France back in lockdown

For all the spaffing that's going on about vaccines it's worth noting that France, Spain, Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Croatia, Romania, Sweden, Poland, Ireland, Greece, and Italy have all handled the pandemic better than the UK government when you look at per capita deaths. Our death rate attributable to Covid shames our government, being one the worst in the world.

No doubt someone will be along soon to tell me that we count differently to others. This is probably due to the Priti Patel book of mathematical equations being employed by UK government.

Having said that spending £126k of tax payers cash to get a shag is significantly better value than the billions wasted on world beating hide and seek (track and trace) program. Mind, I suppose the whole country got shagged with some of the contracts doled out to Tory cronies.
All that is very true, but the way the rest of Europe is handling the vaccination roll out is only making the tories look better and unfortunately as things like Brexit have shown, the general British public is more interested in soundbites than cold hard reality.
 
All that is very true, but the way the rest of Europe is handling the vaccination roll out is only making the tories look better and unfortunately as things like Brexit have shown, the general British public is more interested in soundbites than cold hard reality.

I don't think it's anything to do with soundbites.
By any metric, the UK government's vaccination programme is one of the best in the world.

The problem is that the UK government's response to the pandemic in virtually every other part was poor.
There's only Russia that has a higher death toll than us in Europe.

But it shows how badly it's going in the rest of Europe right now that we're being overtaken by many countries in Europe on a per capita basis after the horror show our government put us through last year.
It's looking like Italy will overtake us again in the next few weeks.
 
As an addition to my earlier post, I remember thinking during the first lockdown that the pandemic might actually see us emerge with a more holistic approach to our existence and that we'd be more mindful of our effects on others and the environment. What has become apparent though is that we won't change enough to make a discernable difference and that saddens me.
We've seen in the US and now in Europe that certain politicians are incapable of understanding that they are elected to serve the people and not themselves.
If we don't arrest our progress down the path we are on then I worry that the next pandemic we face could be even worse. Not only are we encroaching more and more into animal habitats in the search of profit, which will expose us to more and possibly deadlier pathogens, but our leaders seem less than statesmen and more like egomaniacs interested only in themselves.
I wonder how many deaths are directly attributable to the political dithering by the French and German governments.
 
Anecdotal evidence, but I know a French man in Paris whose mother is refusing to get vaccinated until she's offered something different than the AstraZeneca one, and he's managed to get himself booked in for a jab at the pharmacy because there's such a low uptake.
He's not even 30.

Apparently that pharmacy is changing to the Johnson and Johnson vaccine only because so many people are refusing the AstraZeneca jab now, and that won't even arrive for a few weeks yet.
I know people doing the same here, at least one mentioned giving it a miss on this board until he could get the Pfizer jab.
 
For all the spaffing that's going on about vaccines it's worth noting that France, Spain, Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Croatia, Romania, Sweden, Poland, Ireland, Greece, and Italy have all handled the pandemic better than the UK government when you look at per capita deaths. Our death rate attributable to Covid shames our government, being one the worst in the world.

No doubt someone will be along soon to tell me that we count differently to others. This is probably due to the Priti Patel book of mathematical equations being employed by UK government.

Having said that spending £126k of tax payers cash to get a shag is significantly better value than the billions wasted on world beating hide and seek (track and trace) program. Mind, I suppose the whole country got shagged with some of the contracts doled out to Tory cronies.
I agree with all of that which is why I think that most of us are just relieved that our vaccination progress is going so well.

The two are not mutually exclusive. As has been said, we need the continent and the rest of the world to be improving to get any semblance of normality but it's OK to be glad that things are improving closer to home with the awful way things have been managed
 
Further up though you said that would be us in 10/16 weeks? Or are you saying there’ll be a mutation that renders the vaccine basically useless?
I meant to just quote the following part "The only way we'll end up in a fourth lockdown will be if vaccines prove less effective than reported or there's a new mutation."

"Exactly this" was in reference to mutations coming into the country and impacting us and causing another lockdown....it's the nature of a novel virus, it has massive scope for mutations and until we get an effective global vaccination programme we will be pishing in the wind.

I also think misinformation to stop people taking the vaccine will be harmful, youths refusing to have the vaccine will be harmful, and international pressures to fairly share vaccines will be costly.
 
We are a lost cause. Time to wipe the slate clean and give some other creature a shot.
The problem with France is not Macron, the problem with France is the French, would rather spend time discussing rather than doing, it's just perpetual blahblahblah and no action, if anything Macron is the least guilty of this, he just has to deal with a parliament full of professional gobsh&tes and an inordinately large number of fonctionaires that have hardly had to do a day's work in their lives.
 
The problem with France is not Macron, the problem with France is the French, would rather spend time discussing rather than doing, it's just perpetual blahblahblah and no action, if anything Macron is the least guilty of this, he just has to deal with a parliament full of professional gobsh&tes and an inordinately large number of fonctionaires that have hardly had to do a day's work in their lives.

I was actually referring to the human race as the discussion had turned in that direction, though I know some people that would like to see the french wiped off the slate. :giggle:

I can't agree with much of that smog although there is rather a lot of waffling goes on, but I'd rather that than the situation in the UK at the moment where Parliament itself hardly gets a say in the decision-making process. It's part of the french nature to endlessly disuss problems - possibly because philosophy is still taught at school.

Macron as President doesn't deal with Parliament, he just gets his Premier minister to do his bidding. There is effectively no opposition at the moment so he has little impediment to do what he wants to do, he's just not doing it well.
 
The problem with France is not Macron, the problem with France is the French, would rather spend time discussing rather than doing, it's just perpetual blahblahblah and no action ....
In fairness to the French, their productivity (as measured by GDP) is pretty good (6th on this list; UK 13th). While this table has some oddities (Norway has a lot of oil; Ireland skewed by some corporate rules) it is fair to compare countries of "similar" sizes - UK, France, Germany and Italy, for example.

