With Covid-19 cases on the up and the Omicron variant rapidly sweeping the UK, fears of strict Christmas rules are beginning to emerge amongst those in the capiral.

Chloe Parkman www.devonlive.com

Although tougher restrictions have not yet been implemented, the UK Government has said a further 88,376 lab-confirmed Covid-19 cases have been recorded in the UK as of 9am on Thursday, the highest daily recorded since the pandemic began.

As part of Plan B England has reintroduced the wearing of masks in most public places after the announcement last week, and on Wednesday Covid passports will be introduced in nightclubs and other venues.

And as cases continue to rise ahead of Christmas, reports suggest Londoners are leaving the capital early for Christmas, with many flocking to the Westcounty.

According to the Daily Mail, commuters have described trains leaving the capital being packed with passengers laden with suitcases, bags and presents so they are assured of seeing their families on December 25.

The Daily Mail reports: “Mr Johnson has denied that there will be any further lockdowns or an escalation of his Plan B, those leaving admitted they have a ‘horrible feeling’ he might change his mind before Christmas Day with one million cases per day of Omicron predicted by Sunday.

“One person wrote the situation felt ‘like last year, the mass exodus from London spreading Omicron far and wide’. Another said: ‘Sadly this is true. Many London folk are still leaving for the West Country where it is inherently safer. Things can only get worse’.”

And for many across Devon and Cornwall, there is the feeling that history may well repeat.

Back in May of last year residents in Salcombe said they were “extremely frightened” after a number of second homeowners travelled from all over the country with their boats to visit the town as restrictions were set to ease.

Cars including Range Rovers (also known as Chelsea tractors), appeared within Salcombe, following the Government’s announcement on Sunday (May 10), which stated a slight ease with regards to the UK lockdown.

The flocking of second homeowners came after PM Boris Johnson announced, that driving your car to work and to travel somewhere in order to undergo unlimited exercise is allowed, however, nowhere did he state that families or indeed groups of friends, are able to travel to second homes.

The ‘Grim Reaper’ was even spotted standing on the Exeter Road roundabout last year holding a “Welcome holidaymakers” sign as restrictions began to ease.

The prank was not reflective of the general mood in the region, as Devon and Cornwall welcomed visitors back with open arms on day one of a major boost to the Westcountry’s economy.

The man, who wishes to remain anonymous, said that two men from a local business challenged him and ended up confiscated his sign.

This comes after many have expressed worries that easing lockdown might be too soon. Earlier today in Cornwall, another not so very welcoming sign was held by three pranksters over the A30, near Bodmin. It read simply: “Turn around and f*ck off. Read more here.

And in Cornwall, locals were faced with a similar situation.

Back in August of 2020 holidaymakers were being urged to follow social distancing rules in a bid to prevent Cornwall from being put under local lockdown.

Adam Paynter, deputy leader of Cornwall Council, warned that if people ignored the instructions to maintain a social distance, wash hands and wear a mask where appropriate, a local lockdown could potentially jeopardise the holiday season.

He said: “I urge all visitors to Cornwall to follow guidelines such as washing hands, wearing a mask when required to and maintaining a social distance.

“We want to avoid the local lockdowns that have happened further north that have seen places shut down and we want to make sure the attractions stay open for local and visitors to enjoy and don’t want to see anything closed and the best way to achieve that is if people do all they can to follow the rules to avoid spreading the coronavirus. If they do that, they’ll remain open.”

Ryanair has once again “trolled” the UK government on social media, imploring Rishi Sunak to “Come back to help out”.

www.independent.co.uk

The British chancellor is currently in California, prompting his critics to claim he is “missing in action” as omicron rates surge across the UK.

“It’s not often we plug our rivals, but there’s [sic] plenty of flights from California back to the UK if you’ve got urgent business to attend to #comebacktohelpout,” Europe’s biggest budget airline tweeted, alongside a graphic of Mr Sunak.

The carrier was referencing the “Eat out to help out” scheme, which the chancellor championed in the summer of 2020 to encourage Britons to patronise restaurants after months of lockdown.

Labour and business leaders have also joined forces to demand that the chancellor “come out of hiding” and put forward an urgent package for the hospitality industry to compensate for customers being urged to cut back on socialising as Covid infections soar.

