Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[Ludo*1]

ChairmanMao slotting right into the space that Todd left. Fair play for spotting that gap in the market.

[Michael W]

1 hour ago, WATTOO said:

This is becoming one hell of a shambles in England, Burnham wants to pick and choose his rules for Manchester and now Khan is demanding to cherry pick the rules for London and has decided what ones he'll adhere to and what ones he'll ignore. Meanwhile Liverpool believe they've been sold down the river and are rightly furious.

There's no doubt that the UK Gov have lost control and any authority they had has been completely undermined / destroyed, expect anarchy as the next step as I can't see how they can retrieve the situation.

Khan's been agitating for harsher restrictions for ages. He got his wish a few days ago when London moved into Tier 2. Essentially this prohibits household mixing indoors (including restaurants and pubs). 

I see he's now wanting the 10pm curfew abolished. Much as I agree with him that this is bad policy, given that mixing with other households is now banned indoors in London, I don't think we're going to be seeing the scenes we saw recently with everyone piling out at once. 

1 hour ago, ICTChris said:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/10/20/scots-face-five-levels-lockdown-sturgeons-severe-alert-system/

Scotland to have a five tier system, same as England but a top tier level of full lockdown (excluding schools) and a bottom tier of normality.

According to the above report pubs closure will by extended by a week and then the tiers will kick in.

I don't think those measures on pubs will be lifted from the central belt until some time in 2021, unfortunately. 

Edited October 20, 2020 by Michael W

[Derry Alli]

1 hour ago, ICTChris said:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/10/20/scots-face-five-levels-lockdown-sturgeons-severe-alert-system/

Scotland to have a five tier system, same as England but a top tier level of full lockdown (excluding schools) and a bottom tier of normality.

According to the above report pubs closure will by extended by a week and then the tiers will kick in.

Is there any way to read this without signing up? Going incognito doesn't work. 

[Ludo*1]

1 minute ago, Mr. Alli said:

Is there any way to read this without signing up? Going incognito doesn't work. 

This is an absolute game changer when it comes to shitey paywalls like The Telegraph. Works for all major newspapers, just download it as a Chrome extension (I use the Firefox version so I'm sure there's a version to suit your browser)

https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome

 

[Bairnardo]

1 hour ago, ICTChris said:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/10/20/scots-face-five-levels-lockdown-sturgeons-severe-alert-system/

Scotland to have a five tier system, same as England but a top tier level of full lockdown (excluding schools) and a bottom tier of normality.

According to the above report pubs closure will by extended by a week and then the tears will kick in.

 

Fixed

[Ira Gaines]

1 hour ago, Ludo*1 said:

ChairmanMao slotting right into the space that Todd left. Fair play for spotting that gap in the market.

Well, it's a perfect fit seeing as it's probably him.

[Dee Man]

I strongly suspect Todd bumped into Jeremiah Cole on the beach of Marmaris and after a quick holiday romance they adopted Chairman Mao. 

It's a beautiful story with a shite ending. 

[renton]

6 hours ago, Mr. Alli said:

Is there any way to read this without signing up? Going incognito doesn't work. 

https://archive.is/ikiFU

[ICTChris]

I’m not a member of the Telegraph but was able to read the article. I had thought it had been made free.

[superbigal]

So confirmed this morning an extra 60 million is on the table for the Mancs. It is real and not waiting on agreement.

I wonder if Burnham did get the govt to move a little towards his requested 90 million and minimum 65 million. Or was 60 always the govt offer as they seem to indicate.

That 60 is supposedly in line with the extra for businesses in Liverpool city and Lancashire.

I'm sure those areas will now be doing the maths to work out if Manchester did do better.

 

Edit apparently they did get an extra 5 million from the baseline offer of 55 million that was in line with Liverpool City.

 

 

[Wee Willie]

12 hours ago, pandarilla said:

13 hours ago, Michael W said:

It is of course entirely possible that both parties come out of something looking bad. 
The Government for being what it is and Burnham for having achieved absolutely nothing. 

I think burnham has looked like genuine opposition, and i wish he was leading the labour party instead of starmer.

How the fcuk would that help Scotland?

We would still have Trident and still be paying for expensive English projects.

Remember the Tories and Labour are twa cheeks o' the same arse

[Wee Willie]

10 hours ago, Michael W said:

Burnham was previously quite happy for the Tier 3 measures to apply provided they also applied across the whole of England. This would, of course, have affected the very same people that will be impacted in Greater Manchester across the whole of the country. Granted these people are not his voters, he was seemingly happy enough for them to have the base level of government support.

There is a replacement furlough scheme - it's worse than the one that is about expire. It's the starting point and he's of course within his rights to ask for more money, which is fine. I don't recall saying he shouldn't try and ask for more money despite whatever your insinuations here are. Indeed, he was offered a package which has seemingly now disappeared because the government's emptied it's pram again. 

Burnham has overplayed a pretty bad hand here and failed to realise what he's dealing with. The Johnson government is awful and employs childish tactics - did he really think they'd cave to him when they are happy to f**k the EU around by messing around with negotiations and table bills threating to breach international law? For all I've never rated him, he's an experienced politician and really ought to have realised how this would play out. They have no respect decency or any form of norms, and playing hardball is met with harmful reactions carried out in haste. Additionally, they've been a weak shambles for months and they have gleefully made an example of him to assert some kind of strong image. 

He has little to no power here too - this isn't Scotland where health is devolved. If the government orders the tier 3 restrictions, that's it. Again I'll say it - his region is amongst the worst affected in England, further weakening his bargaining power. He has overplayed his hand against a government that, as I've said, is prone to reacting childishly and also in a harmful way. Which is exactly what has happened. 

