Germany bails out Lufthansa to save jobs, govt gets 20% equity, seats on Supervisory Board to shape company policy.
UK bails out British Airways, no focus on jobs, no equity stake, no board seats, no employee say, no stipulations.

New Zealand, “Our PM has kept the number of Covid deaths down to 22”

UK, “We may have over 60,000 deaths from Covid but our PM can do a press-up!”

From a US friend on Facebook, who posted this with the question, which country in this map does Fox news say is a model for handling COVID-19?


Attachment 42486

There's something wrong with that map. England is showing up as if it's had few new infections in any region over that period, which is simply not true. I'm not going to quibble with the Scottish colours (although Lanarkshire looks a bit improbable), but the impression that England is doing just fine while Scotland and Wales aren't is the exact opposite from the truth.

I think what's going on is an anomaly I noted in a different thread, that while new cases from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland include all positive tests, the disaggregated country data for England only include tests done in NHS hospitals, not the ones done in the drive-through centres. This gives rise to the ridiculous situation seen in this figure, which is of last week's cases.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EbMvttVX...g&name=900x900

You see that while England is shown as having only 1,900 cases for the week, "UK" is shown as 8,400. However, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland together only add up to 553. In fact the true England figure is the one recorded for the UK, and the figure attributed to England omits the drive-through tests, which are the majority. I suspect the map in the previous post was taken from these deceptive figures.

There is a concerted effort as far as I can see for the English media not to report England-only figures at all. The UK figure is reported, but the implication that the pain is probably equally spread out is sort of left hanging. In fact, ...

Scotland could be covid-free by the end of summer

That doesn't mean eradication, which is impossible with an open border, it means no community transmission and any case or small cluster that emerges being immediately snuffed out by contact tracing and isolation.

So the impression given by the map is wholly misleading. England is in a bad place, but chooses to report its data in such a way as to conceal this.

It would be unwise of Westminster to issue England only figures given how badly they would compare to the rest of the UK who are taking lockdown lifting a little more cautiously.

To be fair, would you feel safe on a plane if this government had a say in how to run the airline?

Looks like international holidays are back on the cards again for UK folk as it’s now all over, well unless you live in Leicester but lets be honest who of significance does?

Here we go again. England is not the UK.

What? You don't agree with their plan to streamline the service and eliminate duplication of resources by cutting the number of wings on each plane by 50% (unless you pay for the executive package) in line with good market driven principals?

We are all in it together is the cry from england when it wants to use the data to hide behind.

I have found the website where that data came from, but not where their regional breakdown was.

The worldwide daily report by country is below
https://t.co/RxWu4wMLIq?amp=1

And their latest map for the European area is here:
https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/geogra...019-ncov-cases

It came from their twitter feed:

https://twitter.com/ECDC_EU/status/1...957683209?s=20

Actually it's normally the cry from Tory millionaires before they shaft the rest of us.

That's assuming anyone wants to let you disease riddled Brits in...

Politically, this is getting serious. This is a slightly out of date graph of the 7-day average of deaths per day for England and Scotland. I just checked Scotland's current figure and it's 0.26. England's is over 2 on that (logarithmic) graph and doesn't seem to be coming down. So the death rate in England is currently eight times that in Scotland. Notwithstanding the fact that as recently as a month ago there was no difference. (Sorry about the image size but it's a twitter link and I can't change it.)



It is no coincidence that the date Sturgeon decided to dump her catastrophic "lockstep" strategy whereby she committed to do exactly what England did regardless of the situation on the ground in Scotland was in early May. It takes at least three weeks for the effect of changes of strategy to work through and show up in the stats, so it all fits rather well.

Nevertheless she and Scots in general are getting flak for daring to be different, even for wanting to be different. People on twitter are saying, I wish you'd fall into line, I want us to go through this as a single country. Why, for God's sake? Commentators are criticising Sturgeon for "lagging behind England" in opening up, and she's accused of "playing catch-up" with England. (Not in mortality statistics I hope!)

In virtually every other country on the planet bigger than a tennis court, regions and states and counties and territories and Lander and departments and cantons and whatever are allowed and encouraged to deal with their local situation in the way that addresses that situation best. Not only that, central governments are in general anxious to put in measures to protect regions which have escaped the worst effects of the virus or have reduced it to very low levels. We weren't even allowed to stop tourists getting on the ferries to our vulnerable islands at the beginning of this. Britain is the only country I can see which is uniformly the same bad colour all over in the death statistics maps. Everywhere else managed to spare some part of its territory. But here "we're all in it together" to the point where some in England are outraged at the very suggestion of travel restrictions to prevent virus being seeded all over rural Scotland again.

If Westminster actually saw Scotland as a valued partner in the union it would have readily agreed to a divergent strategy and to travel restrictions. Indeed if it had had any sense (hah!) it would have implemented travel restrictions within England too and indeed may about to be forced into that anyway. But such is the terror of Scotland ever doing anything differently and particularly of the border meaning anything but a couple of back-to-back welcome signs, they're doing precisely the wrong things.

