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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The Social Undistanceables: A Plan
What a mouthful. Like the name for a reality TV programme. Trying to match up the odd, the awkward, the peculiar. Or perhaps a play – if a theatre can be found. Almost unremarked, the RSC recently announced it would close until next January. Birmingham Hippodrome has started redundancy consultations, its reason being what Basil Fawlty might have termed the “bleedin’ obvious”: “We are unable to reopen until social distancing measures are relaxed”. “Abandoned” might be a better word. (Pitlochry Festival Theatre and Keswick’s Theatre on the Lake are doing the same. More will follow.) The performance arts are facing an existential crisis in the land of Shakespeare, a land with a claim to having one of the best, richest, most vigorous and influential theatrical traditions around.
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https://www.timeout.com/tokyo/news/japan-will-now-allow-restaurants-to-use-public-sidewalks-for-outdoor-seating-060520
I would support going with guidelines initially and if that's enough then great, but dealing with the virus *is* a statistical phenomenon, and if you don't do enough, it will literally kill you, with remorseless mathematical logic.
It may simply be that, for no fault of their own, many businesses can't be operated safely any more. If that's the case, they need to close. The owners understandably won't want to close them, so it may need compulsion. (There's also a middle ground consisting of labelling places as unsafe and letting their customers close them for you, but I'm not sure that really helps the operators.)
The alternative to closing the places that can't be operated safely is that you end up with the virus getting out of control, then you're back in a full-scale lockdown which is *far* more disruptive than losing whatever portion of your pubs turned out to be impossible to ventilate.
, just unpopular with nearby people. Meaning best to get on and do it since no point tip toeing around it as it wont help.
Planning generally is a great example since most public involved in the process think the process and rules should be about letting them say no to things but government rules generally want the opposite. You can't square that so you need to bite the bullet
Looking at Sage minutes it does look that the scientists got it wrong and as much as the media and those anti HMG critics are concerned they are likely to find no other politician would have taken a different path. To be fair I heard Nicola admit that mistakes were made but she followed the science and so much of those attacking the decisions are founded on hindsight
Blair extended licensing hours in the belief that it would encourage more continental drinking habits. It is observably not the case that the result was that people now sit for hours over a bottle of wine and a handful of olives. People who object to licensing extensions can be dismissed as NVADIMBY (vomiting and defecating), but it is possible to feel they have a point.
I would support going with guidelines initially and if that's enough then great, but dealing with the virus *is* a statistical phenomenon, and if you don't do enough, it will literally kill you, with remorseless mathematical logic.
It may simply be that, for no fault of their own, many businesses can't be operated safely any more. If that's the case, they need to close. The owners understandably won't want to close them, so it may need compulsion. (There's also a middle ground consisting of labelling places as unsafe and letting their customers close them for you, but I'm not sure that really helps the operators.)
The alternative to closing the places that can't be operated safely is that you end up with the virus getting out of control, then you're back in a full-scale lockdown which is *far* more disruptive than losing whatever portion of your pubs turned out to be impossible to ventilate.
Yes I thought this too (aside can we come up with something better than doveish/hawkish which is very confusing)...
COVID is considerably more dangerous than food poisoning and not only to the clientele but to wider society. Restaurant owners are not necessarily good judges of virus spread.
The govt needs to distill the science advice into clear recommendations (like 2m distance) which people can understand and apply.
ETA why are people complaining about the edit function?
Venues have a duty of care to their customers - preventing a cold has probably never been take to court mainly because the level of harm is low. Compensation will have been paid for breaking a leg or serious food poisoning. In terms of duty of care and impact on the person, is covid more similar to a cold or the severity of breaking a leg/food poisoning.
Not a laweyer but presumably negligence would have to be shown for any case to succeed. If a venue allows in double its legal capacity for example and social distancing doesnt happen specifically because of that, should there be liability? I dont really see why not.
Suppressionist vs anti-suppressionist???