Burnham has fought for his region and fair play to him, but the end result here is a bad one. I don't doubt his intentions, but he's played it badly and the government has lashed out. Who knows, maybe he'll achieve a classic Boris u-turn in which case I will withdraw my criticism of him. However this government does tend to pick quite peculiar things to dig its heels in on. 

Excellent post

[Aubrey Maturin]

9 hours ago, Bairnardo said:

 

Fixed

Nah not really, they're understandably upset considering the amount of work and vast adherence that the majority of pub and restaurant owners have done.

It's cost many a small fortune to open up and yet they find their livelihoods at best under threat and in some cases ruined due to the decison made to make the hospitality sector a scapegoat for rising cases.    Chuck in no fans in outdoor sporting arenas then you have two very easy targets in which to look decisive whilst ignoring the elephant in the room.  Yup, libraries of couse.

When Sturgeon announces an extension until 2nd November, then hits those sectors with further closures when the tier system hits then you can forget a lot of them reopening.   Still as long as the schools stay open that's the main thing apparently.

[Derry Alli]

I see gyms in Liverpool have now been told they can re-open because Lancashire, which was placed into Tier 3 after Liverpool, was told its gyms can remain open. 

[Marshmallo]

8 minutes ago, Tynierose said:

Nah not really, they're understandably upset considering the amount of work and vast adherence that the majority of pub and restaurant owners have done.

It's cost many a small fortune to open up and yet they find their livelihoods at best under threat and in some cases ruined due to the decison made to make the hospitality sector a scapegoat for rising cases.    Chuck in no fans in outdoor sporting arenas then you have two very easy targets in which to look decisive whilst ignoring the elephant in the room.  Yup, libraries of couse.

When Sturgeon announces an extension until 2nd November, then hits those sectors with further closures when the tier system hits then you can forget a lot of them reopening.   Still as long as the schools stay open that's the main thing apparently.

Yeah but the seethe heehee

[effeffsee_the2nd]

Nah not really, they're understandably upset considering the amount of work and vast adherence that the majority of pub and restaurant owners have done.
It's cost many a small fortune to open up and yet they find their livelihoods at best under threat and in some cases ruined due to the decison made to make the hospitality sector a scapegoat for rising cases.    Chuck in no fans in outdoor sporting arenas then you have two very easy targets in which to look decisive whilst ignoring the elephant in the room.  Yup, libraries of couse.
When Sturgeon announces an extension until 2nd November, then hits those sectors with further closures when the tier system hits then you can forget a lot of them reopening.   Still as long as the schools stay open that's the main thing apparently.

It’s totally understandable, they’ve had to jump through many more hoops than anyone else. Their hours are cut, their service is made inefficient and needs more staff, their capacity is cut plus many people don’t enjoy the covid going out experience and take an “ I’ll just wait till it’s back to normal “ approach which means many will have less customers than usual. It’s a lot of heavy hits to take and I fully believe they are being made scapegoats becuase they are easy targets

[renton]

28 minutes ago, Tynierose said:

Nah not really, they're understandably upset considering the amount of work and vast adherence that the majority of pub and restaurant owners have done.

It's cost many a small fortune to open up and yet they find their livelihoods at best under threat and in some cases ruined due to the decison made to make the hospitality sector a scapegoat for rising cases.    Chuck in no fans in outdoor sporting arenas then you have two very easy targets in which to look decisive whilst ignoring the elephant in the room.  Yup, libraries of couse.

When Sturgeon announces an extension until 2nd November, then hits those sectors with further closures when the tier system hits then you can forget a lot of them reopening.   Still as long as the schools stay open that's the main thing apparently.

In fairness, they shut down indoor socialising first. It's not like hospitality was the first thing they went for - at least through in the West. Cases were maybe even plateauing out for a week before the Unis opened back up and seemed to change the trajectory for the worse. 

I do agree that ScotGov should had the tiered system ready to go before this point, and that it should have been clear that it was being enacted as soon as the "circuit breaker" was done. As it is, it looks like they said one thing to mollify the hospitality sector, and then applied mission creep to it. Not a good look.

I guess you can't put schools into a tiered system easily, since you open up the risk of a kind of education apartheid: if kids do perform worse under blended learning (and I realise that is not a universally acknowledged sentiment on this thread at least) then areas in higher tiers of lockdown will start to lag, and if there is a strong correlation between higher tiers of lockdown and an area's median income (and it probably is true that areas with lots of white collar workers, working from home will find it easier to get case loads down) then it could start to double down on pre existing attainment gaps.

Having said that, I think there is a strong case for moving tertiary education to remote learning to as high a degree as possible, at least through the remainder of this semester, and I think there is a good case for moving the S5 and S6s across Scotland into blended learning until the new year. That should remove most of the risk from schools while allowing most kids to remain in their customary environments.

With any luck they won't close hospitality until you are in tier 4, which would still mean Glasgow, Lanarkshire and probably Lothian at this juncture. Though if its by council area rather than health board, more might be spared. If you are going to do a tiered thing, it probably means more legislation to enact travel bans. No point other wise, surely.

If retail has to go back to 2M distancing, that could start to really put a dent in them as well.

 

[D.A.F.C]

The government chucked pubs and restaurants under the bus and told them to reopen and spend a fortune, restock and then shut them again.
If they weren't ruined before then they made sure of it now. If I was a landlord I would be looking at compensation for wasted stock and protective screens etc.

[NotThePars]

9 hours ago, Andre Drazen said:

Well, it's a perfect fit seeing as it's probably him.

Why tho

[renton]

The other thing that is needed is absolute clarity on why a certain tier is enacted. Not just case/capita, but rates of increase or decrease as well, and no exceptions. If an area reaches a certain target for qualifying for a lower tier, then that needs to happen. None of the previous phased tier 3 pish.