Political Ramifications of Covid-19 Pandemic

[A'Villan]

Sorry, mate. Didn't mean to lecture or preach.

Let's just hope in all of this I don't come into possession of a microphone or a loudspeaker.

What if you're right, and all this hype and perceived crisis amounts to little other than further solidifying the leverage held over the common people? The virus itself comes to pass.

I think a V for Vendetta quote is about as apt as you can get right now, "Beneath this mask, there is more than flesh, beneath this mask there is an idea, and ideas are bulletproof".

The fear of another potential world crisis should be enough to keep people compliant, and if that's not enough there's always the fear of being stuck at home reading posts like mine.

But you never know, this could be the birth of something magical too. Unfortunately I don't think it will come without resistance from some very powerful entities.

[bannedfromHandV]

One hope I have out of this, assuming we don’t get wiped out by it is for an adoption of ‘green days’, at least once per month if not once per week.

We’ve seen the evidence in the reduction in pollution recently and I think we’ve all now come to realise that the world can stop for a day without Armageddon taking form so I hope, that in the fallout of this, global governments agree to install green days where basically nothing opens, no factories, shops, no flights etc and we all just have a day, at least once per month where we don’t go out, we stay home, relax and spend quality time with family and friends.

Ideally this would be a weekday obvs.

Fanciful in the extreme I know.

[veloman]

23 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

There's a well-known 'rally round the flag' effect during crises that leads to incumbents seeing their popularity rise.

Just to endorse your post; I would suggest that also happened during The Falklands conflict. Didn't Thatcher get back in with an increased majority. Apologies if I have got this wrong.

[bickster]

If there's one thing I've realised over the years, Occam's Razor does not work with council officials

They make the most perverse decisions based on some absolutely bonkers ideas. I'm dealing with some of those nutty consequences today

Taxi Drivers licences that go out of date during the lockdown, extended for 6 months automatically (even though in the case of three year licences, this is technically illegal) - Sensible decision

Same council with vehicle licences (the plate on the back), testing must continue as normal and the testing stations will forward the paperwork to the council even though MOT tests are being stopped from Monday, perverse non-sensical decision!

[bickster]

14 minutes ago, veloman said:

Just to endorse your post; I would suggest that also happened during The Falklands conflict. Didn't Thatcher get back in with an increased majority. Apologies if I have got this wrong.

Yes and as I recall she was slipping heavily before that happened

[PaulC]

Was it the falklands conflict that regained her popularity. As the conflict was so far away most people  weren’t even bothered about it. We had a lot of unemployment at the time and labour were run by the unions so no real viable opposition 

[Seat68]

1 hour ago, chrisp65 said:

I understand that almost all the land and all the wealth is controlled by a tiny number of people.

I understand that in the grand scheme of things, they have 9 biscuits, I have half a biscuit and the rest of the world shares half a biscuit between them.

I understand we are in a lucky position where we could vote for something different.

I understand that as soon as there is a chance we have a military coup I’ll be front and centre of the resistance along with Coldplay and Julian Assange.

But my bet is on something much less dramatic. Much less JFK 9/11 Roswell Woodstock.

 

[Seat68]

I really think we don't see enough Zammo on this thread. 

Edited March 26, 2020 by Seat68

[OutByEaster?]

I look forward to the time later this year that the Conservative Party try to reinstate parking charges for NHS staff at Hospitals.

I think we'll learn then if anything has really changed.

 

[mjmooney]

59 minutes ago, bannedfromHandV said:

We’ve seen the evidence in the reduction in pollution recently and I think we’ve all now come to realise that the world can stop for a day without Armageddon taking form so I hope, that in the fallout of this, global governments agree to install green days where basically nothing opens, no factories, shops, no flights etc and we all just have a day, at least once per month where we don’t go out, we stay home, relax and spend quality time with family and friends.

We had those When I Wor A Lad. They were called 'Sundays'. 

