I don't think that the party rank and file will be comfortable with a party leader from his *ahem* "demographic" whatever his personal qualifications.

Give it a few more days and the MPs will get bored and the papers will have moved onto something else - like the delicious prospect of pubs opening soon :rolleyes:

It just needs to keep going until Sunday, as that's when DC said he'd resign if it was still news.

I mean, I don't expect him to resign, but his failure to do so would give the story some more legs.

Of course, Sunday's a long way away...

And listen to Hancock this morning still making up the new "guidelines" as they asked more questions about it! And if you are contacted by the tracers it won't be compulsory so forget most people being able to tell their employees they have to stay at home, and we know when someone gets it in say a distribution centre for the likes of Amazon or Very there is no way any "local shutdown " will go into action.

Plus where is this app that was going to be ready, still not seeing it in the App store...

They screwed up the initial contact tracing so you'd have thought they'd have learned from that screw up, but no.

Someone clearly threatedd to defund the BBC.

Emily Maitlis won't be doing her job this evening, she 'just wants the night off'

Cummings is still doing his job.

This is petrifying.


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-52824508

Text of a tweet from LibDem MP Daisy Cooper:


And one from Labour MP Ben Bradshaw

I guess my error was assuming that "world beating" was going to be world beatingly good, not top of the global list when it comes to incompetence. :mad:

Mrs Don asked me again at lunch why the UK's per capita Coronavirus death rate is so bad.

A recent Financial Times analysis has come to the following conclusion (should not be paywalled):

https://www.ft.com/content/6b4c784e-...2-648ffde71bf0

It's also worrying that the number of excess deaths has started to tick up again everywhere except Scotland. Perhaps it's just coincidence that Scotland is the country which has lifted the lockdown restrictions least.

I think that will depend on how poor their chances of re-election become. If it's that or lose power I think a certain amount of pragmatism will creep in.

Johnson's mouth writes more bad cheques than Al Bundy let loose with Marcy's cheque book.

Slight correction, it is going to be a "world-beating" system.

One of my producers proudly had a sign on his desk for a game that read "Game of the year". It was from a poll on the worse game of the year award....

People have just made assumptions about how and why our system would be "world-beating".....

Yes, and sadly I'm one of them....:o

The R-number here in Wales is still worryingly high - especially considering that our lockdown restrictions haven't been lifted to the same extent as those in England:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-52574859

I wonder what factors are in play here. The epicentre of Welsh infection are "The Valleys" where incomes are low and health is poor. Communities like this will have more than their share of essential workers who are exposed to infection more regularly. There are also anecdotal accounts of widespread non-conformance with lockdown rules.

Either way, with the R-number so close to 1, I won't be agitating for a significant lifting of restrictions in Wales, whatever the English decide to do*.

* - of course, being so close to the border, I could choose to largely live by the English rules.

My mother is included in the North West area and that is remaining very high, overtook London now, but hey it's past Watford so what does it matter.

If it's any comfort for me, the North East probably gets a lot more attention at the moment ;)

This is interesting, during the time they were hiding in Durham, Cummings' wife was writing a 'London Lockdown Diary' in The Spectator magazine claiming they were in lockdown in London! Why deceive if you have nothing to hide and are behaving lawfully?

Facts and truth are for the little people.

Probably, although I did hear a quote that struck a chord with me the other day - "this isn't going to go away for them, as long as anybody knows what a Zoom funeral is".

Todays distraction in the papers is that the pubs will re open in june and the 2m rule will be 'reviewed'

So look forward to a massive resurgence in July, then.

You know, looking at the worldometer, the current government undermining of their own message, and that we're coming out of lockdown early (including a relaxing of the advice on social distancing!), I genuinely wouldn't be surprised if we ended up with the third highest per capita death toll in the world.

We're currently 5th, with 558 deaths per million.

Spain in 4th place has 580. There's a few things squiffy with Spain's numbers recently, but in general their deaths per day over the last couple of weeks appear to be under 100. Ours are generally between 300 and 400. So I think it's entirely credible that we'll overtake them before this is over.

Then there's Andorra with 660, but that's a special case. Small population with only 51 deaths. Their daily death toll has never been higher than 4, and their last recorded death was almost 2 weeks ago. So I think it's credible that we'll overtake them, too.

Belgium is second with 808, and even with their daily death count being less than a tenth of ours, I'd hope we don't manage to get that high. Although perhaps it's a vain hope that a second wave would see the public and the government starting to take it seriously at last.

I hope I'm wrong, but I wouldn't be surprised to be right.

