wilsoncgp

It's a strange one unless we have indeed already given up on Bola.

Perhaps because people aren't taking their rules seriously enough already and anything that undermines how serious it is in this climate is perceived as a bad thing?

I didn't see this but am glad if it's true.

Saw a timeline of Trump's comments alongside the increased cases. Absolutely mad stuff.

I mean, it was a stupid ass decision to reduce the number of services in the hope it would reduce the number of people per tube. Khan is saying drivers are self-isolating or are ill themselves. Obviously the latter is unavoidable but given the scale of the tube usage, surely tube drivers should be considered key workers too? How many of them will be in self-enforced isolation who could feasibly be working? Though I'm willing to bet it's not just key workers who are using them and perhaps an alternative is to start ensuring valid reasons for travel instead of just letting anyone use them. There's potential problems with all of the solutions but the main problem as ever is the people who use them. I lived there, anyone else who has or does and has dealt with the Central Line for a short period of time, never mind the 3 years I did, will know it feels like 90% of the people going to work in the capital every day felt they were more important and more significant to the world than the people around them, the very peak of the capitalist society we live in where some people would step on their dead grandmother for an extra few bob. It gets in your bones too, it's almost beyond your control to be the same as them because you know as soon as you hold open a metaphorical door for the more vulnerable, those who are perfectly fine will capitalise on your good gesture and will never give you credit for your good deed. This virus has levelled the playing field significantly in that we are reminded about how individually, we are all important and all our individual decisions can impact so many other people. The maths is simple. If you can feasibly do so, staying at home is going to be hugely positive in delaying the spread of this virus. It's important that those of us who can, do so, in order to allow those who can't to be less at risk.

Aye, my in-laws can no longer see their grandson. I know my mother-in-law in particular is worried because he's so young that he mightn't actually remember her properly by the time they see each other again, heartbreaking stuff. She's using WhatsApp video now to read to him so fingers crossed that's enough for now.

The police struggle with their duties during a short spike in crime on a regular day. That, along with the government's long desire to portray the changing face of crime and how we increasingly need to change to fight more digital crime, is going to be a factor in how many coppers we have on the streets to enforce these things. The government has now been forced to accept that enforcement may be needed to keep people indoors, which goes drastically against their ideal distribution of officers. Going significantly against their ideal setup is becoming quite a theme during this pandemic. As I said earlier, this doesn't mean higher levels of lockdown are on the way, what it may mean is that higher levels of enforcement will be dispatched in order to enforce the current lockdown procedures.

I don't imagine us setting any more restrictions than we have. What else can we do other than further enforce the ones we already have?

In a response to my own question from a few days ago, I went to do a shop yesterday evening after work, around 5:30pm. We're based in Sunderland at the mo and we went to the big Iceland Warehouse in Hylton Retail Park and the big Sainsbury's just down the road from there. Geographically that might not make much of a difference to many in here but thought if you're worried about getting out to the shops soon, it's worth posting about the experience. We went to Iceland first in the retail park, it's like a quarter-size of the retail end of Teesside Park, just a long row of big shops with a small Greggs, Costa and Card Warehouse at the end. Things like Home Bargains, Aldi, Iceland, Smyths, Peacocks and a couple more. The car park was absolutely dead. The place is usually very busy day and night, easy enough to get parked but noticeably busy at all times. Before the lockdown, this was still the case. So how about now, few days after... well the food shops were open, including the big Iceland Warehouse with some signs outside about the elderly/NHS hour. Inside, Iceland was much better than before the lockdown. Some signs up about the distancing, some tape along the floor to indicate what was 2m apart. Food-wise, not fully stocked, still out of toilet paper but the fact they had one pack of kitchen roll and a box of packaged tissues was a noticeable improvement on that front. Tinned food was still low, no pasta really... but everything else was much better. The frozen stuff was ransacked prior to lockdown. This time we got everything we needed. Fresh section was quite well stocked with meats, we got some fresh veg. Quite a lot of bread and baked products like that, eggs in decent stock considering the time of day. Overall, this made me feel much more confident about where we're at. After that we went to the Sainsbury's and we got our first queue. Not organised by security but people obeyed it. Not a very long queue but it got bigger soon after we got there, we were 2nd in line, waiting for people to come out. Stood for maybe 5 minutes waiting to be let in. Once we were in, it was clear how dead it was inside. Usually a big long line of tills active, now only 2 or 3. Self service had 2 active tills. We didn't get a good look around everywhere but notably they had quite a bit of toilet paper to spare. We managed to pick one pack of 18 rolls up to top us up a bit. It even looked like the Argos at the back might have been working though we didn't have a good look up there. But it was the whole shop, so even the home sections, all opened up. People by and large also maintaining good social distancing. I noticed when I went to pick up a couple of Coke bottles, there was a woman behind me who wanted to come down the aisle but waited for me to leave first. Again, it was much more positive vs. before lockdown, people obeying the rules and not being *** about it. So yeah, hopefully that makes people feel a bit better about going out to do their shops.

