RandoEFC

I remain cautiously optimistic that this is looking like a last hurrah for the virus in terms of widespread impact on society. It's not going to be an easy few weeks though and I feel as if the pressures on the NHS this time around are being swept under the carpet somewhat by a lot of the media. Schools are going to be a problem as well. I'm fully expecting to finally catch Covid in the form of Omicron at some point between now and Easter and with the high level of staff absence I'm braced for this to be the hardest 6-12 weeks yet, which I don't say lightly. I'm starting to rich that point where I don't know how many times we can go back to the well and rally ourselves again. For two years now, we've been looking at the next half-term or term and accepting that it's going to be the hardest one yet (and the job wasn't exactly a stroll in the park before the pandemic). I really hope this is the last time. The constant cycle of covering for absent colleagues, making sure work is provided for absent students, making sure those that have missed two weeks have got all the resources they need to catch up, dealing with constant changes in mitigations and having to try to encourage teenagers to follow them. The most demoralising part is how many times we've believed that we're on the path back to normality only for things to take another turn for the worse. September 2020 I was laughing at some of my chancers who were gambling on not working that hard because they might get 'given' their results for Summer 2021 without sitting their exams and look what happened. Other people have it worse, just a few personal thoughts and experiences... I didn't know where else to post really, but yeah, hopefully this is the last big round of complications.

I have no sympathy for him at all. Just stop being a melt and take the vaccine and none of this happens.

Smacks of them wildly underestimating the backlash this would cause and being pressured into a u-turn.

I'm going to sort of stick my neck out here. I don't like Tony Blair and generally wish he'd retire from ever being seen in public again. The Iraq war was a travesty and while I was pretty young when he was PM and certainly not politically switched on, I never got a positive vibe off him really. That said, look at some of the other politicians who have knighthoods for service to the country (or something). Iain Duncan Smith whose actual name is Iain Smith but makes his middle name a part of his name to make it sound like he's a posher double-barreled guy, jumped up and down and fist pumped when his big reform of benefits fucking over the poorest in the country passed through the commons. Then there's that absolute cartoon Desmond Swayne who is an anti-mask ponce who prances around parliament in his three pieces suit and his pocket square. This isn't a high bar and it shows how much of an "honour" it really is to be knighted these days, not very much. It's also worth mentioning that under Blair's government, a generation had doors opened to higher education and his team was also instrumental in the Good Friday agreement and the peace process in Ireland. Again, I was young at the time but I would tentatively suggest that living in the UK when he was Prime Minister was probably better for an awful lot of people than it is today. (Again, low bar acknowledged in terms of governance). But whatever, I also don't really care at all about the honours system (although my Dad actually received a BEM a few years ago and he was pretty proud of that so it still matters to some and far be it from me to take it away from anyone) and sticking up for Blair is not a hill I'm willing to die in. I just don't see why so many people are arsed about whether he's called Tony Blair or Sir Tony Blair because it makes no fucking difference to anyone's life, he's slithering around out there either way, and while I'm at it, I thought I'd gently suggest that we don't have to always judge people off the worst thing they've ever done but this is the Internet so I'll go ahead and take cover.

More news: Graeme Sharp has now been appointed to the Board of Directors. What to think of this appointment? Is he passionate about Everton Football Club? Yes. Is the Board of Directors lightweight now following the departure of Marcel Brands and the open secret that CEO Denise Barrett-Baxendale is actively seeking other opportunities? Certainly. Are these two reasons combined enough to justify this appointment? You wouldn't say so. My reading of the situation is this. Bill Kenwright is once again sitting on a lot of influence when, regardless of how bonkers his replacement continues to be, he should have been put out to pasture after overseeing the least successful period in the club's history. An accusation is made by a lot of our fanbase towards the board (well, mainly Kenwright) of "it's Jobs for the Boys FC", and I think it's justified. The backroom staff is packed with former players who haven't made a name for themselves anywhere else in football, most notably Duncan Ferguson and David Unsworth. Based on the development of Calvert-Lewin in his time at Everton, I actually think Ferguson is probably pulling his weight, but there are question marks over Unsworth who has led the under 23 team to the PL2 title, but is arguably partially responsible for the fact that Anthony Gordon is the first academy prospect since Tom Davies to really find a pathway into the first team squad. Denise Barrett-Baxendale herself is another example of "he/she knows the club" being given far too much weight when making key appointments, having been lifted from Everton in the Community. Then you have a history of Kenwright being the driving force behind bringing Wayne Rooney back to the club from Manchester United, Francis Jeffers being given a role with the academy with few prior qualifications, Jose Baxter being given a professional contract at the club after falling on addiction-related hard times, Leighton Baines staying on as some sort of coach at the conclusion of his playing career and now former player Graeme Sharp joining the Board of Directors. I'm sure there are others I've forgotten. Individually, these are all things that happen at other clubs and sometimes they've even been successful. But at Everton, it happens too often. I don't necessarily think this appointment is going to be particularly damaging but I don't think it'll take us forward either. The club needs outsiders to come in and challenge the decision making processes that have led us down the path we're on. Hopefully we can find some who are qualified football people unlike Moshiri and Usmanov, who are the only real outsiders who have been involved in the club, and Moshiri's flat out insanity has somehow made the management of the club even worse. Maybe I'll be proven wrong and Graeme Sharp will be a genius whose input at board level will transform the club's fortunes in the long term but I don't think anyone expects that to be remotely likely.

