Exactly. This new "Stay Alert" slogan is begging the question.

It assumes they were lerts to begin with.

This is a clear example of government overreach.

It should be left up to each individual whale to decide whether or not they want people coming to exercise in them.

The most unkindest cut of all.

You may be onto something....

This is a direct result of Boris Johnson's decree on Sunday. A full bus, absolutely no social distancing. All the sacrifices we've made in the past 2 months thrown down the pan by a reckless government totally out of their depth.
Quote Tweet

SkyNews
@SkyNews
Buses in London are packed with passengers this morning, despite the govt asking people to avoid public transport if possible when the #coronavirus lockdown eased.

(vid in link)

https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1260465038881685505

Viz top tips: Readers! Spend quality time with your family by encouraging them to put their house up for sale, then visiting them as prospective buyers.

Or hire them as cleaners or child minders.

Another commentator points out that the changes shift from the blame from the Government, onto people for when it goes wrong.

Also a bit of advice for the opposition:
https://medium.com/@jonjalex/johnson...t-d336cae96348

Scientists for EU also has a good take on it, analysing the changes they have made.

Nick Ferrari on LBC making out teachers are lazy and just don't want to work, not opening schools is just an excuse to skive.

First it was follow the science, then it was follow the scientist that made them look bad, and finally the face mask slipped, they went back to following the money.

Hence: "If you can't work from home you should go to work."

But the furlough scheme has been extended. Surely, if the buses are crowded, or their work is unsafe, people should be allowed to stay at home on furlough?

What if the boss tells you to come to work?

If you want to use technology to combat the virus via software, Taiwan is the way to go:
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/ar...-data-tracking

I've just realised that they (the government) have no idea why people use public transport, especially in a city like London, they really do not understand it is not from preference* it is from necessity. How did they think all these people could "avoid" the only way they have to get to their place of work?!

ETA: And in three weeks we can all be shocked once again when we learn it is still the "low skilled" workers who are dying at a higher percentage


(*well I am sure there will be a very tiny minority of people that do use it as a preference)

PMQs Starmer pours scorn on Johnson’s claim that we shouldn’t read anything into Downing St dropping international comparison death charts just after UK became the worst in Europe.

Jacob Rees-Mogg tells MPs to 'set example' and return to Commons. I wonder which Tube line he travels in on.

Shocked that the PM who was sacked from The Times for lying and sacked from The Spectator for lying and then did quite a lot of other lying has been asked to correct that stuff he said in PMQs because he was [ checks notes ] lying

Also, we still have free bus travel with centre door loading in London. This means the driver has no control over how many passengers are boarding the bus.

We have been told to radio in when the bus has more than 10(single deck) or 20(double deck) passengers on board, or if one particular stop has heavy loading.

So, you radio in and are told, "thank you driver, we have made a note of that, keep your social distancing as best you can, try and stay safe and carry on for now".

In terms of deaths per 1000 head of staff, we are up there with care workers and NHS staff, but we have been given masks this week so we'll be ok surely?

87,063 tests for coronavirus were carried out on Tuesday.
The target, set by the Health Secretary Matt Hancock last month, was for 100,000 tests per day in the UK.
The PM now says the UK "will go up to 200,000 by the end of the month".
There is some confusion about these figures which the Department for Health and Social Care says refers not to tests but to testing capacity.

It's his palanquin bearers I feel sorry for.

At least they are in open air. That should help some.

They ought to consider themselves privileged.

NZ's budget being given today - $50B is the cost of the virus for the country.

We're lucky in both having smashed it early and having a very low debt/GDP rate in 2019.

Other countries may not fare so well.

Is that capacity to take a sample or capacity to analyse the test in the UK instead of having to send it overseas because UK labs aren’t capable of doing so?

This really must be the End of Days when I find myself agreeing with Peter Bloody Bone of all people.

https://twitter.com/Channel4News/sta...57779304017923

Strange times indeed...

Tory MP Maria Caulfield shared a doctored video from a far right site of Keir Starmer apparently sympathising with 'Grooming Gangs' and Jimmy Saville and explaining why when he was head of the CPS he wouldn't prosecute them. She claimed it showed the 'True face of the labour Leader'

Rather than take it down and apologise she has deleted her entire Twitter account.
Nadine Dorries also posted the same video but removed it without comment or apology.

He's got them rattled.

Russia has the second highest number of Coronavirus cases (>250,000) and yet comparatively few deaths (<2,500).

How has this been achieved ? Excellent testing and tracing to catch the disease early ? Innovative treatments from a world-class healthcare system ? The extraordinary robustness of the Russian people ?

Nope, being creative with the numbers:

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

I expect the UK to start to adopt a similar approach to Coronavirus reporting.

Does anyone not think we will see a huge spike in infections, hospitalisations and deaths within the next three weeks in any areas of the UK in which people have to use public transport?

You really need to send that to Johnson to help him work out the figures he wants to release.

Really, only 10 / 20 per bus? The smallest in our fleet, the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter City 77, which normally holds a max of around 20 (I haven't driven them in ages, as the routes it serves are not on my schedule) has been rated to hold 10. Our medium size busses (12-13.7 meter) can have between 25 and 30, and our large articulated busses (18 metre) can have 40 - though we rarely get anywhere near that, as it's only deployed on routes that serve the large shopping mall in town (only just reopened) and the university (still closed).

