Relax – johnson says he’ll be working flat out during the summer hols.
But then immediately said he'd be going on holiday.
Indeed but it’s not because those communities have not been taking the matter seriously.
From some of my colleagues who live in Leicester, some of whom are BAME, some sections of that community have not been taking it as seriously as they should, and the nature of some of the working environments, multigenerational households etc is thought to have been a factor in the spread.
Given that that community seems to have worse outcomes if they catch it, it's vital that measures are taken to reduce the spread in any area with a spike. Leicesters lockdown seems to be bringing numbers down nicely now.
I would hate to think that the BAME population was being put at greater risk because it was in some way felt to be "politically incorrect" to try and tackle the Covid problem in such areas.
@stumpyjon - your posts on this thread in the last 24hrs are doing a lot of finger pointing at "Asian" communities.
If you look a bit deeper, there are also deprived areas in all of these towns that are predominantly populated by the white non-working class. Constantly repeating look at them Asians doesn't paint you in a positive light (whether you mean it or not). We all know that in these estates the residents tend to do whatever they want most of the time.
There are lots of people being naughty and not following the rules. It's been like this since the start of lockdown.
Range of sources for you, sorry if it doesnt fit your world view
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-53414937
Rossendale is predominantly low income non Asian communities living closely together in terraced housing, we're well down the rankings at the moment.
I suppose this is the community takings things seriously
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-53464840
There is surely a basic link between cases and poverty - less money = poorer housing, more people sharing, less space, more liklihood of having to go out to work, more use of public transport etc, all of which must increase the risk of infection. Not so much a race thing or 'them on that estate can't follow the rules' as a poverty one.
There is surely a basic link between cases and poverty –
I think that has been shown in some of the data/reports, but the correlation is higher in some areas based on ethnicity than simple poverty.
Given how muddled government messages have been to those of us to whom English is a first language, it must be a nightmare getting the messages across in communities where it may not be, especially when some of the guidance cuts across important religious and cultural "norms".
I'm trying not to make it sound like I'm blaming the BAME communities, but I can see how it adds extra complications.
Range of sources for you, sorry if it doesnt fit your world view
I don't see anything in those articles (the bits I could see) that address the question of taking things seriously. Asian communities are generally different, in income, living situation and working situation. That's left them more vunerable to cv - none of them are a function of negligence.
I'm sure the BAME communities are 'a' factor, but no more than white chavvy scum disregarding any guidelines & common sense what so ever. My mates sister is a hairdresser and is complaining about all the karens trying to insist they don't need a mask when in the salon... it really beggars belief...
Just driven a train in to Blackpool. Well over 400 passengers on it from when we left Preston. Face covering compliance looked like about 30% from what I could see on the CCTV. Glad I'm not going to be driving one out of Blackpool about 7-8pm tonight.
I believe that one train to Southport this morning was so full it was leaving people behind unable to board from Wigan onwards.
MoreCashThanDash
SubscriberAs I read it, there’s been no increase in numbers linked to pubs, restaurants, returning to work etc. In all those places, social distancing, 2 metres, facemasks etc still apply, and from my experience, in an area which isn’t a problem yet, those measures are generally being respected.
I'm not sure how you can draw that conclusion tbh. The current increases are timed very well to be precisely because of those things. Certainly I see nothing to suggest that there's been no increase- in fact it's statistically improbably that there's been no increase related
(that's not to say that any increase would be a problem; all of these activities had a risk and some increase is to be expected/probably inevitable, and hopefully planned for)
Scottish government briefing- which as ever was coherent and well delivered and explained- made it very clear that the increases we're seeing up here are mostly in the 20s to 40s, exactly the people who would be most affected by changes in working and socialising. And our smaller numbers make this sort of thing much easier to consider, we don't get the big-numbers confidence that England gets but we have the ability to look at each individual case in much more detail.
DrJ, Sorry that wasn't aimed at you, the last link shows there have been some issues, big funeral at a mosque, 250 people attended, the Imman tested positive later.
Look, I'm just pointing out the correlation, which is not the same as causation, poverty, multi generational housing, tightly packed housing, totally garbage government guidance delivered in an incoherent manner are all key drivers for the increase, but we're not seeing the increases everywhere and there is a pattern.
This
I would hate to think that the BAME population was being put at greater risk because it was in some way felt to be “politically incorrect” to try and tackle the Covid problem in such areas.
And areas that are less impacted are treated accordingly. I thought they were supposed to be locking down by postcode, that seems to be BB, OL, HX, BL & M.
This is all going to backfire spectacularly, people can see right through the advice and its going to result in bigger issues going forward, they should be locking down specific towns and areas, not blanketing large areas.
And on a lighter note Ilkley has a BD postcode so it's included on the naughty list.
