There’s a huge amount of doubt on whether the 100k a day testing target will be reached How likely or unlikely do you think it is that the government will hit its target of testing 100,000 people per day for coronavirus by the end of the month? (YouGov) Only a third intend to wear a face mask Providing you are able to get one, do you intend on wearing a face mask in public once lockdown is lifted?
A longstanding PBer tell his story Regular readers of the comments on this site will know that over the weekend, my father died after contracting coronavirus in his care home. The index case (colloquially, ‘patient zero’, but more accurately, the first documented patient in a disease outbreak within a particular population), was a patient recently discharged directly from hospital, into the care home. In the ten days which marked the period of my father’s infection, I understand that somewhere just…
In terms of audience and the length and quality of our comment threads the site is going through just about its strongest period ever. Inevitably the pandemic is keeping many people at home and PB has become a great place to come. Unfortunately there is a downside – the crisis has meant that our revenue sources, advertising and affiliate income from bookmakers have declined to almost a trickle and we are fast getting to a stage where it could my…
The fact that Jeremy Corbyn was elected Labour Leader despite the majority of the party’s MPs voting against him, was certainly a problem throughout his tenure. However, it seems we have a new twist to the saga: Mr Corbyn now appears to believe this was the principal reason why Labour failed to win the 2017 election – a victory that he was otherwise “absolutely confident” that Labour would have won “because it was all absolutely going our way”. What does…
With Boris still convalescing after his bout of the virus there have been mixed messages over the weekend about what the government intends to do. First there were reports that we were going to see a partial return to the normal state over a period of months with primary schools going back in a fortnight being the first step. Then it was being briefed that we’d see a much bigger range of shops being allowed to remain open. That has…
My 25/1 tip as next Labour leader. It might seem odd, even before a pandemic, to start looking at Sir Keir Starmer’s successor a fortnight after he was elected, in normal circumstances the earliest there might be a vacancy in 2024 and if Starmer takes power at the next general election there might not be a vacancy for a decade or longer so it is possible the next leader of the Labour party isn’t on this list. Things can rapidly…
Covid-19 is careering in many directions but among the most predictable has been the outbreak of Sinophobia. China is being blamed for causing the outbreak itself, for concealing its extent, for providing faulty equipment, for being too important in the manufacturing chain. President Trump has pushed the idea of a China virus for all it is worth. Not to be outdone, Nigel Farage has claimed that many members of our big business class, of the civil service, and indeed of our political…