I don't think anyone should be attributing significant praise or criticism directly at BJ for our strategy, so I am equally unconvinced. I think the strategy would be effectively the same regardless of which rosette the elected leader wears so it seems pointless to be on either side of the fence for the PM based on the way things have moved forward thus far.

As someone who missed so much of Juninho's time at the Boro, I've always wondered how most felt about him leaving after us reaching Europe? Like, beyond the love and desire to see Juninho play in Europe for us, was it the right time for him to move on? My understanding was it was an unpopular decision but would it have been purely sentimental to keep him around?

Is it? Like I said, so long as we are sourcing the ventilators to cover our problem then we're not cutting our own nose off. And the evidence suggests that we are doing that. We just don't want to be dragged into looking after other countries when our country has democratically decided we get little to no benefit from it. I'm not saying I agree with that notion but if I were to go into the reasons why, it would turn into a debate of Brexit and frankly, I've had enough of that for now after the last few exhausting years. It is what it is.

I'm not a Brexiteer but if we are looking to move forward as a nation that looks primarily after itself, and so long as we are sourcing the ventilators for ourselves (as I'm sure I read earlier that we are, via Dyson in one instance) then I'm tempted to say this isn't the strangest thing to do. I don't think it does anything but confirm our willingness to distance ourselves from the EU, something the public has (unfortunately in my eyes) shown a willingness to do twice now. If I was to put this and 'not pushing back the trade deal negotiation timetable because nobody is negotiating right now' on the same scale of 'Brexit shittery', it would overwhelmingly fall on the side of the latter, lets put it that way. This virus is frankly a superbly convenient excuse for Brexiteers to avoid the discussions and exit 'as promised' towards the end of this year.

There's an air of simply, we don't have enough time to discuss the potential ramifications for taking any strategy. We have to go with the best we've got right now. The global economy isn't gonna bust overnight through delays, it's gonna need stabilising in parts for sure but I don't think there's a country in the world ready to deal with this pandemic. We seem to have some idea which direction we need to go into to be more ready for it and delaying for time to put us in that position, in my eyes, seems like a pretty good plan. If I compare that to my industry, say you're coming to crunch time on a project and final submissions are coming close but you have a catastrophe happening around you. You can either make dog-*** quick decisions or you can buy yourself some time to come up with a better plan. As it is, delaying is potentially going to allow the health service to manage emergency care requirements and allowing industry to get involved and start building more equipment and capacity needed to cope with more cases, never mind that it gives the people at the top time to think about a better, longer term strategy and put it in place, rather than just snapping their fingers at the first idea that comes forward to take the fight to the virus. Saying that by the start of June, the virus would have burned out is not a suitable justification for allowing our health service to be overrun for 2-3 months as we watch 1000s of people die. It's certainly not a judgement a political system should make overnight. Of course the virus isn't going away if we delay, that has literally never been the point. Good luck leading a country as a democratically elected representative when you tell people "We need to let people die to win this battle".

I don't even know why I tried fighting the Nsue battle, I didn't even have him in my team and I didn't want him in it! 😂