Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[Gordon EF]

6 minutes ago, Melanius Mullarkey said:

Imagine, for one minute, that you think free education and widening access for those in most deprived areas is not progress. 

Free education actually hurts working class kids m8. So what we genuine socialists (not like you centrist mugs who vote SNP) propose is eye-watering fees like in the US leading to students leaving university with crippling debt.

[Wee Bully]

I didn't realise Wishaw sports centre was a doctor's office which, given this:
"They don't have to fanny about making doctors' offices sterile between each flu jag recipient, though."
was the sentence that sent Welshy off on one is entirely relevant.

Peak Todd.

[Hedgecutter]

Axing Tay bridge tolls (shocking omission from Mixu).

... and axing Skye Bridge tolls (shocking omission from Granny Danger) 

 

(The jury is still out on whether he shockingly confused the Tay Bridge with the Tay Road Bridge. Although his lower case b in bridge provides a potential get out of jail card, only the road bridge had tolls and therefore I urge the members of the jury to find him guilty and dish out at least a custodial sentence)

[Granny Danger]

9 minutes ago, Hedgecutter said:

... and axing Skye Bridge tolls (shocking omission from Granny Danger) 

 

(The jury is still out on whether he shockingly confused the Tay Bridge with the Tay Road Bridge. Although his lower case b in bridge provides a potential get out of jail card, only the road bridge had tolls and therefore I urge the members of the jury to find him guilty and dish out at least a custodial sentence)

Is Skye a real place?  I thought it was like Brigadoon.

 

[Todd_is_God]

46 minutes ago, 101 said:

How is it possible to compare us to countries will full fiscal and border control. No one can say that we wouldn't have locked down faster if we had the money and say closed the border.

This is true, but, given the SG were happy for the football (including Celtic v Rangers) and a Lewis Capaldi gig to go ahead, it's grasping at straws to suggest that they only did this because they did not have the money.

Was clownshoes not parading about around the same time telling people it was ok to hug their granny too?

[Todd_is_God]

5 minutes ago, MixuFruit said:

Wait what? They didn't close the border because of money? Men with guns would have been in Holyrood faster than you can say peaceful transition of power if they had tried that.

Lol no. But the idea that the SG wanted a lockdown in the weeks before is absolute revisionism.

It doesn't matter what you can't do, if you don't want to do it anyway.

[Caledonian1]

1 minute ago, MixuFruit said:

Other than naked corruption can anyone explain why English contact tracing costs as much as HS2?

 

 

Does that additional £7bn result in Barnett consequentials of circa £650m to Scotland? I am pretty sure we can put it to better use than they have with their world leading nonsense

[Todd_is_God]

1 minute ago, MixuFruit said:

Other than naked corruption can anyone explain why English contact tracing costs as much as HS2?

 

 

£22bn is an exorbitant amount of money. I'd love to see the breakdown of where that's been spent, and why it couldn't be cheaper.

[Guest Jedi]

Note that I also said that I didn't disagree with tuition fees,prescription charges,Baby boxes etc as policies. Point being that I still see them as Centrist rather than necessarily left wing in nature.

Scottish politics really is cyclical in nature..after 40 dd years of Labour dominance when they seemed to be beyond criticism, we then have nearly 20 years of the SNP fulfilling  the same role.

I'm not sure that people vote SNP in their droves 'because' of tuition fees, prescriptions etc (obviously some will)...more likely 'they can get an Indy Ref and they aren't the Tories'.

Any govt needs an effective opposition to keep them on their toes,when they dont have one and votes are taken for granted, complacency sets in.

[NotThePars]

Other than naked corruption can anyone explain why English contact tracing costs as much as HS2?
 
 

Covert nanomachines injections to start the Sons of the Patriots project.

[vikingTON]

10 hours ago, WATTOO said:

We don't need to speculate, we KNOW everyone else has been "just as bad" (actually worse), due to England being run by the Tories and Wales being run by Labour.

The Covid pandemic of course being exclusive to the UK and not affecting any other comparable country.

9 hours ago, Granny Danger said:

 

Personally I think it was a mistake allowing universities and colleges to return but the Scottish and U.K. governments would have got pellets had they not done that.

 

It is not the job of a government to pick the most popular policy and run with it but rather the best one: most of all in a public health emergency, emergency that they're more than happy to trash the economy to deal with.