On an anecdote I was on the board of a French company (tokenism - it was UK owned). My experience was that, in work, people did crack on with it; if you wanted a 7 hour discussion going nowhere just ask about Macron, Americans or cheese at dinner. Vaccine scepticism is more difficult to explain, but not wholly surprising.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/most-productive-countries
 
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.... also as pierre said somewhere in this thread .... get ready for a Le Pen win. People on the left (OK - the 6 people I know in the periferique) are talking about abstaining next time if its Macron v Le Pen in the last round ....
 
There is going to be a catch up on 2nd doses in the coming weeks in the UK.

Across Europe there has been an inequality in sharing doses. The UK has adopted a "GREEDY" rather than a balanced approach.

However we will all only get the benefit when all (not just individual parts of the continent of Europe) are vaccinated.

The UK government is interested in short term points scoring. Due to trying to cover up previous failures.
Unfortunately our European cousins,( not sure I can say that anymore) didn't help themselves by failing to approve AZ for use.
As the U.K was being hit the hardest in terms of death rate, with the worst demographic, why is it greedy of them to negotiate/facilitate adequate supplies. The way I see it, the U.K had to get on with it, whilst in Europe they enjoyed their Indian summer.
As for the U.K point scoring, in a pandemic I don't think so. Maybe getting behind those why have made it happen is more accurate.
 
Unfortunately our European cousins,( not sure I can say that anymore) didn't help themselves by failing to approve AZ for use.
As the U.K was being hit the hardest in terms of death rate, with the worst demographic, why is it greedy of them to negotiate/facilitate adequate supplies. The way I see it, the U.K had to get on with it, whilst in Europe they enjoyed their Indian summer.
You are entitled to your opinion. I disagree with it. However I am not going to get into an argument over it.
 
I did specifically say "fonctionaires" as hardly having done a days work in their lives, the French private sector is not that bad... over 20% of the working population are public employees in France, most of whom have basically had their backsides wiped all their working lives. Is it any wonder the vaccination program is as bad as it is ? It's embarassing that countries the French typically look down their noses at (like Romania or even the UK for example) are doing significantly better.

As for the French endlessly discussing because they do Philosophy in school... they only do it for one year in terminal (i.e at 17 years old)... I've seen what they do, it's essentially being lectured to, not much discussion going on, they're certainly not being taught critical thinking.

And Le Pen... maybe, but not as a result of Macron, as a result of the seeming left-wing wokism spreading through French society, from the schools to the media and politicised by Melanchon.
 
I did specifically say "fonctionaires" as hardly having done a days work in their lives, the French private sector is not that bad... over 20% of the working population are public employees in France, most of whom have basically had their backsides wiped all their working lives. Is it any wonder the vaccination program is as bad as it is ? It's embarassing that countries the French typically look down their noses at (like Romania or even the UK for example) are doing significantly better.

As for the French endlessly discussing because they do Philosophy in school... they only do it for one year in terminal (i.e at 17 years old)... I've seen what they do, it's essentially being lectured to, not much discussion going on, they're certainly not being taught critical thinking.

And Le Pen... maybe, but not as a result of Macron, as a result of the seeming left-wing wokism spreading through French society, from the schools to the media and politicised by Melanchon.

On studies like this, the UK and France look pretty similar, and falling down the table. Aren't our PISA scores in the same range too? i.e. in the lower bands.

We did have a critical thinking test with, various country norms, and the French norms were definitely higher than the UK and US. We included sector specific norms, included public sector managers. Although it was difficult to control for the effects of translation.

As a French education minister once explained, it was more difficult for English speakers to think logically, as the brain used "French" word orders and grammatical structures, not "English". 😁
 
And Le Pen... maybe, but not as a result of Macron, as a result of the seeming left-wing wokism spreading through French society, from the schools to the media and politicised by Melanchon.
I can only speak for my massive sample of 6 left leaning Parisians. They are no longer prepared to choose between (in their view) two candidates of the right on the "least worse option" argument.

I think pierre's wife is in a similar position - "time to lance the boil".
 
I did specifically say "fonctionaires" as hardly having done a days work in their lives, the French private sector is not that bad... over 20% of the working population are public employees in France, most of whom have basically had their backsides wiped all their working lives. Is it any wonder the vaccination program is as bad as it is ? It's embarassing that countries the French typically look down their noses at (like Romania or even the UK for example) are doing significantly better.

As for the French endlessly discussing because they do Philosophy in school... they only do it for one year in terminal (i.e at 17 years old)... I've seen what they do, it's essentially being lectured to, not much discussion going on, they're certainly not being taught critical thinking.

And Le Pen... maybe, but not as a result of Macron, as a result of the seeming left-wing wokism spreading through French society, from the schools to the media and politicised by Melanchon.

You seem to have a very jaundiced view of France and the french which is your right, and I don't think anything I say will change that so will leave it there.
 
I can only speak for my massive sample of 6 left leaning Parisians. They are no longer prepared to choose between (in their view) two candidates of the right on the "least worse option" argument.

I think pierre's wife is in a similar position - "time to lance the boil".

Partner, not wife - once bitten twice shy. ;)

In the lunchtime news there is rising speculation that Édouard Phillipe will throw his hat into the ring for the presidentials. That could be a game changer. He is Macron's former Premier Minister but was replaced just as his handling of the first Covid crisis last year made his approval ratings far higher than Macron's. Although he is a former Republican I much prefer him to Macron as a person, and his popularity 'may' convince enough waverers to support him. His policies will ultimately determine that of course.
 
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