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.

Basically the new plan is:

Hands, knees and boomps a daisy

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.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/can-visit-people-outside-greater-18693495.amp

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.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/903450/Weekly_COVID19_Surveillance_Report_week_30_FINAL_UPDATED.pdf

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.

I stand by my statement that pointing fingers at one group could cause complacency in another so shouldn’t be done.

Agree with that, but the opposite is also true, a one solution fits all approach that our shambolic government has applied is also extremely dangerous, it’s not dealing effectively with the root causes and it’s caused a complete lack of credibility with the population in the area as a whole. If Blackburn, Rochdale, Oldham etc. were locked down based on 4 digit postcodes no one would have an issue, ethnicity would not be a factor, it would be based on proper data and would also pick up areas with other ethnic bias that as you have rightly said are probably shrugging shoulders and saying it’s not us.

including disgracefully shifting the blame onto Muslims

Grow up Dez, this is not about blame, its about successfully tackling outbreaks and dealing with them. For what it’s worth I do agree with you about the pub situation, it just isn’t the main driver behind many of the current spikes. It will probably will have a major impact on the next increase though, compounded by the stupidity of blanket banning 4 million people from meeting in each others homes whilst still allowing pubs to open. Not dealing with the current spikes will directly contribute to the next spikes.

One thing we can all agree on is the government have handled this incredibly badly, again. Introducing the lock down on the eve of Eid was calculated, insensitive and ultimately counter productive, I’d have had more sympathy if they had been more truthful for the reasoning. But then they knew Eid was coming so could have at least given people warning the changes were coming to allow people make alternate plans, the spikes have been clear in these areas for weeks and Eid’s probably been on the calender for hundreds of years. The reality is they weren’t planning and panicked and are now trying to cover up yet another knee jerk reaction.

this is not about blame

You appear to have missed Craig Whittaker’s comments yesterday And Boris’s failure to condemn him.

And meanwhile in Calderdale..

Picture of a bar in @CWhittaker_MP the day people were banned from visiting relatives. Notice all the BAME people he likes to blame….. pic.twitter.com/soJK9vldCT

— James Baker (@Jamesdbaker1) August 1, 2020

The reality is they weren’t planning and panicked and are now trying to cover up yet another knee jerk reaction.

Absolutely. It just reinforces the impression that, right from the off, the government has dithered and procrastinated, then at the 59th minute of the 11th hour, been panicked into action.

And every time they’ve done so, their credibility has been further diminished. This week has been absolutely farcical and the result is that large numbers of people are just going to ignore the governments new rules.

They’ve only themselves to blame for that through their complete incompetence in every area, and the arrogance and entitlement of the whole Cummings affair, which was the catalyst for everything that’s happened since and the rot really set in. From that point on the government had absolutely zero authority. They simply threw it away.

How they’ve pinpointed it to people visiting homes rather than where people work isn’t clear though.

A reminder that we’ve had a school closed here, because it ripped through the staff.

We still need (and should be working on solidly) plans for schools to get all kids in, and for more work places to have people back. That should be the priority. To enable this we need something more than “we’re not at a peak, so send you kids to school 5 days a week next month, and get commuting again”… because that is just an aim, a wish, a punt, a hope, a dream… not a plan. Hmm… what does that remind me of…? And who’s now running the country…?

That plan should probably include paying pubs to stay shut… but that’s just my opinion… some proper contact tracing, and an app, could have told us by now if that was needed… or what measures we could take to help them open safely and profitably (not one or the other).

Chris Witty stated last night that we’re at the limits of opening up and in future, compromises will have to be reached.

They’ve expanded on that today and said that opening up the schools will possibly involve having to shut the pubs

Now, in any sane country, you’d simply say ‘well, shut the pubs then’

Does anybody believe that that would be our governments initial thought process?

No. Me neither

Listening to Capital UK..

Caller – “Yeah me and my mate are travelling down to Brighton, we’re in the car now. Rave weekend innit.

Going to see some mates and have a big one all weekend”

Radio presenter – “All socially distanced of course I presume?”

Caller – “Yeah of course”

Can’t think why infections might be increasing.

I’ve decided to move into the local supermarket.

It’s quite clear from the guidance that the only safe indoor space where you can see other people is when you’re within reach of a contactless payment device.

I’ll see if I can get one in my house and then everything will be okay.

Does anyone know if I need to connect it to the nearest 5G mast?

dazh you really should check your facts before wading in face first.

For Calderdale this data shows that rates of coronavirus are highest in Park and Warley electoral wards.

https://www.calderdale.gov.uk/v2/coronavirus-covid-19/outbreak-prevention-and-control-plan/cases-data

And where are these two wards, west of Halifax.

Halifax is home to a large South Asian community mainly of British Pakistanis from the Kashmir region, which originally moved to the area for employment in the textile industry. The majority of the community lives in the west central Halifax region of the town.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax,_West_Yorkshire#:~:text=The%20main%20ethnic%20group%20in,64%25%20of%20residents%20had%20qualifications.

Where’s the bar you posted a reference to, doesn’t look like the middle of Halifax. Look the next big spike may well be due to the bars etc. but at the moment they are not the main cause in these areas, be pre-emptive by all means and close them (I don’t think pubs should have re-opened and the furlough scheme should have been tailored earlier to take support away from businesses that could get back to work and put suitable measures in place, and fed to industries like hospitality). Deal with the root causes. Idiots like Whittaker don’t help but don’t let his obvious bias cloud the real issues.

Let me rephrase my earlier comment, this should not be about be about blame.

Does anybody believe that that would be our governments initial thought process?

Yep, they’ve cocked up, again, and now roll out the experts to try and sort out their political mess. The whole annoucing the restrictions on Twitter was all part of the standard leak it before announcing it mentality, this time it wasn’t the sort of announcement you could quietly bury if it didn’t go down well.

Bet a lot of the local councils had no idea it was coming either, they certainly had no idea of the detail.

The school that shut at the end of term was east Halifax (mostly white area)… I’m dreading it ripping through any school in west Halifax next month… because so many kids live with, or next door and effectively with, so many older and infirm relatives.

but at the moment they are not the main cause in these areas

You don’t know that. Sorry, but you just don’t. I hope you’re right, given what bars and pubs look like this weekend.

(I don’t think pubs should have re-opened and the furlough scheme should have been tailored earlier to take support away from businesses that could get back to work and put suitable measures in place, and fed to industries like hospitality)

Yes, yes, yes.