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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Not good pandemic front pages for the government this morning
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Not good pandemic front pages for the government this morning
So far during the coronavirus crisis the government has had pretty good front pages. We are facing a massive challenges as a nation and generally papers from across the political spectrum have until now been broadly supportive. That, I wonder, might be about to change.
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The bad professor has managed to deflect away some of the opprobrium. Nothing like a salacious sex scandal laced with hyopcrisy to get people's teeth gnashing.
But, yes, the UK has handled this pandemic very poorly indeed. Especially so in the early stages. It doesn't matter how many tories on here jump up and down and claim otherwise. It's incontrovertible.
Has Boris had a good war so far? Well, he's the only world leader to have contracted the virus which is in part because of his careless attitude and arrogance. And, yet, in so doing he also won a lot of good will from people who are not his natural supporters, myself included.
If the easing of the lockdown turns out to be a mistake then life becomes even more difficult for the government.
https://twitter.com/Psythor/status/1257795741004771329
Live from the number 10 press briefing.
I agree with TSE that easing the lockdown is going to be much, much harder than what's gone before. But that holds true for governments around the world, and we will have at least some advantage in learning from the experiences of those that are re-opening before us.
Given The Telegraph's approach to removing the lockdown, I wondered how long ago they found out about the Professor's lover's visits in March and April.
The element of do as I say not as I do, has damned him.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/05/no-sign-second-wave-germany-first-data-lifting-lockdown-emerges/
"There was no sign of a second wave of coronavirus infections in Germany as the first reliable data on the effects of lifting the lockdown emerged on Tuesday.
Two weeks after shops were allowed to reopen, the rate of new infections continues to fall, the government-funded Robert Koch Institute (RKI) announced.
The reproduction number, or R — the number of people each person with the virus infects — is close to its lowest recorded level, at 0.71.
“The rate of transmitted infections continues to fall. This is very good news,” Prof Lothar Wieler, the head of the RKI said."
Biggest problem the government has is filling the news gap until Boris on Sunday.
The decision to unlock, or rather the series of small relaxations that will happen in practice, are much more political in nature, with ministers having to decide priorities from a range of options given by the scientists, against a background of widespread economic disruption.
This disease requires a terrible balancing of deaths by Government.
Obviously that should be the day that Hancock resigns. This is one f-up that is totally unnecessary and I rather suspect is being driven by the Brexiteer world view that UK does not need international co-operation and agreements and we are exceptional.
https://twitter.com/itvnews/status/1257931263849226241
Metro photographer trolls Nigel Farage.
These people aren't about to go back to work. Their businesses aren't about to reopen and resume status quo ante. Which either means the people are thrown under the bus. Or we continue funding their old jobs indefinitely. I understand that its a hard call to keep funding jobs especially if you're a Tory, and that mass unemployment is less of a problem if you are a Tory, but that also was the old world.
In the new world millions of surplus workers about to be thrown off the bus are Tory voters in seats needed to have a majority. Whilst a general election is 4 years away, people tend to have long memories of such things. The political fall out of the economic disaster will be here long after the medical crisis has faded.
They need to start shutting some more things down too. Like packed planes transiting between Belfast and London.
I think the issue is a combination of the NHS and PHE not-invented-here mentality that we saw with the testing ramp-up problems, and a desire across government to capture more information about problematic locations, functionality which the Apple/Google solution specifically prohibits for privacy reasons.
Other than posting rather twattish images of Comical Ali or Inspector Frank Dreben.
"The public are unaware of the “horrible” economic damage that is “coming around the corner” due to coronavirus, a former chancellor [Lord Lamont] has said, warning that the Government’s furlough scheme has lulled workers into a “false sense of security.” "
Another one for the world's second longest running public inquiry.
A rare visitor from southern Europe, perhaps north Africa. The sort of beastie that will travel on the Spanish plume of hot air we are about to see in our weather.
Instead - Inspector Frank Dreben will have to suffice.
Bless.
The government can't keep paying people almost their full salary to not work, and a lot of companies are going to find that when allowed to open they can only afford to keep on half their existing team.
How to we deal with those made redundant, some of whom (but not all) will have been well looked-after by their employers such as airlines?
Any plan of action from here is going to result in a *lot* of bad headlines and corner-cases for the government, but the only real solution after June or July is to move everyone without a job onto Universal Credit, as would happen in a more usual recession.
But is it not worrying we are about to get another plume? I don't know but feels like one of the warmest and certainly driest springs in a very long time.
And he has shown this quite elegantly.
Where the real damage will be done will be hard working middle class grafters being dumped onto the shitshow that is Universal Credit. IDS and his successors got away with demolishing the poor and the sick because they don't have a loud voice. I am already hearing anecdotage of middle class people rocking up to claim UC and in their horror asking "is that it?" - the myth that scroungers live it large is about to be dropped like ton of bricks onto Sun and Mail readers as they themselves try and claim and find it pays 2/3rdsof fuck all.
Tories better hope for a miraculous mutation of this virus into a dormant state or a quick antibody test revealing most of the world is now immune.
If Carole Cadwaldr (sp?) or Robert Peston or Piers Morgan or other journalists I dislike did the same thing it would be the same.
No matter how bad things get healthwise it is not OK to tell journalists they can't report the news.
Without their joint approach, every world government would have implemented some Orwellian tracking app of their dreams, and made it impossible to live life without it. As it is, the A/G solution is the ONLY solution that will actually work for tracking the necessary social interactions to stop the disease spreading.