As with anything, unlockdown will have early adopters and others will follow at their own pace. It will be in the interests of venues to show that they have given great thought to the risks posed.
The government needs to give simple, consistent and well-publicised instructions. Pretty well the reverse of what it is doing now.
But two people standing closer together than 1m in a restaurant and everybody loses their minds.
Our council is increasing high street pedestrianisation for the reasons mentioned, but the main car parks are nearby, not on the high street itself, so there's no opposition so far.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/audio/2020/jun/09/covid-19-the-psychology-of-physical-distancing-podcast
Editorial summary: we have different preferences for getting close to our sort of people (defined subjectively, of course) and keeping away from other sorts. The problem is encouraging social distancing in circs where we naturally want to cluster (e.g. music festivals) - much easier when we naturally don't (e.g. Tube travel).
Prediction - restaurants and pubs will be open with 1m social distancing between different groups by mid September.
But we should not forget that they are notoriously low-wage, low-productivity industries. As such, they contribute less than their share to the economy and use the limited resources of labour and capital inefficiently. So, for example, the hospitality industry employed more workers than the digital sector in 2014, but the latter contributed twice as much to the economy.
We need our economy to recover. Our longer-term industrial strategy should be to focus on high-wage, high-productivity industries, not low-wage low-productivity ones.
September? Why not now, if consenting adults choose it?
The only area I disagree on is the careless talk part. Kite flying is useful to get feedback before something is policy. The alternative to careless talk is reckless actions and that is worse. The reality is that nobody is an all knowing seer in this situation so getting more people engaged via talking is a positive not a negative.
The Government needs to make an announcement in the next two weeks (at the latest) on pubs, restaurants, cafes and hotels for the summer season. Or it will be too late.
It should also officially end the lockdown. It's gone on long enough and things are under control now.
Open uppers and shut downers? Or birds (open fly about) and bats (hibernate until winter)
The government giving clear and precise and consistent solutions is the worst possible solution! What's good for one business (especially London centric) is awful potentially for others.
The government needs to be as vague as possible. Let the businesses involved and their community adapt the vague advice into specific actions that work for them.
Why would what works specifically in London work specifically in Lakeland? Or works specifically in a city centre bar work in a traditional rural one?
People need to be educated of the risks but allowed to adapt for what works for them
But we also have, partly through the failures of our education system, many millions of low productivity workers. And then immigration added even more.
The aim of our debt fuelled consumption economy, which Chancellors from Brown onwards, was partly to find employment for these millions of low productivity workers.
Now that Sorry-who-are-you-oh-yes-the-sacked-liar Williamson (as opposed to the other sacked liars the sacked liar has filled his cabinet with) has accepted this rather basic reality, how many other things can't be done from 2m? Ah yes, cosy venues as Cyclefree raises where the confinement is the charm.
Why must we suffer such utter cockwombles as a government?
https://twitter.com/BethRigby/status/1270251544265609217
The consequences of some current rules are silly (for instance, allowing couples who don’t cohabit to have sex outdoors but not indoors). No one in Whitehall seems capable at present of creating straw men to test their rules. The result is that their fussy complex rules are ignored by many.
We need some simple situational rules: eg At Home; On The Street; At Public Leisure; In Public Buildings.
https://corona.go.jp/prevention/pdf/guideline_20200514.pdf
For instance, this is the document for operators of mahjong parlours:
https://zenjanren.com/pdf/guide_20200521.pdf
It's quite detailed, just to take one little random bit: They've also got stuff about taking the temperature of people as they arrive to check for fever, disinfecting slippers, etc etc.
In the example you quote the law is even sillier, you can have sex with a prostitute indoors because it would be their place of work, but you cant with a non cohabiting spouse (unless you pay them).
Once this has been pointed out, ideally there should be a same day update to introduce common sense, but if that happened here the minister would be pilloried for a u-turn and seen as weak.
