Corona Virus

I fear you waste your breath. The more correct and scientific you are, the more they will cling to an authority that removes their freedoms.

 

It worked in New Zealand as well. Far stricter than the first one in the UK, I was there at the time and got stuck there for an extra 2 weeks. Corner Shops shut only supermarkets open. No take away food, no home delivery’s, no one could go to work except essential workers an they were in the main emergency services. No incoming flights or cruse ships etc etc and all this combined with a mentality of cooperation from the pubic.

 

Don't you think at the time people didn't locked themselves after witnessing a spreading deadly virus?
You didn't demonstrate much there then.

 

Change the subject why don't you ?
I'll repeat, a proper lockdown does work, you said lockdowns don't work. You are wrong.

 

Well if it so important for you to be right how come cases doubled in prison in October and how come it escaped China in the first place? Or maybe it has been a smouldering ember for much longer and burst into flame in Europe last Christmas/New Year?
Tell you what. Take it up with the former head of Pfizer respiratory research and watch his jaw drop at your insights.

 

Memo to self. Stop being so provocative. Most people are very happy to be bossed around by people like Matt Hancock without a scientific qualification to his name who yesterday pretty much called the Oxford Professor of Evidence Based Medicine a liar (while the PM in name was in hiding)

That, folks, is where we have got to.

 

I was just stating some simple facts to show that you are not always right like you think you are.

 

https://www.forces.net/news/coronavirus-raf-will-bring-vaccines-uk-if-necessary

 

Of course NZ needs that vaccine because they barely got infected when they slammed the door. They are doubtless fearfully watching Oz and rolling up their sleeves in anticipation.
Us? Not so much. The cavalry will be largely too late.

 

I am not always right and a total PITA but on this? Happy to be judged by events.

Right, I will up shut for a while.

P.S. an assertion is not a fact. Substantiate with evidence.....

 

It was an event in Wuhan I referred to (a proper lockdown) not the whole pandemic. I've said my piece and i'll stop at that. You can have the last word.

 

.

 

Fly away Peter
Fly away Paul


Come back Peter
Come back Paul

 

This is pure enticement and attempted entrapment.....

 

You can’t put a cigarette paper between the British Government and the devolved assemblies on Covid. Oh Nicola has given hers a tartan makeover with 5 tiers, not three but that is just window dressing because the middle chunk is near as dammit identical and the outer layers are purely decorative and liable to remain unused.

Herd stupidity has already been mentioned in the Commons but all of them made identical mistakes so now there is safety in numbers. A proportionately larger number have died in Scottish care homes while we have had significant outbreaks in hospitals. The tightening of Lockdown is being threatened here just as numbers halve in Inverclyde.

The whole of the UK is underwritten by taxes raised in London and the SE. As a Unionist I have no difficulty in recognising that and being appropriately appreciative without grovelling. It is how we have gravitated over 300 years of union. Forget the optics of noisy nationalists. For now and the immediately foreseeable future we are one Nation with four families whose squabbles are best played out on a pitch. You really don’t want me to get started on SNP fantasy economics, currency, interest rates and central bank!!

 

Boris? As instructed? He could have a swab test and be out by the afternoon. It’s politics, not medicine. He is no hazard to anyone but himself.

 

Oh go on let’s have a debate about NS and independence

 

Or perhaps that is another thread

 

I seriously doubt there is the appetite.

 

OK just for littleMcAde

The question is not, and never has been, ‘could Scotland be independent’ but ‘should Scotland be independent and, if so, what would it be like’?


It is always easier to sell what we have because everyone understands what is on offer. People tend not to vote for uncertainty. However, for me, it all boils down to would we be better off? Well that depends on the ‘we’. England, unquestionably because it would no longer be sending money beyond Cumbria and Northumbria. Scotland? MUCH more complicated.


In 2014 the SNP case was pumped by oil prices at an improbable high and questionable estimates of reserves. It is a bit more basic than that though. A genuinely independent country has its own currency backed by its own central bank. That in turn underwrites domestic banks and the whole way an economy is financed through loans and borrowing. Scots like the £ sterling but to use it as Puerto Rico uses the dollar means the Scottish Government would have no control over its exchange rates nor the cost of borrowing. If Scottish Government debt (for which there would be no immediate track record) was seen as less secure, a £100,000 mortgage in Berwick on Tweed could be much cheaper than one in Eyemouth just a few miles away. Create a new currency and everyone prices in risk; big time.


By the same token , Scottish Banks and insurers are today reliant on Bank of England support as ‘lender of last resort’. It is what saved RBS and others. The boards of those financial institutions are legally obliged to protect their shareholders and, in the event of looming independence, that would see them shift their business HQs to London along with all their tax revenues. It is all lost in the weeds today but it too would massively reduce Edinburgh’s expected revenues alongside loss of Barnet formula dosh (itself only ever intended to be temporary just like income tax and licensing laws. Still trust Governments?)


The long and short of it is that Scotland would have to massively trim the size of the public sector we have today (education, health, police, roads etc.) because it could not borrow cheaply to pay for recurring expenditure and expect anyone to believe they would ever get their money back. The SNP have tried to spin it away but for a ‘progressive socialist’ party their sums literally do not add up.


The prize of independence leads many to suppose it can all be sorted out afterwards but not without turning Scotland into a Singapore and the very opposite of what the SNP supporters want. The trouble is, most people think they understand far more about ‘the economy and where money comes from’ than in fact they do. I only know enough to know a good deal when you have it. Some people cannot see beyond their noses. God help us if that swings the balance - and the EU wants contributors. It already has too many beggars.