The only person I saw maskless on the buses today was a fat mess and her children. "STOP PRANCING ABOUT! YOU'LL GET KILLED ON THE ROAD!" was probably her best bellow.
The only person I saw maskless on the buses today was a fat mess and her children. "STOP PRANCING ABOUT! YOU'LL GET KILLED ON THE ROAD!" was probably her best bellow.
Prediction: The government will have us back in another lockdown by July.
See you in July
Been able to sign up for a 'short notice' vaccination as the roll out has gone so well locally, so may well get a call to get jabbed soon.
#LibDemFightback
He wants them from the end of the vaccine roll out, right? So it's only hitting the anti-vaxx-vegan-tarot-card mob and the disabled that can't take them. His voters worst enemies. Pure politics.
I don't think it's just that, in line with what I was getting at on the last page, the shitting the bed is definitely continuing...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56608632
Why?New rules to help pubs, cafes and restaurants reopen outdoors safely in England on 12 April have sparked anger from industry groups.
All customers will have to sign in on entry, not just one member of the group like before. It is also unclear whether payment at the bar will be permitted.
The vaccines are helping pubs, cafes and restaurants to reopen outdoors safely.
What more evidence is needed of this?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-56011982
Pfizer says its vaccine is preventing 91% of coronavirus cases in the six months after people are immunised.
And now I've thought about this even more, it's even worse than I thought.
If these details are being taken to help with test and trace then is it safe to assume that if someone is in the pub garden at the same time I am and they later test positive for Coronavirus that I'll be contacted and expected to isolate for 14 days? Despite being in the open air and likely on a completely different table to them (any friends I meet in the pub will tell me if they test positive at any point).
I can tell you now that should I get contacted and it wasn't through sitting on the same table with someone in the pub I went to, I sure as shit won't be isolating for 14 days. I've done a year, the vulnerable have all had a shot, I'm out unless I have good cause to think I actually have it, and good cause would consist of far more than sharing an open air space with someone on the same planet.
Either way I hope the passports are blue.
Gutted we can't even attempt to prevent the new variants getting in.
Pubs OPEN. Dinghies SUNK. Vaccine passports BINNED.
Mr D Smith, 14 Raasclaat Road, E3 1LD, 0755778345
Neil Armstrong, the Moon, USA.
Actually, don't the chains all have apps now? That's one way to have that data without asking on entry.
Best two covid stories of the day surely the rightful shaming of Australia for the reprehensible way they have treated their overseas citizens and the fact that the UK government chucked a load of cash into this Dutch vaccine plant (unmatched by anyone else, god knows why) that is at the centre of the most recent AZ row. Matt Hancock's open chequebook I saw this film once policies not entirely without merit it seems.
Matt Hancock has donned most things since about August, not that he'll ever get the credit for it. Of course in this kind of situation it turns out that acting quickly and decisively > spending ages weighing up the evidence, which upsets a lot of people's worldviews.
That story about celebrities flocking to Australia was a bit weird. Surely America is still sufficiently open that if you're rich and famous you could do most of what you wanted to be doing without having to move to Australia.
Clot watch: Our regulator's found 30 rare clot events in 18.1m doses. Carry on.
Also, how has our R number increased when cases are decreasing?
Last edited by Shindig; 02-04-2021 at 01:47 PM.
Fuck. Off.During a Twitter question and answer session, Johnson was asked if people could meet loved ones indoors if they are vaccinated, to which he replied:
I’m afraid the answer is no, because we’re not yet at that stage. We’re still very much in a world where you can meet friends and family outdoors under the rule of six or two households. And even though your friends and family members may be vaccinated, the vaccines are not giving 100% protection, and that’s why we just need to be cautious. We don’t think that they entirely reduce or remove the risk of transmission.
This is absolutely contradictory to THE SCIENCE.
It's not for that reason, it's because he thinks/knows that as soon as you allow any two people to meet up indoors then others will immediately do it and in larger numbers.
So he has to parrot that kind of bullshit to keep the show on the road.
Indeed. Not that it's working.
Next-door currently have the birds mum and dad round and they're all in doors. We're going round my wife's mum and dad's tomorrow and am I bollocks sitting outside in the cold all day.
We're just back from the park too and it was rammed. All the kids playing together. All the parents stood talking. Complete normality.
It's done lads. Fuck the R. Fuck the cases.
I’ve had my first shot and I don’t give a fuck anymore. All of my immediate family have had at least one so we’re all meeting up for Easter. Fuck ‘em.
The goalposts have been moved from "protect the NHS" to... whatever the fuck we're doing now. The vulnerable are no longer vulnerable and there's no reason to suspect the NHS can be overwhelmed by this now.
