BrizzleRed

I’ve already made my decision and decided one football match isn’t worth the possibility of messing up Christmas for, but I can certainly see your problem. Got to say your last sentence proves the no-win situation the authorities are is, as they are damned if they do, or damned if they don’t! Last year they were hammered for locking down and were accused of ‘cancelling Christmas’. This year they’re treating us as adults and leaving us to make our own decisions on what’s most important to us, and that’s also wrong. Who’d honestly want to be in government these day?!!!

I think what we’re supposed to do is trawl the net for every crazy fuitloop mad scientist who disagrees with the accepted view of science or medicine. When you find them, you follow whatever they say without question. I think the way it goes is, if you follow the mainstream, you’re a sheep and closed minded, but if you follow a ****** nutter, you’re a maverick and open minded. I think that’s right, but maybe this Bannerman chappie will confirm.

Do they have a bottomless pit though? All us taxpayers are obviously the pit and speaking for myself, my pockets are far from bottomless!

Ok get your point that you weren’t actually against some of these things, but show me an urgent crisis where there hasn’t been waste. I still maintain your post seemed to be aimed at putting a negative slant on any point you could possibly find and I don’t think that was down to my interpretation, but there you go. As for your comments about waste, you can’t spend weeks in a crisis too’ing and fro’ing negotiating contracts, whilst people are dying in their thousands. That was a time to get contacts done quickly to get what was needed, so I think they can be cut some slack on those cases. It’s also easy to be wise after the facts, especially when judging lengths of lock-downs, etc. Fair enough on the future NHS and you can’t keep running it at 95% + capacity indefinitely and expect it to hold up, so something definitely needs to be done there for certain..

So true I’ll bet if they ever get independence, they’ll still be expecting financial support from the UK for years.

Yes and that has to be paid back too. This is the real world, not some fluffy idealistic paradise where you wave a magic wand and every one of the world’s ills are fixed. We all know a lot of things can be fixed by throwing money at it, but that can’t go on indefinitely when you can’t afford it. By your comment, you suggest because we’ve already spent loads, there must be loads more available. I think we’ll all be in for a rude awakening when we see what cuts will have to made to pay this lot back, let alone add even more to the huge debts.

The only thing you’ve missed out on is explaining where that magic money tree forest is! The Welsh and Scots are now saying they’d like to re-introduce furlough, even though the government hasn’t actually closed anything down. Drakeford was on this morning saying how unfair it was that the nasty UK government is being unfair to the devolved governments by not agreeing to pay up. Anyone would think there was a bottom-less pit filled with money you can just dip into at will and never has to be paid back.

Awful story and puts into context how others deal with this virus. As for your last sentence in bold, that perfectly describes a ‘I want and I’ll have it’ generation. They seem to have the view that they don’t have to work within society and won’t be told or even advised what they should, or shouldn’t be doing. It seems they view fighting against rules and authority as a badge of honour and appear to be really proud of it and it isn’t difficult to spot them on here.

They’re coming thick and fast now. The players are just as likely to catch it as the rest of us, so this just goes to emphasise how much of it is out there now.

Passes probably would have helped if we were still at the point where we were a week or so ago. Things change fast and when you get runaway infections like we’ve got going on now, it possibly wouldn’t help that much now. With the delay between being infectious and actually showing up on a lateral flow test, it could mean there could be many who passed a lateral flow test on Saturday morning who could still still infect others. If you’re looking at covid passes as a ‘tool in the bag’ in tackling the virus, it could well be a very blunt one in the situation we have now. That doesn’t mean it wouldn’t have worked before this latest spike though.

Bet it would be a very different picture if all these muppets had to sign a disclaimer that if they continue to do what they want, they’ll waive any right to treatment if they get sick! You just know what their response would be though ….. oh no, that’s my human right to have treatment and I’m entitled to it just as much as those being careful and if I can possibly queue jump, I’ll do that too and tough shit to anyone else who suffers in the process. Selfish tossers

How can it, when there’s so many d1ckheads not following the advice. Add in the plonkers who only wear the masks over their mouth and leave their nose sticking out of the top and there’s your problem Anyone would think they didn’t breath through their nose, the ******* dimwits ?

If you’d been paying attention, you’d know that wearing a mask isn’t to protect you, it’s to help protect others!

