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More bad news for Scottish residents

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Berliner

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Honestly, living in Scotland feels like such a slog at times just now. The insistence on stricter measures than England at every turn strikes me as politics. I accepted them at the start of the pandemic, but it’s been done far too many times now.

A lot of people will disregard this ‘appeal/guidance/plea’ to restrict household mixing to 3. These things have been asked of them one too many times.

Those in charge of a health system which could be overwhelmed by lack of capacity implying that the spread of the virus is due to ordinary members of the public and their desire to socialise, is manipulative in the extreme. I sometimes feel like I’m the only person who sees this.

You most certainly are not. I'm not alone in thinking this either and I've noticed more and more of my social circle is coming round to this mindset too.

It's not the public who have mismanaged the NHS for years, bloated it with excess management, starved it of funding and set unachievable targets, running doctors and nurses into the ground. If we are 2 years into a pandemic and the health service still can't cope then The fault lies with the ones running it, not the ones trying to rely on it for healthcare needs which are once again going ignored because of Covid. This is aimed at the whole of the UK and not just Scotland.
 
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devon_metro

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Honestly, living in Scotland feels like such a slog at times just now.

Amen to that!

The social distancing will just make visiting shops and hospitality miserable again. As if it wasn't miserably enough with masks! Those in England don't realise how good they've got it still. And yet Scotland and England follow similar pandemic trajectories.
 

Failed Unit

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Amen to that!

The social distancing will just make visiting shops and hospitality miserable again. As if it wasn't miserably enough with masks! Those in England don't realise how good they've got it still. And yet Scotland and England follow similar pandemic trajectories.
I wonder if voters will turn on the SNP. They seem to be able to do no wrong. England is reckless is the view they paint. Back in August when you could say why is your Covid rate higher? They go quietly off. I visited in October. Didn’t enjoy going backwards. But they are already blaming any losses businesses incur on Westminster rather then policy. I guess if they are right they can watch England suffer. If they are wrong they can say you can’t be too cautious but the business failures are because Westminster wouldn’t give us more money. I won’t be back for a while, spend my money elsewhere.
 

devon_metro

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I wonder if voters will turn on the SNP. They seem to be able to do no wrong. England is reckless is the view they paint. Back in August when you could say why is your Covid rate higher? They go quietly off. I visited in October. Didn’t enjoy going backwards. But they are already blaming any losses businesses incur on Westminster rather then policy. I guess if they are right they can watch England suffer. If they are wrong they can say you can’t be too cautious but the business failures are because Westminster wouldn’t give us more money. I won’t be back for a while, spend my money elsewhere.

The current government is a grievance machine. Westminster will always be the fall guy. In the current situation, it has actually saved us from harsher restrictions as they can't do it without extra cash (though of course many SNP voters will see that as a bad thing). Sadly Scottish politics is entirely dominated by the constitutional issue so the SNP can do no wrong in the eyes of many. It's a shame with regards to the covid situation because Scotland vs. England is perhaps one of the best case studies to demonstrate how ineffective the extra measure in Scotland have been. If politics wasn't always through the Lens of Scotland is better than the nasty Torys in England then we might actually get a good conversation going as to the effectiveness (or not) of the extra measures.
 

farleigh

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You most certainly are not. I'm not alone in thinking this either and I've noticed more and more of my social circle is coming round to this mindset too.

It's not the public who have mismanaged the NHS for years, bloated it with excess management, starved it of funding and set unachievable targets, running doctors and nurses into the ground. If we are 2 years into a pandemic and the health service still can't cope then The fault lies with the ones running it, not the ones trying to rely on it for healthcare needs which are once again going ignored because of Covid. This is aimed at the whole of the UK and not just Scotland.
Agree totally.
 

Butts

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Er, how is the Scottish government going to enforce the 3 household mixing limit?

I can't see the Police Scotland sending out officers round the rougher parts of Glasgow and Edinburgh on Christmas Day, or especially Hogmanay, and checking whether people in gatherings are from a maximum of three households.

