Current Affairs Coronavirus Thread - Serious stuff !!!

[Bruce Wayne]

Some interesting food for thought in the Telegraph as Johnson and Conservatism have bankrupt the country, income tax rises, and public sector pay freezes. What's that line the Tory's fed about fixing the roof when it was sunny...

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Fix the roof and then a hurricane comes and blows the house away. Think the ONS were saying on the radio this morning that GDP is down nearly 6% in March, which is a record fall. Given that April will have seen a full month of lockdown, it seems likely that April will be worse. Hard to see how public finances won't be affected by that, especially as practically no government ever runs a surplus to provide a rainy day fund.

 

[tsubaki]

Some interesting food for thought in the Telegraph as Johnson and Conservatism have bankrupt the country, income tax rises, and public sector pay freezes. What's that line the Tory's fed about fixing the roof when it was sunny...

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The question of who pays for this is a going to define his administration. If it’s mostly us, he will get kicked out at the next election, or sooner given the potential for things to snowball from there. If it’s the tax avoiders he might stay there for a while.

 

[Tubey]

The question of who pays for this is a going to define his administration. If it’s mostly us, he will get kicked out at the next election, or sooner given the potential for things to snowball from there. If it’s the tax avoiders he might stay there for a while.

Spoiler alert - it'll be us!

My guess is Johnson tries to sure up London as the global economic powerhouse through incentives and the burden is laid on regular households.

People have forgotten Brexit by and large too - that'll cripple us as well.

 

[ramacca]

Hancock it up said yesterday, that you can't have a friend or family around to sit in your back garden because they'd have to go through your house.

"Asked about the garden rule, he said: ‘Lots of people don’t have gardens. Secondly, you often have to go through the house to get to the garden and indoors is much higher risk.’

But as of today people can traipse through your house if it's for sale.Incoherent from this incompetent lying government.

No wonder Johnson is being accused of misleading parliament.

"Boris Johnson has been accused of misleading parliament by denying that his top medical and scientific advisers had not signed off his government’s new “stay alert” slogan.

The acting Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey, claims the prime minister misled MPs “inadvertently or otherwise” by telling them in a debate in the Commons on Monday that the claim was “not right”.

Davey has asked Johnson to come back to the chamber to “clear up this discrepancy” and ensure that Hansard, the official record of parliamentary proceedings, is clarified so that it is accurate.

Davey has written to Johnson about his response to the Guardian’s report on Monday that neither Prof Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, nor Sir Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific adviser, had approved the “stay alert” message. Political leaders, scientists and doctors have criticised it as vague and confusing and warned that it could lead to the erosion of public compliance with the lockdown rules".

Hancock it up should also be brought before parliament for misleading remarks over his 100 000 'tests' per day.

 

[tsubaki]

Spoiler alert - it'll be us!

My guess is Johnson tries to sure up London as the global economic powerhouse through incentives and the burden is laid on regular households.

People have forgotten Brexit by and large too - that'll cripple us as well.

If he does that, it will be 1945 for them - but if Chamberlain’s corpse had been PM rather than Churchill. They’ll end up with less than 100 seats.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

Spoiler alert - it'll be us!

My guess is Johnson tries to sure up London as the global economic powerhouse through incentives and the burden is laid on regular households.

People have forgotten Brexit by and large too - that'll cripple us as well.

I wouldn't be 'that' surprised if they don't use a situation that sees overseas travel reduced to a minimum, and seemingly little real cooperation across Europe to force through a hard Brexit, as the virus will already have caused the (temporary) rupture anyway.

 

[Tubey]

If he does that, it will be 1945 for them - but if Chamberlain’s corpse had been PM rather than Churchill. They’ll end up with less than 100 seats.

My hope is that if/when that does happen then Johnson's "charm and bluster" will look calamitous in the face of a competent opposition.

 

[Brisan123]

Being a KNOBHEAD you will carry it off just fine.

