The end of self-isolation rules for double jabbed Brits who are ‘pinged’ or contacted by NHS Test and Trace after coming into contact with someone who has tested positive for Covid is “dangerous” and “totally illogical” (but not illogical in the way that Toby pointed out earlier), says the Deputy General Secretary of the Rail Maritime and Transport Union. He is one of the sizable number of industry leaders who have called for staff to be supported if they choose to stay at home after being ‘pinged’, despite concerns over staff shortages caused by the ‘pingdemic‘ (which is said to have finished). The Telegraph has the story.
Railway workers and doctors have been backed to stay at home if they come into contact with a Covid case despite new rules allowing double jabbed people to return to their jobs.
Meanwhile, industry leaders called for further clarity on whether staff alerted by NHS Test and Trace could be compelled to come back to the workplace. …
Steve Hedley, the Deputy General Secretary of the Rail Maritime and Transport Union, criticised the change [to self-isolation rules] as “dangerous” and “totally illogical” and backed staff who refused to come back to the workplace.
“This is a dangerous approach by the Government because the evidence shows that the link between the virus and deaths has been weakened, but it hasn’t been broken,” Mr Hedley said.
He added: “Many workers will be concerned at spreading or catching Covid if people pinged by the app are allowed to come back to their jobs straight away. If they choose to stay at home, we would support them. No one should be forced to go back to work.
“The railway companies have assured us that it will still be voluntary for people to come back to work. It must stay that way.”
The British Medical Association added that healthcare workers who want to self-isolate “should not be penalised in any way for doing so”.
Meanwhile, business leaders welcomed the relaxed rules but called for clarity on whether staff could be compelled to return to work if they come into contact with a Covid case.
Kate Nicholls, the Chief Executive of U.K. Hospitality, said guidance should be “black and white” rather than leaving the choice up to individual employers.
“Employers want to know with more certainty what they should do in those circumstances,” she said. …
Ms Nicholls also called for a further relaxation of the rules to allow younger people who have not yet had both jabs to be spared from automatic self-isolation.
Worth reading in full.
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I don’t plan to read a 70 page opinion from another country’s supreme court about their own affairs but the quoted passed raises some philosophically interesting points and is not as clear cut as Gorsuch implies.
In some places, the dissent gets so turned around about the facts that it opens fire on its own position. For instance: While stressing that a Colorado company cannot refuse “the full and equal enjoyment of [its] services” based on a customer’s protected status, the dissent assures us that a company selling creative services “to the public” does have a right “to decide what messages to include or not to include”. But if that is true, what are we even debating?
Think of two extremes.
It would be quite shocking to return to the days where a landlord would refuse to offer a room based blatantly on race (remember “no Irish, no niggers”). This kind of thing is presumably the basis of the idea that a company – or an individual – cannot refuse full and equal enjoyment of services.
On the other hand suppose a publisher were asked to design a web site (or printed material) with blatantly racist content. In this sense a company should have the right to refuse to include these messages.
The distinction is between refusing services based on who is receiving the service (particularly if this is based on race, gender, sexual preference etc) as opposed to refusing to provide certain kind of services independently of who is asking for them. This is merely an extension of a fairly obvious right to refuse to make or do anything if you think the object or service is immoral.
I don’t know the details of the Lorie Smith case but it may well be poised between these two cases. Remember that her concern was not that she might be forced to included certain material in web sites but that she might be forced to offer her services to gay couples. The service being offered is in some senses the same service that is being offered to heterosexual couples but the fact that the couple is gay might be taken to imply an approval of gay relationships.
It is not obvious to me that the dissent is self-contradictory.
I discussed this in my previous article (and I didn’t want to repeat myself here), but it’s important to recognise the distinction between providing goods and services (e.g., hotel rooms, newspapers, etc.) where speech is only incidental and those where it is important (e.g., writing an article or creating a custom website). Public accommodation laws prevent one refusing to sell goods and services in the former category to someone because of their race, sex, etc.; but when speech is implicated (e.g., writing an article in favour of slavery), one can refuse if one has an objection to it.
The left has tried to claim there’s no distinction between the two, but they end up getting tangled in knots, because they can’t say that people can’t express themselves how they want (because of clearly established law), but at the same time they also have to say that if they want to win. The quote neatly, I think, highlights that central problem with their arguments.
I’d recommend you read Gorsuch’s opinion – it’s not 70 pages long, and it’s very legible and well-explained. It’s on pages 7–32 of the PDF (pages 1–26 of the paper document).
The fundamental point is that if I rent someone a hotel room, I’m not being compelled to say something I don’t believe, but if that person asks me to write or create something objectionable, that’s a different matter.
