An excellent summary. There was a sign at a protest in the USA that read 'Trump, - we knew you'd be bad but fec k me' - you could replace Trump with Johnson. There is astonishing levels of theft from the public purse going on - but please look over there at the asylum seekers getting £30 a week.

The average age of a person dying from Covid is 82. Life expectancy in the UK is 81.

We have chose to destroy our society for it. Go figure.

I think the corruption of all these taxpayer-funded contracts going to Boris' cronies will end up being to him what the Iraq war became to Blair....less of an issue at the time it happened but after a few years when the public realise what happened he will be forever tarnished with it. Same with the housing secretary overruling Tower Hamlets council to get a Tory donor out of paying the levy on his development. This is the kind of dirty stuff that used to happen in European countries with corrupt politicians like Chirac in France or Berulosconi in Italy, where they had that kind of "nudge, wink" relationship with the electorate where people knew they were dodgy feckers but tolerated them for a while, but the UK was relatively free of it because of the strict rules in Whitehall (which Boris and his chums are tearing up under the guise of civil servants being 'enemies of the people').

The whole clash with the EU where they are ramming through that Bill to break their commitments in the Withdrawal Agreement, isn't about the Irish border or the EU "blockading food" like Boris is trying to say - its about being free from restrictions on State Aid (giving taxpayers money to private businesses) because Cummings wants to build his "British facebook", ie use taxpayers money to finance ventures from his tech industry pals.

In a few years time when everyones taxes go up and services are cut to pay for it and we're told "there's no money left" and they start finding out it was frittered away during Boris' days as PM in easy handouts to favoured donors they will go apepoop.

Johnson is like Trump but he's a lesser version of him and surprisingly weak in public performances. In the scenario which I suggested earlier where this had happened on Theresa May's watch, Boris would have been writing columns in newspapers taking the same position Dita's Slot Meter does on here, acting as the champion of "common sense" and "British freedoms" against the lockdown, because he'd be positioning for May's job. He was suited to that kind of outsider critique, he's not suited to being PM. He dithers about making decisions, then does something, mumbles about it when questioned, and U-turns later. I never liked him but thought he would have had a bit more personality and charisma about him as PM, but he's very weak in debates. I think the knives are being sharpened behind the scenes by some of his colleagues, notably Gove.

I’m not sure Sky would allow the RFL to make money from their live feeds. Let’s not forget, Superleague are not allowed to show any game live without the say so of Sky...

And it has also now been widely reported that Serco in turn have sub-contracted the work to dozens of smaller firms, some of whom have been involved in dodgy activity before, and others whose usual business in debt collecting.

Do you mean rather than a position that will, in the long term, cause far more health and social disaster than the virus itself ever will?

I actually agree with you over our ineffective government. Combined with an equally ineffective opposition and a gormless and easily manipulated population, we have all the ingredients for the absolute mess we are currently in and far from getting out of.

Out of curiosity, you often speak of not wanting this virus to 'rip' through our population - Do you seriously believe this hasn't already happened?

We currently have daily cases of over 6,000, with just over 30 daily deaths. Back in April, when testing was non existent and we had upto a 1,000 deaths a day, how many positive daily cases do you think there was?.. with the present figures, you could easily say it was well over 100,000 a day?

Like I have always maintained, we are hiding from a virus that behaves like flu. Kills the vulnerable, is an inconvenience to the vast majority. Our reaction to it, while predictable, begs the question of why we never react like this to flu and also suggests we can't ever return to normality, simply because we have set a precedent that any virus that kills must be hidden from and not lived with.

Flu doesn’t overwhelm healthcare systems with cases that require hospitalisation. You had hospitals in other parts of Europe having to make decisions about who to try and save because there weren’t enough respirators to go round to treat so many people. We locked down and stopped that from happening.

We actually closed our health system and turned it into the covid service. By doing so, we have just made a far bigger problem for further down the line.

For about the last 8 weeks, covid has been 8th on the list for causes of death in the UK. Even flu has claimed more victims in that time. So the question has to be asked of why don't we close our society down on annual basis for flu?