We spent the last 5 windows prioritising manager favourites over the scouting team's recommendations and now, after the Director of Football and his scouting leave depart the club, we go and sign two of their recommendations. Every day, we find more ways to show what a circus we are.

Yeah apparently the criteria for Premier League games is that every player who has appeared in the PL this season counts as a 'senior player'. I don't know if it's the same when the League Cup is the competition in question. That said, our lineup against Chelsea involved Simms and Branthwaite who were making their first appearances of the season, so I doubt we were at the 14 players at that point. However, I don't think we were missing players due to Covid, only a lot of injuries, so even though our squad was in a bad enough position to reach the threshold for postponement, the fact that it wasn't *Covid and injuries* means I don't know whether we could have had that one postponed if we'd asked. Having a nice little Covid outbreak now though is a good way for Liverpool to reduce the number of games without their AFCON players isn't it.

Apparently they're allowing 'have had Covid in the last 6 months' as a medical exemption for some players. ATP have confirmed that 95 of the top 100 players are fully vaccinated and that a handful of players have been granted said exemption due to having a positive Covid test in recent months, although the tournament spokesman wouldn't comment on individual cases with Djokovic obviously being the high-profile one they were quizzed about. It seems really dodgy to me though and has quite rightly led to some outrage. Australia have had one of the most strict and oppressive approaches towards managing the pandemic out of the countries that are big enough and popular enough as travel destinations to garner any attention. I would be interested to hear the thoughts of @Toinho, @Spike and @Devil-Dick Willie on this as I'd be pretty fucked off if I was Australian with the restrictions on travel that have been in place for the last two years, and what people like Spike have been put through in trying to get home to see family, seeing Djokovic being allowed through a loop-hole to come and compete at the Australian Open despite being pretty openly a "vaccine sceptic" if we want to take the generous route of not calling him a full on anti-vaxxer. Whatever you think of vaccine rules, surely rules are rules and it would grate on me to see an elite athlete granted this special treatment if I was told I had to jump through hoops every which way to be allowed back into my home country to attend a family funeral, for example.

Right back and left back signed up for at least about £30m. Even if there's a way back for Digne now, it seems like we're going to have to sell him for FFP. A shame to lose a player of his calibre but Mykolenko and Patterson are a good age and will be good assets for us if they're decent. Still a bit concerning that we only have one left back in the squad if it's a case of Digne out, Mykolenko in. I'm growing to like Godfrey in that position but prefer to see him get game time in central defence if that's going to be his position long term.

I'm sitting slightly below the UK average to be honest. I still have time though .

I don’t trust this government, the media will make slightly bad or worrying news seem catastrophic because it gets them clicks and sales, none of this is dependent on the pandemic, it has always been the case (with any government I can remember at least). The scientists have been right and wrong at different times throughout the pandemic and they along with the government have both been guilty of too much and too little caution based on imperfect information. At the height of this crisis, we had 2,000 people dying a day in the UK and that was WITH a full lockdown to reduce the traffic hitting the NHS. Short memories much? If you believe the restrictions introduced earlier in the pandemic were an over reaction, then you'll believe anything. As for now, it's more complex with vaccines and more knowledge available. The data coming out of South Africa was promising but the sample size was pitifully small. It's not 'agenda driven' for the UK scientists to do their own studies as well. It's called due diligence and the fact that they've ratified the initial findings from South Africa enables all of the "we've lost our minds over this" crowd to finally have their "told you so" moment. It doesn't mean everything that came before was an overreaction. You'll also note that the government in England at least haven't actually imposed meaningful restrictions besides asking you to wear a piece of cloth on your face and carry around a copy of your vaccine certificate on your phone. Neither of these are exactly massive hardships and are measures taken to keep infection rates down so that they don't need to step in and take away the basic human rights of being allowed to go and watch multi millionaires kick a football about in a huge stadium and going and getting wasted with your mates in the pub or in town after.

