Lockdown 2.0 was a con.

[Workingman]

It was posited to end, by law, on the 2nd of December for political and psychological reasons and that wil be the case. However, one minute later the vast majority of us in England will go into Tier 3, and some of the local rules applied there are stricter than the lockdown. So now we have a patchwork of rules where adjacent areas, and even some neighbours in the same street, find themselves in different tiers. Talk about a recipe for setting one against another.

We have been played - again.

The lockdown should have been, and still be, UK wide and gone on for as long as was necessary. We need an end to the stop-start measures and either open up whilst protecting the most vulnerable in better ways or lockdown hard until it is safe(r) to ease up.

Mass vaccination, whichever ones are used, is not going to be in full swing or in full effect till late Jan or early Feb and we all need to understand that.

[cromwell]

It was. Sunak announced that furlough was going to run until March, but that didn't mean we were going to be locked down after Dec 2nd.
Of CO@URSE not!
Only it did, and anybody with a brain could see it.
But then, we're all supposed to be stupid.
Oh, and there are now rumours that lockdown etc is NOT going to end in March after all.
What a bl00dy shock - not.
I really cannot stand the constant lies.

[Workingman]

I really cannot stand the constant lies.

You and many of millions of others.

Once the lies start and then get found out the next ones have to be bigger or more blurred, and this is what we are seeing. "We can safely come out of lockdown." "Err, we need a short lockdown till December then we can all be free." "Lockdown will end, as planned, but we then need to go into tiers to control the virus." "The virus hibernates over Christmas so we can have five day break." "We do not have plans for a lockdown in the New Year, as yet." And on and on we go.....

[Gal2]

On the flip side, if we had been told we had to go into lockdown for X number of months AT THE START, that would have been far FAR harder to get our heads around and quite honestly I don't think anyone would have complied.

This way, although frustrating, it's easier to accept short bursts of tighter rules than a full on months-long spell. IMHO of course.

[Workingman]

Good point, Gal, but I have always said that the lockdown should have been for as long as necessary. Had we done that it would have been up to us and our behaviour how long or how short the lockdown lasted.

Imagine the get-out clause that would have given the government.

[Kaz]

On the flip side, if we had been told we had to go into lockdown for X number of months AT THE START, that would have been far FAR harder to get our heads around and quite honestly I don't think anyone would have complied.

This way, although frustrating, it's easier to accept short bursts of tighter rules than a full on months-long spell. IMHO of course.

I think so too. Imagine if we'd known in March that things would still be like this in December

[TheOstrich]

The trouble is, Kaz, back in March, we all thought by December we'd be dead !

Nine months in, however, we're still here, we now have "too much information", we have had talking heads jabbering at us 24/7, and none of those talking heads agree on anything. And we have a Prime Minister more concerned about his popularity than taking the hard decisions which need to be taken until an effective vaccine is rolled out. Johnson might have had a lot more respect if he'd played it straight rather than all this psuedo-lockdown Tier nonsense, and decreed a total lockdown until confirmed cases fell back to (say) 1,000 a day.

People will, begrudgingly, obey the rules if the dangers are spelt out, and Liverpool is a case in point. But any perceived weakness or waffle, and people will say "Sod it" and take advantage. And so the merry-go-round of waves of infection continues revolving ...

[cromwell]

And the lies continue.
Chris Whitty has now said that anywhere in Tier one "will rise".
Two things.
One, obviously the lockdown is going to get more severe. That decision has already been taken. Even if deaths and infections fall?
Two, when did Chris Whitty get to give the orders?

[Workingman]

Trouble is brewing with the vote on Tuesday re the tiers. It is said that about 100 Tories will either abstain or vote against. If Labour gets its act together, a BIG if, and also votes against then either the government or BoJoke could fall. Just what we need in a time of crisis, eh?

It is more likely that if anything is to give then the perambulating haystack will fall as no sensible party or parties will want to take on the mess the Tories have created.

[medsec222]

There is no easy way to do it if we want to get rid of the virus. We have slightly more freedom in tiers than a total lockdown.