In some ways, this is astonishing. Around a third of English respondents, presumably based only on short inserts in the UK news about what is happening in Scotland and featuring Nicola Sturgeon, feel Scotland is handling the outbreak better. The attempts by Sarah Smith and Ian Murray, to tell a very different story in those same broadcasts, have been ineffective.
The survey was based on 2 883 GB adults surveyed on May 29th. The Scottish sub-sample will have been around 8% or 230. Even if they all selected Scotland as having done better, a further 36% of mainly English respondents must have agreed.
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
Some people in England are now seeing through the tripe coming out the press and TV, as Scotland has done for year now.
When Emily Maitlis tells the truth, she is castigated first by her employers, but then by the Boris Gang in the London right wing press.
Sadly, Scotland has no “Emily Maitlis” journalists.
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Shout out for Lesley Riddoch and The National?
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Comment on twitter this morning about the composition of SAGE. Lacking any public health input one consequence of which was that there was no modelling done for the effect of testing. That testing was of little value rested on the planning being done for a flu epidemic which most people would catch anyway.
Ben Warner attended SAGE meetings. Who he? He is a pal of Dom Cummings and one of the Leave group campaigning for Brexit.
It is worth bearing in mind that Scotland’s CMO could attend and observe these meetings but not question. Any questions had to be submitted in writing in advance of the meeting.
Professor Alison McHarg said this about the possibility that the UK government dictated to the other UK countries.
“One of the unsatisfactory features of devolution is how informal the systems for inter-governmental working have been, right from the beginning, and how dominated they have been by the UK Government,” she said.
“The UK Government gets to really dictate the extent to which it will share information and share decision-making with the devolved governments, and if it doesn’t want to, they can’t force it to.
“That doesn’t mean it can dictate how the powers are to be exercised.
“But I guess if you’re not in the room when things are being discussed, or you’re not being able to influence those decisions, you might find yourself in the position of not actually having much choice about how you exercise those powers.”
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Deaths yesterday across Europe:
Spain 2
Italy 87
Germany 24
France 52
Turkey 28
Belgium 42
Sweden 84
Portugal 14
Ireland 6
Poland 13
Romania 13
Hungary 8
Netherlands 28
UK … 324 and in Scotland 15.
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Tweet from Tricia Greenhalghs
“a government that counts single gloves as an item of PPE, classifies kits in post as tests performed, & counts 2 different specimens from the same patient as 2 tests has lost the trust of the medical profession & public”
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“Complex and odd rules plus the Cummings effect mean the public will decide for themselves what to do about Covid-19”
https://www7.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2020/05/30/lockdown-is-over-what-next/
“It may be coincidence but the timing of the announcements of the reopening of schools and shops, and the relaxing of social distancing measures in England – as we now know, without the backing of SAGE; a marked departure from “being led by the science” – might easily be seen as an attempt to bury the bad Cummings news. If so, that would be reprehensible prioritising; if not, the government really should have made better efforts to answer ‘why now?’…..
….. If the government’s anti-Covid-19 strategy is to work, it needs the public to follow it willingly because there is not the means to enforce it otherwise. And the public will only follow it if it believes in it and in the government’s handling of the crisis. I have severe doubts on that score.
For one thing, the rules themselves make little sense. You can meet up with six people from different households as long as you do so outside – unless you have to walk through the house to get to the garden, which is ok; and you can go inside to the toilet as long as you clean it afterwards; and so on. No-one is going to bother with that level of detail, especially when senior members of the government (which includes advisors), are clearly not fussed about the rules anyway and the PM isn’t bothered about criticizing such broad self-interpretation.
Besides, if schools are re-opening for the youngest primary school children, who are clearly incapable of social distancing, and shouldn’t be asked to try, then that merely adds to the impression that the rules are all over the place and that people are best making up their own minds as to what’s best. Given lockdown fatigue, we can therefore expect quite widespread social interaction among groups who don’t think themselves high-risk.”
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