New lockdown in England, including school closures, announced by Johnson, 4/1/21

[6862]

While its true the pro-lockdown crowd are still getting their way, no Tory government can stand free spending and paying for people sitting around doing nothing for too long. Its way too engrained into Conservative thinking for this to go on for much longer. Rumours from No.11 are that when the Chancellor found out the extent & cost of furlough back in September he hit the roof. Well we have several more months under our belt at an average cost of around £30 billion a month (for context the NHS budget for 2019-20 was £141 billion). There may not be signs on the surface, but believe me pressure will be mounting rapidly.


Well the US managed it under Trump, so they'd have to have an amazing excuse to get away with it here.

They cancelled last year's local elections, so they've done it once, why not do it again? Also, I would love to live in America right now. Some youtubers I watch are American and their lives look pretty much normal. It looks amazing.

You honestly think that will will be in a lockdown (i.e. schools/shops/hairdressers/etc closed,
no holidays permitted within in the UK, no meeting up with friends/family indoors and so on)
for a further 14 months??!!

I don't think anyone in this country other than most extreme of the Zero Covid maniacs would
tolerate 14 weeks, never mind 14 months...

People have tolerated it for almost a year, and apparently the majority want more beatings restrictions, so yes, I definitely can see things like seeing friends and family being banned for another year or more. It doesn't hurt the economy (not that the government care about it anyway), and it helps to keep people scared and depressed.

 

[brad465]

Priti Patel has said there'll be fines of £800 for house parties of more than 15 people. I mean, if there was a policy that was so flawed, pointless and incompetent, look no further than all the obvious holes in this one.

 

[HSTEd]

Priti Patel has said there'll be fines of £800 for house parties of more than 15 people. I mean, if there was a policy that was so flawed, pointless and incompetent, look no further than all the obvious holes in this one.

Well it wouldn't really effect me since I don't think I even know 14 people to invite to a house party.

 

[bramling]

Priti Patel has said there'll be fines of £800 for house parties of more than 15 people. I mean, if there was a policy that was so flawed, pointless and incompetent, look no further than all the obvious holes in this one.

It’s simply more scapegoating. They are running out of people to blame, last week it was construction workers for having the temerity to travel to work.

 

[initiation]

Am seeing that on the Daily Mail site that Boris wants to make sure this is the last lockdown by having a final 'squeeze'. Hang on, last year we got cases down to hundreds per day, deaths to single figures and yet a few months later here we are again. How low does it need to go? The answer seems to be never low enough.

With the media, the opposition, the government all enthralled with their virtue signalling and new found power over people's lives it is going to be very difficult to get out of this.
The Government will not release complete control of us. I honestly see no way out except:

1) a western country abandons lockdowns and like happened with China then Italy, it starts a domino effect leading to everyone else opening up.
2) Mass disobedience, but it HAS to include businesses opening. It can't just be people driving non-locally for a walk or visiting a friend's garden.

F*** this is depressing.

As discussed by Neil Oliver on talkradio - what is the point? More lives screwed over.

 

[221129]

It doesn't hurt the economy

Ermm of course it does!

 

[brad465]

Quite honestly I don't believe that Sunak would be so easily extending it, especially not before the budget. It may be there are pressures on him to do so, but frankly I don't think even a Chancellor in this joke of a government would be doing something so reckless this far out.

Well, if restrictions are properly eased around May, Boris could then walk away sometime around June/July claiming that the vaccine programme has been a success. So keeping furlough going would then avoid the risk of things kicking off and causing Boris to go under a dark cloud.

It feels at times like we’re never going to get rid of flaming furlough.

Tomorrow the ONS does its release for December borrowing and the latest debt total. How much publicity it gets remains to be seen but those in favour of restrictions continuing certainly can't use the findings to their advantage.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 21 Jan 2021 ==

It’s simply more scapegoating. They are running out of people to blame, last week it was construction workers for having the temerity to travel to work.

It certainly will increase tensions and hostility in society if this gets widely enforced.

 

[tommy2215]

This press briefing is a joke. Priti Patel has given the exact same answer to every question - cases/deaths/hospitalisations very high, far to early to think about relaxing restrictions, stop behaving badly and we have a vaccine.

 

[Controller1701]

Now you are being stupid. Was that some facetious way of saying kids don't need school?