In times of instability things sometimes reach a tipping point and events happen much faster than most people would have believed possible. Remember 1989-90. If we're in a situation where preserving Scotland's virus-elimination status requires a border closure and we're being dragged into a destructive Brexit in the middle of a winter of stress and fear and England is in the middle of a second wave, we could be in for interesting times.

My news sources are varied enough that I get a fair amount of international news. But I have to say that some of the very best stuff comes from threads like this one.

I'm in Wales and would welcome a relaxation of the lockdown rules but I recognise that the recent outbreak in Anglesey and our need to restrict movement from England to reduce the risk of new cases coming across the border means that it isn't safe to do so.

I'm glad that the political differences between the leaders in Wales and Westminster means that it's actually politically expedient for the Welsh Assembly to pursue a divergent course. If the Tories were in charge here, we'd be in lockstep with England and damn the consequences. :mad:

looking for advice here:

I was on track to visit the UK for a week in late August.

Would I be able to do some sightseeing, or would I have to self-isolate in my hotel room?

any guesses?

Who knows :confused:

The UK English government seems to change tack on a weekly basis. First we waited for months to implement any quarantine regulations, then were going to have one implemented far too late, then the travel industry complained and the yet-to-be quarantine regulations were relaxed.

By late August, in England you could be able to waltz in from anywhere (white) in the world with no questions asked. Then again, case numbers could spike again and international travel could be off the cards.

Boris Johnson says that Coronavirus has been a disaster for the UK but.....

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

I guess because it's too soon.

And guess what, in a few months time it won't be the right time because it'll be too late. :mad:

Why would you want to enquire into whether what you are doing is a good idea while there's still time to change direction? That's crazy talk. Boris Johnson didn't get to where he is today by bothering about the real.world effects of his policies!

Thank you to Zooterkin for fixing that graph size. Much appreciated. I have no idea how to do that.

If I were you I seriously would not come. There is uncertainty as to where anywhere in the country will be at that time, how big a risk you'd be taking of getting the virus, what might be open, how far you'd be allowed to travel and so on.

It's my firm belief that everyone on the globe should be looking at taking a holiday near to home this year, if they go away at all. No airports or planes or ferries (other than quick local island-hoppers) or cruise ships.

Everywhere has somwhere beautiful within a relatively short car journey and we could all benefit from knowing our local attractions a bit better.

many thanks.

Plus you might be required to isolate (or be quarantined) when returning home. Unless it's the USA or Brazil...

[ IMGw=640]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EblZy0NXQAMMHdd?format=jpg[/imgw]

ETA: remove the leading space in the tag

Jim - you can use the [noparse] tag to show an example of a tag [imgw=640]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EblZy0NXQAMMHdd?format=jpg[/imgw]

Thanks to both of you, I'll know next time.

Due to the spike in Coronavirus cases, Leicester (probably the UK's most ethnically diverse city) will see a return to tighter lockdown restrictions:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-englan...shire-53229371

From the government's point of view, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland taking the lifting of lockdown at their own pace is somehow divisive, but a city by city approach is just fine. :mad:

It's not London so what's the problem, there's not even any good public schools in Leicester.

True, Uppingham has an LE postcode, but is proudly in Rutland (which I see seceded from Leicestershire in '97)

James O'Brien had callers from Leicester yesterday telling him about their mates plans to jump on a train to somewhere where the pubs are open. We'll see if the lockdown is enforced in any way.

It will be interesting to see the extent to which a "ring of steel" is thrown up around Leicester.

Will there be police checkpoints on all roads to make sure that no-one unauthorised enters or leaves the Leicester ghetto local lockdown area ?

Will public transport users be asked to justify their journeys ?

Will this intensify the feelings that BAME residents are being hardest hit by Coronavirus, from a health perspective, economically and now on freedom of movement ?

We're just starting to open up properly here. The earlier moves were pretty superficial and unlikely to cause any increase in virus transmission (mostly just additional outdoor activities permitted). Now, as well as even more outdoor activities, all shops that open from the street are open (not arcades or indoor shopping centres though), and factories and labs are back at work. So today seems a good time to get in some more supplies, and I have a repair to pick up anyway. No new cases of the virus for over a week either in my own region or the next-door one where the shops are. Best take advantage in case all the opening-up leads to a flare-up of infection.

It's quite ironic that here we are opening up in a controlled manner, doing fine, virus suppressed really low, at the same time as a part of England has to lock down again because they opened up too early and not in a well controlled manner. But we are the ones getting flak for daring to step out of line with reckless Big Brother next door.

ETA: I've been reading about the situation in Leicester. 135 new cases per 100,000 people over the past week. Raw total of 944 in the past fortnight. I can see why they're worried.

