The lifting of lockdown restrictions has been halted in much of the central belt of Scotland, with Nicola Sturgeon pinning the blame on the spread of the Indian Delta Covid variant. Sky News has the story.
Giving a Covid update to the Scottish Parliament, [the First Minister] said there was hope the rollout of vaccinations was “opening the path to a less restrictive way” of dealing with the virus.
But, with not all adults having yet received two doses of a vaccine, [Sturgeon] told MSPs: “We are not quite there yet.”
She added: “As we make this transition – just to compound the challenge – we are also dealing with a new, faster spreading variant.
“This is, of course, a new development that has arisen since we set out our indicative route map back in March.
“All of this means that at this critical stage – to avoid being knocked off course completely – we must still err on the side of caution.”
Edinburgh and Midlothian, Dundee, East Dunbartonshire, Renfrewshire, East Renfrewshire, North, South and East Ayrshire, North and South Lanarkshire, Clackmannanshire and Stirling have not yet met the criteria to see restrictions ease, Ms Sturgeon said.
As a result, those areas will remain under Level Two restrictions [meaning limits will remain on social mixing and on leisure and entertainment businesses].
However, Glasgow will move down from Level Three to Level Two from Saturday.
And another 18 local authorities will see restrictions ease from Saturday to move down to Level One measures.
Worth reading in full.
Despite calls from various Government advisors for the end of England’s lockdown to be pushed back, the Prime Minister says there’s no evidence to suggest that the country’s reopening should be delayed. The Guardian has the story.
Boris Johnson stands by his comments that there is nothing in the data to suggest a deviation from England’s reopening on June 21st, Downing Street has said, as scientists said the U.K. was facing a perilous moment.
The Business Minister Paul Scully also said on Tuesday there was “cautious optimism” that the date for the final lifting of restrictions could go ahead as planned. He told Times Radio the Government did not want to have to roll back restrictions again.
“One thing that we saw last year, before Christmas, was the stop-start nature just didn’t work for businesses and cost them more. So we’ve got to get it absolutely right. People’s jobs and livelihoods depend on it.” …
Asked about the Prime Minister’s view on the latest data, a Number 10 spokesman said: “I was going to point to what the PM said on Thursday. The Prime Minister has said on a number of occasions that we haven’t seen anything in the data but we will continue to look at the data, we will continue to look at the latest scientific evidence as we move through June towards June 21st.”
A announcement on the final step of the roadmap out of lockdown is expected on June 14th.
Also worth reading in full.
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“Disinformation is one of the gravest threats weighing on our democracies,” he says.
This is absolsutely true, but it is the Governments who are using it to push narrative and silence opposition. Ergo, the Governments are the gravest threats to our democracies.
I must say, I’ve had doubts about how far Musk will go in his ‘free speech’ campaign. I dont think it reasonable for him to withdraw from the EU, so I expect he will sail somewhere close to the line, without actually crossing it.
Withdrawing from the EU might get people’s attention, though most likely people would blame Musk not the EU.
Musk can’t take on the EU by himself.
If the population were ready to see him as a champion and rally behind him to fight for free speech, then obviously he could.
But we’ve seen how spineless the population is. Many of them have offered up their children as guinea pigs for untested jabs to appease a menacing state bureaucracy, so…
I think it would do more harm than good for him to take that step, yes.
There’s little support for freedom of speech, at least in the UK and Europe, among people I speak to. People will tell you they like the idea, but when you start quoting types of speech (“hate”, “misinformation”) and ask if they should be allowed they will tell you “no of course not”.
It would also probably be suicidal.
I don’t see Twitter’s withdrawal from the EU’s code of practice an empty gesture. It is a signal. Now, one can debate what the signal is.
It might just be to try to look good. Or it might be a signal of measured defiance which says – ok, you might be forcing me to comply by turning a code into law, but I will t least, with my gesture, show you I don’t agree with it or like it.
I don’t know how committed Musk really is to free speech. I doubt few do. But if one assumes he is, how he plays his cards is anything but simple. It would be fiendishly complicated to try to runTwitter as a free speech platform in today’s regulatory environment, if that was what one wanted to do, without being destroyed by the heavy hand of ever more oppressive and authoritarian states.
My guess is that he’s trying to do his best, but I am ready to be disappointed and discover I’ve been naive.
I’ve said it before and I will say it again – Musk doesn’t give a flying duck about Free Speech.
Surely Twitter need to replace the display of offending content with a message saying banned in the EU. If people are really interested they can use a VPN to avoid this. If enough people are annoyed then there will be push back.
The EU appears not to want Twitter being what it is but wants something else instead.
The EU should build its own ‘service’ as it wants it to be – I’m sure they could make it just as popular eventually.
I hope Elon has the power and the balls to withdraw Twitter from the EU territory.