RandoEFC

It's Johnson's MO. Promise the most optimistic scenario possible for a cheap boost in popularity, hope for the best. If he's right, bang on about how he told us this would happen and how he told us we should never have listened to Labour, Europe, the media, scientists, Project Fear, etc. If he's wrong, just make a u-turn and act like that was the plan all along in the knowledge that too much of the media are unwilling to or incapable of pointing out how wrong he was. Thankfully the majority of the public have a better perception of reality than Johnson does so many were already planning to keep themselves locked down or away from their elderly relatives over Christmas knowing that it really isn't worth risking lives when the vaccine is finally being rolled out. We need to know more about this new strain though, read a few troubling stories about it being transmit in hospitals and taking down health workers again.

Feel for Albon, but he'll probably get another crack at some point. It's the right decision and well deserved on Checo's part. I really hope he doesn't end up being another one who can't get within 4 tenths of Verstappen.

I do get what you're saying but it's not like backing a soft Brexit was good for the UK either. If I was an MP, I couldn't have voted for it in good conscience. As soon as you vote in favour of Brexit, it's not longer a 'remain' strategy really.

Too many words in the one you posted .

Speaking of Brexiters, from the man that brought you "the Grenfell victims should have had more common sense"...

I disagree, remainers were well within their rights to keep saying Brexit was a bad idea and were well within their rights to campaign for a second referendum last year when it became apparent that most of what won the Leave campaign the referendum was built on lies. The second referendum campaign has had absolutely no impact on whether it's a hard or soft Brexit. The Tories had a majority government and they couldn't get any sort of Brexit anywhere near complete. They still have a majority government now, and they won't be able to pass a soft Brexit through parliament. Why? Because they can't get the nut job ERG wing of the party to get on board with any compromise and the mainstream Tories are terrified of Farage coming out of the woodwork to steal the Rule Britannia vote from them. Why should Remainers take the heat if they can't even get their own party to vote for any sort of Brexit? At some point, Brexiters are going to have to own Brexit. We all have to compromise and I don't want it to be I told you so because that only leads to more division and is going to actively encourage those who still believe in Brexit to keep denying facts and reality rather than eventually changing their mind. Continuing to campaign for what you believe in is basic democracy and Remainers should not apologise for fighting for what they believe in. The polls have said for 2-3 years almost uninterrupted that the majority agree with them on this issue. Pretending that it's partially our fault for fighting against it just enables the Tories not to take responsibility for this insane, damaging policy that they've pursued at all costs, and god knows with this current shower in charge you know they don't need a second invitation to say "it's not my fault, look over there!"

That's an insanely high proportion of the population. Surely must be a 'generous' definition of vulnerable, probably including anyone over about 60. The only other thing I can think of is that they're counting anyone overweight as 'vulnerable' as well, there has been some evidence of people who aren't in the best health suffering worse from this and it's been theorised that that's one of the reasons our death toll has been so bad compared to some other countries.

I've not read anything either way on that. I'm not even sure whether the vaccine(s) provide long-term resistance or whether they'll need to be administered annually. I haven't read anything into whether the flu jab and a Covid jab "clash" with each other in any way but I imagine that that research has been done because a lot of the first people to receive the Covid vaccine will have had a flu jab this winter as well. I suppose we'll find out quickly if there are complications there but I'd be surprised if that's not something the leading scientists who have designed these treatments have considered and tested. The thing is, I'd probably want the Covid jab every year if that's how long the resistance lasts. I haven't had it, but I've read enough about long Covid and further complications to not be one of those people who welcomes getting it so that I get the immunity and it's all out of the way. Hopefully if the current vaccines only last for months or a year, they'll continue to develop them until one of them provides longer term immunity.

That is indeed good news. Hopefully that other strain that apparently emerged over the past week doesn't fuck things up. It's going to take a while though. I imagine the capacity to vaccinate people will continue to grow a lot from 150k a week, but there's about 60 million people in the UK. At a rate of around 150k vaccinations a week, it would take 400 weeks to vaccinate the entire population, so we still need to be patient. This also doesn't take into account the possibility that you might need the injection again each winter if you're vulnerable (I'm not sure about this, that might have only been one of the vaccines). That said, once they've vaccinated the vulnerable and health care workers, then you should be able to think about lifting the vast majority of lockdown restrictions and get on with it to an extent.