Hopefully the message that there is only one workable solution will spread around the world faster than the nasty virus did in the first place.
So Boris needs to present a clear plan on Sunday to us coming out with stages and timescales. This will maintain the support of the nation.
We don't want the wishy washy 'plan' put forward by the Scottish executive who seem happy to restrict people's freedom for as long as possible.
And we need to stop furlough after 30 June except for those businesses which legally cannot operate eg pubs.
The Government had a piss-poor first half and went about 5-0 down.
The second half they have played much better, probably narrowly winning it.
There may be several more legs to play.
Then you release them, either before it gets light or else keep them inside the trap out the sun until it starts to get dark again. The real concern is birds predating them. They soon learn there is an easy meal if you oversleep...
No moths were harmed in any way in bringing you these images. (Occassionally, really unusual specimens that can't be identified from photographs require to be collected to prove the record, but for something as obvious to identify as this, you just let it go free again.)
At the moment there are 6.3m people having wages paid by the government in large part. I have not seen any clear statistics about how many of these are on 100% of wages and how many are on 80%. A rough rule of thumb might be that those on 80% should be deeply concerned about whether their employers are going to want them back.
We need to open a wider range of shops with social distancing. Some won't open but if they go into liquidation/administration then we will have a clearer idea where we are.
We need to get construction workers back to work. That's a difficult one because a lot of work on site requires close contact. Maybe masks should become as compulsory on a worksite as the hardhat? We need to find a way to get office workers back to work. Possibly on a phased basis with some form of rotation. Once these people are back cafes will find it worthwhile being open again, even if only for takeaways. I would hope that the measures would reduce those on furlough by roughly half.
Getting those people to their work safely is going to be the biggest challenge. The message will still be to WFH where you can so that the crush on public transport is reduced but that is going to be the biggest threat to the R number, no doubt about it.
So thats hospitality. As the guidance remains WFH unless you cannot, that means public transport not running fully as you cannot social distance people on trains buses and planes. Which is all their staff, their support staff, the businesses who sell stuff to the people who use public transport.
Schools and nurseries? Can't reopen as you can't socially distance kids. A possible limited part time reopening is in the offing. I'd already covered wholesalers who supply school meals in the first paragraph, but as kids aren't going back their parents can't go back regardless of the sector they work in. Nor can you say "get the grandparents to look after them whilst you work" as they are in the protected group.
Etc etc. Its not as simple as "end the furlough scheme" when so many people will be unable to return to work. And thats to say nothing of businesses who will be thrown under the bus by "restaurants can reopen for takeaway only" which means no support which means they fail. With March rents barely paid it seems unlikely that June rents will be paid, so expect an avalanche of insolvencies from mid-June onwards...
At the moment the Government is pursuing the most social democratic economic policies of any Tory government since Macmillan, while also still committing to end free movement and the transition period, they are policies designed to appeal to working class Leavers
He was there for his science not his politics or views on Brexit.
#classicdom
The one thing they did an excellent job on was the staging and build up to lockdown over a period and the communication of that. It is fair to argue that all that should have commenced somewhat earlier, but I wouldn't change much at all about the how it was introduced. The staging fed in to the high levels of public support and compliance with the lockdown.
Of course, the high level of support for the b lockdown means they are going to have to be equally if not more savvy about reading the lockdown, a process that cannot necessarily be as linear as the introduction.
The German virologist Professor Hendrik Streeck has convinced me that in the very likely absence of a vaccine we'll have to learn to live with this virus and modify our behaviour by careful observance of "hygiene" in all social settings. Also that herd immunity is not a black or white thing, and that infection by fleeting contact with a carrier may easily happen but not give rise to serious illness.
And I don't trust Apple or Google at all.
With a lot of the economy shut down, and a couple of hundred billion in borrowing happening this year as a minimum, the priority is getting as many people working as possible, then making sure that those who can't work don't endure unnecessary hardship until the economy recovers. Additional measures such as banning repossessions for a year may also help those temporarily unemployed.
From a political point of view, the next election is four years away - there's an awful lot that can and will happen between now and then. The government has a safe majority in the meantime to accomplish what they can, which Labour (and other parties) can choose to either constructively engage or reflexively oppose.
This looks like a classic scam. But googling "Norton password manager scam" doesn't show up anything of interest. Any suggestions?
It is going to be bad for plenty, some smug Tories will soon get to see how what they counted as lazy indolent scroungers manage to survive at first hand.
As said earlier they will not find it a bed of roses.
Did you even read and process any of the criticism of that chart? Did you read and process any of the criticism of the person who produced the chart?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8288797/Queen-calls-Scott-Morrison-congratulate-Australia-success-fighting-coronavirus.html
On @Topping's point that Ferguson is undermining his own argument for lockdown. If that's the case, why would the government want to undermine their own mandated lockdown? It's a valid point. Nevertheless I am fairly sure this story has come out through news management. The papers running with it on their front pages are very well briefed.
The cost of a human life, as per the govt's calcs is £1.8m. By most estimates we have spent so far £100bn on anti-CV19 measures.
At some point there will be a decision that spending such sums on an ongoing basis is too much per lives saved.
Train operators should be required to provide a normal service. Tube and train drivers have no contact with passengers. If necessary arrangements can be put in place to protect National Rail conductors/staff eg encourage people to buy tickets online.