Good point. People keep missing the real picture - European nations kept their borders open far too late.

New Zealand is lucky, it is remote, it does not even get asylum seekers - it is a remote archipelago which took an early decision to close its borders and screen everyone arriving. Even if the UK Government had decided to take action on our borders, it would have been far more difficult to enforce here than in New Zealand.

I was actually revising my earlier posts where I said the biggest transgressors of CV restrictions in my experience has been 'people of the DE social classes' and pensioners.

Obviously, this article doesn't state that the people visiting Malham Cove from many miles away were middle class middle-managers, but - again only in my experience - the demographic of people who visit Malham Cove and the wider Dales isn't usually people from sink estates. I made an assumption (one, on balance, I'd still bet my lockdown savings on) about the type of people who had been visiting that area. Get over it. FWIW, I made the point because I was shocked at their behaviour (which normally I would expect far more from people living in sink estates)

With respect, my only 'fault' is a strong memory of the frequency with which you dip into the 'class struggle' bucket when expressing your views. 

'Get over it' works both ways, my friend.

🙂

Can't help thinking we've got our wires crossed here.

I'll try to clarify: the sort of behaviour toward the police that has been reported is what I'd expect from people living on sink estates. But I wouldn't expect people from sink estates to travel - even at the best of times let alone during a lockdown - to a beauty spot like Malham Cove or the wider Dales. That would be more the preserve of a different social demographic, who I wouldn't expect to have such an aggressive and anti-social reaction towards the police. The police officer themselves said "I endured more abuse than I ever have dealing with drunken idiots outside nightclubs", the inference of which is that the people being so aggressive & anti-social towards the police here were otherwise unlike the kind of people who would be 'drunken idiots outside nightclubs'.

You're leaping to the wrong conclusion in this instance.

But they will...

Sir Patrick Vallance tried to warn government in January about effect an outbreak of coronavirus in the Uk would have on care homes:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8261149/SAGE-warned-Government-early-care-homes-risk-COVID-19.html

Lockdown measures seem to have been working around here. 7-day rolling average in Wandsworth has gone from 27 positive tests a day two weeks ago to 7 positive tests a day now, basically a 75% drop. Next door Lambeth has gone from 29 to 12 in the same period. A lot of people had been infected early on but its encouraging to see it drop so much. Its still out there though. I doubt that the much talked about herd immunity has been reached, probably just an effect of knowing that people locally are getting ill focussing minds more? Maybe people's job, social activities have a big influence as well, ie some people are far more likely to catch an illness. Not an easy one to quantify.

Definitely feel the lockdown is loosening here as well. Part of it is just people's attitude, a few weeks ago people definitely seemed a bit stressed when out, now  there is a lot more talking and laughing going on. There do seem to be more people who are meeting friends - in a socially distanced way though. Generally, most people are doing social distancing when walking on the pavement but it feels like a bit more of a token effort now. FWIW, people in their 20s and 30s here have tried to avoid people walking down the pavement but not as much as men in their 50s and 60s who have definitely been the most worried. Looking at the death stats its not hard to see why.

I’ll try to watch it tomorrow.

I thought everyone was in agreement that the government response was crucially too slow and that they’ve been playing catch up in many key areas ever since.

The only area where the response has been surprisingly good, IMO, has been the financial support measures.

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I don't think it's strictly fair to compare us to New Zealand. They were quicker to semi-close borders to outside than us but they had the same knowledge as us and didn't lock down till we did in late March. They are an isolated Island with a total population of 4.2 million in area the size of the UK roughly and in one of the remotest parts of the world. They only have one city with a population over a million and my local authority of Basildon and Thurrock has a bigger population than their third biggest City , Christchurch. All of these factors made isolation much easier. They've followed a similar curve to us - but as the numbers are a lot less to start normality returns quicker. We would have had to have locked down by February to have had the same starting numbers and perhaps we should have. 

But even taking that into account they still have done much better than us especially with the number of fatalities which if scaled up are nowhere near as high as ours. Then of course ours are among the worst per capita in the world. They also seem to have a much better Prime Minister and Government which helps.

 Whoops should have fast forwarded to this before I posted my reply which is essentially the same.

Couldn't agree more but haven't bought one for 15 years. The thought of all those free copies of the Mail not being planted in waiting rooms, receptions and so on any more breaks my heart!

It is and I did. Mind the black cab from the station to the airport cost me more than my train ticket from London! (true!)

Churchillian speech by Bozo as DEW mentioned, the common man loves it, and he knows how to wrestle down a mugger too!

What a guy. Immune to any virus and a have a go hero to boot

The Mail and Sun will be fine, their owners will subsidise them until sales pick up

The Express could hopefully be done for, but sadly the Guardian too, in print form anyway

You cannot use time/date to compare when countries reacted, you need to compare at which stage of their epidemic they reacted. Almost all countries which reacted early and aggressively have avoided the exponential curve, they have relatively few deaths and they are now in the process of relaxing the restrictions.

I have shown this graphic before, have a look at the number of deaths for most countries in the bottom half of this table. The UK was the slowest one to react.

cock journalism 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-northamptonshire-52449274/coronavirus-survivor-98-thanks-kettering-general-hospital-staff

basically old boy has a fall and ends up in hospital and as is standard procedure now he is tested for covid. Old boy probably has minimal symptoms at worst but BBC journalist says he was suffering for a week in hospital.

This is the source/context for that image. It is a long but interesting read. https://www.politico.eu/article/coronavirus-europe-failed-the-test/