And what about that street party in Edinbugh on Hogmanay? Is having an event of this kind consistent with the Scottish government's updated guidance?

The same way they did cross-border travel last Christmas - ie not at all !!

Just ignore all this nonsense as I do and carry on with your life.
 

duncanp

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It is getting beyond silly now.

No sooner has Nicola Sturgeon announced new COVID restrictions for Scotland yesterday, than John Swinney says that there is the "potential for more restrictions BEFORE Christmas"

Scotland's Deputy First Minister John Swinney has said there is the potential for more restrictions before Christmas in response to the new Omicron variant.

Speaking to BBC Good Morning Scotland, Swinney said: "We hope that we have done enough in the announcements that were made yesterday and we hope that members of the public and businesses will work with us in a cooperative spirit to make sure that we can take these provisions forward."

Swinney said he was "optimistic" enough was being done for now but cautioned that the percentage of Omicron cases in Scotland had soared from 2% about 10 days ago to more than 27% now.

He added: "We have a variant that is very powerful, that is growing at an alarming rate, and we face a very severe situation.

"What we are trying to do is protect the period that people are looking forward to, to have as normal a Christmas as we possibly can do, but we need people to work with us in a spirit of caution to try and make sure that we get through this and get through it safely."
 

kez19

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It is getting beyond silly now.

No sooner has Nicola Sturgeon announced new COVID restrictions for Scotland yesterday, than John Swinney says that there is the "potential for more restrictions BEFORE Christmas"

I don’t think this will go down well either, fair enough it’s social media but even on Twitter the last announcement went down like a led balloon so even with John Swinney now saying this it’s going to be a further kicking the can and the public will indeed tell them to stick it.
 

Berliner

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Quite Frank the way Swinney goes on every other day saying we may get more restrictions etc is a disgrace. It's no way to for a government minister to talk, threatening the whole nation in Such a way, constant reminding us that things will get worse.

It always seems to be his name attached to these dire predictions. He needs to realise his words can cause great mental anguish and anger. Even the hint of more restrictions is enough to send many people on a mental health spiral, cause anxiousness for people who have made plans and cause knee jerk cancellations etc. He needs to tone it down and stop the doom mongering. We know a change could come at any time, it's been this way for nearly 2 years, we don't need a constant reminder of who pulls the strings.
 

takno

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I don’t think this will go down well either, fair enough it’s social media but even on Twitter the last announcement went down like a led balloon so even with John Swinney now saying this it’s going to be a further kicking the can and the public will indeed tell them to stick it.
They mostly seem to put Swinney out to float ideas they don't think they're going to get away with. He's too dim to realise he's been made to look like an idiot every time Sturgeon pops up the day after to say "good news! We don't need to do that after all"
 

Ex-controller

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Quite Frank the way Swinney goes on every other day saying we may get more restrictions etc is a disgrace. It's no way to for a government minister to talk, threatening the whole nation in Such a way, constant reminding us that things will get worse.

It always seems to be his name attached to these dire predictions. He needs to realise his words can cause great mental anguish and anger. Even the hint of more restrictions is enough to send many people on a mental health spiral, cause anxiousness for people who have made plans and cause knee jerk cancellations etc. He needs to tone it down and stop the doom mongering. We know a change could come at any time, it's been this way for nearly 2 years, we don't need a constant reminder of who pulls the strings.

I agree completely. It’s like how an adult would address an errant child - and even then it’d probably be considered bad parenting to continually introduce the threat of negative consequences.

There’s been a real authoritarian turn in Scotland. People I know question this as it’s all in response to the pandemic, they wouldn’t have done it otherwise etc. But this misses the point. The fact is people’s rights are continually impinged on, meaning it goes from being a response to an emergency circumstance to being normal. The ideology behind those doing it is irrelevant.
 

kez19

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They mostly seem to put Swinney out to float ideas they don't think they're going to get away with. He's too dim to realise he's been made to look like an idiot every time Sturgeon pops up the day after to say "good news! We don't need to do that after all"

Thing is the ideas float about make little sense and contradict themselves but it only applies to us plebs! Look at how long they put on the “mask” act - public been doing it since first asked and it’s not until recently they started doing it in Holyrood (for argument’s sake even Westminster), yes where was/has been the media criticism on that - nowhere!
 

