BRFR Cake Stop 'breaking news' miscellany

[briantrumpet]

Cake for us today. Cake for you tomorrow. Or at some point.

50 years? If you're lucky? Just as your mortgage buy-out becomes due...

 

[Pross]

Old news now but the company I worked for, and the vast majority of competitors, had us all working from home before the lockdowns were announced. The government were like deer in the headlights. Covid scared them and the solutions scared them more.

The company I was with at the time went ahead with their hospitality events for Cheltenham Gold Cup week. I was supposedly the person with H&S responsibility but my advice to cancel was ignored. I didn’t go as there was no way I was travelling on crowded trains at that point. About half the guests turned up and most ended up with Covid in those first few days of wave 1.

 

[Pblakeney]

The company I was with at the time went ahead with their hospitality events for Cheltenham Gold Cup week. I was supposedly the person with H&S responsibility but my advice to cancel was ignored. I didn’t go as there was no way I was travelling on crowded trains at that point. About half the guests turned up and most ended up with Covid in those first few days of wave 1.

Yup. It was pointed out at the time that Cakestop was ahead of the government at every turn.

 

[briantrumpet]

Yup. It was pointed out at the time that Cakestop was ahead of the government at every turn.

One sadness of BRF's demise is that that CS wasn't archived, because it did often seem to be ahead of the politicians. I remember that in the Brexit thread in the *very* early days (2016) after the referendum, the intractability of the NI situation was pointed out as being unsolvable without a border somewhere, and yet Johnson still claiming he could solve it in 2019.

It would have been interesting to go back on so many things and say "Told you so." It was a good repository of evolving collective discussion over time. As I'm sure that NCAP will be too.

 

[Rusty Nails]

Hindsight is a wonderful skill

It is also a chance to evaluate, based on evidence of what happened, what could have been done better.

Hindsight doesn't work before or after an event.

 

[BoldonLad]

It is also a chance to evaluate, based on evidence of what happened, what could have been done better.

Hindsight doesn't work before or after an event.

Not disputing the benifits of “learning lessons”, although, on past performance, lessons seldom are learned.

Is that hindsight too? 😂

 

[briantrumpet]

Has Spaffer Johnson appeared anywhere yet to profess that he's been terribly wronged by this report? Seems unlike him to take anything on the chin and not to blame someone else.

 

[briantrumpet]

If you've got 5-10 minutes to read 2500 words in a kind of stream-of-consciousness rant about Twitter, Bluesky, AI, and how the world seems to be going to hell in a handcart, this is quite a good romp. It's a bit sweary too, which is always a bonus. (The introduction about an art initiative might interest Mr H.)

https://youngvulgarian.substack.com/p/arent-you-tired-of-feeling-insane

I reckon you’d struggle to make the case for the world of ten or so years ago being all that fantastic but there is, I think, a profound difference between “things that are depressing” and “things that make you feel like maybe someone dropped a big rock on your head while you were sleeping and no-one told you about it”, and I actually prefer the former to the latter by quite a wide margin. Right now? I just don’t know what to say.

That’s the crux of it, I think: I’ve just spent 2500 words hysterically going on about this or that but really? I have nothing to say. Nothing I say works. Nothing I say matters. Our world is stupid and hateful and it didn’t have to be this way but here we are. farking hell.

 

[Pblakeney]

If you've got 5-10 minutes to read 2500 words in a kind of stream-of-consciousness rant about Twitter, Bluesky, AI, and how the world seems to be going to hell in a handcart, this is quite a good romp. It's a bit sweary too, which is always a bonus. (The introduction about an art initiative might interest Mr H.)

https://youngvulgarian.substack.com/p/arent-you-tired-of-feeling-insane

Just because Eeoyre is depressed, it doesn't mean that he is wrong. 😉

 

[briantrumpet]

Nathan Gill gets 10½ years in prison for accepting Russian bribes. Maybe that'll give a bit more incentive for the major news outlets to find out what Farage was up to while he was an MEP.

 

[Psamathe]

Hindsight is a wonderful skill

At the times when lockdown due yet Johnson dragging its feet everybody was saying how he should be doing it now not dithering. No Hindsight, more "come on Johnson, pull your finger out".

 

[Psamathe]

No one seems to come out of the Covid enquiry with much, if any credit, including the CMO and CSO, who were they most important advisers to the Government.

Fairly pitiful how those found lacking by the inquiry now start declaring the failings of the inquiry.

We all knew of most of their failings at the time. I lost my Dad to Covid very early despite his being within Hancock's "Protective Ring around Care Homes". "Protective Righ" might have been more effective if had extended beyond Hancock's imagination.

 

[briantrumpet]

At the times when lockdown due yet Johnson dragging its feet everybody was saying how he should be doing it now not dithering. No Hindsight, more "come on Johnson, pull your finger out".

So many instances - the one when school pupils went back for one day at the start of January before another lockdown was imposed, the three-day notice before the Christmas holidays lockdown, so Londoners could escape to Cornwall, and the subsequent skyrocketing of cases there. Everything Was Too Late, because Johnson had a desperate craving not to take what he thought would be unpopular decisions. I always go back to Eddie Mair's to-his-face interview comment "You're a nasty piece of work, aren't you?" Bang on.

 

[PurplePenguin]

So many instances - the one when school pupils went back for one day at the start of January before another lockdown was imposed, the three-day notice before the Christmas holidays, so Londoners could escape to Cornwall, and the subsequent skyrocketing of cases there. Everything Was Too Late, because Johnson had a desperate craving not to take what he thought would be unpopular decisions. I always go back to Eddie Mair's to-his-face interview comment "You're a nasty piece of work, aren't you?" Bang on.

One of the conclusions of the inquiry was that children were not given enough consideration and that lockdowns had an enormous impact on them. I think, on balance, I would prefer the PM to do everything possible to avoid closing schools.

One of things I think the inquiry should have found is that the right, with hindsight, response to covid may not be the best response to the next pandemic. Some of the initial failings came about, because all the UK's advice up to that point made out lock downs were pointless. The obvious danger is that the government becomes too gung-ho about the imposition of lock downs and tries to take that approach when it is not necessary.

 

[Pblakeney]

One of the conclusions of the inquiry was that children were not given enough consideration and that lockdowns had an enormous impact on them. I think, on balance, I would prefer the PM to do everything possible to avoid closing schools.

One of things I think the inquiry should have found is that the right, with hindsight, response to covid may not be the best response to the next pandemic. Some of the initial failings came about, because all the UK's advice up to that point made out lock downs were pointless. The obvious danger is that the government becomes too gung-ho about the imposition of lock downs and tries to take that approach when it is not necessary.

Surely the lesson learned should be to find out how the virus is spread ASAP and contain that.
Then use track & trace to find out who should be staying at home or which areas should be locked down.