What that Russia Report that should have been released in October and before the last election? The one that if, say a Corbyn led Labour government had suppressed I'm sure the the papers wouldn't have been screaming "cover up" every single day until it was released? That Russia Report?

No, not released yet.

Maybe that's the plan, wait until everyone is dead, then release it.

And UK pigs can breathe a sigh of relief for a while.

This week, a govt minister promoted far right lies & went unpunished. The Prime Minister & the Health Secretary lied about care homes. Johnson was shown to have lied about customs checks in Northern Ireland. Teachers were maligned, lockdown chaos escalated & the R number went up.

So things are back to normal!

Amber Rudd working from home telling teachers to get back to work.

Mail attacking Keir Starmer for not being a 'Man of the People' as he owns a field used as a donkey sanctuary.

Apparently if it had houses on it the value could be as much as £10 million.

He bought a field next door to his parents property so his mum could keep a donkey
Some random bloke thinks the field could be worth £10 million if a housing development was built on it.

How dare he!!

Yeah they already seem to be scraping the bottom of the barrel as far as attacks go. of course with whatever grace period Johnson had acquired after the lockdown and falling ill having ended after his terrible address to the nation they have to go with something.

But don't forget, the idea that a large section of the media routinely attacks Labour leaders is just making excuses.

Mrs Don and I got out on our bicycles yesterday and cycled from our house, across the Severn Bridge and into deepest, darkest Gloucestershire and then retraced our tracks to return safely home. We noted that:

• There were a lot of people out cycling, especially in England. We were following one of the national cycle paths so that's to be expected.
• People were cycling singly, family groups or in pairs, no great herds of MAMILs
• There was a very noticeable police presence around Chepstow stopping and questioning cyclists and motorcyclists

That last point makes sense, the A48 and M48 are access points from England and the Wye Valley is very popular with cyclists and motorcyclists. From what we noted of the interactions, it was all pretty good-natured with police motorcyclists chatting to motorcyclists, admiring their bikes before advising them to go back to England if they wanted a recreational ride. Cyclists only seemed to be being stopped if they were in same sex pairs and on "serious" road bikes. Mrs Don and I on our squeaky city bikes clearly looked like locals out for a short ride, not Englanders out for the whole day. :)

I see a lot of cyclists out here in the US too, now that the season is kicking in. I heard on the news that one of the industries doing well now is bicycle shops, but that new cycle sales are going to be difficult because almost all bicycles sold are made overseas, most in China.

I find the last point somewhat bothersome. Why should the police be stopping people just out for a ride? And were they letting them go on if they were actually going somewhere, which seems like more of a risk of spreading the virus?

I don't have primary school age children but if i did, i think Id send them back on the same day as Prince George and Princess Charlotte

France sees 70 coronavirus cases linked to schools days after reopening

Just a week after one-third of French schoolchildren went back to school in an easing of the coronavirus lockdown, there has been a flurry of about 70 Covid-19 cases linked to schools.
independent.co.uk

If only most politicians were capable of rational thought.

Jacinda Ardern provides yet another lesson to leaders around the world - people generally don't want others to die from an avoidable virus.

When politicians protect those vulnerable people - even at massive economic cost - voters like it.

Labour NZ has gone from trailing main opposition, National, by 10 points pre-Covid to a massive lead of over 20 points - about 56 - 33 right now.

Even the despised Scott Morrison, in Australia, has undergone a total reversal of fortune and would win an election right now in a landslide.

Yes, in Wales it's illegal to exercise with someone outside your household and AFAIK it's also illegal to cross from England to exercise in Wales.

wrong thread

This is scientifically improbable given what we know of the time course of infection. From the official statement of the French Health Minister, "Given that the incubation period for the virus is several days, people are “likely” to have been infected before the reopening of the schools" So the transmission is thought to have occurred before the schools re-opened and are not causally related to the reopening of schools.

If it is any reassurance most doctors and nurses have continued to send their children to school. Of course you might argue those children are at highest risk of infection from their parents anyway, so you would want to keep your children away from the dirty children of doctors.

Exactly.

WTF? We've got a government adviser who thinks there's a 30th February?

You couldn't make this **** up ... they're giving guidance to the government.

****'s sake! Truly led by donkeys!

What's your reference for this?