+1 for Fuck 'em
He must know it’s all bollocks. We don’t need, and might never get, a vaccine that is 100% effective. So to use that as an excuse to keep VACCINATED loved ones apart is completely disingenuous.
First weekend of pubs opening being May Day weekend is making booking places a right cunt
Or to continue to make BREXIT a side story instead of an unmitigated disaster.
I've just discovered cool shit like museums are off the table until May.
The ones that have nothing to do with Covid. Trade, travel etc
You need a visa to go to France!
Oh wait.
Imports/Exports dropped loads in January.
Capital flight! The banks are all relocating for a 4 day week and a siesta every day in Madrid.
It'll be interesting to see if any analysis is done on the number of billions being able to reopen ahead of our all-knowing European overlords yields versus the number 'lost' to Brexit.
Magic?
Exporting is definitely more difficult (partly because European customs agencies are deliberately trying to make it so), but it will settle down after a while.
I think I read somewhere that 20% of companies that used to export to Europe have stopped doing so because it's not worth the effort anymore, but I can't find the source and without any context that stat is pretty much worthless.
What I'm finding is that our bigger customers are cracking on, but the smaller shipments (£500 and less) are becoming less worth it because of the customs clearance. We sell engine components so it's relatively ok, but if you sell cheese or cakes or something then life will be pretty difficult.
What's making life slightly more difficult is that the customs agencies, whether told to by government or just because they're surly cunts themselves, are deliberately delaying/blocking process of shipments from the UK. Some are even telling our customers things like 'You need to stop buying from the UK'.
Private eye has export of beef, pork and lamb are down by around 85-90% from norms. The EU stuff is just being waved through on our end to avoid food shortages/disruption. Anecdotally, my wife's wine exports to Europe is completely disrupted to the point of wine being sent back to the UK because the couriers on the other side unable to take on the challenge. Personally, I now need a work permit to make my current move into the motherland possible.
The couriers being unwilling to reconfigure their business (at all) to deal with it is another issue, yeah.
What I've found is that many customers on the European end were taken completely by surprise. Some had never heard of Brexit. Even those who had seemed to have no idea that it would change anything substantially. I'm still getting French people now shocked that their goods have to be customs cleared.
The story in private eye below:
FARMERS in Great Britain (Northern Ireland remains in the EU single market) are trying to adjust to post-Brexit "tariff-free" exports to the EU as best they can. But in January, given little practical help from the government, beef exports fell 91.5 percent from £39.9m to £3.4m, cheese by 85.1 percent from £45.3m to £6.8m, and pork by 86.9 percent from £27m to £3.5m. Some exports - such as breeding animals, seed potatoes and certified seeds - stopped entirely.
Certain food products have not been granted "equivalence" status as part of the UK/ EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement, under which a "trade specialised committee" was meant to sort out problems. Threemonths on and the committee has not even been set up.
Another difficulty is that animal products sent to the EU now need "export health certificates" signed by a vet, and there aren't enough of them (see An Eville Failing, last issue and passim). Defra secretary George Useless (aka Eustice) has suggested "para-professionals" or "technical managers" could do this work. But until this is agreed with the EU, let alone implemented, it's no help to Great Britain's animal product exporters, who say 350 extra vets are needed.
The export of live animals, meanwhile, is not helped by the lack of facilities on either side of the Channel to oversee their movement. Specialist livestock transporter Edward Gilder & Co. based in Bourton-on-the Water, Gloucestershire, runs the highest quality humane modern trucks to carry valuable cattle, sheep and pigs for breeding to EU countries, and estimates it has lost £300,000 in custom since 1 January. Its drivers, though trained to EU standards, are no longer recognised as qualified to transport live animals because the firm does not have an EU address.
Unfairly, no pre-notification and export health certification for animal products will be required for EU exports into Great Britain until at least October. Similarly, no checks will be required on plants and many agri-food products until next January and live animals will not be checked until next March. Even the creation of border control posts this side of the Channel - supposedly operational by January 2021 - has been put back a year. The lack of inspection in GB is due to fear in government that import controls will create food shortages here. But until it finds the courage to threaten reciprocity to EU food import standards, there is no incentive for the EU to address this near one-way direction in food trade. So much for taking back control" at our borders.
Was January's catastrophic fall in food exports to the EU down to "teething problems" or do the new arrangements signify a permanent crash in food trade? Will GB's food exporters have to throw in the towel because costs are too high and bureaucracy too overwhelming? Trends will soon become clear: but a more worrying first month of post-Brexit food exports to the EU is hard to imagine.
Ban the import of foreign muck, force the Muslims to eat British pork. Easy.