UK Politics - It's a bit glitchy

[Werthead]

12 hours ago, ants said:

So, what is the status of the Brexit talks? 

Unofficial word is that Boris is trying to keep plates spinning until the US election is decided. If Trump wins, Johnson believes he can negotiate face-to-face a strong free trade deal with the USA that he can sell as a replacement for a free trade deal with the EU (also such a free trade deal would risk undermining EU standards, so be default would be much harder if there was also a deal in place with the EU). That fact such a deal would probably gut UK agriculture is something Johnson would hope he can brush over. If Biden wins, he has indicated his first call would be to Merkel and he would reinforce the Washington-Berlin relationship as the most important in Europe and he would not be interested in negotiating anything with Britain whilst Britain was endangering the Good Friday Agreement (which Trump doesn't give one flying shit about), which would compel Johnson to accept a free trade deal with the EU.

Johnson believes he can spin either outcome as a victory and he can then move on. There seems to be a feeling that the soft Brexiters and Remainers and the general public at large (whose support for Brexit at all was lukewarm, hence the narrow victory) would accept that and gratefully talk about something - anything else - and the hardcore Remainers/Rejoiners and Brexiters are too small to be much of a problem. There's also the feeling that once an agreement is in place, it may be possible to tweak and fiddle around with it later on (even if the EU disagrees).

[Fragile Bird]

I find it hilarious that Johnson thinks he can negotiate a “strong” free trade agreement with the US if Trump wins. Trump would take the attitude of “I’m doing you a favor, now bend over” with Boris.

There’s a good nickname: Bend-over Boris!

[Derfel Cadarn]

4 hours ago, Werthead said:

Unofficial word is that Boris is trying to keep plates spinning until the US election is decided. If Trump wins, Johnson believes he can negotiate face-to-face a strong free trade deal with the USA that he can sell as a replacement for a free trade deal with the EU (also such a free trade deal would risk undermining EU standards, so be default would be much harder if there was also a deal in place with the EU). That fact such a deal would probably gut UK agriculture is something Johnson would hope he can brush over. If Biden wins, he has indicated his first call would be to Merkel and he would reinforce the Washington-Berlin relationship as the most important in Europe and he would not be interested in negotiating anything with Britain whilst Britain was endangering the Good Friday Agreement (which Trump doesn't give one flying shit about), which would compel Johnson to accept a free trade deal with the EU.

Johnson believes he can spin either outcome as a victory and he can then move on. There seems to be a feeling that the soft Brexiters and Remainers and the general public at large (whose support for Brexit at all was lukewarm, hence the narrow victory) would accept that and gratefully talk about something - anything else - and the hardcore Remainers/Rejoiners and Brexiters are too small to be much of a problem. There's also the feeling that once an agreement is in place, it may be possible to tweak and fiddle around with it later on (even if the EU disagrees).

So glad we ‘took back control’.

Oh, and apparently covid is spreading x4 faster in England that the government’s ‘reasonable’ worst case scenario

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54750775

[Werthead]

38 minutes ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

So glad we ‘took back control’.

Oh, and apparently covid is spreading x4 faster in England that the government’s ‘reasonable’ worst case scenario

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54750775

An additional 85,000 deaths is a quite horrific possibility. It would move us close to half the British casualties sustained during the Second World War.

I can't see even this government looking at these figures and thinking that not implementing a second lockdown ASAP is a good idea. It's astonishing.

[Derfel Cadarn]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

An additional 85,000 deaths is a quite horrific possibility. It would move us close to half the British casualties sustained during the Second World War.

I can't see even this government looking at these figures and thinking that not implementing a second lockdown ASAP is a good idea. It's astonishing.

Depends if they’re also looking at texts/emails from their donors who own the businesses that will suffer.

Thr Bishop of Paisley (whonwas apparently previously involved in promoting gay conversion or something) has been pushing for a Christmas ‘truce’ like WW1 (ie all restrictions are briefly lifted). 
Not sure if he’s made an overture to covid yet; I’ve had an assurance from my inmune system that if I’m infected on Xmas Day, so long as the virus halts its attack, it will stop attacking the virus for that day.

so all good! Maybe my immune system and covid can even organise a football game.

https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/columnists/bishop-paisleys-christmas-plea-offers-not-hope-fear-martyn-mclaughlin-3016498

[Werthead]

The Times reporting that a new national lockdown will be imposed on Wednesday, to last until 1 December.