This sums it up really well for me. Every once in a blue moon, they get something wrong and their defenders say they were damned if they do and damned if they didn't, and they're right. I think it's basically impossible in a country like ours to find the right balance between risking lives to sustain the economy and suffocating the economy to keep people alive and protect the NHS. You could say that it's a good or a bad thing that they've tried so many approaches, local lockdowns, tier systems, it has actually worked in some places. Liverpool, for example. It wouldn't actually be that hard to be sympathetic if they were the type of people that you could actually feel sympathy for, but they just aren't. There's next to no humanity there, they never admit they're wrong and they don't care about basic standards. Patel should have gone, she was found to have broken the ministerial code. Johnson is a known liar. Williamson should have gone after trying to force primary schools to open when there weren't enough physical classrooms or teachers available to do so when there were still restrictions on bubbles and class sizes, which proved only to be an appetiser for the shambolic mishandling of exam results. Jenrick should have been gone over the planning scandal. Cummings should have gone over Barnard Castle. There are so many things that they actually have changed their minds on, free school meals twice, the fire break lockdown, etc. etc. Changing your mind when the information changes is a positive trait, but this lot still manage to turn it into some sort of taboo to admit just occasionally that they made a call and got it wrong, and now they're putting it right, instead of pretending that they never did anything wrong and actually what they're doing now is what they always said they were going to do and anyone who points out they shouted Heads last week and Tails today is 'getting confused between two things'. You can even say "at the time we made this call because we thought this, this and this, but now things have changed and we believe that this other approach is better". I would actually admire them if they did that. The other consequence of their truth-twisting is that people see through it and don't trust them. This leads to serious issues with Covid restrictions and public compliance. Johnson is teetering on the brink of not even having a positive favourability rating from Conservative party members now. If the conclusion to the Brexit talks doesn't do something to help him in that regard I imagine they'll start making their succession plans.

You've lost me and I don't know what Spokian Logic is .

Only really got into it recently. I had no interest in Ultimate Team this year but I've been playing two player with my housemate on his account and it's pretty fun. Once you get good enough at not going for the same balls it feels like a bit of an unfair advantage actually. The game is pretty rubbish though. It's far too easy to just spam massive through balls to players with average stats but great pace and they just always score because of the broken goalkeepers and often because of the broken skill moves. It's fun to play two player but I've had a go at a few games on my own and it really isn't fun in that scenario. It's the same old broken FIFA meta of finding the players with elite pace and skill moves and decent enough other stats that make them unstoppable overall, and the gameplay being wildly inconsistent on top of that. Then you occasionally come up against players who have icons in their side and your players start behaving completely differently because they have to reward the other guy for having icons, but they're too lazy to design a game where having better stats (aside from pace) actually opens up more options for what you can do with the player. Still, the SBCs and opening packs is still a bit of fun as long as you don't lose your head and spend real money on it. Basically the same old FIFA. I haven't bothered with career mode or anything outside of Ultimate Team again probably unless they introduce some sort of difficulty slider or dynamic difficulty that gives you a sensible level of challenge. Even with seven levels of difficulty, the majority of players won't be able to find one that suits them. It took the F1 series about 15 years to fix this, hopefully FIFA will eventually do the same. Last time I played career mode I was managing Sandefjord in Norway and on the maximum difficulty I had a 100% record in the first half of my second season, it's just boring.

Okay I did get a bit rattled there in your direction. I stand by what I said but I should probably have aimed less of it back at you.