21C101

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You most certainly are not. I'm not alone in thinking this either and I've noticed more and more of my social circle is coming round to this mindset too.

It's not the public who have mismanaged the NHS for years, bloated it with excess management, starved it of funding and set unachievable targets, running doctors and nurses into the ground. If we are 2 years into a pandemic and the health service still can't cope then The fault lies with the ones running it, not the ones trying to rely on it for healthcare needs which are once again going ignored because of Covid. This is aimed at the whole of the UK and not just Scotland.
The fault is with Nye Bevan for ramming through a model that would inevitably fail for partisan political reasons.

The NHS is so large and centralised that it dissapears up the rear end of the vast bureaucracy that is trying to control it. It is politically unreformable because Labour screech and shroud wave when anyone so much as tries, so no one dares. Most of the restrictions we have are because the Tories are terrified of labour denouncing them if the NHS is overwhelmed by Covid and scenes like Italy in 2020 get on TV news.

I fear it will gradually end up like South Africa with anyone who can remotely afford to having private healthcare and the state health system only used by those who cannot afford not to but still cost taxpayers a fortune. You only have to look at the growth of private GP services and the fall in cost of a 15 minute appointment from ~£95 to about £~50 with NHS GP vacancies ever more difficult to fill.

Until Bevan changed the plan for nakedly partisan political reasons, the (sane) plan was to extend national insurance cover to the whole family (in the 1930s workers had health insurance through national insurance but not their families).

Instead, thanks to Bevan, we have the health equivalent of a Soviet Tractor Corporation with hotspots of front line staff worked off their feet while vast numbers of indolent other staff and management do s*d all or circle paper. Exactly as it was in British Rail prior to privatisation (I was there).
 
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david1212

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Amen to that!

The social distancing will just make visiting shops and hospitality miserable again. As if it wasn't miserably enough with masks! Those in England don't realise how good they've got it still.

And yet Scotland and England follow similar pandemic trajectories.

At least some of us do and have done for the last few months.

Exactly but regardless Boris has been persuaded by some advisors that re-introducing masks and for the first time vaccine passports will significantly reduce the number who become infected.

The current government is a grievance machine. Westminster will always be the fall guy. In the current situation, it has actually saved us from harsher restrictions as they can't do it without extra cash (though of course many SNP voters will see that as a bad thing). Sadly Scottish politics is entirely dominated by the constitutional issue so the SNP can do no wrong in the eyes of many. It's a shame with regards to the covid situation because Scotland vs. England is perhaps one of the best case studies to demonstrate how ineffective the extra measure in Scotland have been. If politics wasn't always through the Lens of Scotland is better than the nasty Torys in England then we might actually get a good conversation going as to the effectiveness (or not) of the extra measures.

Yet the same Nicola Sturgeon wants another referendum on independence. I wonder how the last 21 months would have played in Scotland had the result in 2014 been yes ... ?
 

takno

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Yet the same Nicola Sturgeon wants another referendum on independence. I wonder how the last 21 months would have played in Scotland had the result in 2014 been yes ... ?
The argument is that the Scottish government is literally not allowed to borrow the money, whereas a sovereign Scotland would be able to. The long-term tax implications of an independent Scotland run by an SNP government doing what they think best through the pandemic really doesn't bear thinking about. They are correct however that the only thing holding them back from their desired economic suicide at this point is the attachment to Westminster.

As to a "Yes" vote in 2014 it's fantasy politics, but a fairly reasonable argument would be that Scotland would have been able to stay in the EU and avail themselves of EU bailout funds. It's all a complete guessing game once you start working through seven-year-old counterfactuals.
 

devon_metro

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The argument is that the Scottish government is literally not allowed to borrow the money, whereas a sovereign Scotland would be able to. The long-term tax implications of an independent Scotland run by an SNP government doing what they think best through the pandemic really doesn't bear thinking about. They are correct however that the only thing holding them back from their desired economic suicide at this point is the attachment to Westminster.

