UK Politics: National shortage of incompetence pads

[A wilding]

On top of the inconsistent and confused messaging coming from the government and its ministers (which to give him some credit Johnson did manage to dampen down for a while when he came back after his illness), there is also the fact that many elderly people get much of their news from reading the Telegraph and/or the Daily Mail. Their skewed presentation of the facts does not exactly encourage their readers to stick to lockdown procedures.

I have already posted an anecdotal example of an aunt who was convinced she did not need to go on self isolating basically because they were telling her that Johnson had everything under control.

 

[polishgenius]

29 minutes ago, williamjm said:

Anyway, I would have thought most Mail readers would respect him more once they found out he had made money with a property investment.

 

I think part of the complaint is that he's had the nerve not to build houses on green belt land.

[DanteGabriel]

2 hours ago, Leap said:

From the Guardian piece on it

Looking up Piers' history now, I wonder if he knows the sort of company he's keeping with these protests? Nice that there is something that can heal the partisan divide between left and right though, ironically at the cost of rationality.

Also, apparently calls to "Jail Bill Gates" at a civil liberties protest. I'm not sure if that's because of the 5G stuff, the anti-vax stuff, or because he looks a little bit like Dr. Fauci, but either way it is...well, not particularly funny.

My mother in law is a retired high school teacher and a number of her former students are her Facebook friends, so every once in a while one of them gives me an insight into the right wing arglebarglesphere.

Apparently Bill Gates gave a talk once that involved using biometrically identifiable tattoos as the key to storing medical information on a person, so that and his involvement in the effort to get a Covid vaccine (and his general efforts to vaccinate the developing world) mean he wants to control the world through vaccine brainwashing control and microchips embedded in people. I posted some Reuters link debunking the "Bill Gates wants to microchip everyone" theory but that's never as convincing as the seductive conspiracy theories emanating from a mediocre MAGA chud's colon.

[Maltaran]

4 hours ago, polishgenius said:

His most controversial decision as DPP is probably not to prosecute any officers over the Jean Charles de Menezes shooting, but I'm not sure there's any capital in raking over those coals, especially since the reasoning was there wasn't enough evidence to convict any individual person.

There was the Twitter Joke Trial as well, which seemed particularly stupid

[Which Tyler]

2 hours ago, polishgenius said:

 

I think part of the complaint is that he's had the nerve not to build houses on green belt land.

That, or possibly shock that someone at the very top of the legal profession in this country, isn't a pauper!

Imagine that, soneone who worked hard, without just being gifted a £20M headstart in lef who has made some money!

[BigFatCoward]

5 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

Honestly, how tone deaf can you possibly be? In a situation like this you say “I’m sorry to hear that happened, hope everything turns out ok”, not defend Boris and not just say your folks didn’t. Bloody hell.

@HelenaExMachina I hope nothing happens to your mom, sorry, nanna, and all is well. 

Even as someone who lacks empathy myself I was wondering where he was going with that. Even if not massively factually incorrect. 

Also people from the NE are particularly protective of their nana's.  

[Which Tyler]

UK Excess death stats:

 

[Derfel Cadarn]

Unshockingly, there’s a shortage if fruit pickers. So the government wants ppl on furlough to do it.

’Pick for Britain’ theu call it and aoparently have a website.

I expect this to be an abject failure.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-52717664

[Pebble thats Stubby]

3 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Unshockingly, there’s a shortage if fruit pickers. So the government wants ppl on furlough to do it.

’Pick for Britain’ theu call it and aoparently have a website.

I expect this to be an abject failure.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-52717664

So much a failure the website predictably  crashed not long after they made the announcement 

[Werthead]

1500 schools have refused to reopen on 1 June and that number is growing. Entire city authorities like Birmingham and Liverpool have joined in and even Tory-controlled Essex County Council and Solihull have said they don't believe schools should reopen.

Looking at the figures, they are encouraging but it's not a slamdunk, and the deaths shooting back up again to over 500 today reflect that. Based on the numbers we had previously, it looks like having the lockdown in place until the end of June (so 3 months in total) wouldn't just flatten the curve, it would almost crush it. Not altogether, which is likely impossible, but enough that the adoption then of moderate social distancing measures for a further period could diminish the chances of a second wave to very low levels.

Given the scale of the school rebellion, I can see the government backtracking on the issue in order to retain goodwill.

