We are (not) all going on a summer holiday

[Tony Tony Tony]

Seems like the toilet paper madness all over again.

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2021/feb/12/britons-ignore-ministers-and-rush-to-book-uk-summer-holidays

I will be staying at home and hoping it rains.



A lot.

[poo]

Hope the holiday people die

[Fambo Number Mive]

With bookings continuing to flow, tourism bosses, who initially feared that Shapps' message could be another hammer blow to consumer confidence, were openly dismissing his remarks by the end of the week. "I would encourage people not to pay too much attention to it," said Andrew Howe, the chief executive of Bridge Leisure, which operates nine holiday parks in England and Scotland. "I can't think of a time in recent history that people have deserved a holiday more."

That's not how it works, Andrew. Better to listen to the minster than the CEO of a holiday park firm on this.

I wonder how many of these bookings are refundable.

[PlanktonSideburns]

I've done fuck all but lounge about since lockdown

Coivds been shit,  but I need to go get some work done I don't deserve a holiday

[mobias]

So according to a leaked government report they aim to re-open pubs and restaurants by the beginning of April. We're fucked  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/13/experts-warn-huge-uk-covid-wave-if-restrictions-lifted-too-soon

[jobotic]

Easter's gonna be a fucking mental one! BORIS-BORIS!!!

The Wetherspoons Virus.

[BlodwynPig]

They'll (those who remain) will be calling it the Easter Variant - the one that mutates sufficiently to kill off the young at great pace.

[bgmnts]

Imagine not having holibobs.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Regarding international travel what will be the conditions for each country and would they be reciprocal? For example, I heard about a vaccine passport idea. That could get things going, but similarly some countries rollout is less than 5% of the population. Would they be happy taking in holidaymakers?

[Fambo Number Mive]

So according to a leaked government report they aim to re-open pubs and restaurants by the beginning of April. We're fucked  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/13/experts-warn-huge-uk-covid-wave-if-restrictions-lifted-too-soon

Shouldn't they stop giving dates for when things might be re-opened and go for case numbers, vaccination numbers, hospital occupancy and deaths as the metrics for deciding when to relax restrictions instead? We don't know what the picture will look like at the beginning of April so the government shouldn't be making predictions based on dates.

[BlodwynPig]

Regarding international travel what will be the conditions for each country and would they be reciprocal? For example, I heard about a vaccine passport idea. That could get things going, but similarly some countries rollout is less than 5% of the population. Would they be happy taking in holidaymakers?

Give it up. You're not going to be sampling smokey dark beers under the shadow of gothic churches in towns with more z's than vowels.

[BlodwynPig]

Shouldn't they stop giving dates for when things might be re-opened and go for case numbers, vaccination numbers, hospital occupancy and deaths as the metrics for deciding when to relax restrictions instead? We don't know what the picture will look like at the beginning of April so the government shouldn't be making predictions based on dates.

It's intentional and dumb.

[jobotic]

So why are they doing it? I was actually feeling slightly hopeful that they had started to look like taking a less idiotic approach.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Give it up. You're not going to be sampling smokey dark beers under the shadow of gothic churches in towns with more z's than vowels.

Actually there are neither smokey dark beers nor gothic churches in Wrzeszcz. Haven't been to Bydgoszcz yet though.

[Gurke and Hare]

Actually there are neither smokey dark beers nor gothic churches in Wrzeszcz. Haven't been to Bydgoszcz yet though.

You're just going to have to stay in the UK this year and go to places with vowels in them. Sorry.

[mobias]

So why are they doing it? I was actually feeling slightly hopeful that they had started to look like taking a less idiotic approach.

The libertarian right of the tory party, ie most of them, want the whole economy opened up sooner rather than later. At all costs by the looks of things. Those costs so far are 120,000 dead or thereabouts and rising.

[BlodwynPig]

You're just going to have to stay in the UK this year and go to places with vowels in them. Sorry.

Alloa

[olliebean]

Shouldn't they stop giving dates for when things might be re-opened and go for case numbers, vaccination numbers, hospital occupancy and deaths as the metrics for deciding when to relax restrictions instead? We don't know what the picture will look like at the beginning of April so the government shouldn't be making predictions based on dates.

It's the mistake they repeatedly failed to learn from last year, so I doubt they're going to learn from it now.

[jobotic]

The libertarian right of the tory party, ie most of them, want the whole economy opened up sooner rather than later. At all costs by the looks of things. Those costs so far are 120,000 dead or thereabouts and rising.

Of course. Sunak's lot. But it's been like that all the way through, I juat got an inkling they might have learned something. Silly of me.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Same dumb cunts could have had the economy open for longer and fewer deaths if they had played it smarter and not thought of the disease as some sort of entity that can be bargained with. Delayed action in March, the ridiculous Eat Out scheme, and pretty much every step from reopening schools to going back into a calamitous 2...3...4 months lockdown now.

[Cuellar]

Alloa

Low

[Icehaven]

I posted about this in the Cab Men thread but the ad with lots of people running across a beach to floaty music (I thought it was Sigur Ros but it might not be) is now basically an ad for "What you definitely won't be doing this year." I didn't even know Iggy Pop was involved until someone said as I don't look up much during ad breaks, but I've seen him now. I don't think it's going to be inspiring thousands of people to book almost inevitably then cancelled holidays, durrr.