Oh my....
EEk that will make the Rossendale outrage seem like a polite tut.
The northern towns we’re referring too here are as racially and culturally segregated as apartheid South Africa. There is zero integration. None whatsoever.
Specific areas of Rochdale, Oldham and Blackburn have had far higher incidence of infection in their largely Asian populations right from day one. The reasons for this are both societal, based on widespread poverty, type of employment etc, and also cultural. It’s a complex mix that seems to be creating a perfect storm.
This is common knowledge. We’ve seen the figures. We’re not stupid.
I can tell you that the common consensus from everyone i’ve been talking too today in Rossendale is that this is total bollocks and we’ve been included in this purely because of the government being wise to racial sensitivities in the area. It’s not like Boris hasn’t got form on the old racism front, is it? Specifically islamoaphobia
My prediction is that once Eid’s out of the way, they’ll leave it a few days, so as not to make it too obvious, then lift it. A week, tops.
Binners I dearly hope you're right about the lifting of the restrictions.
You're absolutely right about the segregation, despite the huge amount of money spent on new schools in Burnley and efforts to integrate the communities its as segregated as ever. If you don't live in the area it's difficult to realise how separate the communities are.
I'll raise your Ilkley BD postcode outrage with the Ribble Valley and BB - although no mention of an RV lockdown
My prediction is that once Eid’s out of the way, they’ll leave it a few days, so as not to make it too obvious, then lift it. A week, tops.
Completely agree, week or two tops.
Kirklees rate has been falling for the past 5 weeks.
My prediction is that once Eid’s out of the way, they’ll leave it a few days, so as not to make it too obvious, then lift it.
This is just brilliant!
Meanwhile my mothers wake on Monday has just been cancelled by the venue because they are unsure what they’re allowed to offer and don’t want to risk being shut down.
Utter shambles.
If you were in any doubt as to how much of an utter dickhead Laurence Fox was after his previous outburst then this should finally allay those doubts
Commiserations Stu. Sorry to here that.
It is indeed a complete and utter shambles. Like every single thing they’ve done since they were voted in. Dom and Dommers entire time in office has had them staggering blindly from one car crash to the next
Unfortunately for all of us, I fear they’re only just getting into their stride and there’s far worse to come.
I’m guessing a totally chaotic no deal Brexit-related economic collapse, 6 million unemployed and then a massive winter second wave due to their biblical incompetence
I fear you’re not far off in that.
😞
We ate out this lunch for the first time since lockdown. Phoned pub in advance to book in and was told about what we could and couldn't do. Due to new local rules, only your household at the table, don't leave table etc etc. We sat outside and the pub was keeping capacity down to less than 50% of tables. God knows how they will survive this. They were worried as they had ordered loads of food in and if lockdown was tightened any more it would go to waste.
My mate is coming over, from Halifax to Leeds, to go for a ride tomorrow from my house, can he come in for tea after, or do I send his disease riddled carcass straight home for fear of the feds busting us?
Tom, as neither johnson nor any of his incompetent sycophantic clown circus of a cabinet could find their own arses with both hands and the police are distancing themselves from the latest johnsonian emissions...I think you're safe to invite your mate in for afternoon tea.
Tom, he shouldn't actually be coming over to ride. The guidance seems to be "stay in your area".
With regard to the discussion about it being the Asian community that are the source of the rise, even if it were true (and so far it's purely conjecture, there's probably as much evidence that it's the fault of the pubs being opened up) it's a dangerous idea to spread. My mum's next door neighbour said yesterday "well, it clearly relates to the Asian people so I'm going to press on with my barbecue for my mates". If white people are being told by Craig Whittaker MP that another race is to blame they will carry on as normal which is a foolish thing to do if there is a genuine risk in the area.
I'm not sure that's correct. I think you can go about your business but not enter someone else's house or garden, or meet them indoors like in a pub?
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/north-west-of-england-local-restrictions-what-you-can-and-cannot-do
I don’t think the complaint here is that it’s some exclusively Asian issue. It isn’t. Trafford has seen big increases too, which has no notable Asian community, but a large affluent white one.
The complaint in the North West is that this isn’t really a ‘local’ lockdown at all. Far from it. So to use that term is misleading. Greater Manchester is huge with a population in millions.
A lot of the areas locked down (ie: Rossendale) had few cases to begin with, and rates have been steadily falling, not rising, yet have been lumped in with areas with rising rates and locked down for reasons that haven’t been adequately explained.
Maybe that’s down to the government’s absolutely woeful communications, but it’s unleashed a lot of animosity and resentment, and a lot of people in these areas aren’t going to cooperate this time.
Munrobiker
Where's the advice to stay in your area, you've made that up, they guidance says you're not to meet up with other households indoor or in private gardens, meeting up elsewhere outside and maintaining social distancing is fine, as is going to the pub with complete strangers.