FIXED lol

 

[ClausThomsen]

Partly true. We saw people lying on trolleys and on the floor and in terrible conditions. Our NHS did not experience any of that. Even though we built extra hospitals to cover, we never ran out of ICU beds, the Coronavirus sick never took up more than 60% of ICU beds and no one was lying on floors or trolleys. The death toll is horrendous but lines up and the NHS, despite all the issues over PPE, ventilators, etc, has not once been overrun. Could we have done better, absolutely, could it have been worse, absolutely. Certain groups within the NHS, Military etc, deserve a lot of praise and I think we should stop the self flagellation......

The idea of leaving a significant portion of victims to die in nursing homes rather than admit them to hospitals and clog up ICU's massively helped with that. And as a country we don't need a pandemic to ensure we have people lying on floors or trolleys. That particular shortcoming has been a well documented feature of our NHS for a while now.

 

[Brisan123]

I think its silly, my daughter has ordered 4 tests for us to take in this house, now granted she is at risk, but none of us have symptoms, I think its pointless that we are taking tests away from the many people who need it more.

For clarity, my daughter ordered the tests without my consent.

Like mother like daughter so lol lol lol

 

[tsubaki]

My hope is that if/when that does happen then Johnson's "charm and bluster" will look calamitous in the face of a competent opposition.

Hope so, though I rather think the likes of Watson, Woodcock and Austin haven’t finished with saying Labour isn’t the party of the working class any more.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

My hope is that if/when that does happen then Johnson's "charm and bluster" will look calamitous in the face of a competent opposition.

There seems a chance he might be 'retired' on health grounds, much as Eden was. Especially if it all goes belly up.

 

[JimmyJeffers]

I wouldn't be 'that' surprised if they don't use a situation that sees overseas travel reduced to a minimum, and seemingly little real cooperation across Europe to force through a hard Brexit, as the virus will already have caused the (temporary) rupture anyway.

Yeah that’s what I was thinking as well. Also gives them a handy get out clause if/ when things go wrong.

 

[Jebus_lives]

The question of who pays for this is a going to define his administration. If it’s mostly us, he will get kicked out at the next election, or sooner given the potential for things to snowball from there. If it’s the tax avoiders he might stay there for a while.

It's the beauty of the messaging...we're at stay alert but use common sense.

Its the perfect message for an inadequate response, because everybody thinks they're blessed with an abundance of common sense and it's others who are the problem.

Anyone who says it's meaningless can immediately be dismissed as lacking common sense, a condescending elitist or playing politics.

It shifts blame for any negative outcomes onto whichever sub-group the media, social media decide haven't exercised any common sense - it'll be scroungers and forens.

And it means that the Government can say 'well we gave you the chance to do the right thing but you didnt' so people will look around and think 'well someone didn't do the right thing...' and take out their ire on them.

The government shifts from one that offered liberty and freedom and left the common sense choices to the public to one that trusted too much in a public that wasn't responsible enough. Negative impacts now mean the Government tried to provide autonomy but members of the public didn't have enough common sense to do the right thing (see Grenfell).

It allows the Government to not have to deal with complex and difficult choices.

Detailed answers require difficult moral, economic and ethical decisions and 'best worst scenario' judgement.

"Just use common sense," pushes those decision onto others. The Government takes the credit if it works as they trusted the public to do the right thing, but if it doesn't work they tried to let us have our autonomy but WE made bad decisions.

 

[nsno-chris]

I wouldn't be 'that' surprised if they don't use a situation that sees overseas travel reduced to a minimum, and seemingly little real cooperation across Europe to force through a hard Brexit, as the virus will already have caused the (temporary) rupture anyway.

they’re pushing ahead with EU End Transition planning now, it’s not getting delayed, funding is being ramped up to deal with consequences at an operational level.

The movie “The Perfect Storm” comes to mind; if we’re still remotely close to a partial lockdown come January and the current EU Transition plans go ahead, then I’d be worried very very very worried