She showed some virus symptoms about ten days ago and although these worsened for a while they then lessened a bit and by the time she got to take a test she seemed practically better. The test showed negative but I didn't believe it and nor did our mutual friend, a doctor of some 30 years experience. So we packed her off to the Royal Free for further tests and sure enough they confirmed she had indeed had the virus and it was still knocking around. They admitted her, but mainly to deal with an associated bacterial infection of the lungs and to administer some blood -thinning agents. We think she will be out today and all should be well with her again shortly.
That's not the worrying bit. It was the remarks of the consultant. Her symptoms (basically extreme and unpredictable temperature fluctuations) were kind of different to what they have been witnessing generally during the epidimic. He is classifying it it as an example of "...the new wave".
This is not really what any of us want to hear.
Keep your hats on folks, but stay alert.
Edit: I have to walk the dog now but will be back later to field responses/enquiries, if any. Laters.
Otherwise I wouldn't have any.
Henceforth known as the 'outdoor Cummings' rule.
In my experience they set the regulations based on their (lack of) knowledge of the world and then try to make the world comply with threats and fines.
And factor in that people have become used to supermarket prices, a pizza and netflix on a friday night for less than half the price of a night at the pub.
The pub game as we all know it is finished.
Schools not to reopen for all primary as planned. Hancock now talking about "September at earliest" for secondary.
If we get an autumn wave then we could see many pupils not being in school until next spring. That would be an entire year at home.
Yet we plan to reopen shops, beer gardens, theme parks etc etc. Even talk of holidays in EU from July.
For schools, I wonder if something like alternating weeks will be needed for some time whereby half the kids go one week and half the kids go the next? It won't be ideal, but we mustn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Food based is a pub lunch / tea with the family. We all eat, a couple of pints then home. As social distancing means we can't do that then no point pining for it. And its not just pubs - the entirety of IFD & OOH (eating out) is screwed. And with respect to twatty coffee bars charging £stupid and polluting teh world with non-recyclable cups thats a Good Thing.
Drink based is beers with the boys. We've done enough Zoom nights to know it can work. Indeed we've done more Zoom nights than we would have had actual nights out. There are some brilliant micro pubs here in Stockton-on-Tees and I feel for them, but the cash that a night out in them costs is daft. No point going if any social distancing is required (will we even get in? and if so do we have to space apart?). I have a couple of "I'll tell you all about it over a pint when we can" chats due, but if we can't secrete ourselves off in 'Conspiracy Corner' whats the point?
People will go to the pub when they reopen - course they will. In greatly reduced numbers and that as you say will be the death of so many of them. Good News for Tim Gammon and his Wetherspoons empire, less good for anyone else.
Or have I missed something?
Not a joke. This has happened to me.
I understand closing them was only put in at the last minute.
Once the Taliban tendency gets going over imperialism, slavery and massacre, at what point does the culture war end? As a test case the much statued Cromwell comes to mind. Is he a hero of the left and an avant garde of modern democratic ways (Tony Benn) or is he a perpetrator of outrageous imperialist massacre especially in Ireland?
I am asking questions. Not taking a view. But caution would be a good idea.
First they came for the statues,
and I did nothing.
Two households should be able to meet, indoors. You should be able to stay overnight with your parents. You should be able to have sex with your partner. Restaurants and cafes should be able to open. Hotels too. Common-sense will prevail.
I have stopped taking notice of most of the rules. I now simply do whatever I like plus 2m social distancing with the public. With my family, I don't even do that. I touch their back, shoulder or arm, but I don't kiss or hug them tight. I won't be alone in making my own judgements.
The whole way through this crisis this Government has been slow, pedestrian, uncreative and inflexible in its thinking.
That comes from the top.
So, extreme remarks from one's own camp will be treated generously and with forgiveness, whilst those from the opposing camp will be taken in the most negative and hostile manner possible.
And that's how you get a culture war.