85% of new infections in Blackburn in mid July was people with South Asian heritage. There's a large proportion of that community don't frequent pubs.
The conjecture and assumption making seems to be coming from you.
It is still a fair point about other communities not becoming complacent but this blanket ban to control Eid (people from all communities agree on this based on the local news last night) which has included areas with low rates of Covid 19 is having precisely that affect, people know what the numbers are, where the issues are and are fuming. They are now saying stuff the guidance (it's not law yet according to the official statenent) and I really doubt the police will get involved, they couldn't even stop mass gatherings before which were clearly against the rules.
Also, the lockdown rules make no sense.
Our mates run a cafe bar. Yesterday I went in to see them as I’m doing some design work for them. We sat down indoors in their place and had a meeting to go through some stuff. Because this is ‘work’ this is apparently fine.
But we’d also invited them round for a barby last night, which we cancelled because apparently it’s not safe for them to come round and sit in our garden.
Make sense of that for me, if you can? Because I can’t.
It seems I have, thankfully, got the bit about leaving the area wrong. I was convinced I'd read it somewhere but because the guidance so far has been so muddled I can't remember all of it.
Stumpyjon, basically everything you have come out with apart from that stat for Blackburn is conjecture. If you can present similar data for every other area that has these restrictions imposed and then prove that the increase doesn't correlate with the reopening of pubs and restaurants then I think we'd have a decent idea but as it is, no one does. I also doubt the government do, they will have just seen spikes in cases and responded without doing the social analysis that goes with it. Pointing fingers won't help. If one part of society is convinced another is to blame then they won't modify their behaviour.
Binners- my theory on that is similar to why wild camping wasn't allowed in Scotland while you could go to a campsite- control. A business has a policy on how to operate safely and a duty of care, a pub is obliged to only seat single household groups, a park is a public space and easy to police, while a back garden is not subject to any controls and doesn't have a Bobby theoretically wandering around like a public open space.
Urgh. Seems if I’d got to the barbers last week they could have done my (really rather tramplike now) beard, but now just my hair.
Looks like I’ll be wearing a mask more than most for the foreseeable...
To be fair Tom, I think your Captain Caveman look quite suits you
A business has a policy on how to operate safely and a duty of care, a pub is obliged to only seat single household groups, a park is a public space and easy to police, while a back garden is not subject to any controls and doesn’t have a Bobby theoretically wandering around like a public open space.
Nah, it’s because no one gets charged, and no one gets paid, for friends and family getting together in their back gardens. The government want to pass the buck to businesses for being economically viable (despite it being their lack of appetite and aptitude to implement the means to drive down the virus to levels for track/trace/isolate to be effective in stopping spread that is killing so many businesses).
Pubs in Hebden yesterday were full of groups of 4, 6, 8 adults… they could well be mass occupancy households… but more likely pubs are turning a blind eye because it’s the only way to break even.
Neighbours had garden parties last night… I strongly suspect an awful lot of people have decided the new rules aren’t for them… whether it’s down to so much “these rules are for the Asians” nonsense that seems to be proliferating… or the more general poor messaging and back slapping for Cummings breaking the rules that this government indulged in, I don’t know.
My mate is coming over, from Halifax to Leeds, to go for a ride tomorrow from my house, can he come in for tea after, or do I send his disease riddled carcass straight home for fear of the feds busting us?
Of course he can. As it stands this is only government guidance rather than actual law. Much like their only exercising once a day was.
Economic factors are likely to play a part but also, to some extent, it's that nothing is actually OK or not OK. It's not binary like that, just points on a spectrum. Anywhere that the lines are drawn, there'll be weird inconsistencies around the edges. The aim is to damp down transmission overall, and that could actually be achieved by all kinds of weird rules that block one thing but not another. The really tricky thing is maintaining compliance I suppose. To do that they need to make the rules as obviously sensible as they can, and communicate them really well (along with the reasoning). Throughout this whole thing I think the communication has been pretty rubbish.
Munrobiker
Knock yourself out, from Public Health England, week 30 report.
From the summary:
There has been an increase in the proportion of cases from the Asian/Asian Britsh ethnic group, This is likely to reflect larger populations from this ethnic group in areas that are currently seeing higher incidence.
Seems to be a lot of people picking holes in this to suit their own personal or political views, and when decision making isn't properly explained or appears inconsistent, I can totally see why after all this time.
Seemed to me from Whittys comments yesterday that the "experts" are digging their heels in around what can be done safely to release lockdown. His suggestion that if we want schools open in September then we might need to clamp down on something else was telling.
