Well, maybe enforcement shouldn't be your main concern? Maybe you can convince enough people of the importance of social distancing that social distancing becomes the norm. I'm not going to say everything went perfect overhere, but by and large people respected social distancing and clearly to the extent that the numbers have moved dramatically down to the point that regular care has been taken up again in hospitals all over the country. A friend of mine even had a purely elective procedure earlier this week.
Congratulations America
I fail to see how you could keep a tally or control entrance any exit for an entire park, beach, beauty spot or just... Barnard Castle.
When the sky above us fell
We descended into hell
Into kingdom come
Maybe parks are significantly different around here, but generally there are entrances and exits, areas for car parking, and gates when the parks close for the night. So using those same mechanisms, (an entrance/exit to the parking lot and a gate to prevent entry) the only thing you would need additionally would be a park employee or volunteer asking how many people are in the vehicle when they are coming in or going out. Your mileage may vary - urban parks probably don't rely as much on parking, and might require someone to walk through and determine capacity. In that case I'm guessing what we are really talking about would be a police officer asking people to disperse if it looks as though it has become too crowded. I'm guessing many urban parks already have police officers that patrol them in some capacity.
The scandal arises not simply from the fact that Cummings—an unelected tool who everyone knows believes himself to be above the rules—did something wrong and hypocritical, but from elected leaders' support for his actions and for his bullshit excuses. Now, some reporting indicates that Cummings may indeed have influenced SAGE recommendations to favour a switch to stricter suppression measures, which ultimately resulted in the UK's lockdown policy; based on reports of his influence in govt, it would seem unlikely that those measures would have been implemented against his advice. However, even if that hadn't been the case, the govt is ultimately responsible for those policies, and it is unjust for that govt. to give him a free pass for violating both the letter and the spirit of those rules, while actively enforcing them for ordinary people in the UK. The special treatment and arbitrary enforcement renders the rules not simply bad but unjust. The govt. has confirmed that it won't waive fines for ordinary people, even as they have defended Cummings. This offends a basic moral institution shared by most people.
From a healthcare system perspective, a similarly important point is that, if people don't take long and/or unnecessary trips, hospitals and healthcare workers will have to deal with fewer trauma patients while simultaneously trying to manage an absolutely devastating pandemic. This was very clear here in the north until fairly recently—people drastically changed their movement patterns, and the number of patients in the ER, ICU and neuro-ICU immediately dropped, remaining lower than I've ever seen them until they started moving about again.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
I think I am missing the part where he received special treatment or there was arbitrary enforcement. If he was approached by a police officer and was told to leave but waved his government credentials in their face and told them to buzz off, I get it. If he just wasn't caught, (likely like thousands of other people) then there was no special treatment that I can see - unless the we are talking about the other resignations that Steely mentioned earlier, which I don't know the particulars of. Has it always been the policy of Number 10 that any member of the cabinet who has been found to violate these protocols be forced out?
No, that's not what the police said. The police said he engaged in conduct that would likely have been regarded as a violation of lockdown rules. His actions, as he has described them, justify that assessment. What the police statement means is that, had he been caught, he would have been regarded as violating lockdown rules, and told to go home. This is clear from the statement—they lay out their assessment of what a police officer would likely have done, if s/he had caught Cummings in the act. Do you truly believe that rightness and wrongness—or legality and illegality—are simply functions of how good you are at not getting caught? That's certainly... a take.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
The special treatment is that the govt. has downplayed his actions, defended them, accepted his clearly dishonest excuses, and the AG has even publicly interceded on his behalf, before the facts were known and adjudicated—while thousands of people have been fined for violating this govt's lockdown rules.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Does Randblade know that the police don't actually determine whether an offence has been committed, that is the job of the CPS and, ultimately, the courts?
When the sky above us fell
We descended into hell
Into kingdom come
Since this is such a minor alleged breach it would never have gone to the CPS or Courts. It could have been a fixed penalty notice which the Police can issue.
They might have given him a fixed penalty notice if they'd not liked his further details (not asked for) as to why they were driving and if he'd ignored their instructions afterwards if they had issued them.
Again, and bear with me because I know some people don't like this analogy, but it helps me understand. If this was Dominic getting away with speeding, are we saying that because millions of other people have gotten ticketed for speeding anyone who has sped and not received a ticket is getting special treatment if it later comes out that they had traveled faster than the posted speed limit? If a video came out of Mark Meadows going 75 in a 70, and it was downplayed by the president, ("fake news," I'm sure) and he said he accepted his stated explanation of having to go faster because he needed to go to the restroom, and Bill Barr shrugged and said, "Guess he got away with it," are we really saying that is special treatment? I know social mores and norms regarding social distancing are in flux, but it seems within the purview of Johnson not to require resignation for an offense that isn't even a misdemeanor - likely a civil infraction (I'm not sure either term is valid in Britain). That doesn't make him any less of an entitled jerk, and some level of public backlash seems reasonable if he was an architect of the rules, but politics are full of entitled jerks.
