse incentive to catch the damn thing.
Again, you canāt discriminate on age grounds. We are all in this together or we are not.
May 5, 2020
Prof Neil Ferguson has quit as a government adviser on coronavirus after admitting an “error of judgement”.
Prof Neil Ferguson is one of the world’s most influential disease modellers.
He is director of the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis.
The centre’s mathematical predictions advise governments and the World Health Organization on outbreaks from Ebola in West Africa to the current pandemic.
It was that group’s work, in early January, that alerted the world to the threat of coronavirus. It showed hundreds if not thousands of people were likely to have been infected in Wuhan, at a time when Chinese officials said there were only a few dozen cases.
But he shot to public attention as “Professor Lockdown”.
In mid-March, the maths showed the UK needed to change course or a quarter of a million people would die in a “catastrophic epidemic”.
Those calculations helped transform government policy and all lives.
May 5, 2020
Is the whole thing a cunning stunt to cull us baby boomers? What better way to get the bill for state pensions and care down than to get the numbers right down.
May 6, 2020
And to attempt to scupper Brexit, perhaps?
May 5, 2020
Provided that social spacing of 2 metres is maintained, people should be allowed to go back to work. Restaurants will need a booking system. Soccer matches must be played behind closed doors or very sparsely attended. Pubs may not open as pubs but pub space could be converted to restaurant use. Hotel rooms must not be shared by people from different households (adultery is out but incest is OK). Queues outside shops must have 2 metre spacing, as Tesco and Sainsbury do already.
Use of public transport could be relaxed only slightly; it is difficult to enforce social spacing in buses and trains (platform occupancy would not to be controlled) and virtually impossible in aeroplanes. Driving solo in a motor car does not spread the virus if you wash hands before and after your journey. The lockdown on international travel must be maintained pro tem.
We need to get our export industries and construction back to work, even if it is difficult to enforce social spacing. I am thinking of car plants.
The main difficulty is a severe shortage of PPE. We need to wind down furloughing and instead allow businesses, institutions and individuals to purchase PPE from any UK source and bill the Treasury. It would be expensive but cheaper than furloughing and it would boost supply dramatically.
And we need the children back in school.
I like Mr Gove’s idea of localised lockdowns where the virus flares up again.
Finally, why is the NHS mothballing the Nightingale hospitals? I thought that the idea was to separate out Coronavirus patients from other patients so that other hospital treatments could restart. If it’s a question of staff retention, we will probably have to pay a bit more for doctors and especially nurses.
May 5, 2020
Good interview John on Newsnight well done sending the right message
May 5, 2020
Mike Wilson: “A population well educated enough to know that the pronoun āitā does not have an apostrophe when it is used as a possessive pronoun.”
A fair point Mike. My English teacher Mrs Walters ( bless her ), tried her best.
But given that Boris went to Eaton, and Neil Ferguson, professor of mathematical biology two highly educated men, have between them managed to lose 20% of the British economy overnight throwing a million people out of work. A little bit of stupid might have leavened the mix a little.
May 6, 2020
Interesting that the girlfriend turns out to be an anti Brexit campaigner, because I have thought all along that the curfew is the biggest anti Brexit campaign yet.
May 7, 2020
Iāve been getting quite anxious all week that Iām perhaps worrying too much about the future for my children as everyone seems so calm and unconcerned about putting the U.K. on hold for three months. Inside Iām freaking out because Iāve always believed money trees donāt exist and no-one, no government, sponsor, has ever given me or my family anything, weāve had to make it not just for ourselves but quite a number of other people.
Then I read everyone just expecting free handouts, and another couple of months wanted with more āfreeā money to be printed for them – like school unions who are demanding not to go back to September – what would they say if we said ok but you all wonāt get paid, because thatās what lots of businesses are experiencing. You canāt be paid without offering the service?
Iād have thought this last few months would have been the best of times for libraries to serve the public with so many people with time on their hands, they could have had a queue system like a supermarket but it isnāt obviously seen as essential for poor people or children to read, yet these institutions expect millions per year. They could have ordered their selection on line and just get a pick up time. It obscene that everyone is just expecting money for nothing with no consequences.
Garden waste collections why was that stopped? Why didnāt schools ask for laptop donations instead of having to buy new and giving them away? Universities expecting handouts for nothing, they want to be considered private businesses and set their own agendas and courses but then they just want taxpayers to bail them out – what are they going to do in return take a pay cut? Howās it all going to be paid for fairly? Are the people struggling on and trying to keep working now going to get all the bills? Because you know if we are Iām not sure …..why should we carry on whilst everyone else bails?
You know when universities charge Ā£3000 per term then donāt be surprised if the people taking on loans for that donāt want to pay for something theyāre not getting because thatās what happens in the REAL world not the magic faraway money tree world the Unions and Professors think we live in. Is someone suggesting we pay all the garden centres for lost stock sales, what about pay for all the meals we donāt eat, what about future taxpayers buy all the tickets for cinemas and entertainments that arenāt going on if weāre all going to be getting made up money! If we can get free money for buses and trains and aircraft that arenāt flying then does everyone get free money if we just close down?
Seriously John, who is going to be paying for this?
May 9, 2020
Certainly right on University degrees. Even without the covid disruption most degrees are not remotely worth the circa Ā£50K of debt that it incurred (plus three years loss of earnings and Ā£3,000 interest PA on the debt too. Over half the student going have 3 Ds or lower so will not really benefit anyway and many of the subjects being taught are rather a joke anyway.
May 9, 2020
Clearly the tax payers will be paying for it. No one else can or will do (other than perhaps the lenders should the government defaults on the debt).