Government publish official updated guidelines; Box Hill bike shop claims telephoto lens antics forced closure; Brighton gets cycle lane on major A road; Will latest lockdown regs change our riding?; Uttrup Ludwig has a sh*t day + more on the live blog

You are correct unfortunately. The usual councils (in London) Camden, Hackney, Lambeth, Enfield will continue to do good stuff for active travel and others like Barnet won't. Haringey is a peculiar case, it's centre left, it espouses and preaches active travel and cycling but actually does FA to promote active travel or make it easier. It's a borough criss crossed by rat runs, busy, hostile roads and angry, aggressive drivers. (And that's just during the 'lockdown')

Right, and the Government's new Statutory Guidance specifically says use physical separation because "road markings only are very unlikely to be sufficient to deliver the level of change needed."

Ah, yes! Fine words from a saintly pillar of political independence!  

Name a mass circulation politically neutral newspaper.

I'll wait.

That used to be The Independent, sadly no longer

Rich_cb wrote:

Name a mass circulation politically neutral newspaper.

I'll wait.

Probably closest is The Independent (though leaning leftwards a bit) or The Times (leaning rightwards).

From: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2017/03/07/how-lef...

That did used to be true of the independent but their new business model has seen them chasing millennial clicks and getting far more left wing as a result.

Rich_cb wrote:

That did used to be true of the independent but their new business model has seen them chasing millennial clicks and getting far more left wing as a result.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of their opinion pieces (nor the Guardian's either) even when I broadly agree with the sentiments therein. I'd rather reporting stuck to facts and events that happen.

I had a brief read of that Telegraph article (I usually avoid reading it due to the paywall as well as not usually agreeing with the politics) but it didn't really contain anything of interest. I'd expect political parties to break solidarity when the govt puts out a garbled message. How, precisely, am I supposed to Stay Alert to an invisible virus?

Another point is that unlimited exercise is now allowed though it was previously allowed anyway (exercise being one of the valid reasons to go outside and no limit specified).

I think the exercise thing is a changing of guidance rather than legislation. The guidance before was for a bicycle ride of around an hour's duration.

The huge publicity is a bit out of keeping with a relatively minor change but the publicity massively benefits cyclists so I'm not complaining!

You can't stay alert to the virus itself but you can stay alert to situations were you might be at higher risk of contracting it. I don't think that's too difficult to interpret.

That was pretty much the point of the article, people are feigning confusion and that 'confusion' appears to be heavily split along partisan lines.

Indicating it's not real confusion but merely opportunism.

From Labour's pont of view they are being politically savvy in criticising the communication. It saves them from committing to a strategy and leaves them free to claim they would have done things better regardless of the outcome.

Rich_cb wrote:

I think the exercise thing is a changing of guidance rather than legislation. The guidance before was for a bicycle ride of around an hour's duration.

It wasn't. It said nothing at all about duration.

I think back stabbing Gove mentioned timings in some throw away remark.

hirsute wrote:

I think back stabbing Gove mentioned timings in some throw away remark.

The back-stabbing thing was entirely false, and the whole thing of Gove letting Boris down by standing for the leadership himself was a con.  Neither Boris nor Gove wanted to face the shit storm that was Brexit, despite the fact they'd caused it, and needed a way for them to avoid being elected, so Gove initially supported Boris for the leadership, then announced his own candidacy, knowing very well that he didn't have a chance, and allowing Boris to bow out claiming wounded pride.

If Gove really had done it, would he be in the cabinet today, and best buddies with, guess who, Boris the Liar?

I've obviously spent too much time listening to Dead Ringers

I think Gove said that did he not?

Gove made an off-the-cuff comment when pressed in an interview - it wasn't part of the guidance and didn't have any official standing.

Even so, he didn't exactly say that anyway. He said it would depend on people's fitness, and he would imagine for most people a cycle ride would be about an hour. So he was speculating about what the majority of people might be capable of, but not stating that it was the case, or laying down any limits.