Wes Streeting, Labour’s shadow health secretary, said: “It’s frankly inexplicable that the chancellor and the business secretary are nowhere to be seen.

“What they ought to be doing is getting business leaders and trade unionists around the table, as they have done at different points throughout the pandemic, to thrash out a package of support measures for these industries.”

The tweet from Ryanair is the latest in a string of social media attacks on the government over the last week.

Boris Johnson joined Downing Street officials for a party at No 10 during the first Covid-19 lockdown – with the prime minister telling one attendee they deserved a drink for “beating back” the virus, The Independent has been told.

www.independent.co.uk 

It is understood that about 20 civil servants and advisers gathered on 15 May last year for celebratory drinks inside No 10 and its garden. At the time, people from different households were restricted to one-on-one meetings outdoors, with gatherings indoors strictly forbidden.

The gathering took place after the then health secretary Matt Hancock had delivered a televised press conference, noting that 384 coronavirus deaths had been recorded in the previous 24 hours and highlighting a gentle easing of restrictions. The group is understood to have drunk alcohol, including wine, beer and coke mixed with spirits, and eaten pizza, with some staying late into the night.

The revelations – uncovered in a joint investigation by The Independent and The Guardian – are likely to pile pressure on Downing Street, which has come under fire over gatherings in No 10 around Christmas last year.

Drinks were poured at desks as participants huddled chatting just after the press conference finished at around 6pm that evening. It is understood that some staffers carried their alcohol into the Downing Street garden, making the most of the day’s good weather.

The event was characterised as a party by one source in attendance, who said aides had planned in advance to stay on for drinks, with a celebratory mood in the air as restrictions were loosened.

At one stage early on, according to a witness, the prime minister was present for around 15 minutes, during which he told an attendee inside, who had a drink in their hand, that they deserved their beverage for “beating back” the virus.

Only days earlier, on 10 May, Mr Johnson had told the nation in a televised address about plans to ease restrictions and, in a reference to the hardship that the country had faced, stressed that people had “shown the good sense to support those rules overwhelmingly”. Outlining an increase in fines for restriction breaches, he told the nation: “You must obey the rules on social distancing, and to enforce those rules we will increase the fines for the small minority who break them.”

Mr Hancock – who was forced to resign earlier this year after being caught kissing his aide in breach of social distancing guidelines – was present at one point during the event, according to a witness. However, a spokesperson for Mr Hancock said: “These allegations are not true.”

Asked about Mr Johnson’s “beating back” comment, and his presence at the alleged party where officials were drinking and socialising, a No 10 spokesperson said: “In the summer months Downing Street staff regularly use the garden for some meetings. On 15 May 2020 the prime minister held a series of meetings throughout the afternoon, including briefly with the then health and care secretary and his team in the garden following a press conference.

“The prime minister went to his residence shortly after 7pm. A small number of staff required to be in work remained in the Downing Street garden for part of the afternoon and evening.”

A spokesperson for Matt Hancock said: “Matt arrived at Downing Street at 4:43pm and gave the press conference that evening on lifting lockdown measures. After the press conference, which finished at approximately 5:53pm, Matt debriefed his own team, then went to the Downing Street garden to debrief the prime minister. He left Downing Street at 6:32pm and went back to the Department of Health and Social Care.”

There is no suggestion that either Johnson or Hancock drank alcohol themselves, or stayed late.

Mr Hancock had highlighted at the 50-minute press conference, held immediately before the gathering, that people could now meet one other person from another household, outside, for the first time since lockdown was enforced in March 2020 – a change that had come into effect two days earlier.

Mr Hancock described the “shared sacrifice” people had made in observing the stringent measures imposed in the months up to May in order to curb the impact of the virus.

Details have emerged in recent weeks of a series of parties held in No 10 and Whitehall at the end of last year, despite Covid-19 restrictions at the time. They reportedly include a party in No 10 on 18 December, when London was in tier 3, as well as a “packed” leaving do on 27 November, while the country was in its second lockdown. Separately, a Christmas quiz took place on 15 December at which the prime minister virtually hosted a round of questions. A picture emerged showing Mr Johnson sitting next to a colleague wearing a festive hat.