"Allows the children to spend more time in school as they need school)

I have quite clearly stated in agreement with Richard Scott that children do need school. Relevant part of my post highlighted.

 

[RomeoCharlie71]

This press briefing is a joke. Priti Patel has given the exact same answer to every question - cases/deaths/hospitalisations very high, far to early to think about relaxing restrictions, stop behaving badly and we have a vaccine.

Precisely what I thought. I turned it off after the answer to the second question as her answers were completely irrelevant to the question asked.

 

[Yew]

Yes the rumours I heard is it's basically to threaten us all that if we don't stick rigidly to the rules they will introduce more restrictions. Time will tell.

If these measures are so popular, how come so many people are breaking them?

Priti Patel has said there'll be fines of £800 for house parties of more than 15 people. I mean, if there was a policy that was so flawed, pointless and incompetent, look no further than all the obvious holes in this one.

So does that mean parties with 14 people are Okay?

 

[bramling]

If these measures are so popular, how come so many people are breaking them?

Exactly that. Likewise if this was so genuinely threatening to people, we wouldn’t need restrictions as people would be doing it off their own back (I remember the trains in my local area going very quiet around early to mid March).

 

[brad465]

So does that mean parties with 14 people are Okay?

Apologies if it was me not making this very clear, but when I said "I mean, if there was a policy that was so flawed, pointless and incompetent, look no further than all the obvious holes in this one.", the idea 14 might be an okay size was the main reason why.

If anything it might be counter-productive to their beliefs if more people think "ooh I can have a house party with 14 people and get away with it".

 

[Bikeman78]

People have tolerated it for almost a year, and apparently the majority want more beatings restrictions, so yes, I definitely can see things like seeing friends and family being banned for another year or more. It doesn't hurt the economy (not that the government care about it anyway), and it helps to keep people scared and depressed.

That doesn't really bother me. Who's going to stop me going to stay with my mate in the Lake District to climb mountains? It's unenforceable.

 

[6862]

Ermm of course it does!

The simple act of making it illegal to visit ones family does not damage the economy directly. Of course it has more complex ramifications (for example depression and reduced productivity resulting from this) which will indirectly affect the economy, but the buffoons leading the country don't have the ability to think in such a complex way, so from their perspective, making family interactions illegal doesn't harm the economy.

 

[Class 33]

This press briefing is a joke. Priti Patel has given the exact same answer to every question - cases/deaths/hospitalisations very high, far to early to think about relaxing restrictions, stop behaving badly and we have a vaccine.

I knew this one would be nothing positive or useful. I shouldn't have bothered to watch it. Priti Patel keep repeating the same things. 40 minutes of my time wasted!

 

[MikeWM]

Am seeing that on the Daily Mail site that Boris wants to make sure this is the last lockdown by having a final 'squeeze'. Hang on, last year we got cases down to hundreds per day, deaths to single figures and yet a few months later here we are again. How low does it need to go? The answer seems to be never low enough.

And that was the point they introduced mandatory masks!

I don't think there's much point in looking for logic in most of this.

 

[greyman42]

Yet another Downing Street News Conference in a mo. This one with Priti Patel. Am not expecting anything positive in this one. I can bet she'll be saying "We are at a critical point right now...." and ordering us that we must still keep sticking to the restrictions!

Considering her performance on GMB yesterday i wont be taking any notice of anything she has to say.

 

[philosopher]

2) Mass disobedience, but it HAS to include businesses opening. It can't just be people driving non-locally for a walk or visiting a friend's garden.

Personally I think if anything is going to give it is going to be this. Non essential shops, cafes and restaurants without an alcohol license will decide they can no longer afford to stay closed and open up en mass and hope a strength in numbers protects then being fined and forced to close again.

At work someone in my team mentioned that this is already happening in Poland.

 

[bramling]

That'll be the next thing.

You can guarantee it will be found to be endemic here within the next two weeks.

I’m already getting a sense that the media seems to be reflecting a “cooling off” on vaccine enthusiasm. I hope I’m not reading too much in to it.

 

[STINT47]

Getting Priti Patel out each week is the stick as the carrot is no longer working effectively with more and more people.

There was a time when the current death rates would have been a huge issue but now people seem to just accept it as sad but unavoidable and get on with their lives.

Hopefully things will start to ease soon as lifw like this is not really living at the moment.