I totally supported that at the time, as it was an unknown virus and we didn't fully understand it or the best treatment for it. Hospitalisations and deaths are not at the same level now because they know how to deal with it. It will still kill thousands but not at the same rate it did previously. The statistics around the age of those dying and prevalence of pre-existing conditions also simply cannot be ignored.

The current restrictions are going to result in millions of people losing their jobs and millions of people losing their homes. That alone will create a far bigger problem than say 100,000 dying from Covid 19 would. Financially we are digging a hole that our children and grandchildren will likely still be paying for in 40 years. There is also the cultural impact this will have. It's inevitable that some professional RL clubs will go, the sport will be lost to towns all over the North West. Semi-pro football is also going to be bankrupted and out of existence. Amateur rugby teams, bars, restaurants, music venues. A lot of the places and activities we attend to enjoy life and distract ourselves from the depressing realities of life will be gone. The relationships and friendships built up in those places will be lost as well and the cultural loss is probably as significant as the economic one.

There's a balance to all this. What they should be saying is use a common sense approach. Everything can exist as it used to, but wear a mask in public places other than when eating/drinking. Temperature checks on doors of shopping centres and pubs/restaurants and sporting events etc. Anyone with symptoms HAS to isolate. Anyone found violating that is fined, any employer found with obviously positive cases on premises also fined. Visitations to care homes limited and non-physical etc. Schools moving to more digital solutions than in school education etc. Kids who don't have a laptop or internet or carer at home can go in, you'd minimise the number of kids in school, but can alternate it so all get to be around their friends part of the time. Protection of those with pre-existing conditions with a semi-permanent furlough scheme that helps them long term if they are unable to safely return to work, which we could then afford if the economy wasn't being frozen. There's so much we could be doing.

Instead we're willingly and deliberately self-creating one of the worst economic depressions there has ever been and recklessly ruining the lives of MILLIONS of people. All to save 100,000 people from dying, when given the demographics most of whom would die in a similar time frame anyway.

I've no doubt that in 10, 20, 50 years people will look back on this and view it in hindsight as a huge error. The Covid Calamity or The Willful Cancellation of Society.

Great post Saddened.

Sadly, we have a large number of our population who have been frightened into believing our only escape is a zero-covid society and our politicians (of all sides) are playing to that audience, despite it being obvious that it is highly unlikely to ever happen.

I can't honestly see why a season ticket holder would be allowed to watch a sky production via the RFL website when a pay on the door supporter can't. It would only be like the now tv day pass that allows for watching sport channels. I am not a sky customer & have no premium sports channels by any other platform.

I would think that Covid19 ,if it is related to the common cold for which science has found no known cure, will just have to be a virus that has to be lived with & accepted as a possible ongoing problem. We live with medical ,bacterial & biological problems every day of our lives & this is most likely something we will just have to get used to.

I agree with this but most of this stuff has been going on anyway. It's been undermined by two things: failure of the testing and tracking system and government giving out mixed messages which have confused people and undermined trust.

For testing and tracking the principle is already in place with dealing with things like salmonella. If an outbreak is detected, they trace where it came from, rapidly track all the supermarkets and food outlets that could have contaminated produce and get them to remove or recall. They don't need to say "there's some salmonella out there, destroy all food stocks in the UK". An infectious disease is obviously harder to deal with but the same principle applies: if you have knowledge of where the outbreaks are then you know where the risks are and can have a better approach to risk management. If you've identified a series of outbreaks in Exeter then it's not going to affect people going to rugby league matches in the north of England. Enforce isolation of those affected, temporary closure of affected workplaces with testing of employees, if necessary introduce some stricter measures in Exeter for a couple of weeks, get on top of it. It's not 'zero covid' it's 'risk minimisation' covid but you needed to have the proper test and trace infrastructure to deal with it.

This is why it's been so destructive to award the contracts for political reasons to reward cronies than allowing it to be dealt with by public health experts. Then to deflect criticism of the government they abolished Public Health England, and increased Dido Harding's empire by putting her in charge of the things PHE used to do. The Sunday Times reported that they are looking to replace Simon Stevens as head of NHS England with Dido as well - the government is working to a different agenda here. They should be focusing everything on defeating the pandemic, instead they are playing politics and looking at how they can use the pandemic to political advantage by centralising power in the hands of a Conservative peer who they know will be receptive to their future 'plans' for the NHS.