Cabinet secretary Simon Case, the UK’s most senior civil servant, is leading an investigation into the events. Mr Case has been given “a broad remit to investigate anything he thinks should be [investigated], any type of gathering at Downing Street that should be looked at, on any particular day he wants to,” health secretary Sajid Javid told Sky News on Monday.

Meanwhile, another picture emerged in recent days, adding to public anger. The image, published by the Daily Mirror, showed attendees of a festive gathering posing for the camera at Tory HQ on 14 December last year, when measures in London prohibited indoor social mixing. The picture shows elaborate platters of food, with grinning staffers posing alongside the then Conservative London mayoral candidate, Shaun Bailey. Mr Bailey has since apologised for attending, calling it a “serious error of judgement”. He said he gave a speech to thank his team “before leaving shortly afterwards”.

Lib Dems win “true blue” market town rural seat held by Tories for 200 years, with a majority of nearly 6,000!

Well at least he will have a bit of a hangover but don’t expect a leadership challenge until the various factions of a deeply divided party can agree on a challenger – Owl

A senior Conservative MP has warned Brexit is “destroying” British agriculture, as he condemned a government minister for failing to act.

www.independent.co.uk 

A furious Neil Parish laid into Kevin Foster, the immigration minister, for ignoring a recommendation to make it easier to bring in EU butchers and other workers – leading to a huge shortage.

The chair of the Commons Environment Committee warned that planting of vegetables was down 25 per cent and poultry production by 12.5 per cent, since Brexit.

“We are seeing our industry slowly being destroyed,” Mr Parish told the minister – demanding to know why the migration advisory committee’s call for farm workers to be placed on the shortage list was rejected.

“I thought Brexit was about encouraging production in this country, not discouraging it. This is down to labour shortages.”

Mr Parish accused the minister of claiming “it’s no problem, it wasn’t our problem” adding: “It is, I’m sorry minister.”

But Mr Foster hit back, arguing there was a “problem with uptake” and blaming employers for failing to sign up to a visa scheme to bring in workers.

Warnings of farm labour shortages have raged for months, after Brexit slammed the door on the ability of EU nationals to move to the UK and work freely.

In October, ministers performed a U-turn by allowing 800 butchers and 5,500 poultry workers  to enter the UK on short-term visas – having rejected putting them on the shortage list, to ease entry.

But Mr Foster admitted the number of butchers actually in place is under 100 – after the farm industry protested at the cost and bureaucracy of the visa system.

He criticised companies that have failed to apply to sponsor visas, telling the committee: “They could be used immediately if people wanted to do so.”

But Sheryll Murray, a fellow Tory committee member, told the minister: “We are seeing pigs slaughtered on the farm because of your slow process.”

The criticism came as a coalition of agriculture groups attacked “short-term fixes” that were failing to find a long-term solution to the supply crisis.

Dr Zoe Davies, chief executive of the National Pig Association (NPA), said: “The UK pig sector is still in meltdown as worker shortages continue to impact our ability to process the number of pigs we already have on farms.”

The National Farmers’ Union (NFU) demanded a commitment to avoid Britain’s self-sufficiency in food production falling from the current 60 per cent.

“Britain’s farmers are world-leaders in producing climate friendly food and, over the past 18 months, have been working hard to keep shelves and fridges full despite many being impacted by severe supply chain issues, particularly worker shortages,” said Minette Batters, the NFU president.

“Government has tried to paper over the cracks with short-term fixes but, if we want to avoid this crisis continuing, long-term solutions are urgently needed.”

Covid cases have fallen across much of Devon, after weeks of infections going up.

Ollie Heptinstall, local democracy reporter www.radioexe.co.uk

However, Devon’s director of public health urges caution as the first cases of the new Omicron variant are confirmed in the county, and reports that it may be more transmissable than Delta.

Figures for the week to Thursday 9 December show rates in Torbay and Devon County Council both fell by just under 15 per cent, but Plymouth’s went up 13 per cent.

However, the county continues to have higher rates of covid than the national average of 514 cases per 100,000 people. Devon and Torbay’s figures now stand at just over 600, while Plymouth’s is considerably higher at 865.

In the northern part of Devon, previously the most infectious area, cases have gone down significantly over the past week. Both Torridge and North Devon recorded falls of over a quarter, bringing rates closer to the county average.