I think we need a new klaxon in this thread for when people *aren't* posting crackpot conspiracy theories.

We've had victory laps before though followed by a step back. This is good news of course but this virus has mutated every few months in a way that has completely changed the risk profile. It does mean that England have probably made the right call this time, helped by the public increasing their personal levels of caution in the last few weeks, and Scotland and Wales have taken the plunge to the next level of restrictions a bit too quickly. It's cause for cautious optimism but that's the maximum I'll allow myself for the immediate future. Anyone celebrating this as if it's the end of the pandemic is equally as misguided as the perpetual doomsday crowd. Everyone reacts differently though. Some people feel the need to release their elation. Others are terrified of the beacon of hope in case it gets taken away from them again. The media we know are at least slightly biased towards bad news because it sells better for them, that part is what it is. There's a lot of psychology and emotional fatigue going on though, you can't expect everyone to always react the same as each other to each piece of news.

This has been mentioned on the F1 podcast I listen to. One of the hosts is an actual journalist employed by F1 too and he says he doesn't know how people Will cope. Teams will end up having to have two race teams or something to go to alternate races or groups of races, I don't know how that factors into cost cutting though! In other news:

The unvaccinated are a danger to the NHS in the event of another wave. The picture that's emerging as far as I'm concerned is getting jabs in these people's arms. I'm currently cautiously optimistic on the Omicron situation but as long as we have so many unvaccinated, the risk of another big wave or another new variant/complication hangs over us. I wouldn't condone making vaccination compulsory at the moment but as recent developments have shown us, these people are risking more than their own health. Restrictions have returned not to protect the vaccinated but to protect the NHS. It looks as if Omicron will not lead to as many cases becoming hospitalisations even in the unvaccinated but at the rate we're seeing new mutations, the picture could change again in a few months. It could even change next week. The next plan the government has to come up with is getting unvaccinated people to change their minds. They've had most of a year to decide for themselves. I hate to say it because it goes against what I believe and how much I think government should have a say in our lives but it looks to me that there's a choice on the table. Either continue with the status quo and periodically have to impose advice or restrictions on the whole population every so often to protect the NHS, even those who get boosters as often as they're asked. Or they begin to impose restrictions on unvaccinated people only. I don't like the sound of either but from where I'm sitting, the second option or at least starting to move down that route is becoming unavoidable.

Schumacher did wreck that thing a few times to be fair.

All the arguments are doing my head in now to he honest. Shock horror that after 2-3 days of "will they, won't they" leaks over the Covid restrictions, Mr Blobby makes a grand announcement today that there will be no restrictions before Christmas. All so the Mail and Express can plaster "Boris defies doomsday Sage Marxists to save Christmas" on tomorrow's front pages. What a truly pathetic man he is. Maybe he'll get a little polling boost for a week or two to make the uncertainty faced by the little people worthwhile. Anyway, I got my booster at a walk in today. Every little helps.

A legitimate question has to be answered here. When do the government stop asking fully vaccinated people to restrict their lives to protect the unvaccinated, and protect the NHS from being overwhelmed by unvaccinated patients? Is it a legitimate comparison to compare it to smoking? Another time where people knowingly make an unhealthy decision and increase their risk of needing treatment from the NHS, so they are taxed on their purchase to generate more revenue for the health service. Is it moral and/or practical to start levying some sort of tax or charge on people who haven't had the vaccine unless they have a legitimate exemption? Probably not, and it probably sets a dangerous precedent, but if we've ended up in a place where people are told the vaccine was the nucleus of our exit strategy here and people are still not given full freedom after 3 jabs, what other route can you take to prevent this from happening every winter and every time the virus mutates (which it's currently doing at a rate of one troublesome mutation roughly every 6 months)?

No matter your views on vaccines, lockdowns, masks, etc... these people are demented and terrifying. These sinister catch phrases they come out with, they act as if they're acting to overthrow some sort of post-apocalyptic tyrannical dictatorship. "Power to the people" is the rallying call of an extremist minority who don't represent anything resembling a majority. Note the absolutely overwhelming majority of these crowds being made up of men as well. I have my share of issues with the Met Police at large but these people have families and lives to go home to. The majority of policemen and women are good well-intentioned people who have chosen a career in serving and protecting the public. It's inevitable some of the time but they still shouldn't face abuse, threat and physical injury like they do on nights like this. Unacceptable.