People keep whinging about hindsight, borders and full fiscal control but the key decisions that allowed a second wave to break out were within the SG's remit as much as they were Westminster's. Nobody put a gun to their head and told them to abandon the blended learning strategy that they told education authorities to develop all summer nor were they compelled to let universities bring students into dorms. Colleges meanwhile have not actually returned to widespread face to face learning, which demonstrates the point because they didn't have a substantial lobby group that the SG decided to cave in to for electoral reasons.

Edited November 24, 2020 by vikingTON

[RiG]

23 minutes ago, MixuFruit said:

Other than naked corruption can anyone explain why English contact tracing costs as much as HS2?

 

 

£22 billion is also, by some distance, more than this country spends on GP services in a year. In fact, it's almost double what we spend on GP services on an annual basis. 

[Hedgecutter]

£22bn is an exorbitant amount of money. I'd love to see the breakdown of where that's been spent, and why it couldn't be cheaper.

A bit of a steal at ~£330 per person. Reeks of the government asking private contractors to name their price and just agreeing to the first quote given (as is pretty commonplace I understand).

 Grant Shapps on Sky News just now trying to justify it by saying "the only option is to spend a lot of money" (and saying that Patel shouldn't be sacked because poor Priti never had sufficient support in her role).

 

[Gordon EF]

£21bn to dido harding.

[Derry Alli]

9 hours ago, tamthebam said:

Lassie at work is self isolating after her bidey in has a bad cough.

 

This is her 5th self isolation of the year

 

She's fucking at it but the work Covid policies mean she can't get a well deserved arse kicking. 

She's following guidelines, sounds like a classic case of workplace bullying from yourself. 

[Gaz]

9 hours ago, tamthebam said:

Lassie at work is self isolating after her bidey in has a bad cough.

 

This is her 5th self isolation of the year

 

She's fucking at it but the work Covid policies mean she can't get a well deserved arse kicking. 

Rubbish.

This is always going to happen. The symptoms of Covid align with symptoms of other common respiratory illnesses. I know folk who've had to isolate three or four times and it turns out they've just ended up with a bad cold, but that's what's going to happen. It's better not to take the chance.

[John MacLean]

Measuring the performances of one nation’s government with another’s is incredibly difficult and can’t be based purely on mortality and infection rates. There are going to be loads of other factors to take into account including, but certainly not limited to, the overall health of the nation, levels of poverty, population density etc. etc. etc.

Ultimately governments though are little more than the current administrators of whatever the prevailing ideology is at any given point in history. So, yes, you can analyse how a nation’s government has administered the pandemic and perhaps how effective their testing and track and trace processes are can be an indication of how successful or otherwise they are being in that regard but the real failings lie in the free market, libertarian ideology that dominates.

[beardy]

11 hours ago, welshbairn said:

No. Explain to me why it's more hazardous to administer a Covid19 vaccine than a flu vaccine at this time. There may be a technical factor I'm unaware of, but as we don't know which vaccines will be approved yet, I doubt it.

The fluvax is generally administered prior to the onset of flu season where the disease burden in society is low.

The covid vaccination program will be undertaken likely in the throes of a pandemic (all you casedemic nutters at the back sit down please).

This poses a problem of a large number of people who may be actively infectious presenting for the vaccine. The logistics for this will have to be managed. 

It will definitely be different to flu vaccination program.

 

Apologies if already covered.

[welshbairn]

A million vaccines amounts to 17 vaccinations for every nurse in Scotland. If they can get the distribution sorted it shouldn't take too long to get the first phase done.

[Gordon EF]

13 minutes ago, John MacLean said:

Measuring the performances of one nation’s government with another’s is incredibly difficult and can’t be based purely on mortality and infection rates. There are going to be loads of other factors to take into account including, but certainly not limited to, the overall health of the nation, levels of poverty, population density etc. etc. etc.

I see this a lot. Population density probably isn't a good indicator, population concentration is. For example, if 50% of your population lives in one city, it's incredibly concentrated, no matter if the rest of the country is the size of Canada or the size of Galloway and that will probably lead to high transmission per head of population.

Scotland has a smaller population density then the rest of the UK but it does have a very concentrated population, potentially even more so than England by some measures.