Mmhmm brother in law's dad.
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!
Do we need a coronavirus thread?
(5710 posts)-
Posted 3 years ago #
-
Noticed this afternoon that the cones preventing (or at least discouraging) access to cars, vans etc at the "dog walkers' car park" on Hermitage Drive/Midmar Drive, and the parking area by the gates at Blackford Pond have been removed. This would seem to support the general interpretation of the phase 1 lockdown easing, that it's now OK to drive to a place where you plan to take your exercise.
The updated guidance from the MCofS seems to be in alignment with that interpretation as well, although they do warn that car parks may not be open.
Braid Road is still closed south of the Hermitage Drive junction though. But that may be part of the "pop up" provision for cycling and pedestrianising?
I haven't yet checked whether the Pentland Hills park folks have decided to open up their car parks. Anyone been by Bonaly, Harlaw, Thriepmuir or elsewhere to see what's what there? (Swanston is just a knock and a spit away from casa mia but I haven't been that way today.)
Posted 3 years ago # -
Would be nice to think someone, somewhere monitors what happened in the city today.
Doing a couple of runs with Helios cargo was pretty awful - felt almost like back to where we were except the pent up demand to exercise cars was palpable.
Had dozy aggressive driver turn right onto Lothian Road ignoring filter light and green pedestrian phase. I legally entered road from Bread St and held a middle lane - then she actaully tried to come alongside and drive me off the lane as I approached the lights. I resisted the use of her little white Kia as a weapon and glared in as she undertook me heading to Home St.
At Kings Theatre a cyclist and car almost hit on the junction - queues of cars at many places.
Meadows is like an urban beach today. One crossing was enough.
The 'new normal' seemed much like the 'old normal' with added aggro today. Some people maybe thought cycling in the city was like a theme event that ended yesterday and are re-asserting their 'ownership of the road'.
Posted 3 years ago # -
@ejstubbs - i am informed the harlaw and Thriepmuir car parks are still closed so hordes could park in high school car park and walk up via saw pit woods.
@baldycyclist, my wife’s nieces and nephews are lovely people who call me their uncle but I am not sure that is right. Similarly I decline to accept that your wife’s sister’s husband is your brother in law, i say he is your sister in law’s husband. If i have followed this correctly. However I am happy to be ignored or corrected.
Posted 3 years ago # -
“I am happy to be ignored“
No no, the world would stop turning.
Posted 3 years ago # -
@gembo, there are differnt views, this one supports it:
https://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/brother-in-law#brother-in-law__3
Others don't, but either way I've never been able to buy a wife's sisters husband birthday card.
Posted 3 years ago # -
“
'It's going to get wild': Scotland begins to ease coronavirus lockdown
“
Posted 3 years ago # -
Huge gatherings at Sighthill Park and Saughton Park/skate park this evening.
Posted 3 years ago # -
The reservoirs were busy this afternoon but not enough to be a problem - the car park closures seem to be working. A beautiful day for a ride. Views all the way over to the Kincardine bridge. City roads pretty busy though.
Posted 3 years ago # -
Carparks in Pentlands to open next weekend, forecast not so scorchio
Posted 3 years ago # -
London Covid hospital admissions continue to rise.
8,000 new infections a day.
Two SAGE members saying that easing of lockdown is too soon:
https://twitter.com/jeremyfarrar/status/1266470822564200456?s=21
I fear we are heading backwards.
Posted 3 years ago # -
Posted 3 years ago #
-
@baldycyclist - 5 mile limit is unique to here. Easy to miss when you're f!ying.
England allows 6 people from 6 different households. Not good for R number (no meeting up is though).
In England, groups of up to six people can gather from Monday 1 June. They can be from different households, but they have to meet outside - such as in parks or private gardens.In Scotland, two separate households - up to a maximum of eight people - can meet outdoors, ideally travelling no more than five miles.