[bannedfromHandV]

1 hour ago, mjmooney said:

We had those When I Wor A Lad. They were called 'Sundays'. 

Indeed, I'm old enough just about to remember.

[blandy]

10 hours ago, Mandy Lifeboats said:

If you hear hooves coming rapidly towards you from behind it’s extremely unlikely to be a zebra. So why would anyone assume it’s a zebra without having rock solid proof that it is?  The simplest solution is that it’s a horse, you should expect it to be a horse and you should do whatever is the right thing to do with a horse.  

Nb  If you live in Africa on a zebra farm please ignore this dangerous advice. 

It’s clearly not a black and white issue.

[lapal_fan]

5 hours ago, OutByEaster? said:

I look forward to the time later this year that the Conservative Party try to reinstate parking charges for NHS staff at Hospitals.

I think we'll learn then if anything has really changed.

 

I'll whisper this VERY quietly, but I've heard that parking charges for senior NHS staff is going up, NHS staff generally will go up in an effort to make over 60s parking free.

The park and ride I use to get into work will become chargeable (currently free) and I could buy a bus pass.

I'm a bit torn, but I like the idea of helping the older people onsite where parking is shit atm

[Awol]

The Dutch just kicked the idea of Coronabonds/Eurobonds (mutualised EZ debt issuance) into touch. 

Italy, Spain and probably French banking systems will be in the hurt locker quite soon. 

[maqroll]

Not the W.H.O's finest hour

[mjmooney]

Quote

This might not feel like the moment to go on about Brexit, but Brexit goes on whether we are feeling it or not. When people are worried about surviving April, December’s deadline for EU trade talks seems a long way off. Covid-19 may have eclipsed older problems, but they will not solve themselves in its shadow.

The disease has halted negotiations and infected the lead negotiators. All Whitehall capacity is being spent on the immediate crisis. Boris Johnson has no time for Brexit. If he did, he might want to practise some social distancing from the idea.

Suppose for a moment that Britain had not already committed to quitting the single market. Then imagine the government choosing the peak of a pandemic to plan new obstructions for goods flowing between the UK and Europe. Picture Rishi Sunak, wunderkind chancellor, explaining why supply chains must be disrupted and friction added at Channel ports. Ponder ministers selling the idea of a customs border between mainland Britain and Northern Ireland – sand in the wheels of recovery, plus salt in the wounds of history. Pitched that way, as a post-viral convalescence strategy, the UK’s Brexit trajectory is absurd. Johnson’s best-case scenario – a “Canada-style” deal – promises only shock to a debilitated system.

 Even before coronavirus, the December deadline looked fanciful. Transitional arrangements can be extended if a request is made in Brussels by the end of June but Downing Street denies thinking of such a thing. The official line stresses that the current timetable is enshrined in law, as if to imply that it cannot be changed.

It can, but only with parliament’s permission, and the prime minister is in no hurry to ask his MPs. Civil servants and some senior Tories think he has no choice, but they see logic in leaving it to the last minute. The crisis will get worse before it eases, and the further Johnson marches his party down this gruelling road, the more of its unwieldy ideological baggage gets discarded. A few more weeks of lockdown and Brexit hardliners might be persuaded to rubber-stamp a second year of transition, given that the first one will be lost to sickness.

Covid-19 has already ravaged conservative orthodoxy, provoking economic intervention on a scale unimagined by any chancellor in recent history. Fiscal discipline is gone, while the new state bossiness about private behaviour makes libertarian Tories squirm. Euroscepticism has not yet been compromised in the same way, but that doesn’t mean it is immune.

There are early symptoms of discomfort in the government’s confused response to a joint European tender for emergency medical equipment. No 10 said it had not taken part because of Brexit, then changed its story. They claim an email invitation had been missed. But officials had known of the scheme for months. By some combination of arrogance and incompetence the government excluded itself from one piece of European cooperation that no one could reasonably denounce as a compromise on sovereignty.