Presumably this?
https://www.thenational.scot/news/18...ruary-30-days/

It is my opinion that the UK's VE-day bank holiday was an ersatz Brexit bank holiday celebrating the UK's "liberation" from the EU :mad:

Bettridge's law of headline doubtless applies to this story, but nevertheless:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52715571

It would be a bitter irony IMO if a pointless bank holiday celebrating an act of national self-harm resulted in a significant death toll, largely among people who lived through the event allegedly being celebrated. :(

Like I say, Bettridge's law of headlines and all that, but anyway......

If you see the word 'could' in a newspaper headline, you are safe to disregard the article completely.

Wow! Are people now voluntarily shaking his hand? Blimey.

The bigger whopper is that people were told to self-isolate as at the time many were telling the media no-one at the airport said a dicky bird.


Perhaps he was using Goebbels technique of telling a small lie before telling a big one.

An explanation as to why, when the UK ranked 2nd in the world for Health Care Security, the pandemic has hit so hard.

https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...nment-pandemic

"The UK was prepared, but then it de-prepared. Last year, the Global Health Security Index ranked this nation second in the world for pandemic readiness, while the US was first. Broadly speaking, in both nations the necessary systems were in place. Our governments chose not to use them."

The answers are;

- the government was too slow to react
- it did not take the threat seriously enough
- loads of people were allowed into the UK without being tested and required to isolate
- care homes were not protected enough

The UK could have done far better, but the government chose not to.

In a couple of week's time, the wfour countries worst-affected by Covid-19 will be:

USA
Russia
Brazil
UK

Now, if I could just think of some common political factor in all of those countries...

For the top three, is it large populations so that the absolute numbers of deaths give an inflated impression of how the country is doing?

The USA is going to have to nearly triple its number of death to get the mortality rate of Belgium. Italy is still ahead of the UK in terms of daily deaths. Deaths in France kind of look like they might be climbing again.

By your way of calculating, San Marino would be doing great with only 41 deaths, despite topping the list of deaths per million.

Captain Tom Moore is to be knighted for his fundraising efforts after a special nomination from the prime minister.

The war veteran raised more than £32m for NHS charities by completing 100 laps of his garden before his 100th birthday in April.

Boris Johnson said the centenarian had provided the country with "a beacon of light through the fog of coronavirus."

As an honorary colonel, his official title will be Captain Sir Thomas Moore under Ministry of Defence protocol.

San Marino is an outlier under any metrics.

I believe the source of the disease is a little country call "China".

That country's population is almost double all four chart toppers added together.

Hint: it has absolutely nothing to do with population size.

Bread and circuses. :rolleyes:

Meanwhile Rome burns ( sorry about the horribly mixed metaphor)

India will probably be worse than any two of those combined, possibly worse than all four.

They have the same political factor as those four.

McHrozni

I agree on both of those points, although the chances of getting reliable numbers from India isn't high.

Ah, it's zero. The virus entered Mumbai slums a few weeks ago (if not earlier), that means it's here's to stay.

McHrozni

Better late than never - or at least that's what people say, but there are occasions where something can be so late, that it effectively becomes never.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52741331

As usual for this government, the wording is full of superlatives - IMO learning from hte Trump Administration.

I'm so glad the system is "world beating". I wonder if it will actually work and I wonder whether a slightly less "world beating" but available considerably earlier system wouldn't have been much better.

I fear that as usual the key driver is the need to generate positive headlines and deflect blame rather than to protect the British public.

IIRC, the contract tracers being recruited were being offered minimum wage - another clear indicator of how much the government values "essential" workers :mad:

But of course, the promised "world beating" system of 1 June will be nothing of the sort. According to the BBC's Health Correspondent:

I was a small cog in a number of large benefit systems developments in the late 80's and early 90's. I'm painfully aware of what a Version 0 deployment looks like - and this looks exactly like that. Instead of delaying launch by weeks or months, the government is going to plough ahead trying to sort out the problems on the fly. I expect a working system (both IT and people) will be in place much later than if they hadn't committed to the 1 June deadline :(.

In terms of people over the age of 60 India and the US are surprisingly close. India also has far fewer people with pre-existing conditions and/or obesity problems. Per capita death rates in India will be much lower than the US, and while real deaths may be higher limitations in the infrastructure for counting these deaths will keep them below the US totals.

Johnson only nominated him as an opportunity to try to boost his own popularity.

Not sure it is that mixed; actually pretty apposite, both would apply to Nero.

It is worth noting that on tests per capita none of those countries are any good. Russia is the best of them, ranked as 25th in the world.