"Lawyer and policy expert David Allen Green" refers to it in the tweet embedded in the live blog as a "change in guidance".

If it bothers you that much go and argue it out with him.

I honestly don't care.

The official guidance (slightly weirdly) said that it should only be 'one form' of exercise a day. Subsequently, in the daily briefings (which could reasonably be considered part of official guidance), mention was made of 'exercise once a day'.

It's these constraints that have been removed from the guidance, not any restriction on the amount of time you could exercise for, which, as DAG says in the tweet above, was never limited in the first place.

There wasnt a change in guidance but the media reported it as though there were one,presumably on basis that any utterance from a cabinet member is immediately government policy, but that is why we should care about it because that media interpretation resulted in a stack of anti cycling rubbish directed at cyclists who werent doing anything wrong.

"claim they would have done things better regardless of the outcome"

Nobody could have done things worse.

There was negligence in not taking measures soon enough at the start, and this is negligence in opening up before you've got test, track and trace in place.

Your post makes it clear you have literally no clue what you're talking about.

This will go on for 18 months minimum.

Pretending that you know which approach is right or wrong a few months in just exposes your ignorance/arrogance (delete as appropriate).

That Telegraph piece does bang on about the criticism being partisan but it looks like the criticism goes wider afield and maybe the more accurate view is that the Tories are instead showing unity over this (which is possibly a good thing).

I disagree about "Stay Alert" not being vague though. What does staying alert to situations actually mean? A message such as "Cover your face" or "Take precautions" or even "Keep apart" would be simpler and much more precise.

Even Tory MPs seem to be getting confused: https://twitter.com/Haggis_UK/status/1259766541794582528
(Sorry - features Piers Morgan who is a nasty piece of work)

Ultimately, I think the "Stay alert" message is partly designed to be mocked whilst hiding the lack of following scientific evidence (e.g. the message wasn't run past the usual medical advisors) and the lack of testing.

From: https://twitter.com/ESpringW11/status/1259548288556109826

Of course people on the right understand the current right-wing government's messages. Because they're all part of that "silent majority" which loudmouthed anti-elitists (with opinion columns in newspapers owned by billionaires) claim to represent (without a trace of irony). So they don't have to even stop of think about whether they understand it because, by definition, whatever they imagine to be the situation is what everyone (except a few work-shy lefties who somehow rule the world) also have in their minds. That is until, say, they go to Dover to film some propaganda video and get in a hissy fit when the police have a quiet word with them. The same groupthink can occur on the far left, in Soviet Russia for example, which shows just how far to the right some have swung that they resemble each other so closely.

It's always going to be difficult to convey a raft of instructions into a short and easily memorised slogan.

It has to be broad enough to cover most guidance so will always be open to criticism that it's too vague.

I think 'stay alert' is about as good as you can probably get. Interestingly France have gone for a similar slogan.

Messages don't need to be run past medical advisors. They produce the advice the communications specialists produce the slogans.

It's not as if 'stay alert' contradicts any of the advice given.

That's just another media red herring.

Rich_cb wrote:

This sums up the 'confusion' some are experiencing nicely. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/05/11/lefts-hysterical-confusi...

For those, like me, who have ideological, trust and honesty issues with clicking on a link for the Torygraph, the headline reads "The Left's hysterical 'confusion' over No 10's plan is utterly transparent"

That's as far as I read.

Translation:

I refuse to challenge my predetermined views by reading anything outside my echo chamber.

Rich_cb wrote:

Translation: I refuse to challenge my predetermined views by reading anything outside my echo chamber.

That may be true but every time I click a link to a vaguely right wing media source it's either made up of utter drivel, complete bollocks or bare-face lies... or a combination of all three. No-one is really surprised if the Sun and its counterpoint the Mirror are like that, they are aimed at people with little intellect and no interest in facts, but the views expressed in the more 'serious' papers is a genuinely serious problem for democracy.

The headline referred to above is a fair example. I know the Torygraph has long been referred to the Conservative party's in-house newsletter but it stopped being even remotely even-handed in reporting news and current affairs some time ago.