Really sorry to hear you’ve got it and hope you’re on the mend really quickly. I know there are some right numpties around who clearly don’t care about anyone other than themselves, but your experience is a classic example of how it’s virtually impossible to control the spread of this, even when you do the right things. When people call for a lockdown when the case numbers start rising, you can’t help thinking of the stable door analogy. If the virus was the horse and the stable door was our containment controls, the horse had already bolted from the stable at least a week before we closed the stable door! It’ll be speading through London like wildfire anyway I reckon. I was up there on Sunday too and the more touristy areas were absolutely rammed and as you say, the tube was really busy too. Given how contageous this latest variant is, I think the government is basically at the point of saying, ‘here’s a vaccine if you choose to have it, but otherwise, there isn’t a lot more we can do and it’ll have to run its course’. Hopefully it’ll just mean a few days off work for most people, but there could be nuge numbers of people isolating in the next few weeks and services could take a massive hit.

I felt the first lockdown was pretty restrictive, though definitely not so much the second one. Saturday certainly doesn’t hold much attraction for me now either. I had no worries this time last week, so just shows how quickly the situation can change. Given the choice of going to the match on my own and then potentially risking Christmas with the whole of my family, its starting to look like a no-brainer for me. I can only see that getting an even more clear cut choice by Saturday morning. Can certainly see your thinking with you and your dad, as there’s more important things in life than a football match. Looking further ahead, I wonder if this will have an effect on the transfer window, with clubs being even more cautious due to uncertainty.

Would be interesting to know what the clubs would prefer: 1) You go ahead with the match, have a piss poor crowd and all the extra costs of the security and covid checks and possibly turn out to be a very efficient virus spreader. 2) You play behind closed doors with no atmosphere or bar or food takings and having to offer refunds for tickets sold. 3) Have the match postponed and have another game to fit in somewhere in an already busy schedule.

I reckon we’d only get another lockdown as an absolute last resort. The previous ones proved they don’t actually prevent infections and just delay them. The only benefit would be the possibility of getting more booster jabs done. Even if we had a lockdown tonight, you can guarantee there are tens of thousands who are already infected, who don’t even know yet and probably won’t test positive for another week, so the numbers would still grow massively anyway. The tipping pount could be if the infection rate translates into massive numbers of hospital admissions and the NHS really looks like collapsing. You can see the logic of trying to ride this out if possible, as you just can’t keep locking down.

Hope your son gets over it very quickly and it doesn’t mess up Christmas for him and his family. Trouble is with this virus, there’s a few days delay between being infected until it actually shows up on a test. That allows it to be spread unnoticed, which is why it’s practically impossible to get on top of, as it’s always one step ahead.

100% this and was thinking much the same. With the ST’s counted anyway, the official figure won’t be that low, but you can bet this will be easily the smallest league gate of the season if you did an actual head count on the day.

Completely with you and I’m seriously questioning if it’s worth the hassle and risk of going this Saturday. In normal circumstances I would definitely go, but we’ve got the whole family coming over for Christmas dinner and I really don’t think standing in a massive queue to watch 90 + minutes of probably shit football is worth screwing up Christmas for. Things are moving so fast at the moment, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if it was decided to suspend this weekend’s matches. With the rate doubling every couple of days, we could be looking at 150,000 new infections a day by Saturday. This could lead to a few more matches postponed due to covid in the squad anyway, so that may make the decision for the authorities anyway. F*****G virus ?

Still makes me shudder when I get a mental picture of that bloke walking up to take a penalty ?

Don’t disagree with most of the points you make, but most of your solutions are long term ones, though clearly should be things we’re aiming for. What bothers me is what you seem to be proposing for the short term though. The way I see it, there are two choices; either continue with some restrictions as we’re doing, or what it appears you’re suggesting. Let’s not sugar coat it, as it seems you’re basically saying the young, fit and healthy should be able to go out and live life as normal. On the other hand, the elderly, those with fragile health, or just plain fat b******s should all lock themselves in their houses until either their healthy relatives eventually infect them after ‘living their lives freely’, or their ill health or old age finally overcomes them. Have I got that one right, because that seems to be what you’re saying?

Yeah, you could easily smell the cellophane factory as you drove past Bridgwater on the M5. Smell would get right in the back of your throat. That glue factory was something else though. If the sags do move to the fruit market, someone out to come in and rebuild the place and stink the f*****s out. They may have been proud to stink of gas, but they wouldn’t be with that bone works! Handy for us though, as we can just call them the Glue Few!!!

My Dad used to work out of SWEB, which was next door to the glue factory. He used to occasionally smuggle me into work with him when I was a kid and I can clearly remember the stink from that place, even now. It was unbelievable and I’ve never smelt anything like it since thankfully. You’d never get away with something like that these day, as there were still a lot of houses around there, unlike today.