What the government is completely failing to do, at a key time in the epidemic, is communicate clearly to carry the population along with them to make it work. Even if that communication might need to be blunt and the message unpopular in the interests of keeping infection rates under control.
MrsMC is breaking some rules today to travel to visit her parents for the first time since Christmas. Frankly, we weren't expecting them to get this far through the pandemic. Both in their 80s, one with stage 4 cancer caring for the other with increasing dementia, whose anxiety as a result of this is through the roof. My brother in laws - both in vulnerable groups - live close by, but trying to get a care/support package in place so far this year has been a nightmare.
Pubs in Hebden yesterday were full of groups of 4, 6, 8 adults… they could well be mass occupancy households… but more likely pubs are turning a blind eye because it’s the only way to break even.
Neighbours had garden parties last night… I strongly suspect an awful lot of people have decided the new rules aren’t for them… whether it’s down to so much “these rules are for the Asians” nonsense that seems to be proliferating… or the more general poor messaging and back slapping for Cummings breaking the rules that this government indulged in, I don’t know.
Very much this. Talking to one of our neighbours last night who was just about to walk down into town to go to a leaving do with another 50 people. They'd phoned the pub up where they'd booked the room and asked if it was being cancelled due to the new rules, and were told that, no, it was fine. And I totally get why the landlord would do that
I walked through town yesterday and all the pub beer gardens were rammed. Were all those people in single-household groups? What do you think?
So that's how seriously it's being taken here
Throughout this whole thing I think the communication has been pretty rubbish.
Rubbish is somewhat understating it. The communications, from day one, have been absolutely woeful. Inexcusably bad. But essentially cancelling Eid with 3 hours notice, putting restrictions on millions of people in a massive geographical area, and doing so via Twitter absolutely blows their usual inept, incompetent efforts out of the water.
That's well and truly into the realms of taking the ****ing piss! It's treating us with complete contempt! And it's fair to say that it's not gone down well, to say the least
Stumpyjon- thanks for that, I'm not a statistician but it does seem fairly conclusive. The number of Asian people infected is going down, just not at the same rate as other ethnic groups. So there does seem to be a problem there. How they've pinpointed it to people visiting homes rather than where people work isn't clear though.
I stand by my statement that pointing fingers at one group could cause complacency in another so shouldn't be done.
I walked through town yesterday and all the pub beer gardens were rammed.
They’ve f***** up massively in allowing the pubs to open, and they know it. And now they’re doing everything they can, including disgracefully shifting the blame onto Muslims, to avoid a u-turn on that decision.
I’ve still not been to a pub since they opened because it doesn’t take genius to work out that’s the best place to catch the virus. Boris Is terrified of closing them, not just because of the expense of propping up all those jobs, but the symbolism of it. That’s why he delayed lockdown in March and ended it too early.
Maybe that’s down to the government’s absolutely woeful communications, but it’s unleashed a lot of animosity and resentment, and a lot of people in these areas aren’t going to cooperate this time.
This is the dangerous part of the whole thing for me. If a large part of the population will not stick to any new lockdowns then we have no hope of controlling the virus on the run-in to the winter flu season. Keeping that compliance of the public was key to the first restriction period, if they have managed to squander that now it will be very, very hard to regain it. You just have to look at the scenes on beaches to see that a lot of the general public have realised that if they disobey the social distancing rules in large numbers there is very little the police can do about it. 10-20 bobbies vs 2-3000 people is poor odds.
What the government is completely failing to do, at a key time in the epidemic, is communicate clearly to carry the population along with them to make it work. Even if that communication might need to be blunt and the message unpopular in the interests of keeping infection rates under control.
They've failed at almost every stage to communicate clearly. The only success they've had was the original 3-part slogan of "Stay home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives" but then the Cummings incident blew that out of the water. Every slogan or advice since then has been pretty poor in that it could be interpreted in multiple ways to suit your circumstances. As for being blunt and giving an unpopular message, this is Good-Time Boris we're talking about. The person who hides at every opportunity, whether that be on holiday or in a fridge. He could address the nation on Monday and announce a fresh lockdown and most people would not take him seriously. If we do have to go back into the same restrictions we had for March/April/May (which I think we are genuinely in danger of doing) then the compliance his time round will be much lower.
latest johnsonian emissions…
To refer to any of this as Johnsonian, Johnsonism or Johsonite is lending an inappropriate level of gravitas to utter guff. Even referring to it as an omnishambolic shxt show would be disrespectful to omnishambolic shxt shows.
It comes back to the pxss take point again - you need to set a hard point for people to oscillate about. Not some nebulous nonsensical daily dance about the point. People aren't making sense of it and need clarity. What three words may work for finding your location but not really ideal for setting the route out of this chaos.
It's feeling like Boris Buckaroo today and we are all just waiting for the inevitable.