In Wales, any number of people from two different households will be able to meet each other outside from Monday. As in Scotland, families should aim to travel no more than five miles. Beauty spots remain closed.
In Northern Ireland, groups of up to six people who do not live together can meet outdoors.
Posted 3 years ago # -
I can't think of a single reason that a government intending to protect its citizens wouldn't already have requested that extension, given the extraordinary circumstance of the pandemic.
Infection and death rates are currently four or five times what they were when the (late) decision to enter lockdown was taken. This makes the decisions to relax lockdown mystifying.
Unless the idea is create a small disaster that will occupy column inches and TV screens until - oops! - it's too late to request a withdrawal agreement extension.
Then on the first of January 2021 the prison doors clang shut on Great Britain and a small war starts in Ireland. I'm trying to find observations incompatible with my theory but the Cummings affair and everything else is compatible with it. Odd that the Labour party appear to be playing along too.
Posted 3 years ago # -
“
If Boris Johnson or Matt Hancock are reading this, I’d ask them to please go into the chatrooms you created and read what people are saying. You will see a lot of anger and confusion from a lot of people. And none of them have any faith that we’re properly set up to fight any increase in infection rate from this pandemic.
“
Posted 3 years ago # -
Possibly not the right thread. But I think the connections are there.
https://simonduffy.info/blog/colonialism-version-3
"The fact that the economies of the North are now equivalent to countries that suffered more than 40 years of colonial exploitation by Soviet Russia is perceived to be ‘our own fault’. We are seen as non-productive, non-competitive and somehow unworthy. The disdain and prejudice which seeps into general political debate is not just the projected prejudices of the powerful in London, it becomes part of our own story. We accept it.
At a meeting about austerity one council leader, who shall remain nameless, said to me:
“Well we had to save the banks. We need them don’t we?”
It still shocks me to think that someone could believe that a bank - the place money goes to die - is part of the real economy. London’s excess wealth is not built on growing things, making things, ‘competing’ or doing anything worthwhile. The excess has been expropriated by banks and other financial organisations, the glassy-mirrored edifices that loom over the capital’s skyline. Thatcher gave to the banking sector the power to, quite literally, make money and it exploits that power by creaming off resources for itself. Central government adds to this injustice by pretending to redistribute resources across the country, while actually holding back much of that money for itself or for its friends in business and civil society.
The UK’s economic system is utterly broken and corrupt; yet we accept it as normal and inevitable.
If the people who occupied these positions of power had a different skin colour from the rest of us then we’d call this exploitative system ‘colonialism’. But we do not see it like that. Instead, while we might moan about London and ‘the Government’, we are much more likely to blame ourselves or those to whom we give the impossible job of trying to run local government under these hostile conditions."
Posted 3 years ago # -
“We” being everyone who doesn’t benefit from this as much as the few who run it?
Posted 3 years ago # -
@SRD
I was talking to a guy about Our Thing in 2014 and he asked me this question: 'But where will the wealth come from?'
I answered him without thinking: 'Same place it always does: from the hands and minds of working people'.
Neither of us expected the exchange to take place and we were left just looking at each other in a moment of beatific clarity.
Posted 3 years ago # -
Wardens up at Thriepmuir - parking on the verge up the Rig Road - warden could not do much about that. Some stupid people with big St Bernards, letting it wander across road when busy. I declined to descend by the SPCA road as it is very steep and I anticipated hoaching so went down cockburnhill which was quiet and then as it was first time in the moring with wind behind (wind dicked about nfrom Noertherly to easterly)
Farmer at Harlaw will be going mental as they will be parking all over his verges as the carparks there still shut. And road off the actual road that goes up to the car park shut too
Then retraced my steps to Buteland then on to end of tarmac at listonshiels - the modern mansion at the end had bunting out and gate to farm track down to Leithhead open (you could always take the stile but this is the road) So maybe a cheeky wee party.