I didn't realise I'd walked into the Daily Mail comments section. Don't try and make this about money. Some areas of England have seen a 75% increase in infections in the 10-19 age group over the last week. There could/will be countless asymptomatic kids in families who will be seeing potentially vulnerable grandparents over Christmas. It just isn't worth sending them for 2-3 extra days so they can catch Covid to give to their family members as a Christmas present just so they can colour in a few Christmas trees. I don't know how you get this response from "schools simply have to stay open". Nobody's getting a week off, the argument is to move the schools in question to online learning so please actually read and think things through before spouting comments like this. I won't apologise for overreacting to shite like this after the pasting teachers have taken from the right-wing press this year. Don't let them convince you that we had months off earlier this year either. We didn't, we just had to re-learn how to teach kids sitting miles away through a computer screen with no help and now get blamed for kids falling behind because it's apparently our fault they don't have WiFi or they live in households with 5 kids and 1 computer. Furthermore, I don't even live in England so I'm speaking as somebody who isn't affected by it actually. I already acknowledged on the previous page that it probably isn't practical because of childcare at this short notice, but I think it was Northern Ireland who decided ages ago that they'd shut for Christmas a week early because they realised that it was probably better to go without the week of colouring in and films and awards assemblies that can't happen this year anyway because of Covid, and that both students and teachers would benefit more from the extra week's rest. The rest of the year, everyone agrees that the sacrifices schools have had to make are worthwhile to keep the essential need that is education going, but the last week before Christmas is a different kettle of fish. I'm really disappointed to be honest that there are intelligent people still going around thinking that people who choose to go into teaching and dedicate their careers to educating your kids while getting paid less than almost any other job requiring similar levels of qualifications, still go around accusing teachers of being selfish and suggesting that we're driven by money. I could be earning almost double of my current wage if I had gone into accountancy or trained as an actuary so even if you didn't mean it like that, I'm not going to apologise for comments like this triggering me. There are bad eggs in every profession, I've come across plenty of teachers who have lost their passion and that sense of being in it for the right reasons, but the overwhelming majority are driven by a genuine sense of serving their community and supporting young people. So no, nobody is asking for an extra week off, they're just asking for 4 extra days of online learning to reduce face to face contact and reduce the risk of having Covid over Christmas. It's completely reasonable and the cost to education is minimal to none. It's too late now to do it across the country but it beggars belief that Gavin Williamson is trying to play the hard man over schools that are trying to shut TWO TO THREE DAYS earlier for health and safety reasons. There's absolutely no appreciation for the fact that headteachers have had to effectively redesign schools to be Covid-safe since the summer as well as carrying out their own test and trace operation while teachers have put themselves in front of kids every day with minimal or no PPE throughout the second wave. No, you can't do your job from home for a few days so that you can at least be sure you'll see your families on Christmas Day.

Schools have to stay open. It really is that simple. I imagine the slight increase in transmission is to do with the fatigue of both staff and pupils sticking to the routines that have had to be put in place in schools every day for 15 of the last 16 weeks. But the last week of term before the two weeks off? Like I said, it's films and colouring in. Kids are drained, teachers are drained, it's been a fucking nightmare for everyone, and now it's time to rest. Anyone who gets infected this week will potentially miss Christmas day with any of their family that they don't live with. And for what? It's just one of those "is this really the hill you're going to die on" moments. Like I posted a few days ago they should have just closed the schools a week early anyway.

Former fireplace salesman and all round moron Gavin Williamson, taking legal action to keep schools open for a last week of term where they'll be spending the whole time colouring in and not doing the end of term assemblies and events they'd usually have. Closing schools across the country this week would cost literally nothing from an educational perspective. This is all about him being able to call it some sort of success that schools have been open for the full term, about him looking strong and decisive. Meanwhile the actual science showing rising concerns about transmission in schools. I can't emphasise this enough. It's four fucking days. They'll spend it colouring in and watching films. The councils are trying to close schools due to safety concerns but the colouring in is more important is it? For. Fucks. Sake. The man makes Boris Johnson look intelligent.

The Leave campaign literally won the referendum by shouting loud enough and bullying enough TV stations into presenting Tory Brexiters as somehow equivalent to university professors and experts on international trade in TV debates, enough that actual information and reality was unable to gain a foothold in the public discourse. It's been all hands to the pump for four and a half years trying to suppress the increasingly unavoidable reality. It's hard to actually remember what they've been saying about Brexit. It turned from sunlit uplands into "it won't get that much worse" quite a long time ago. Well, the rhetoric that has emerged since Johnson's dinner date with Ursula von Thingy says that there isn't going to be a trade deal and things are about to become pretty shit for a while. It's already "the EU's demands" aren't compatible with the UK's needs. Opinion polls ought to be interesting over the course of the next year.

They should have considered closing schools a week early in England to be honest and given an extra week off. The toll on teachers, school leaders and other school staff (catering, cleaning) has been absolutely mad since the summer holidays. I know it's probably not practical with childcare and stuff but it could have been considered as a bit of a thank you to schools. You can see from all of the temporary closures how trying it has been on so many teachers, students and families. The last week of term, as we all know, isn't a massive loss of education and it's probably not possible this year to have all of the little tutor group parties and end of term assemblies that would usually make it worthwhile.

