LOCKDOWN

I said medical, not medicinal actually, if we're being anal retentive about things. Better to just admit you ballsed up there, mate.

Crappy anniversary to this thread. Just think, a year ago today we were a fortnight too late to go into lockdown.

I agree that some of the decisions made by Boris and his mates have been ludicrous and in many cases have put the economy ahead of human life, but if they'd have put everyone into lockdown two weeks earlier I don't think anyone would have taken a blind bit of notice and some would have labelled it a massive over-reaction and just carried on as normal. Unfortunately it was only when the bodies started piling up that many people started taking it seriously and by then it was too late. 

You only have to look at how seriously, or not, this last lockdown has been taken by many people in the UK to realise that people think Covid is a thing of the past. The traffic on the roads during this last lockdown has been, if anything, heavier than in the months when we weren't in lockdown.

If there is another wave of Covid restrictions I don't think the mainstream public will stand for it and anti-lockdown demonstrations will become as common as they were in the US.  

I don't know, I look back at Friday, March 13 when Ireland closed all schools, pubs and public attractions, while we put out some silly advice about how people over 70 are advised not to go on cruises.

I still think the Premier League, EFL and most National League clubs deserve credit for cancelling fixtures that weekend, against government advice. 

I know what you're saying about the lockdown being two weeks late and there is no doubt the death toll would have been a lot less if we had shut down on March 13th. I agree the government didn't take the threat seriously enough until it became obvious that the death toll was spiralling out of control. But I still think they'd have struggled to impose an effective lockdown on March 13th due to the general public not taking it seriously enough because not enough people had died to make it a serious issue.   

i wonder why people are ranting over holidays .surely there is more to life than getting a sun tan .we as a country seem to have a grip on things at last.who would have thought good old germany would be creeping up to 80000 deaths france 100000 these were held up as shining examples of how we should do it.i think for me holidays can wait normally i would do a couple of cruises and 2 weeks in greece I'd struggle to justify stopping in a hotel anywhere at the moment.

I don't doubt this will happen, I can't see normal life this year.

The only reason the government haven't banned holidays abroad will be because there will be MPs and their advisors who go abroad the second they get a chance and they want to be able to say "well, we never said you can't".

Both for health and economic reasons, encouraging people to holiday in Britain this year would surely make a lot of sense.

EDIT: looks like they've just banned holidays abroad. They must read this thread! 

I hope it was a joke amongst people he would hope would see it that way. If I was him after asking them to forget what was said I would be looking for the big mouth and getting rid. There are to many on both sides that don't seem to care about keeping things to them selves. I have been in loads of meetings where things are said you may not agree with but they are not broadcast outside the meeting.

To be fair I don't think, if the PM is making a comment like this, it's something that should be kept quiet. Perhaps it'll teach him that making an alleged 'joke' like this during a pandemic isn't really the right thing to do. If anything it shows how naïve the bloke is if he thinks he can make a throwaway comment like this during a meeting with other MPs and not expect someone to leak it.

Looking at the statement from the government this morning I think they're saying that what he meant was that the vaccine roll out success was due to the vaccine producers wanting to maximise their profits rather than saying we got more vaccines because we greedily snapped up as many doses as we could. It's a nice, clever spin on things, that someone's obviously been up all night thinking up. But does this imply that the PM, who has been praising the vaccine companies for their fast and efficient production of the vaccines is now accusing them of being opportunistic and greedy?  

Whatever he meant, and whether he was misinterpreted or not, it's still a stupid and unnecessary thing to say and if you say something so stupid you deserve to be held to account for saying it.  

Capitalism and opportunism certainly played an important part in the rapid development of the vaccines by some “Western Democracy” pharmaceutical companies. The willingness to pay top dollar upfront and early to contractually ensure supplies could been seen as greed. Not sure this can be levied against the Oxford/AZ development, largely funded by UK government, and being rolled out at cost world wide. Whatever has been said, the UK is one of the world leaders in both the development and deployment of vaccines and this should be recognised and applauded.

As we’ve seen, the whole bumbling cuddly clown caricature is pretty dangerous.

I'm afraid it's the end of the line for Merkel a very dangerous woman

Interesting you consider the difference between EU and EU member states merely a 'techicality' in this instance but not when we were talking about their undermining of the AZ vaccine.

Also, before anyone gets too gushing, these are vaccines that we've paid for.