Day: 2 August 2020

Chefs stage protest about the lockdown in Belgium by laying down their whites In an effort to escape the madness of Sturgeon’s Scotland, we headed to Belgium to see my aged mother. Our usual route from Hull To Zeebrugge remains unavailable, handling freight only. Clearly, only freight drivers are immune from COVID-19 on overnight crossings! So we stopped off in Kent on route to Dover and spent two wonderful days in a hotel that re-opened the week before our arrival on July 19th. No social distancing, no masks, and people behaving like adults used to in 2020 BC (before Covid). It was liberating A week before we were due to depart the news came through that masks were mandatory in Belgian shops from July 11th. The Sturgeon curse was following us south. On arrival in Belgium, it was clear people were going overboard. As we approached an open air market, we were met with mandatory hand sanitisation and mask wearing. When I asked an official why masks were compulsory in the market, but not on a pub terrace less than one metre from where I was standing, I was told it was the law. If I did not comply, I would be fined €250 by police enforcers roaming the busy streets. A retailer could be fined €750 for serving me ...

Boris Weighs Up "Nuclear" Options There's a story by Tim Shipman in the Sunday Times today that I'm struggling to understand. He reports that last Wednesday at 4pm the Prime Minister convened a war-gaming exercise in which they considered various responses to different "second wave" scenarios. For an hour they mapped out options for the next few months. Simon Case, head of the COVID-19 taskforce, led a discussion of three fictional but realistic scenarios that reflected Whitehall’s fears about what could happen next. “There were three whiteboards in different corners of the room,” one of those present said.In their tabletop war game, Johnson and Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, first discussed an outbreak in northwestern England, then an outbreak in London and finally a general increase in infections nationally.Under the first scenario, local authorities in the northwest saw a persistent rise in infections and the measures taken by councils failed to stem the tide. Johnson and Sunak agreed that the first lever pulled should be additional restrictions on household interactions. “There must be quick, decisive action,” Johnson said.That evening, the fictional scenario became reality as the prime minister was presented with Office for National Statistics data showing a 66% rise in infections in a fortnight, with increases in Blackburn, Bradford and Manchester. Where does that 66% figure come from? The ONS ...