For this to work it would have depended on a lot of public compliance to go along with social distancing and mask wearing and isolation if necessary but I think most of the British public would have been on board if they felt that the government was on their side and trying to enable as much normality as possible just with additional safety precautions. Unfortunately trust in government is very low, the Cummings affair did huge damage after people made big sacrifices for the common good and saw the rules didn't apply to everyone, but its not just about Cummings. The government started by talking up the threat of the virus and making everyone scared, then they tried to take political advantage by making it look like they were the ones trying to reopen the economy and it was the unions and Labour who were championing the lockdown. See Boris repeatedly baiting Starmer at PMQs to say it was safe to go back to schools or on public transport. In the civil service the problem was they have reduced office space to the point everyone is cramped into small hot desking environments in buildings with no windows, they made some adjustments which meant it was safer to come back but for a limited proportion of staff, so those who have difficult home environments for working from home could come back but the rest stay working from home if they could. But then Boris wanted to create a clash with the trade unions so started the instruction for all civil servants to go back which then undermined all the safety measures. The intended audience was his target voter base who are supposed to think "look at our Boris taking on them lazy civil servants" but it also sends a message that the virus is effectively over and we can all return to normal. Now about 3 weeks later he's saying everyone should work from home if possible.

People have seen all this mixed messages and just lost trust so the government's only tool left is a cycle of ramping up restrictions and then loosening them. I have always disliked Boris but a lot of my family supported him in the last election and would not hear a word of criticism against him at first, saying he was doing his best in an impossible situation. But something has changed in the past few months because now they are like "he's just an idiot", "he changes his mind every 2 weeks". It feels like when you have a coach of a rugby team and they reach a point where the fans just lose trust in them. He's past that point as PM.

The politicisation of this virus is a huge side issue. The main driver of the hysteria over this virus has undoubtedly been social media.

I said at the start, and still maintain now, that if Covid had happened pre-internet then we would hardly have been aware of it. We would have, at most, had the odd Daily Mirror front page about a particularly aggressive flu season and how the odd hospital was struggling to cope and using it as it's usual Tory-bashing angle that the Mirror so enjoys to take.

The vast majority of the population would have simply gone on as normal, with the usual spate of people, as is happening now, complaining of a particularly heavy cold or flu that they had.. The point is, social media has been responsible for turning mundane everyday life into the drama that it really isn't.

can i just say, on this point, if you want to go watch the social dilemma on netflix, well worth a watch and probably an eye opener to a lot of people

90% of this leftie garbage.

Similar to a detailed Bojo riposte at PMQs. Well argued sir.

Can you imagine if Boris was a Super League coach.

"Another 40-0 defeat Boris, are you feeling your position is under pressure?"

"Well....clearly....you're quite mistaken....we trained absolutely superbly....all week....an absolutely world class training session, and the middle class lefties at the Warrington Guardian should be ashamed of themselves for not getting behind this team....will they tell us that they support our efforts to win matches....rather than undermining us...."

'We trained superbly all week...' - reminds me of Reg Bowden......

Oh, [size=200 THANKS[/size

Just caught up with this - Obviously went very heavy on the apocalyptic tone for dramatic effect and the drama part of it was a bit cardboard, but the overall message was one which should make anybody a little nervous and one which is already apparent in modern society.

The supposed most informed generation are the most misinformed.

Just as a side note, away from the doom and gloom has anybody seen the squad that York City knights have put together for next season? We don't even know if it will go ahead but fair play to them they've been busy recruiting experienced players, Ryan atkins, cuthbertson, Clarkson, washrook and kirmind to name a few. Maybe they're thinking if a superleague team or 2 fold they want to be in a position too fill the void.

Will they come out to the Dad's Army theme tune?
Who do they think they are kidding?

Ha, there's still life left in those players so long as they have some young players with pace around them as well. Atkins will go well at championship level IMO got a couple of years left in him there. Eye-catching signings none the less. Morgan Smith is signed too.

danny kirmond should have retired a few years ago, great player in his day, barely been on the field for wakey recently