Well, that’s progress! Yay! Blinding logic from HM Gov. Up to 15 of us can swap viral loads without fear of fines – it’s an £800 wallop for everyone if a 16th person gets past the front door, so we’ll need someone scary to stay in the hallway and look mean. I’ve got some lights for the front room, and a load of mixtapes that will keep us hyperventilating till dawn. Bangin’ choons, breathin’ germs, sharin’ the Covid load.
What planet is she from?
Has it escaped her attention that a month or so after rules were relaxed for Christmas yesterday’s death toll was one person in the UK dying from Covid every 47 seconds, and that the UK has the worth death rate in the world? Or perhaps she doesn’t see a connection, or shares her boss’ weasly ‘we know you don’t want to obey rules but we have to ask you to anyway’. How many tens of thousands of lives could have been saved if the people in charge just gave clear, unequivocal instructions?
Great day to announce this. Another 1200 deaths.
Imagine those people are Jamaicans, Priti. Feelin’ so relaxed about it now?
Come on, people are still infectin’ each other, goin’ into hospital and dyin’!
To be frank, it’s appalin’
That “15” number is incredible isn’t it. Get 30 in, piss it up, back door exit strategy, “Only 12 here, Officer.”
Bottom line:
(a) They don’t care.
(b) They are thick. She certainly is, and I wouldn’t have considered for one minute calling her equivalent 30 or so years ago, regardless of which party that person might have represented, that.
Has that 3-word slogan (they’re full of them – “Gob-Shite-W*****s” – there’s another one!) “Bouncing-Back-Better” been given the nod for another few days, or has it already been given the boot?
I was going to post a rant after yesterday’s horrendous death toll. Other countries are suffering. Cases are on the rise again here in Spain, and all non-essential businesses have closed. But the messaging is clear and the rules are strictly enforced.
I just get no sense of a clear strategy from the UK government. Johnson’s boosterism has been worse than useless because he’s offered too many false hopes, so why should anyone listen to what he says now? When you elect someone who is neither responsible nor a leader, this is what you get.
When are UK journalists going to start holding this government to account? When are they going to start highlighting the shameless cronyism? You’ve got folks at the Mail still droning on about benefits cheats and lazy teachers and God knows what else, but not a pip about the government diverting money from taxpayers to their Tory donor mates, many of whom are completely ill-qualified for the roles they are being paid for. Outside The Guardian, this stuff doesn’t even make the headlines. It’s pathetic and I despair.
The i is keeping me informed on the cronyism too, but why would the Mail, Express etc hold them to account? That’s not what PR companies are for.
Speaking of boosterism, my Spellcheck just made an interesting suggestion…
In N Ireland, 6 people can meet ‘in a public place’ outdoors… while not even 1 person can meet you in your back garden. I hope the virus is making sense of all this, because nobody else is.
Smirky McSmirkface’s reference to the number 15 seems to imply it is an existin’ rule but only the finin’ element is new. The only reference I can find to the number 15 in existin’ rules is below:
“Support groups that have to be delivered in person can continue with up to 15 participants where formally organised to provide mutual aid, therapy or any other form of support – but they must take place at a premises other than a private home”.
Or to put it another way, what the f*** is she talkin’ about?
Do you think she’s been reading the Sea Shanty post?
15 men on a dead-man’s hamper.
Lay ee odl lay ee odl-oo…
Not sure I’ve got that right.
Please don’t think I’m crowing, or being smug, or anything. But I couldn’t help reflecting on the fact that 381 more people died in England YESTERDAY than have died in Australia since COVID started – 1290 vs 909, 820 of which were in Melbourne after the security guard shag incident. There may be many reasons for this, not least size of population, but not fannying about must be a significant factor.
Watching the Big Bash has been surreal seeing crowds of supporters, no masks, enjoying an afternoon at the cricket. We seem a million miles from that….
Yes, I’m wishing now I’d gone to the Gabba test, but I couldn’t face it – too many bloody people, plus too darned hot.
I’m with you on your main point, but it’s worth saying that the ‘security guard shag incident’ was an entirely made up story courtesy of The Melbourne Herald Sun. Didn’t happen, the local spread was a result of guards car sharing.
I stand corrected! 🙂
Is she existin’ in the real world!
I forgave Johnson at the start for not locking down soon enough, just… I’ll never forgive him for coming out of lockdown too soon, I cry inside when I see a “next slide please” with the August numbers, soooo close… If he fucks this up I will hunt him down. Please can someone, somewhere just get him to say on national TV “Don’t even fucking ask me about releasing lockdown until everyone over 60 or vulnerable or front line has been vaccinated and the new daily cases are under 50”. That’s what it will take or we’ll be back here in July. And Patel can piss off with her 15. Idiot..
Boris has not been quite so bombastic about releasing lockdown in the past couple of days. He may actually be listening to advice more than before (or that’s how it appears at least)
But I fear he is still believing Easter will be the point – I hope he will be taking firm guidance on this and not releasing because he likes the date.
The factors you quote are key to the decision – I hope it’s not like last July when (paraphrasing) he said “we’ve just about met the measures, and as I promised we’ve decided to lift some restrictions”.
Scientific reasons or a sop to the public because he said the date and doesn’t want to go back on his word?
Furlough ends at Easter, so…
It’s not that he likes it, it’s because a sizable chuck of his party does. He’s pinned. Not that I have a micron of sympathy for him.
Is it not a religious thing…at Easter Boris will rise again.