There are about 330,000 people in Leicester. There are 5.45 million in Scotland. We had 85 cases in the entire country last week, 223 in the past fortnight. I was checking the rates per 100,000 population in the areas we consider hot-spots and both Glasgow and Edinburgh (both with larger populations than Leicester, Glasgow is twice the size) are sitting between 2 and 3. Edinburgh was causing a little concern three weeks ago but even then it was less than five. Our worst area is Lanarkshire at 5.3 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. And come to think of it these disaggregaged figures are for the week before last as last week's figures don't come out till tomorrow and they've been falling.

I don't care where you want to draw the boundaries but boundaries need to be drawn here. We have worked hard, we've endured an extra couple of weeks stricter restrictions, and we're now reaping the benefit. We're ready to open up with a very low viral prevalence. Why do people who didn't do that and are still breeding virus freely think they should have the right to come here and set back all our progress? It wouldn't happen anywhere else on the planet. Countries that are genuinely united and "all in it together" are anxious to impose restrictions to protect their less-affected areas. Including England, now. The very fact that Scotland is being accused of racism for even contemplating protective restrictions on travel from England should tell you all you need to know about the way Scotland is treated within the union.

And it's all England's fault. If England had done the same as Scotland through May and June there wouldn't be this discrepancy. England would also be seeing lower viral prevalence and we'd be very happy indeed to welcome English tourists to our visitor attractions. But as it is, sorry. Maybe next year.

The mayor of Leicester is speaking on TV at the moment. The need for a lockdown was apparently a surprise to him, and it took some time (over a week) to get the data out of the government that explained why (though he seems to be satisfied now that it's the right thing to do).

ETA: Leicester had apparently 10% of all new cases (not sure over which time period).

Leicester is not a particularly large city by English standards. It's population is only 0.57% of the population of England. So if it had 10% of all new cases (I think they're talking about over the past two weeks) that is hugely significant.

It seems to me there has been a superspreader event in Leicester a week or two before the numbers started to rise. This is absolutely what contact tracing is about and should be identifying. England is supposed to have a test-trace-isolate operation up and running but there's not a word about this. Something started this, and at a time when superspreader events should not have been happening. Was it an essential business, like the meat plants that have been implicated in several other flare-ups? Was someone running an illegal basement rave-up? If you can't track an outbreak like this back to its source at this stage in the game, you are not ready to open up and you're in a seriously precarious position.

In other news, Scotland had three more deaths today (rolling weekly average now nine per week for the country) and ten new cases (7-day average is 10.6 per day). We've been warned not to go mad, also that it's almost inevitable there will be flare-ups and "unpopular decisions will have to be taken". Like locking down Glasgow? Who knows. But if that's the situation even when we're looking at our worst area sitting on 3.4 new cases per 100,000 people per week last week, and we have a moderately efficient contact tracing operation on the go, then the situation in England is undoubtedly precarious.

Jacinda Ardern is now doubling down and doing the dont mess with our line in the sand.
I have irreconcilable matters that stain her role indellibly but now is time to wait and totally support our increasing iron border.

The Financial Times has finally figured out what's going on with the England figures, saying that all these helpful web sites and maps are building their visual aids from "junk data" which excludes the pillar 2 testing.

https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/sta...60112691273728

They've cottoned on because of Leicester, which isn't showing anything out of the ordinary in the public figures because nearly all the tests that have revealed the problem are pillar 2.

Leicester lockdown exposes lack of local Covid testing data

There is an error in the article though because the subheading talks about the "nations" and regions not getting the full picture, and the article talks about the UK. I don't think the FT realises this is purely an England issue. I don't think Wales ever used the pillar 2 tests, and Scotland and NI didn't use them a lot and incorporated all the data (with backdating) into their regular statistical briefings several weeks ago.

"About 4,000 people raved in Daisy Nook [June 13th, Manchester area] that night. Meanwhile, another 2,000 people attended a “quarantine rave” in Carrington, 15 miles away. Similar raves have popped up throughout June. Staffordshire: 1,000 people raved in Brookhay Woods, near Lichfield. Liverpool: hundreds of revellers danced to house music in a forest near Kirkby. Bristol: 1,000 people gathered in Stokes Croft. Leeds: police shut down a rave in an underpass of the M1 motorway as shocked motorists watched participants flood on to the road ..."

Not just insanity but willful insanity.

As Brit expats aiming to return to the UK soon we've been checking the situation in Wales, our destination. Today I visited a certain Welsh tourism website and its headline said "Visit Wales. Later". Damn right, and it suggested that hotel bookings etc might resume in mid-July. Given that flights to the UK won't be resuming until then, at best, it doesn't hamper our plans any more than they're already hampered (that's to say considerably, as our buyers are Belgian).

Right now I'm thinking that Greece would be nuts to allow the resumption of tourism by the English, especially given the shocking performance at Bournemouth beach a few days back and other examples of total disregard for the health of others such as the raves above. But, of course, a UK passport doesn't mention which home country you're from.

We're working on it...