It's all the Remainers' fault I'm hearing this week. We should have accepted a soft Brexit or something instead of continuing to try and stop the country from throwing itself off an economic cliff while taking freedom of movement away from ourselves. Some Remainers are actually peddling this shite as well (mainly the ones using it as an excuse to say you should have backed Corbyn if you wanted Brexit but not this disaster). So Brexit being a failure is your fault if: You voted against Brexit. You campaigned against Brexit. You campaigned for a second referendum on Brexit after every poll for a year or more showed more support for Remain than Leave. You voted against the Conservatives at the last two general elections to try and stop Brexit. You didn't want Brexit. You tried to convince people that Brexit was a bad idea. You've had essentially no political power over the past 5 years. You're a Conservative MP who backed Remain and/or a reasonable Brexit deal to find some middle ground. Whereas Brexit being a failure is not your fault if: You voted for Brexit. You campaigned for Brexit. Brexit was your idea. You're a part of what has been the country's ruling party for the last 10 years. You told the country during the referendum that it would be the easiest deal in history and have since been proven wrong. You're a member of the ERG who refused to compromise and accept Theresa May's Brexit deal instead of leading us down this rabbit hole. You're the current Prime Minister, who sold Brexit to the nation, became Foreign Secretary, a part of the UK's negotiation team under Theresa May, then resigned and voted against a Brexit deal last year, before then being elected on a slogan of "Get Brexit Done". You're a Conservative/Brexit Party member who has enough money not to be adversely affected by a disastrous Brexit. I could go on. I've honestly got over it, it's happening, but I'm not having this shite about how its actually Remainers' fault for not getting on board sooner. If this was the 'will of the people' and 52% was the unquestionable majority that it's been made out to be over the past 5 years, then I'm afraid you dickheads have had 5 years to agree on something that you could get through parliament and get back to actually running the country (although with the current administration I dread to think what that looks like if/when it eventually happens). There's serious talk of Boris Johnson facing a leadership challenge if he compromises on the remaining issues and makes some sort of deal. People need to wake up and see that this whole thing has been nothing more than a cross between a big game and an identity crisis for the Conservative party. Now that they've purged so many of the moderate and more progressive Conservatives from the party, they really are just politicking over who gets to be Head Boy. Absolute fucking cunts.

Good luck mate.

The closer it gets to the deadline, the more people are losing faith in the whole project. I know it's only polling but this is before the consequences have even really started. If you take out the Don't Knows, the Leave/Remain split based on this polling is roughly now around 43/57, so around 1 in 5 Leave voters have moved towards it being the wrong decision. Of course there is a margin of error when it comes to polling but when you start getting to differences of about 10 points that's way outside that margin. The loudest Brexiters will, by and large, never admit they were wrong, because they won't be able to psychologically even if it makes their lives worse. A lot more quieter ones who are actually capable of changing their minds will swing to thinking it was a bad idea as well. The likes of Nigel Farage and Jacob Rees-Mogg you'll obviously never hear change their minds.

I don't get it .

Oh they'll definitely accuse France of being the worst culprits but they've had a narrative bubbling over of the EU being "obstinent" and "obstructive" whilst simultaneously beating the drum about how the UK won't back down over anything and they're taking No Deal because it's better than giving up our "sovereignty". It makes no sense under even the barest questioning but they've realised that the barest questioning just won't happen if they tap into the ill-informed flag-wavingness of the Britannia rules the waves demographic that make up a minority of their support base, but sadly is the loudest.

Basically everything the experts who backed Remain in 2016 has come true so far. No reason why that should stop now. The government will try to blame the EU but ultimately people will realise that none of this would have happened if people had given Farage the complete lack of attention and platform that he ever justified.

This isn't a VAR thing though. This is just part of the same problem where the referee's decision is not based on the actual offence of the defender but on the reaction of the forward who is fouled. Not only has diving and going down when it isn't needed just been accepted but it is actively encouraged because our referees are incapable of understanding that a player can stay on his feet and still have been fouled. For me, I'd prefer it if the defender's tackle isn't bad enough to force the attacker to the ground without them diving of letting their legs buckle, then it isn't a foul, but we'll never see an honest system like that in football again.