hk blues Posted January 28, 2021 Share Posted January 28, 2021 15 minutes ago, Elixir said: Err, while no-one has a 'given right' to enter a country, the last 50 years of increasing globalisation and the fact that so many people have family ties across borders facilitates the fact that in reality, being able to travel is a necessity. Most people also work to live. If the main result of that for some is to pish away their free time loafing about inside or down the pub then that's up to them, but most want off this cold, rain and wind soaked island every now and then. Being able to travel doesn't really mean the same as being able to go on a foreign holiday though. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elixir Posted January 28, 2021 Share Posted January 28, 2021 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bairnardo Posted January 28, 2021 Share Posted January 28, 2021 1 hour ago, TheJTS98 said: I don't really see what they could usefully say. I listen to podcasts and read things with experts from plenty of different parts of the world and the recurring theme when it comes to easing of restrictions (in loads of countries) is that it's too early in the process to know when different things will be possible. This is not just a UK issue. There is general agreement about this. I mentioned on this thread a while back that one current complication in the UK is the picking apart of the impact of the vaccination programme from the impact of the current lockdown situation. That makes reading what's happening quite tricky at the moment, and no country has a good answer to that. I mentioned before that Bristol University are doing some work in this area, but it'll take a while to get anything useful. One thing that comes up again and again around the world is that it's more complicated than 'We get to X number of hospitalisations and then ease restrictions'. Because there are more moving parts to this and it's simply pretty complicated. There is still a lot that is simply unknown about vaccinations. People are asking for a level of certainty that doesn't exist. If the government hint at any kind of target for, say, re-opening pubs, they are simply creating a rod for their own back in a process where the future is very hard to read, and risking further demoralising the public and taking shitloads of grief if they have to row back on it. I don't see what they can do. How about a broad strokes acknowledgment that massive restrictions will not continue to destroy everyone in order to minimise potential exposure of the few who will be significantly harmed by this virus, with said restrictions being replaced by a vaccine in terms of mitigation of risk. The quite literally all I want. Any timeline is secondary to even an acknowledgement that we have the stomach to accept that people die of things all the time and covid will simply be an addition to that list. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elixir Posted January 28, 2021 Share Posted January 28, 2021 15 minutes ago, hk blues said: Being able to travel doesn't really mean the same as being able to go on a foreign holiday though. But it's the reality. Travel first and foremost facilitates the trading of goods every bit as much as the movement of people for work, family, and leisure reasons. Granted, I have no idea why anyone would want to 'holiday' right now when there is next to nothing you can do and it would be a sanitised experience anyway. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest TheJTS98 Posted January 28, 2021 Share Posted January 28, 2021 (edited) 10 minutes ago, Bairnardo said: How about a broad strokes acknowledgment that massive restrictions will not continue to destroy everyone in order to minimise potential exposure of the few who will be significantly harmed by this virus, with said restrictions being replaced by a vaccine in terms of mitigation of risk. The quite literally all I want. Any timeline is secondary to even an acknowledgement that we have the stomach to accept that people die of things all the time and covid will simply be an addition to that list. You know how the media work. Anything along those lines will be met with an immediate demand for clarification and a timeline etc etc and then the government ends up caving in and making some rash promise or other. 'When you say that tough restrictions will not be enforced long-term, do you mean people can expect to be back in football grounds this year? What do you mean by long-term? Can you put a time-frame on that?' It's a journalists dream. Edited January 28, 2021 by TheJTS98 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven W Posted January 28, 2021 Share Posted January 28, 2021 2 hours ago, superbigal said: It is even worse when I keep publishing that England is in more than twice as bad a state as Scotland for infections, hospital admissions and deaths. So we keep stoom and let the doom from Ingurland be heard as the loudest voice. Add to that the sustained daily drop in infections for 3 weeks now. Well over 40% lower than the peak. That peak I hasten to add was still lower than England today. Cities like Edinburgh being back to the levels where they were screaming for tier 2 previously. The R rate was clearly below 1 when she was using old stats to say 1.4. Fear fear fear. In a way it's working, but come next Tuesday when all metrics will point to reopening of Schools and a return to the 5 levels etc, this rhetoric should stop. Tuesday is something of an acid test. It's been said that the schools will return in a phased manner, with the younger primary schools going back first (and I keep hearing about mounting evidence that transmission in that age group is pretty neglible). Between the phased manner, the two weeks notice we're going to be getting, and the falling case levels, I was hopeful Tuesday would see an announcement of some kind of return for some kids after the mid Feb break. I worry though that BJ's announcement of "8th March at earliest" will impact this though as recent history has shown that NS prefers to wait for BJ to show his hand first. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hk blues Posted January 28, 2021 Share Posted January 28, 2021 11 minutes ago, Elixir said: But it's the reality. Travel first and foremost facilitates the trading of goods every bit as much as the movement of people for work, family, and leisure reasons. Granted, I have no idea why anyone would want to 'holiday' right now when there is next to nothing you can do and it would be a sanitised experience anyway. You are still not differentiating between travel and going on a foreign holiday. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
No_Problemo Posted January 28, 2021 Share Posted January 28, 2021 5 minutes ago, TheJTS98 said: You know how the media work. Anything along those lines will be met with an immediate demand for clarification and a timeline etc etc and then the government ends up caving in and making some rash promise or other. 'When you say that tough restrictions will not be enforced long-term, do you mean people can expect to be back in football grounds this year? What do you mean by long-term? Can you put a time-frame on that?' It's a journalists dream. I don’t really see the issue with this. How about the government stopped fucking with people by being astonishingly negative (yesterday) and then actually manage the media and not do anything rash when questioned about it. I think we can surely expect that little. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ron Aldo Posted January 28, 2021 Share Posted January 28, 2021 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bairnardo Posted January 28, 2021 Share Posted January 28, 2021 2 minutes ago, TheJTS98 said: You know how the media work. Anything along those lines will be met with an immediate demand for clarification and a timeline etc etc and then the government ends up caving in and making some rash promise or other. 'When you say that tough restrictions will not be enforced long-term, do you mean people can expect to be back in football grounds this year? What do you mean by long-term? Can you put a time-frame on that?' It's a journalists dream. We are back once again then to my absolute bafflement that in the worst crisis in living memory, the biggest disruption to life anyone has ever seen (or can remember), we can't expect the government to be honest in case the big bad media twist their words. This is the same logic as the folk who are happy to dawdle along with the vaccines and accept a "we're doing our best" attitude from Sturgeon because they like the SNP. I want independence, but in the worst case scenario imaginable of indy year 1, the cost probably wont get close to six more months of this shit. I think folk have been beaten down into submission when it comes to scrutinising the govt and their forward planning. We have become to cowed to even dare ask them to get the solution to this done in a timely manner, or even idedd acknowledge that it IS the solution, since it will de-risk covid to the point where it does no more damage then countless other diseases/causes of death. Its the responsibility of the govt to mange people expectations re how much protection they will be afforded against covid going forward and they currently aren't doing that. OR.... they intend to offer this level of protection to people indefinitely, in which case, millions of lives are just on the first bricks of the path to utter despair 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest TheJTS98 Posted January 28, 2021 Share Posted January 28, 2021 2 minutes ago, No_Problemo said: I don’t really see the issue with this. How about the government stopped fucking with people by being astonishingly negative (yesterday) and then actually manage the media and not do anything rash when questioned about it. I think we can surely expect that little. If they say anything positive about the future then row it back, they'll be widely accused of 'fucking with people'. It's a fairly straightforward thing. There's no sense in building people's hopes up with no solid reason to do so. Better to be cautious and give actual good news as and when it arrives, instead of offering magic beans. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elixir Posted January 28, 2021 Share Posted January 28, 2021 When events are still planning for 'limited, socially distanced' audiences in mid to late August, what hope is there? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elixir Posted January 28, 2021 Share Posted January 28, 2021 4 minutes ago, hk blues said: You are still not differentiating between travel and going on a foreign holiday. Err, who, other than a minority of social media influencers, have been holidaying since October/November time? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Bob Mahelp Posted January 28, 2021 Share Posted January 28, 2021 10 hours ago, NotThePars said: I'm still gone at someone claiming foreign holidays were a necessity. I think I must've missed it in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I'm not sure if you're referencing my post of few pages back, where I said that for millions and millions of people, foreign travel (not necessarily just holidays) is very much a part of 'normal' life. I was only bringing it up because I was rather taken aback at the number of people making posts saying...'well, I'm happy to give XXXXX up, or I'm happy to give XXXXX up'. Let's all turn the clocks back 5000 years and live in boarded up caves. We'll be safe then. I'm not happy to give anything up. I'll abide by the current restrictions, but I want them lifted ASAP and I want every element of normal life back, including international travel. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hk blues Posted January 28, 2021 Share Posted January 28, 2021 Just now, Elixir said: Err, who, other than a minority of social media influencers, have been holidaying since October/November time? They were working, weren't they? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
No_Problemo Posted January 28, 2021 Share Posted January 28, 2021 3 minutes ago, TheJTS98 said: If they say anything positive about the future then row it back, they'll be widely accused of 'fucking with people'. It's a fairly straightforward thing. There's no sense in building people's hopes up with no solid reason to do so. Better to be cautious and give actual good news as and when it arrives, instead of offering magic beans. There’s a huge difference between being positive and being ridiculously negative. Sturgeon’s comments yesterday were disgraceful and indicated there will be no actual normality this year, even with closed borders. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest TheJTS98 Posted January 28, 2021 Share Posted January 28, 2021 1 minute ago, Bairnardo said: We are back once again then to my absolute bafflement that in the worst crisis in living memory, the biggest disruption to life anyone has ever seen (or can remember), we can't expect the government to be honest in case the big bad media twist their words. That's a side issue. My main objection is that it would be pretty damaging to the public to hear the government hint at good things in X number of months and then pin hopes on that only to have it swiped away by circumstances. If Sturgeon or BJ hinted at a crowd at this season's cup finals, for example, many people would take that as a 'PROMISE' and others would just get their hopes up about it. Then if it didn't happen, trust in the government would be further eroded, and people would have had a bubble burst, leading to more misery. The government here started lockdown back in March by announcing two week blocks at a time. This gave the hope that every block might be the last one. Eventually they binned that and just announced a really long extension. I can't remember how long exactly. The effect of this was removing the two-weekly process of getting everyone's hopes up, and it also brought the benefit of the government suddenly making everyone happy by lifting the restrictions early when they judged it possible. I just don't see why people want them to make some kind of baseless optimistic claim about the future. It may well make things worse. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elixir Posted January 28, 2021 Share Posted January 28, 2021 3 minutes ago, No_Problemo said: There’s a huge difference between being positive and being ridiculously negative. Sturgeon’s comments yesterday were disgraceful and indicated there will be no actual normality this year, even with closed borders. My biggest hope is that countries in the EU and/or the US start unwinding everything and it forces the hand of the clownshoes here, either at Westminster or Holyrood. The Swedes will probably be the first western country. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Bob Mahelp Posted January 28, 2021 Share Posted January 28, 2021 4 minutes ago, TheJTS98 said: That's a side issue. My main objection is that it would be pretty damaging to the public to hear the government hint at good things in X number of months and then pin hopes on that only to have it swiped away by circumstances. If Sturgeon or BJ hinted at a crowd at this season's cup finals, for example, many people would take that as a 'PROMISE' and others would just get their hopes up about it. Then if it didn't happen, trust in the government would be further eroded, and people would have had a bubble burst, leading to more misery. The government here started lockdown back in March by announcing two week blocks at a time. This gave the hope that every block might be the last one. Eventually they binned that and just announced a really long extension. I can't remember how long exactly. The effect of this was removing the two-weekly process of getting everyone's hopes up, and it also brought the benefit of the government suddenly making everyone happy by lifting the restrictions early when they judged it possible. I just don't see why people want them to make some kind of baseless optimistic claim about the future. It may well make things worse. That's exactly what Johnson did yesterday. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheScarf Posted January 28, 2021 Share Posted January 28, 2021 12 minutes ago, Ron Aldo said: What we can gather from this is that both Pfizer and Israeli people's immune systems are the bois? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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