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I agree with every word of this except "eve" - I think they'll bring Johnson out to announce it on Christmas Day. Wouldn't surprise me if they did something incredibly tacky like dressing him as Santa (after all it's the biggest christmas "present" we could receive).

It's impossible to say - how long is a piece of string? If the vaccine rollout becomes much faster and starts to have a big impact on the figures or something unforeseen happens, we could be looking at a few weeks. If not, I fear it'll be months. My gut feeling is pessimistic, I think it'll...

However, Barrow, South Lakeland, and Lancaster all use the same hospitals. The former two are in Tier 2 but the latter is in Tier 3, despite them all having fairly similar case numbers in the last month or so. The only difference is Lancaster is classed as Lancashire and Barrow/S. Lakeland is...

Knowing what Boris Johnson is like, he'll probably announce the Oxford vaccine on Christmas Day dressed as Father Christmas as a pathetic stunt.

Not that it's much, but support bubbles do still apply even in Tier 4, they are counted as one household (indeed it was specifically mentioned that this was mainly about those at risk of loneliness). If she's in one then that could be an option. I really feel for her though, I hope she manages...

The Tier 4 areas seem to cover anywhere in London and the South East which was moved into Tier 3. Seems rather unfair on the Portsmouth area, which is a substantial distance from London, and where the rise in cases may not be directly related to what's happening in the capital.

I've done that several times within my tier 3 area (including crossing Local Authority boundaries into County Durham/Sunderland), and enjoyed some great walks. Never had any problems. You may have an issue if you walk into a tier 2 area, but even then it's vanishingly unlikely that a bus driver...

A very rough calculation suggests that'd reduce deaths by about 0.5%* which would be impossible to detect (but that figure should increase rapidly). But hopefully in a couple of weeks the decrease will be much more noticeable - it might even be getting on for 10%. * There are around 1 million...

If the choice is between a new Tier 4 and another national lockdown (and unfortunately, that's how the government will see it), then I'd rather have a Tier 4. It'd be ludicrous to close down all the shops on the Isle of Wight just because of a rise in infections in Romford.

It will presumably vary between different types of journey. I would imagine average occupancy for commuting is very close to 1, whereas it should be higher for other uses, particularly leisure travel.* If levels of working from home increase then that average might increase purely because the...

Having taken that journey quite a few times, it's always seemed to me that the vast majority of passengers from the stations towards Didcot are travelling to or from Reading, or changing there. This may not be the case at peak times, but through journeys seem very rare (and many will only be to...

It wouldn't worry me unless the celebrities in question were under 80, because it would be unethical to have famous people cutting in line for PR reasons. But the two examples which I know of (Ian McKellen and the Speaker in the House of Lords) are both over that age.

However John Penrose is an MP for North Somerset (he covers Weston super Mare). His wife? Dido Harding.

Then again, there were areas like that under the old tiers. The boundary between Slough and Buckinghamshire around Burnham is just as much of an arbitrary line through suburbia.

I expect one or two areas are likely to be dropped a tier (for symbolic reasons as much as anything). Likely candidates are Bristol as you say due to low infection rates, and West Yorkshire or Humberside where rates aren't quite so low but are falling. However the main movement will be upwards -...

I saw very similar posters in Chester-le-Street on Monday (I didn't stop to read them but assume they say the same thing).

Except the whole problem is that we just listen to this particular hobby horse. All that matters now is the virus, and if you suggest otherwise you're an evil granny killer! To be honest, this latest announcement has really hit hard. For all the talk of a vaccine, we don't seem to be getting...

Have they announced an end date to their planned lockdown, or is it indefinite?

I wouldn't be so sure. Mark Harper stood last time, and I would imagine he'd stand again. He may not be quite as flamboyant as Swayne, but I think his more understated approach comes across well.

If their data is systematically biased, then there's only so much weighting can fix. They will weight for things like age, politics, and region, but if they don't weight for working from home despite people like that being disproportionately represented, their polls could still be off by a long way.