If he offered to pay the fine would that be a good compromise?
You keep saying 'it was a minor breach' like it's some kind of winning argument. We know it was a minor breach, ok? He should still resign.
It was a minor breach when Calderwell drove across Edinburgh to her second home, and it sucked for her but she still hand to resign. I was a less minor but still minor breach Ferguson's girlfriend drove across London to spend time with him but he still had to resign.
When the sky above us fell
We descended into hell
Into kingdom come
The problem is that Cummings did not offer to pay the fine (or even say that he was sorry). What he did was tell that according to his instincts the right thing to do was go at 90, so that he wasn’t actually speeding in the first place.
In the case of the second infraction it becomes even sillier as he then claims he had to go over the speed limit to know if it was safe for him to drive, so he hadn’t been speeding but testing. So again did nothing wrong.
Then the PM told that it was perfectly normal that Cummings had acted on his instincts rather than on formal speedlimits, and that testing was a perfectly good reason to drive too fast also
Then it was made clear the proles should not get any funny ideas in their heads about the actual speed limit being subject to their personal need for speed.
Congratulations America
This is the sort of furor that in the US is reserved for bible-thumping pedophiles running for federal office. It far exceeds the reaction to the millions raked in from insider trading by three GOP and one Dem senator.
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
It's not that exclusively British, here in Holland officials have been resigning over small transgressions for as long as I can remember. A while ago a minister resigned because he got caught pimping up accounts of him meeting Putin before he got appointed. It turned out they'd barely been in the same room.
Congratulations America
It's lots of people's opinion, including 40 Tory mps and some major right leaning press outlets. When I'm on the same page as a bunch of Tories, the Telegraph and the Mail, you know something's up.
I mean, you personally clearly don't. But 'you' in the general sense, yeah, you get it.
I love how confused Americans get when other countries actually hold their politicians to account. They're like... "wow, you can do that? but he only lied about speeding" meanwhile over there politicians are like "I used the federal government to confiscate State's PPE supplies and then gave them to my buddies to sell at a profit lol" and Americans are all "well, he wouldn't already be rich if it wasn't ok for them to do that so it checks out".
When the sky above us fell
We descended into hell
Into kingdom come
Enoch, you can't use speed limits as an analogy for laws you don't like, yet give leeway to government officials who break the laws they enact but don't like, either.
Speeding isn't an infectious or contagious disease.
The better analogy might be legislators who make laws about Public Health and Safety for school children but refuse to vaccinate their own kids against Measles. Or maybe they pontificate about "Family Values" but turn out to be adulterers, or claim to be The Moral Majority but are protecting church/clergy pedophiles.
It saddens me that you criticize the UK for making a big deal out of government officials *exploiting* "Rules for Thee, but not for Me", especially when they lie about it. You don't have to know anything about how their government works to say it's just plain wrong.
I'm expecting the government to lower the Covid alert system level to 3 today, else I don't understand the point of it.
Plus it'd be nice to know how many people are being tested each day. I get the impression they are hiding the figures.
I'm really not sure what you mean here. Most people are knowingly or unknowingly breaking one or more laws every day. Leeway is given because not all laws are created equal. Speeding is absolutely not the same as murder, and I think everyone can agree on that. Requiring a public servant resign for *any* offense doesn't make sense, because then we would have no public servants.
I don't think this is too complicated - people who are behaving safely should not have to apologize for behaving safely. If the regulations say that safe behavior is unsafe, then the regulations are wrong. If Cummings had a hand in crafting those regulations then this is something akin to poetic justice.Speeding isn't an infectious or contagious disease.
The better analogy might be legislators who make laws about Public Health and Safety for school children but refuse to vaccinate their own kids against Measles. Or maybe they pontificate about "Family Values" but turn out to be adulterers, or claim to be The Moral Majority but are protecting church/clergy pedophiles.
It saddens me that you criticize the UK for making a big deal out of government officials *exploiting* "Rules for Thee, but not for Me", especially when they lie about it. You don't have to know anything about how their government works to say it's just plain wrong.
Last edited by Enoch the Red; 06-01-2020 at 04:39 PM.
Hmm, were the slides wrong today or yesterday?
38489 yesterday. 39045 today.
Slides report 111 deaths.
But should be 556?
If it really is 556 that's really shitty news...
I also wonder why there was no scientists today going through the slides.
Again no testing figures.
Still at level 4, AFAIK?
Has anyone seen our PM?
Something isn't right.