Too many people cower to criminals
the estates stick up like stacks
Bo-ris will rise again
…you are mistaken friend
Look where you are
The future death of my father*
(*he’s had his first jab, so I’m not that worried)
It isn’t an easy situation for any politician. Am not defending Johnson but you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t. There may be other factors contributing to the death count that are not all solved by social distancing and lockdowns. It does seem to me that the numbers of positive cases are coming down at the moment. No reason to allow large house parties but I am not sure that is exactly what she is promoting.
Here in Ontario we have a “stay at home” order, however the huge list of exceptions (which includes yours truly) makes that impossible to enforce. Schools are closed in most areas. When they announced the “stay at home” instructions they also said no gatherings outside of more than 5 people which seemed rather contradictory and many were surprised that they could be doing that at all. However as temperature is heading to -20C this weekend then huge outside parties are unlikely. Looks like cases are slowly stabilising this month, but vaccines are going fairly slowly and there is dismay that we will receive none of the Pfizer vaccine for the next week or two.
It’s the old ‘kill elderly people now, kill young people later’ dilemma. There’s no good solution. You can pay everyone to stay at home, not that they’ll do it, and wreck the economy for a generation or two, or you can release the brakes and let us all go out and spend as much as we can before we catch another dose and give it to Granny.
I dunno about ‘large’ house parties, but she is very obviously giving a green light to a gathering of up to 15 people for the purposes of partying. Which is effing stupid at the present time.
Maybe she never knew the right people when she was a student, but I seem to recall that a good, and distinctly ‘large’ party was one that crammed at least 150 people into a terraced house for the evening.
If I’d rocked up somewhere and there were 15 people present, I’d probably have f&cked off to a club instead.
Perhaps Priti only ever got invited (she’d never have gate-crashed) to the sort of sorry gatherings where there were three saddos trying to dance in the living room, four depressives sat on the stairs and eight people in the kitchen wondering who is going to be the one who is bold enough to open the single bottle of Don Cortez that’s on the table.
She’s an idiot, and she’s completely out of touch with reality.
I went to a party once and only 4 people showed up. I felt sorry for the host. One giy nevertheless threw up in the taxi on the way home and was hit with a 200 quid cleaning charge …
That’s the Don Cortez for you.
Fark all a that bollix, let’s party like they do at Steeeemford ‘Ill!
With all of the apostrophes scattered around here, it’s obvious that Priti Patel dropping the gs at the end of word irritates a lot of people. I think it’s probably the only thing she has in her favour. She hasn’t bothered to change the way she speaks to fit in. It’s the accent of someone brought up in London and its surrounding area. Sadiq Khan and Paul Merton, for example, talk in the same way. We can’t all be Noel Coward (who almost certainly originally talked in the same way, as the son of a piano salesman from Teddington. As with Cary Grant, no-one really talks like that.)
I hardly think it’s a strategy – she’s just arrogant and ignorant.
Some people ought to speak properly, and the Home Secretary is one of them. Paul Merton is a comedian and Sadiq Khan is mayor of London, which is pretty much the same thing (hello Ken, Boris) so they can speak any way they like.
We can’t all be Noel Coward? Why the hell not? Get a smoking jacket and do your duty. See you on the balcony.
I am from Glasgow. I speak a dialect.
He is from Leeds. He has an accent.
She is from London. She doesn’t talk properly.
I thought you were going to say she gets a stiff neck.
The actual criteria for someone in her sort of position are:
1) Be understandable (no mumbling or garbling) when you’re talking
2) Say things that make some kind of sense
Dropped aitches and gees don’t matter even half as much as those two.
I agree. I think it’s a bit of a cheap shot. Criticise what she says and does not how she speaks, I say. Plenty of fertile ground there.
Agreed. Wonder if there is a hint of sexism/racism there. Surely not.
Well, you won’t catch me talking about Johnson, Hancock, Gove or Trump in such disrespectful terms, because I save it all up for Priti, with me being a great big misogynistic Nazi bastard.
I’m going with the ‘surely not’. I’ve had accusations of racism and sexism thrown at me and I’m not having it; I recognise them for what they are, having been lifted straight from the Spiked Online playbook. Criticisms of Priti Patel are driven above all by her sheer malice and incompetence.
Agreed. Sexism and racism, no. Essexism, yes
Not. Just thickism.
The only way I can cope with someone so transparently talentless ascending to high office is by refusing to take her seriously even at a basic human level.
And I do still like the idea of a Noel Coward government. Actually the way he was in In Which We Serve – the only film where he isn’t taking the piss – is properly what we need right now.
Well there’s a few prophesies here, although decidedly derogatory about ‘ull.
The day any representative of the establishment has anything decent to say about Hull the ravens really have left the Tower.
I am no fan of hers, but apparently she was in favour of closing borders immediately last March but was overuled by Johnson and/or his cronies. That would have saved a lot of lives, but am sure many here would nevertheless have not given her any credit for that.
She was in favour a closing the borders last March … whether there is a pandemic or not. She just wants to close the borders full stop
(and send all illegal immigrants to a small mid-Atlantic island)
QED
Yes, I recall the odious Rod Liddle arguing against the third runway at Heathrow as I means of controlling the ingress of infectious foreigners. Every now and then, their basic instincts align with what is required at that moment.
A stopped clock.
Has anyone worked out how the £500 for catching Covid thing works? It’s basically a discount off the cost of going to a party with 15 mates. Bit like when you pay your parking fine within 30 days
Beauchamp Place, Kensington?
Where are those water cannons that Boris bought? I know what they should be used for.