Apparently the government was considering remaining as things are until someone showed them a graph showing deaths peaking on Christmas Eve, which they decided was unacceptable PR.

Schools and universities will remain open, which is a highly dubious move, as will supermarkets. Everything else will shut up shop.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

10 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Schools and universities will remain open, which is a highly dubious move, as will supermarkets. Everything else will shut up shop.

Think of it from a PR perspective. Parents being forced to stay at home again with their kids won't please them. And with the schools open, he can push back the revelation, that they have no suitable alternative to the vouchers in place, and are indeed quite indifferent about hungry kids.

[Werthead]

I meant more from the POV that although there were signs of an uptick towards the end of the summer that might have been attributable to other things reopening, things really exploded when schools and then universities reopened, and the first signs of the real second wave were in the universities. At the very least, closing the universities even if you keep schools open would seem to be a reasonable move. Keeping primary schools open should in most cases be fine, with a real question mark over how much spreading is going on in secondary schools.

[williamjm]

6 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I meant more from the POV that although there were signs of an uptick towards the end of the summer that might have been attributable to other things reopening, things really exploded when schools and then universities reopened, and the first signs of the real second wave were in the universities. At the very least, closing the universities even if you keep schools open would seem to be a reasonable move. Keeping primary schools open should in most cases be fine, with a real question mark over how much spreading is going on in secondary schools.

I guess one worry could be that if they close the universities now then all the students head back home (even if they're not meant to) and that spreads the disease even more.

I wonder whether anyone has done an analysis comparing case numbers in various cities with the dates when the local universities started their time. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a lot of correlation there.

[Werthead]

10 minutes ago, williamjm said:

I guess one worry could be that if they close the universities now then all the students head back home (even if they're not meant to) and that spreads the disease even more.

I wonder whether anyone has done an analysis comparing case numbers in various cities with the dates when the local universities started their time. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a lot of correlation there.

That's true, but that would be the case in December when the universities shut down anyway. I know the government was thinking about keeping students in universities over the Christmas holidays, but that's never going to work.

One approach might be a phased shut down, starting with universities in low-incidence areas and moving up to high ones, or insisting students self-isolate for seven days when getting home.

[karaddin]

20 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Not happy with losing two general elections, Corbyn seems intent on trying to steer Labour to a third defeat

It's really not much compared to what the Aus exes pulled, you could ask Tony Abbott for a demonstration since he's working for Boris anyway

[lessthanluke]

Unless they also close Universities and Schools I forsee a lot of people just refusing to follow another full lockdown. Especially business owners. 

I'll await my cheque in the mail which is going to pay my bills when another lockdown happens. 

[SeanF]

46 minutes ago, lessthanluke said:

Unless they also close Universities and Schools I forsee a lot of people just refusing to follow another full lockdown. Especially business owners. 

I'll await my cheque in the mail which is going to pay my bills when another lockdown happens. 

But, how can they close down schools and universities again?  Disrupting the education of children and students is too high a price to pay, IMHO.

[SeanF]

11 hours ago, Werthead said:

The Times reporting that a new national lockdown will be imposed on Wednesday, to last until 1 December.

Apparently the government was considering remaining as things are until someone showed them a graph showing deaths peaking on Christmas Eve, which they decided was unacceptable PR.

Schools and universities will remain open, which is a highly dubious move, as will supermarkets. Everything else will shut up shop.

Basing policy upon whether it affects Christmas is just daft.

[lessthanluke]

5 minutes ago, SeanF said:

But, how can they close down schools and universities again?  Disrupting the education of children and students is too high a price to pay, IMHO.

Why? Disrupting education is too high a price but ruining the lives of adults is fine? They can just repeat their year next year, universities especially. Younger children I can understand your argument but uni? Nahh. 

 

[SeanF]

7 minutes ago, lessthanluke said:

Why? Disrupting education is too high a price but ruining the lives of adults is fine? They can just repeat their year next year, universities especially. Younger children I can understand your argument but uni? Nahh. 

 

There's no magic bullet, given where we are.  But, these are formative years in peoples' lives.

[mormont]

21 minutes ago, SeanF said:

But, how can they close down schools and universities again?  Disrupting the education of children and students is too high a price to pay, IMHO.