I don't disagree with any of this. But I do still have faith that science will eventually win out over this virus and allow us to return to normal again. Our problem at this point in time is we allowed ourselves to believe that vaccination was going to be the end of it. We knew there was a risk of further mutation and that the vaccine wasn't 100% effective in all cases in preventing serious illness or death, but we were too exhausted to psychologically prepare for setbacks like this so it feels like all of the good stuff that's happened over the past year in beating back the pandemic have vanished into thin air. It's two steps forward, one step back. The cycle will be broken eventually.

I'm really not proving your point. There is absolutely no way that anything like a majority of people committed the egregious rule-breaking that is being reported coming from the heart of government. There is a fucking huge difference between what quite a lot of people might have done in stealing a bit of rare human contact when living alone or living with people they don't really know, or the one which applies to me, being lucky enough to live with friends in a small apartment or house whilst being asked to all work from home living on top of each other 24/7 and resorting to turning your bedroom into an office, and what they've done, which is having premeditated parties with anything between 10 and 30 people, potentially more, when you're already lucky enough to have a job where you can go to your office and get at least a bit of human contact and retain some difference between your home and your workspace, AND have the gall to arrange outside catering, exit strategies and preparing to tell outright lies on camera in the event that you get busted, etc., etc. I'm not having it mate. I and almost everyone I know lived their lives on the basis of "if everyone did this, would it be okay?" and if the answer was no, it didn't happen. I've admitted it hasn't been quite as hard for me living on the Isle of Man, but I don't think that makes a ground-breaking difference. You're making out as if "criminalising people seeing other humans" is a black and white thing. My parents went round to my blind Nana's house on a number of occasions during lockdowns to change lightbulbs for her or bring her a meal or clearing out a half-dead mouse that her cat brought in. This was technically against the rules. So yeah, my parents "broke the rules". They didn't host a Christmas quiz in their living room with 30 of their best mates though. It's not remotely the same. If you want to use your speed limit analogy, then alright, probably quite a lot of people drove at 35-40 miles per hour in a 30 zone. These pricks having these "not parties" were coming the other way down the road at 85mph and it's alright to complain about it. I agree that the hypocrisy is an absolute outrage but I don't agree that if you look past the hypocrisy, what they did was ultimately forgivable. Gathering for catered parties and quizzes that could have easily been done on Zoom doesn't fall into the category of essential human contact that nobody could do without and everyone should be entitled to. These are egregious and selfish breaches of the rules that we were all trying to follow as part of a functioning society that made sacrifices for the greater good of those around us. If a clutch of my friends had organised a sneaky gathering at someone's house that was against the rules I wouldn't have gone so I won't be called a hypocrite for taking a dim view of anyone doing the same, let alone those in government itself. Other countries honestly look at us these days dumbfounded at reports of what comes out of the UK and how we as the public tolerate this administration and the contempt with which they hold the electorate that for some reason keep voting for them. I would love to know if any of our overseas counterparts who still pain themselves to keep up with this thread have any insight as to what they think of this ongoing story. In some countries you'd get riots and civil unrest outside of Downing Street every day until every single person associated with these parties had packed their bags. Instead here we are having a philosophical debate about whether it would be okay or not if it wasn't so hypocritical. Yet we carry on as if it's totally normal for an unaccountable government appointee to carry out an internal investigation and aren't even surprised that he only recused himself from it when it became public knowledge that he was party to one of these gatherings himself. The fact that he was willing to keep it hidden that he attended one such gathering, and yet was happy to proceed leading the investigation until he got outed by another leak to the press, just goes to show how corrupt the heart of our government is, and how much they think they can continue to get away with even now, and finally, the fact that there isn't even talk of this Simon Case resigning over the fact that he also broke the rules, when he holds a post which requires him to investigate ministers and civil servants to account for these breaches, highlights that us, the public, by and large have just accepted these pitifully low standards of representation and respect from our elected government and civil servants.

Are we holding central government and 18 year olds to the same standards now? I know the prime minister is a man baby but come on... most of these top civil servants and government ministers are earning more than enough to be home owners with gardens and loved ones under the same roof. You can't forgive their behaviour because a few teenagers locked up with their parents for months on end snuck off to a park to share a crate with some mates or some young professionals who live alone and work from home and haven't spoken to another human in weeks popped across town to stay with their significant other. We're talking about the people making and enforcing these laws, gathering in groups of 10-30 people for social events, indoors, during one of the worst phases of the pandemic against all guidance, sometimes premeditated with alibis and lies prepared in advance. This argument is like going "yeah it's bad that guy robbed a bank but quite a few of my mates shoplifted some coke and Mars bars when we were kids so it's a bit hypocritical to criticise".