[Gurke and Hare]

Eurostar have sent me an email this morning extending the validity of the voucher I had in exchange for some tickets I booked and couldn't use last year from the end of June to the end of December. This seems sensible, removing the temptation to use them or lose them, so well done them.

[Chedney Honks]

Same dumb cunts could have had the economy open for longer and fewer deaths if they had played it smarter and not thought of the disease as some sort of entity that can be bargained with. Delayed action in March, the ridiculous Eat Out scheme, and pretty much every step from reopening schools to going back into a calamitous 2...3...4 months lockdown now.

Yep. This is it, basically.

[Thursday]

It's been so obvious every step of the way to any stupid cunt like me that even if you did only care about the economy over lives, that you've got to accept more immediate pain in the short term to make for a better recovery in the long run, and it's been proven twice before, but we'll make the same mistake a 3rd time, and so on.

[Chedney Honks]

Edit you're probably not allowed to say that kind of thing

[Tony Tony Tony]

Eurostar have sent me an email this morning extending the validity of the voucher I had in exchange for some tickets I booked and couldn't use last year from the end of June to the end of December. This seems sensible, removing the temptation to use them or lose them, so well done them.

Don't fall for the corporate lies, you never gonna get on the train.
 
My mate Terry says the French built a brick wall half way along the tunnel. He says he walked through St Pancras the other day and saw a Eurostar not even moving... explain that and stay in fashionable.

[Fambo Number Mive]

SPI-M forecasts 82K - 150K additional deaths if lockdown is released in March. Modelling includes optimistic assumptions about restrictions & vaccine efficacy. Many scenarios show the NHS will be overwhelmed by July.

https://twitter.com/adamhamdy/status/1360876177339129856

This article in the BMJ is a good one:

...A pandemic has implications both for the residents of a country and for the international community, so sovereign governments should arguably be held accountable to the international community for their actions and omissions on covid-19. Crimes against humanity, as adjudicated by the International Criminal Court, do not include public health.6 But David Scheffer, a former US ambassador for war crimes, suggests that we could broaden the application of public health malpractice "to account for the administration of public health during pandemics."7 In that case, public health malpractice might become a crime against humanity, for leaders who intentionally unleash an infectious disease on their citizens or foreigners. Others have argued similarly for environmental crimes.8

If not murder or a crime against humanity, are we seeing involuntary manslaughter, misconduct in public office, or criminal negligence? Laws on political misconduct or negligence are complex and not designed to react to unprecedented events, but as more than two million people have died, we must not look on impotently as elected representatives around the world remain unaccountable and unrepentant. What standard should leaders be judged by? Is it the small number of deaths in countries such as New Zealand and Taiwan, or the harsher standard of zero excess deaths? Deaths do not come as single spies but as a battalion of bereaved families, shattered lives, long term illness, and economic ruin.

From the United States to India, from the United Kingdom to Brazil, people feel vulnerable and betrayed by the failure of their leaders. The over 400 000 deaths from covid-19 in the US, 250 000 in Brazil, 150 000 each in India and Mexico, and 100 000 in the UK comprise half of the world's covid death toll—on the hands of only five nations.9 Donald Trump was a political determinant of health who damaged scientific institutions.10 He suffered electoral defeat, but does Trump remain accountable now that he is out of office? Bolsonaro, Modi, and Johnson have had their competence questioned in differing ways, and McKee and colleagues argue that populist leaders have undermined pandemic responses.11 The prospect of accountability in autocracies such as China and Russia is more distant still and relies on strong international institutions and the bravery of citizens...

Ministers in the UK, for example, interact with the media through sanitised interviews, stage managed press conferences, off-the-record briefings to favoured correspondents, and, when the going gets tough, by simply refusing to appear. It is this environment that has allowed covid denial to flourish, for unaccountability to prevail, and for the great lies of "world beating" pandemic responses to be spun. "The most important lessons from this pandemic," argue Bollycky and Kickbusch, "are less about the coronavirus itself but what it has revealed about the political systems that have responded to it."17

How many excess deaths does it take for a chief scientific or medical adviser to resign? How long should test and trace fail the public before a minister of health or chief adviser steps down? How many lucrative contracts for unscientific diagnostic tests that are awarded to cronies or errors in education policy will lead to a ministerial sacking?

Where then should citizens turn for accountability, if they don't find it in their leaders and feel unsupported by experts and the media? The law remains one form of redress, and indeed some legal avenues, including criminal negligence and misconduct in public office, are being explored,1819 although proving any such claims will be difficult and drawn out. But the notion of murder, at least "social murder," is hard to shake emotionally, and strengthens with every denial of responsibility and every refusal to be held accountable or to change course.

That leaves three options. The first is to push for a public inquiry, as The BMJ and others argued for in the summer of 2020—a rapid, forward looking review rather than an exercise in apportioning blame that will identify lessons and save lives. The second is to vote out elected leaders and governments that avoid accountability and remain unrepentant. The US showed that a political reckoning is possible, and perhaps a legal one can follow, although research suggests that mishandling a pandemic may not lose votes.21 The third is for mechanisms of global governance, such as the International Criminal Court, to be broadened to cover state failings in pandemics...

There's a poll on UBI to the right of the article

https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n314

[Non Stop Dancer]

https://youtu.be/J-J-cSnhkkI

[poo]

Can someone explain to me what's so fucking good about going on holiday?