The implicit assumption here is that the education of students is not being disrupted at present. As someone working in a university,I can assure you that it is.

For a lot of students, the only difference between university being 'open' and 'closed' is that they're doing classes from a room in halls instead of from home. They might get the odd socially-distanced tutorial in a lecture room for one hour a week, with some members videoconferencing in (often including the lecturer).

Others do get more - medical students, for example, need to have face-to-face classes - but in the event the universities are 'closed', those would continue. What we're talking about when we talk about 'closing' universities is sending home anyone who can go home, and doing distance learning wherever it can be done. That's not that far from where a lot of institutions started the term, teaching-wise.

They socialise in household groups, in bars that close shortly after classes stop, with no music, no dancing, no mingling. Participation in sport is allowed but most societies are online-only. Most of them have probably met a couple of dozen people in person all term.

The experience at the moment is not comparable to what you all probably remember university being like. The value of the current university experience, while certainly formative, is quite dubious IMHO.

william- I can't find the paper right now, but as you can imagine I've spent a bit of time reading up on these risks. So far as I recall, the research so far is tentative because the data is poor quality. But from what we can tell, spread outside of the university communities into local populations is limited. Blaming students for the second wave is premature at best.

[SeanF]

1 hour ago, mormont said:

The implicit assumption here is that the education of students is not being disrupted at present. As someone working in a university,I can assure you that it is.

For a lot of students, the only difference between university being 'open' and 'closed' is that they're doing classes from a room in halls instead of from home. They might get the odd socially-distanced tutorial in a lecture room for one hour a week, with some members videoconferencing in (often including the lecturer).

Others do get more - medical students, for example, need to have face-to-face classes - but in the event the universities are 'closed', those would continue. What we're talking about when we talk about 'closing' universities is sending home anyone who can go home, and doing distance learning wherever it can be done. That's not that far from where a lot of institutions started the term, teaching-wise.

They socialise in household groups, in bars that close shortly after classes stop, with no music, no dancing, no mingling. Participation in sport is allowed but most societies are online-only. Most of them have probably met a couple of dozen people in person all term.

The experience at the moment is not comparable to what you all probably remember university being like. The value of the current university experience, while certainly formative, is quite dubious IMHO.

Wert - I can't find the paper right now, but as you can imagine I've spent a bit of time reading up on these risks. So far as I recall, the research so far is tentative because the data is poor quality. But from what we can tell, spread outside of the university communities into local populations is limited. Blaming students for the second wave is premature at best.

I don't doubt it's pretty miserable for students, right now.

As it happens, I'm doing an MA at the moment, but that's far more easily done at home/online than my first degree was.

[karaddin]

I reckon catching covid but not knowing I have it, taking it home at Christmas and killing grandma is going to have a worst impact on my formative years than distance learning would have

[Werthead]

Quote

But, how can they close down schools and universities again?  Disrupting the education of children and students is too high a price to pay, IMHO.

Most university students can take the hit. They can attend online tutorials and do their work from home. Medical students and a few others need on-the-job training, but reducing the intake to just them would help a lot. They should probably say fuck it and switch to home learning for the rest of the 2020/21 year anyway. By the summer of 2021 we'll hopefully have a vaccination programme in full swing (touch wood).

For primary school children the risk of spreading seems fairly negligible. There are risk factors - particularly parents congregating at the gates like it's business as normal - but they seem manageable. For secondary schools the situation is harder, as asymptomatic spreading seems to start off being difficult (11-13 year olds seem to be at the upper age limit where showing symptoms or spreading the disease doesn't really happen) but then increases significantly with age until at college level they seem to be spreading the disease pretty freely. That seems to be something they need to address.

Quote

They can just repeat their year next year, universities especially.

Not unless you have several years in a row with effectively double the university intake, which I don't think would work. In most cases and for most courses, you can learn from home. It's not ideal, but it's workable and doesn't mean you need to miss an entire year.

2 hours ago, lessthanluke said:

Unless they also close Universities and Schools I forsee a lot of people just refusing to follow another full lockdown. Especially business owners. 

I'll await my cheque in the mail which is going to pay my bills when another lockdown happens. 

I suspect Sunak will be reinstating the previous scheme (reports that he's now frantically working on that ahead of Johnson's announcement on Monday), otherwise yes, people literally won't be able to afford following the rules and will have no choice but to go to work.