All pairs out cycling now proud of being from separate households (same peeps as before just less shy). No one two metres apart. Still mostly singleto0ns and families
Posted 3 years ago # -
“London’s excess wealth is not built on growing things, making things, ‘competing’ or doing anything worthwhile.”
Of course it’s slightly more complicated than that!
One big employer/‘wealth’ generator is (was) tourism.
(The merits of which is a whole other debate.)
One thing that has emerged from the current HK situation is that (apparently) ‘nothing is made in HK’.
When I was a kid “made in Hong Kong” was ubiquitous (and a bit synonymous with cheap and nasty).
For a while Made in Japan was common - and often associated with innovative and quality. (Also Taiwan)
Since then it’s much more about ‘made in China’ (plus a myriad of countries where labour is even cheaper).
Meanwhile, allegedly, UK is still world class in high end engineering.
However there seems to be little thought about ‘well we’re not going to need so many jet engines so how about more research/development/manufacturing of renewable energy equipment, electric bikes etc’?
Posted 3 years ago # -
@chdot
Yes the truth is that wealth is created by the operations of the hands and minds of working people on materials found on or under the surface of the Earth.
But I didn't say that.
Wages, pensions, benefits, dividends and all that are the means by which the wealth is allocated, and also a small fraction of the operations alluded to above.
Posted 3 years ago # -
“
The government is facing increasing pressure from its scientific advisers over the decision to ease England’s lockdown.
Prof Peter Horby has become the latest adviser to express his concerns, saying on Saturday that while thousands of people a day are still becoming infected with coronavirus, lockdown measures may be being eased too soon.
“
Posted 3 years ago # -
'When I was a kid “made in Hong Kong” was ubiquitous'
Yes I remember those times. Back then of course Hong Kong was still part of the British Empire and China was still in the throes of the Cultural Revolution. Now China has its archepelago back and has invested heavily in manufacturing, becoming the new "workshop of the world" that Britain famously boasted of in the 19th century.
Posted 3 years ago # -
“
If your car has not moved for the past few months, why not furlough it? Insurers generally won’t let you pause your car insurance but you can cancel it and take a refund of the remaining months. You can tell the DVLA you are taking the car off the road with a statutory off road notification (Sorn) and cancel the policy. Check the savings and fees you will have to pay before you go ahead. You will also save the car tax for any full months it is off the road. But be aware that the vehicle has to be physically off the highway, on a driveway or similar. The big downside, of course, is that it will not be covered if it is stolen.
“
https://www.theguardian.com/money/ng-interactive/2020/may/30/cash-coronavirus-financial-shape-money
Posted 3 years ago # -
Funny, I was looking at the midlife crisis today, it's not moved since Feb, and has a few bits wrong with it that's not been worth fixing just now.
Might fix the window regulator and power supply, and fit new battery myself, but note the local garage I use is open again.
I replaced the wheel sensor for an ABS fault last month, but that's not fully fixed the issue so now needs professional to look at it.
Interesting that my wife's car MOT now expires in Nov, thought they would have rolled that back when garages started opening again.
Posted 3 years ago # -
Apparently people don't like the BBC when it tells the truth.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11743252/bbc-gets-40000-complaints-emily-maitlis-dominic-cummings-row/
Posted 3 years ago # -
Did Blackford, and many other MPs break lockdown to go to their family homes after being told only essential travel was allowed?
He said he self isolated at home for 2 weeks incase he had the virus, but seemingly wasn't concerned about getting on a plane.
Posted 3 years ago # -
“
Dominic Cummings has broken Covid-19 policy trust, say top scientists
Health experts warn lives ‘put at risk’, as Opinium/Observer poll shows slump in Tory support
“
Posted 3 years ago # -
“
Paris is gearing up for a battle for public space after the city’s mayor, Anne Hidalgo, said cafes, bars and restaurants would be temporarily allowed to set up tables on pavements and in parking spaces when they open this week.
“
Posted 3 years ago #
Reply »
You must log in to post.
posts