 

[yorksrob]

I’m already getting a sense that the media seems to be reflecting a “cooling off” on vaccine enthusiasm. I hope I’m not reading too much in to it.

Yet their enthusiasm for lockdown remains unabated !

 

[bramling]

I have to confess I did that today, but I'm glad to report I'm not on furlough so please don't have a go.

It isn’t an issue as long as one isn’t then caught advocating “stay at home”, as I suspect applies to many of the ones in my town.

 

[takno]

Personally I think if anything is going to give it is going to be this. Non essential shops, cafes and restaurants without an alcohol license will decide they can no longer afford to stay closed and open up en mass and hope a strength in numbers protects then being fined and forced to close again.

At work someone in my team mentioned that this is already happening in Poland.

Poland is in a more complex position. Nobody trusted the government there to start with, and most of the government's focus is on convincing the 60% of people who were against the vaccine until last month to get one.

Meanwhile they had a completely overbearing lockdown one, which left them with very little immunity, and the government subsequently spent all summer crowing about how they'd "beaten" it. They now have massive numbers of people catching the disease, but very little testing capacity and don't want to talk too much about it because their health service was already half the size of everybody else's and they really can't treat people. Things are going to get very interesting now that the Kent variant has shown up there.

The upshot of it all is that massive numbers of people don't really believe in the lockdown and have been ignoring it at scale from day one.

Personally I think their strategy is better - their economy is still growing, and they aren't watching their people shrink as human beings. Their terrible government have done what they've done for all the wrong reasons, but that doesn't mean they haven't hit on a better strategy in these unusual times

 

[brad465]

Apparently CRG chair Mark Harper is putting pressure on lockdown lifting to be announced on the 15th Feb, saying it must be lifted from the 8th March when the effects of vulnerable vaccinations takes effects:

https://twitter.com/PaulBrandITV/status/1352304952182505472

NEW: Chair of Covid Recovery Group of Tory MPs
@Mark_J_Harper
puts pressure on PM to lift lockdown from Feb 15th once most vulnerable have been vaccinated. “Vaccinations will of course bring immunity from Covid, but they must bring immunity from lockdowns and restrictions too."

Assuming govt hits 15th Feb deadline, CRG want lockdown lifted from 8th March - given it takes a few weeks for immunity to kick in (though for most this is only the first dose).

 

[bramling]

Yet their enthusiasm for lockdown remains unabated !

If lockdown enthusiasm is proportional to enthusiasm for WFH, then none of this should be a surprise.

Perhaps I’m just too cynical about this!

 

[Reliablebeam]

That press conference was so appalling there is an email going around my team about it, with negative comments from apolitical and foreign colleagues...

I'm not sure this messaging about lockdown staying into the summer is going to work wonders from compliance either.

 

[HSTEd]

That doesn't really bother me. Who's going to stop me going to stay with my mate in the Lake District to climb mountains? It's unenforceable.

Your friend's neighbours when they report you to the police apparatus.

 

[Solent&Wessex]

I'm not sure this messaging about lockdown staying into the summer is going to work wonders from compliance either.

I would tend to agree.

If people can't see any end in sight, and come to believe that they won't have a summer holiday with friends, and won't be able to meet friends or family for months on end, and won't, as Hancock said "be spending all summer doing the things we enjoy" then they will see little point in putting the effort in now and will start to disregard them more.

I've said it before, and probably will say it again, for many parts of the country including where I live, it has technically been illegal to meet indoors with any other person from outside your household for 6 months already, another 4 or 5 months of being on my own and not being able to meet anyone else for any form of social interaction at all is too much and many people will (if they are not already) just start to ignore it.

 

[joncombe]

It’s not just zombie businesses but zombie people. We now seem to have a subset who are happy to live a life of doing little more than walk around the block, days out to the garden centre / supermarket / B&Q, or down to the town centre to sit on a bench drinking takeaway coffee.

I am reminded of the Royale Family. I know it was meant to be a comedy (personally I never found it funny) but I am sure there is a degree of truth in it. People who are quite happy to spend their life sitting on the sofa puffing their way through a packet of fags and a 6-pack of lager watching whatever trash is on the TV. And of course that's their choice (and so it should be). However I do have an issue with it when those same people are essentially trying to inflict that lifestyle on everyone else that all you should be doing is sitting at home watching TV.