I've only once come close to calling in that the bus was full, but I knew that the rest of the route was mainly deboarding, so I didn't bother with it.

We haven't been supplied with masks, instead we've been given a litre of electrolysed water to clean our hands with as necessary, and the closest row of seats to the driver has been blocked off. We also no longer sell cash tickets, and the IT technicians have been busy reconfiguring the travel card system, so passengers no longer have to use the card reader next to the driver to add more passengers to their card.

Thankfully no driver at the company I drive for (Keolis) has been exposed at work, with only a few employees having had to quarantine for various reasons.

Oh, and the Burgfrieden in Danish politics are showing a few more signs of cracking. A week ago, a further reopening was agreed upon after negotiations between the various political parties. However on Sunday the Danish health authorities announced changed regulations on social distancing, reducing it from 2 meters to 1.

This led opposition MP's to ask the PM, who has very much made a point of presenting herself as a hands-on leader in this situation, if she was aware that the change was coming, and if so, why she hadn't informed them during the negotiations. Their argument being that it would have meant a change in priorities over which sectors could reopen. The PM denied know about the impending change to the social distancing distance.

However, she won't have helped herself, as this evening, ahead of a televised debate with the political party leaders, she announced that the Danish health authorities had given the green light for a further ease of restrictions, and that she would invite the party leaders to further negotiations - and then she immediately presented her ideas for which sectors could reopen, forcing the other party leaders to play catchup.

Well, the social distancing has gone out of the window. Our back street was full of people sat in the sun and drinking for most of the day, there were even a couple of BBQs on the go. People brought out rugs to sit on . Same onDale Street next over where it backs on to Zetland.

Madness.

Perfect :rolleyes:

This will lead to a spike in cases, which will demonstrate that social distancing is now ineffective so there's no point in continuing with it. ;)

Meanwhile ...

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-h...-idUSKBN22R02B

McHrozni

Yup. The warm sunny weather is upon us.

One of our neighbours across the street has had 3 house parties in the last two weeks. Apparently, they're using their monthly Canadian Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) funds to throw parties and bbqs for all their pals.

Not working? Living on taxfree $2000/month government relief funds for a few months? Pfft, no biggie... throw a party. On a Wednesday. Until 4am.

Weeeeeeeeee!

IMO the UK can't really claim to have had "Full Lockdown" like some other EU countries because:

• We've been able to go out for exercise
• We haven't had the "Show us your papers" type enforcement of essential movement
• Adherence to the rules has been variable. The stories of 60 person house parties have made the headlines but there's been an awful lot of people congregating in gardens, popping around to neighbours and socialising in supermarkets without adequate distancing

While many other countries have been on a full calorie control diet, we in the UK have skipped a couple of snacks and are surprised that we haven't lost the same amount of weight.

FTFY :(

Adhrence is the key, I think. It doesn't matter what strict rules you pass if the populace fails to follow them and you're unable to enforce them. Chinese measures were draconian, I'm not even talking about drones that scolded you. By some accounts they welded entrances into appartment buildings shut. That just wouldn't fly in a democratic society, for fire safety if nothing else.

Unless you're already a police state you simply don't have the infrastructure ready to force the populace to comply. You don't have enough personnel and those that you do have aren't willing to enforce the harsh measures against their own friends and neighbors. That's why clear communication of the scale of the problem and a mature attitude of the populace are the key to fighting off the epidemic.

UK flunked on all levels of course. The best you can say about BJ and many Brits is that Americans have turned out wores by far.

McHrozni

Boris said that to wind up Matt Hancock - for he is being set up to be the fall guy - and Matt has lately been seen with a face like thunder, a man burning with rage, sitting alongside in the House of Commons.

Haha, the Nasty Party in full swing, with Party Chairman Brady demanding to see Boris and Boris being ordered never to be alone with Brady. No sign of Priti Patel lately and she must have been chomping at the bit to shut the borders and being fobbed off.

Can you imagine being in lockdown with Moggy and his sprogs and insufferable wife. Expect baby number seven early next year...? Result of lounging around and boredom.

Kids being made to do schoolwork five hours a day and watch online matins and vespers.

UK is not the only country with wildly unachievable goals.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-52651651

China declared everyone in Wuhan would be tested in two weeks. That's nearly 1,000,000 tests daily. Their capacity is perhaps 100,000 tests a day at best and that's probably using the resources of the entire nation, or close to it.

It turns out ramping out testing capacity is not as easy as pouring money into it. You need skilled people, advanced machinery you can't make in a chop shop and reagents you can't cook up in a kitchen. You need all three and finding any of the three is difficult. I have the basic necessary knowledge of the procedure and could probably learn it within a month or so, even though my line of work is profoundly different nowadays. It's not something you can just throw money at to solve.

McHrozni

It already has: the daily country comparison chart has vanished and are still refusing to include all figures, which according to the FT tops 50K excess deaths and 60K, according to Piers Morgan. The statisticians at the ONS have rapped the government's knuckles for misrepresenting its statistics.

So now lockdown is being eased from four, to the next level 3, when daily infections remain at over 3,000. Shurely shome mishtake...?

I predict that in two weeks from now - let's say month end - there will be another spike and rise in infections, deaths and hospital beds.

According to the deputy chief medical officer,* you can't catch the virus outdoors or at packed sporting events. In any case, it is 'just a heavy cold'.

*aka a Boris fan hoping for New Years honours.