That mistake doesn’t yet carry a political penalty. Details of what the EU actually does has never much excited public opinion, except when it can be caricatured as an affront to cultural autonomy. But the urge to cut every fibre of every thread that binds the UK to Europe is also a minority compulsion. Johnson’s electoral mandate was to get Brexit done, mainly so that sweaty European debates might be relegated back to their pre-referendum position on the political fringes. If the prime minister now decided that the small print needed amendment I doubt there would be uproar. If there is one person in Britain capable of serving hard Brexiteers something softer while claiming the taste is the same, Johnson is that man.

In the longer term, events have a way of proving everyone right in their own imagination. Pro-Europeans will see the pandemic as confirmation that modern threats know no borders, and that cooperation on a continental scale is the inevitable solution. Eurosceptics will point to the primacy of national responses in every country to argue that the plot for a federal superstate goes against nature’s grain. Each side will find evidence to support their view. The crisis offers examples of cross-border solidarity and nationalist self-isolation.

It has demonstrated the logic of continental cooperation and probed continental fault lines. There is renewed tension within the eurozone because German and Dutch taxpayers don’t like underwriting Italian debts. There is dismay at Vikor Orbán using the cloak of emergency powers to suffocate what democratic spirit is left in Hungary. The virus will also be a shared trauma that might, as in the past, cultivate the sense of common destiny that underpins collaborative European politics.

EU structures will evolve through Covid-19, as will the character of the European project. Britain will have to define its relationships in this new context, although plenty of people in Westminster would rather resume the old debate or pretend there is no debate to be had – that campaign rhetoric from 2019 answers questions unasked before 2020.

The thing called “Europe” that has dominated British politics in recent years is a creature of the Eurosceptic imagination, with only cartoon resemblance to the real EU, animated by exaggeration of powers held in Brussels and paranoia about the way they are wielded.

Now that the nation faces a truly frightening menace it should be obvious that EU membership never belonged in that category. The downsides were too banal to justify the bellicose frenzy against it. The reasons people gave for separation have not gone away, but it gets harder to mould that cause as the stuff of national glory. Escaping continental regulations for processed fish is not in the same bracket as Agincourt and Dunkirk.

Eurosceptics will claim vindication if coronavirus plunges the EU into an existential crisis, but history might also judge them harshly. They waged a generation-long battle against imaginary threats, claiming victory on the eve of meeting a real one. Coronavirus has not just bumped Brexit down the political agenda, it makes the whole project look parochial and self-indulgent. Britain’s EU membership expired on 31 January, but the doctrine that cast Europe as a national affliction should be buried alongside it.

Grauniad

[Stevo985]

I'm amazed at the amount of people desperate for us to now plough money into public services that have voted Conservative for the last 10 years.

[Genie]

On 26/03/2020 at 22:18, Awol said:

The Dutch just kicked the idea of Coronabonds/Eurobonds (mutualised EZ debt issuance) into touch. 

Italy, Spain and probably French banking systems will be in the hurt locker quite soon. 

I have wondered how much autonomy these countries have over their economies without EU intervention.

If Italy throws a load of money at FIAT group for example could it be seen as state intervention and break the competition rules?

Edited April 1, 2020 by Genie

[chrisp65]

2 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

I'm amazed at the amount of people desperate for us to now plough money into public services that have voted Conservative for the last 10 years.

 

Draw a Venn diagram of self interested tory voting pensioners, self interested brexit voting pensioners, people being told they are most likely to die due to Covid 19.

There’s the answer!

[Chindie]

1 hour ago, Stevo985 said:

I'm amazed at the amount of people desperate for us to now plough money into public services that have voted Conservative for the last 10 years.

It's perfectly in line with conservatism.

I'm alright Jack, until I'm not alright, then you make sure I'm alright.

Of course we are now seeing the new form of conservatism where it's more of a callous let em die it might save a penny form, but generally it's a good fit.