Case in point: France reopened schools when the infection rate had fallen to a level significantly below that of the UK and has had to close 70 of them again after a huge spike in cases.

[Filippa Eilhart]

yeah but 39 930 schools remain open

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, Filippa Eilhart said:

yeah but 39 930 schools remain open

I don't think anywhere near that many will actually open on 1 June.

[mormont]

Oh, hey, look! An outbreak of 'good solid British common sense'.

Meanwhile, Brexit negotiations are still a thing, still not going well, and still based on the idea that repeating the word 'sovereign' over and over is a powerful negotiating tactic.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/may/19/brexit-talks-eu-wants-us-to-obey-the-rules-of-their-club-says-gove

We have a month left to ask for an extension, but the government insist that we're not going to, presumably on the basis that good solid British common sense will see us through this as well.

[Heartofice]

One thing that’s been quite common during this crisis is the discovery that you can take photos from a low angle and it makes people look incredibly tightly packed together. When from another angle you can see everyone keeping more than two meters away from each other.

[mormont]

Excellent example of good solid British common sense there. Clearly all these dozens of photos, videos, and first hand accounts from people who were actually there were taken from a low angle, particularly the ones taken from a high angle. Sneaky things, angles.

I look forward to all the low angle shots of MPs in the House of Commons, who are going to be packed like sardines into a chamber that hasn't been big enough to hold them all for decades, because although remote attendance was working perfectly well, Rees-Mogg decided to kill it off for... reasons. Not at all because he wants Tory MPs to shout down the leader of the opposition. It's because the government really, really want more scrutiny of their proposals! That's totally credible from the party that tried to ram through the entire Brexit bill in about two minutes.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-52682923

[Heartofice]

 

19 minutes ago, mormont said:

Excellent example of good solid British common sense there. Clearly all these dozens of photos, videos, and first hand accounts from people who were actually there were taken from a low angle, particularly the ones taken from a high angle. Sneaky things, angles.

Go check out the ITV article you posted, hugely guilty of this:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/joeydurso/coronavirus-social-distancing-lockdown-photos

Not to say that thousands didn't turn up to Southend beach, they did, but pretty much everything I've seen shows that families are sticking together, keeping at least a couple of meters away from other people. One of my best mates even went there yesterday and was very surprised by the supposed outrage on twitter.

[mormont]

We get it. You just found out about perspective yesterday and naturally you assume that nobody else has ever heard of it. We do all actually understand how the media works, though.

Your best mate is an idiot, by the way, as are all these people, perspective or not. You do not have a day out at the beach in the middle of a pandemic. Full stop. Don't believe me? Let's see what the figures look like in a week or two. I'm sure the camera angle will at that point prove to have been the real issue here.

[Heartofice]

Well it clearly needed explaining to you as you appear to be have been duped by it. I thought it was obvious but you didn’t seem to understand.

Either way we will have to see how much events like this cause spikes, though it would be hard to prove if there was a spike.

Having people being outdoors, mainly keeping their distance from each other, I suspect it won’t lead to anything.

[Pebble thats Stubby]

The day the garden centers opened up, I happened to drive past one on the A127 (on the way to do a click at collect at Tesco)  One whole lane was blocked for about half a mile of cars waiting to get into the car park, also right by a stack of cars on the grass verge also what looked like waiting to get in.  it was a nice day,  lots of these people where out of their cars leaning on the bonnet / bumper and having a chat to the people leaning on their car.     maybe my persective was screwed and yes it was a low angle since I was in a car, but I did drive right by them.  It sure looked like they where less than ONE meter apart and no Masks.    and this looked to be the same with 90% of the cars queueing on the A127.

  When we drove past the car park we could see much better distancing as they garden center had spaced out the queue  Obviously my perspective changed then although I don't remember being on a hill.   

I almost wish I'd filmed it.

 

 

also the spike will be easy to prove the data will clearly show one if there is a spike.  the exact cause of every infection in the spike not easy to prove.     

[mormont]

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

Well it clearly needed explaining to you as you appear to be have been duped by it. I thought it was obvious but you didn’t seem to understand.

Alternatively, and more accurately, you made an assumption that I had been duped by the pictures rather than taking it as bleeding obvious that day trips to the seaside by many thousands of people in the middle of a pandemic are inherently a completely unnecessary risk, and show that the government policy of relying on 'common sense' is fatally flawed by the fact that lots of people don't have any.