I'm going to restock my TP ahead of the next panic.

If excess deaths rather than Coronavirus deaths are considered, we're ahead of Belgium and Spain already in deaths per capita. :(

What did for the UK was we are a major travel destination and UK people are major travellers. Lots of people got infected in China and the Alps and then came to the UK, which combined with dithering over the lockdown, allowed the infection lots of time to spread.

Also it won't comply with any Data Protection rules; data is held for twenty years and no opt out.
:rolleyes:

Complaints have been made to Ipso.

Well, that explains why we're easing lockdown earlier and more completely than other countries...

The latest on the app was that they were going to use the Apple/google API after all, so no data storage.

But at least the Government quickly jumped on this obvious source of infections and quickly put... Never Mind.

She's a columnist so she'll be under no obligation to write non fiction. Plus it's the Spectator so as long as it's 'True Blue' that's probably good enough.

Guess who’s a director of Cheltenham racecourse? Dido Harding.

In today's Spectator:

"Boris Johnson isn't fit to lead"

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/...-t-fit-to-lead

Paywalled, sort of, but astonishing.

I listned to an EFLM lecture the other day, it was explained the excess deaths in Italy (according to a scientific article in NEJM) was due to a combination of two factors:

1. Covid-19 tends to cause blood clotting even in asymptomatic individuals, leading to more myocardial infarctions than you'd otherwise expect.
2. Overburdned hospitals were less capable of dealing with myocardial infarctions, leading to fewer successful outcomes.

It's a rather nasty combination, basically unprecendented in modern times.

McHrozni

The article does give some explanation:

Lockdown rules don't really affect the second and third points.

For context new cases reported yesterday were 72 (1 in Monmouthshire) implying less than 500 live cases in Wales.

https://public.tableau.com/profile/p...eadlinesummary

The lockdown is not being eased because the time is right or the conditions are right, it's being eased because some popular headlines are needed.
"Pubs Open in June"

Doubly astonishing given that Cummings' wife is the commissioning editor. So either the magazine commissioned that without her knowledge, or Cummings thinks that going on the attack against Johnson is a strategic advantage of some kind.

It does and having the R-number in the community being "likely to be below 1" for Wales as a whole is hardly reassuring when other countries have a much firmer grip on R and it's very much lower.

Regarding the current number of cases - who knows ?

Just under 70,000 individuals have been tested in Wales, between 2% and 3% of the population. There could be only 500 active cases, then again there could be several thousand, especially if those infected have mild symptoms or are asymptomatic.

In any case, with an R-value so close to 1, I'm happy that the Welsh government is lifting the lockdown slowly and cautiously and isn't, like Westminster, seemingly trying to generate positive headlines about the country opening up despite the previously published conditions for reopening not being met.

edited to add.....

It seems that the R-number isn't falling in Wales :(

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-w...ost_type=share

You wouldn't expect R to alter just by the passage of time. To change R you need to change people's behaviour. Why doesn't Mark Drakeford understand that?

Todays papers headlining with end of lockdown. Football is starting, NT is opening parks and gardens, Pubs opening, BBQs allowed, families reunited, "Happy Monday"

It's all over folks, we survived!

I'm sure he does understand that, which prompts the question "Why, given the lockdown instructions in Wales, hasn't the R-number dropped ?"

• The lockdown instructions in Wales were inadequate - Wales needed even more stringent lockdown rules than the rest of the UK - which would then pose a further question as to why.
• The lockdown instructions in Wales were inadequate but the Welsh people weren't adhering to them sufficiently well - which would then pose questions of messaging vs. enforcement

The reported situation in Wales is that the vast majority of people are adhering to the lockdown rules and it's only a tiny minority of people who are not. If that truly is the case then the Welsh lockdown rules are too lenient. My suspicion is that lockdown rules are being much more widely flouted than is being reported and that the flouting is endemic rather than a few "yooves" gathering in parks to drink.

In our village, entire streets turn out to cheer the NHS and I'm not convinced that social distancing is being properly maintained. We often see two or three cyclists or runners exercising together. Of course they could be from the same household but if so there are a lot more same sex couples than I expected.

From personal experience I know of two mates from different households who went out mountain biking together (Mrs Don and I bumped into them while we were out for a walk) and who were then going to drop in to visit a neighbour and his family. I'm sure this kind of thing is happening all the time, out of the sight of the authorities.

As you correctly point out, it's behaviour that needed/needs to change. No amount of enforcement is going to address this, it has to come from the individuals involved.