The fundamental point is that if I rent someone a hotel room, I’m not being compelled to say something I don’t believe, but if that person asks me to write or create something objectionable, that’s a different matter
OK I just read your previous article and you make some good points. I am still not convinced that this primarily about free speech. Almost any product or service can bear a message (think golliwogs). And those services that do include speech or text are not typically taken to be the opinions of the person/company providing the services – certainly no one thinks the content of wedding web sites is the opinion of the web site designer!
Nevertheless I support the right of anyone or any organisation to refuse to provide services or products they genuinely consider to be immoral. This has to be somehow combined with the requirement not to refuse services/products based on the race/gender/sexuality of the recipient. For some services/products this is easier than others.
Wedding web sites are particularly tricky. Most wedding websites are just about where to go, timings, the order of service, what to wear, accommodation. If you removed the pronouns and photographs it would be hard to tell whether it was a heterosexual marriage or a homosexual marriage. (My son is getting married next month so I am up-to-date on this!). What makes the site controversial is the fact the recipients are gay.
I will try to find time to read the mere 26 pages of Gorsuch’s opinion but I suspect the court made the correct decision – I just think the dissent deserved more respect than you implied.
I think it’s pretty simple, MTF. If I am the one providing the service, I and only I decide if I provide it, and I am under no obligation to state my reasoning.
Assuming I am not the State, with a monopoly on certain services, then a person is free to look elsewhere for the service they would have received from me.
That would be my starting point, instinctively.
However some non-state providers of goods and services are effectively monopolies – for example water companies, train operating companies, your local leisure centre provider. Also organisations acting in concert or copying each other or going with the prevailing wind can simply all decide to, for example, refuse to serve people not wearing “covid face coverings” or those not “vaccinated against covid” – and if you think that’s impractical and the market would not let it happen, what about banks refusing to provide banking services to known conservative/free speech organisations and individuals?
So if the service is a room to let or say dentistry then there is nothing immoral in me refusing it to people on the basis of colour or sexual preference as long as I don’t say why?
MAK can give his own answer but my answer would be that something being immoral and being illegal are different things. Most/all illegal things would generally be considered immoral but not all immoral things should necessarily be illegal.
I agree – obviously you can have immoral laws. I guess we are discussing the morality of the law.
My point was more that I might consider a dentist refusing to treat people on the basis of their colour or sexual preference to be immoral but would not necessarily say it should be illegal, though to be honest I am not sure exactly what I think the ideal way of dealing with this is.
I take your point. Not every immoral behaviour should be illegal. This is such a complicated and subtle area. One consideration is that making something illegal can change what is normal and acceptable – so the public idea of what is moral follows the law. I am thinking of things like drinking and driving as well as blatant discrimination. But I digress …
The left had Roe vs Wade, which used (and subsequently tossed aside) a mentally ill, young, pregnant woman who wasn’t going to have an abortion and, indeed, didn’t have an abortion, in order to create a hypothetical case that made abortion legal, so it’s kind of amusing that when a verdict based on hypotheticals goes a different way from the way they want it, they now claim falsehoods.
Roe vs Wade was crazy. At the time the amendment they used to justify it was ratified, I think abortion was illegal everywhere in the US, so the people who ratified it cannot possibly have thought it conferred a right to have an abortion.
Dear downvoter, please explain the flaw in my logic.
They never do, do they? Cowards.
The attacks on Justice Thomas are despicable and silly. He has kept to an originalist line from the start of his tenure, so to claim he is being influenced by gifts is absurd. There’s no evidence for it. From the start he has come in for extra vitriol from the left because he is a black conservative.
As Candace Owens has put it, they don’t like black people who leave the Democrats’ ‘plantation’!
“Supreme Court Upholds First Amendment – Lefties Go Wild”
I lurv headlines like this.
In the not too distant past many people worked as servants. They had to address the people they served with specific titles, names and pronouns. In addition the servants had to do their master’s and mistress’s bidding. It would have been unwise to contradict any of the subservience that was demanded. The Industrial Revolution, WW1 and WW2 allowed many people to escape subservient work.
Now we have a group of people demanding that they are addressed in very specific ways and that they can demand any trade or person to make or do things as they decide without question. The difference between working as a servant or being on the receiving end of the alphabet activists is you could leave an employer and find someone better as a servant, whereas to mis-gender or mis-pronoun or refuse to do what is demanded can result in destructive fines and a criminal record. Why is it OK that one group can demand subservience of others with the backing of the law.
“Bogosity”
Respect.
Apparently Quantum Bogodynamics is a thing, standard unit the Bogon.
“Colorado could have found out about, leading them to apply penalties and force her to attend a re-education camp. She wanted to avoid that.”
My God, Colorado?! Or North Korea
or China?…Why the hell has Colorado got a re-education camp? Have all 54 States got re-education camps? What time do you have to get up? What do you get for breakfast? Does the forced indoctrination include mandatory brainwashing booster injections?
We have lost America, I tell you.