As to a "Yes" vote in 2014 it's fantasy politics, but a fairly reasonable argument would be that Scotland would have been able to stay in the EU and avail themselves of EU bailout funds. It's all a complete guessing game once you start working through seven-year-old counterfactuals.

The 2014 independence dream was based on $100+ oil, which hasn't been the case since...2014. So it would have been an unmitigated diaster. Now of course the SNP are in a pickle given their open opposition to UK oil and gas. Selling wind (or water as some suggest) to England could never generate the kind of tax revenues you can achieve through oil and gas.

We really do have to thank Rishi Sunak to thank for Scotland not currently being in a hard lockdown...
 

Yew

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The fault is with Nye Bevan for ramming through a model that would inevitably fail for partisan political reasons.

The NHS is so large and centralised that it dissapears up the rear end of the vast bureaucracy that is trying to control it. It is politically unreformable because Labour screech and shroud wave when anyone so much as tries, so no one dares. Most of the restrictions we have are because the Tories are terrified of labour denouncing them if the NHS is overwhelmed by Covid and scenes like Italy in 2020 get on TV news.

I fear it will gradually end up like South Africa with anyone who can remotely afford to having private healthcare and the state health system only used by those who cannot afford not to but still cost taxpayers a fortune. You only have to look at the growth of private GP services and the fall in cost of a 15 minute appointment from ~£95 to about £~50 with NHS GP vacancies ever more difficult to fill.

Until Bevan changed the plan for nakedly partisan political reasons, the (sane) plan was to extend national insurance cover to the whole family (in the 1930s workers had health insurance through national insurance but not their families).

Instead, thanks to Bevan, we have the health equivalent of a Soviet Tractor Corporation with hotspots of front line staff worked off their feet while vast numbers of indolent other staff and management do s*d all or circle paper. Exactly as it was in British Rail prior to privatisation (I was there).
And yet, it still is measured as one of the most effective health systems in the world.
 

david1212

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The argument is that the Scottish government is literally not allowed to borrow the money, whereas a sovereign Scotland would be able to. The long-term tax implications of an independent Scotland run by an SNP government doing what they think best through the pandemic really doesn't bear thinking about. They are correct however that the only thing holding them back from their desired economic suicide at this point is the attachment to Westminster.

As to a "Yes" vote in 2014 it's fantasy politics, but a fairly reasonable argument would be that Scotland would have been able to stay in the EU and avail themselves of EU bailout funds. It's all a complete guessing game once you start working through seven-year-old counterfactuals.

Directly the SNP position would depend if EU funds were a grant or a loan.

Long term if Brussels had given Scotland the option of remaining in the EU would they have been able to get a deal that overall was a financial gain rather than a cost ?
 

kez19

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Nicola Sturgeon calling out The Herald: https://mobile.twitter.com/NicolaSturgeon/status/1472315931959468039

Far from defending Nicola Sturgeon but looks to me as if even media up north are pushing it.

No idea what basis of this headline is, and it’s not helpful to add to anxiety people already feel. It’s a week before
@ScotParl
is even in recess. The situation is unpredictable and I’m sure Parliament will sit as necessary - but I have no plans at this stage to request recall

Update on events today in Scotland:

just a small quote: https://inews.co.uk/news/scotland/s...gamany-parties-cancelled-crowd-limits-1363444
Crowd limits will be introduced for public events in Scotland from Boxing Day as part of efforts to slow the spread of the Omicron variant of coronavirus, Nicola Sturgeon has announced.

It means that Hogmanay street parties will be cancelled and major sporting events such as the Old Firm match due to take place on 2 January will have to be held behind closed doors.

Pubs and other hospitality venues serving alcohol will also have to return to table service only from 27 December, with 1m social distancing also required between different groups of customers.
 
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Scotrail314209

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D1024

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So the Nictator tightens the screw again. Today's numbers reveal: fewer cases* (I do loathe that term - it implies people who are ill - it should be imho "positive tests") fewer people on hospital with covid, ICU Patient numbers down and deaths at similar level to recent weeks...following the science and the data? BS!

I can go to a 20000 capacity football match tomorrow but not on Sunday- bonkers if there is a real emergency.

What is very noticeable on Twitter and other social media though is the tide of public opinion has certainly turned. Previously dissenters were a very small minority now it's difficult to find any posts in support of these decisions.
 

Berliner

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Let's be honest, these won't just be here for 3 weeks will they?

Absolutely not, and she knows it, but once again, our intelligence has to be insulted in the name of covid.

I'd be surprised at anything other than the start of spring at the earliest before they take us back to where we are right now and there will be a lot more restrictions before then.
 

kez19

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Absolutely not, and she knows it, but once again, our intelligence has to be insulted in the name of covid.

I'd be surprised at anything other than the start of spring at the earliest before they take us back to where we are right now and there will be a lot more restrictions before then.

The thing is I be surprised if it’s co-ordinated, who will go first in terms of pushing the boat after 3 weeks?

So the Nictator tightens the screw again. Today's numbers reveal: fewer cases* (I do loathe that term - it implies people who are ill - it should be imho "positive tests") fewer people on hospital with covid, ICU Patient numbers down and deaths at similar level to recent weeks...following the science and the data? BS!

I can go to a 20000 capacity football match tomorrow but not on Sunday- bonkers if there is a real emergency.

What is very noticeable on Twitter and other social media though is the tide of public opinion has certainly turned. Previously dissenters were a very small minority now it's difficult to find any posts in support of these decisions.

It is happening more and agree to an extent but then I would ask then why are BBC Scotland/STV not reflecting this other than sucking up? (I could be wrong and happy to be corrected)
 

devon_metro

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It is happening more and agree to an extent but then I would ask then why are BBC Scotland/STV not reflecting this other than sucking up? (I could be wrong and happy to be corrected)

The media in general is supportive of restrictions. Just take a look at the constant headlines and demands for more and more. That mentality is unlikely to change. The Scottish media is quite weak too. STV is a paid up SNP propaganda platform and has had a pretty decent year due to government ad revenues. The BBC seemingly has no backbone. If it critisises the dear leader it's decried as pro-Union and vice versa.
 

kez19

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The media in general is supportive of restrictions. Just take a look at the constant headlines and demands for more and more. That mentality is unlikely to change. The Scottish media is quite weak too. STV is a paid up SNP propaganda platform and has had a pretty decent year due to government ad revenues. The BBC seemingly has no backbone. If it critisises the dear leader it's decried as pro-Union and vice versa.

I noticed that even Sky are joining in the bandwagon in terms of restrictions! I wonder what it would take for the media to realise this? (far from defending media let alone the governments), I can see this being the downfall of the media in general, enjoying their party but the party will come to an end eventually!
 

Kite159

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I noticed that even Sky are joining in the bandwagon in terms of restrictions! I wonder what it would take for the media to realise this? (far from defending media let alone the governments), I can see this being the downfall of the media in general, enjoying their party but the party will come to an end eventually!

Sky support more restrictions as if people are stuck at home during a lockdown they might pay them money to watch Sky related products on TV (i.e. Now TV). Also more people staying home means they potentially have a larger audience for the latest series of "Celebrity Hat Making" [or other rubbish they have on the main Sky TV channel these days]
 

kez19

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Sky support more restrictions as if people are stuck at home during a lockdown they might pay them money to watch Sky related products on TV (i.e. Now TV). Also more people staying home means they potentially have a larger audience for the latest series of "Celebrity Hat Making" [or other rubbish they have on the main Sky TV channel these days]

Sky is the obvious one but then why STV/BBC - what are they benefiting out of this? I did have in my mind that in terms of Sky - I just think the media are short sighted if people will watch TV, people will eventually switch off
 
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