Elsewhere at district level, Mid Devon and Teignbridge both had reductions in cases of more than 20 per cent. East Devon and Exeter registered single-figure percentage falls.

The most infectious district remains the South Hams, despite a small drop of just 13 cases. Its rate is 822 cases per 100,000 people.

West Devon was the only district area where cases increased, by just under 10 per cent.

It comes after the first confirmed cases of Omicron  were confirmed in Devon. Steve Brown, the county’s director of public health, said none of them are linked to foreign travel.

He added in a statement: “It was only going to be a matter of time before we saw the first Omicron cases in Devon, so this does not come as a surprise.

It will take a while before we have real world data to understand the full characteristics of the Omicron variant, but early indicators do seem to suggest that it is more transmissible than the Delta variant.

“We do expect to see the numbers of confirmed Omicron cases rise in Devon over coming weeks, and it is likely to overtake the Delta virus to become the dominant strain across the country.

“We are monitoring the data very closely and will continue to take appropriate measures to curb transmission where we see outbreak situations.”

Mr Brown is due to update Devon’s council leaders on the situation tomorrow, Thursday. 

HOSPITALISATIONS

As of the most recent data from Tuesday 7 December, 160 patients with covid are in Devon’s hospitals, an increase of 12 from last week’s figure. Sixty-nine are at Derriford Hospital in Plymouth, 36 at the RD&E, 30 in Torbay, 22 in North Devon and three at Devon Partnership mental health sites.

Of the total number of patients, 16 are in ventilation beds.

DEATHS

Eleven more people died in the county within 28 days of testing positive for covid in the latest complete weekly period (up to Wednesday 8 December). Seven were in the Devon County Council area, two in Torbay and two in Plymouth.

A total of 1,388 people in Devon (including Plymouth and Torbay) have died within 28 days of a positive test since the pandemic began.

VACCINATIONS

The number of peopple aged 12 or over who have received at least one dose of a vaccine is 87 per cent in the Devon County Council area, 85 per cent in Torbay and 83 per cent in Plymouth.

The proportion of people who have had two jabs is 81 per cent in Devon, 79 per cent in Torbay and 77 per cent in Plymouth.

Case rates by age from the Devon Covid dashboard

EDDC Leader Paul Arnott www.midweekherald.co.uk

On Wednesday, December 8, the Full Council at East Devon District met via zoom, as is now usual.

The agenda included an item about whether we should continue to meet virtually until spring next year.

The Conservative group, following direct orders from the national party, continues to make potty arguments for Full Council – all 60 of us, plus a dozen officers – to meet face to face.

Because the council chamber of the new-ish council building they commissioned when in power is so small that only 16 people can be allowed in it any one time (and the windows don’t open!), such a meeting would have to be held at Westpoint.

It’d involve having all the doors open come snow or rain this winter, and land the council with a hire bill of well over £1,000. 

Yet somehow the Conservatives, infected with the odd mixture of gung-ho, macho and arrogance of the PM and his buddy Jacob Rees Mogg, were still trying to force this really daft idea through.

I can report that they failed, but only after the comedy of a few low-grade speeches proclaiming themselves as the great tribunes of democracy, made literally at the same time as the PM was announcing, “if you can work from home, you should”. The right hand didn’t know what the right-wing hand was doing.

However, that was not the most important part of the meeting. At Agenda Item One always is ‘Public Speaking’. In essence, it is the item when anyone from East Devon can come along and say whatever they wish about the council’s business.

In December 2019, Full Council had anointed a former councillor, John Humphreys, as an Alderman, a constitutional curio which is meant to recognise the long-service of recently retired members.

In August 2021, Humphreys was sent to prison for 21 years for his repeated sexual assaults against two minors. In September 2021, Full Council withdrew his Alderman status.

Frankly, this had to be just the start of the council having a serious look at itself. 

Taking away his being an alderman was scarcely even a gnat bite. At that September 2021 meeting I said I would look further into the matter, and I did.

What I discovered, was horrific. To be very clear, the police in the present day, and the Crown Prosecution, got their man. These historic cases are very hard to prove. They did well.

Last week, though, we heard directly from one of the victims that he had done all he could to report Humphreys vile acts to the police in both 2004 and in 2012. 

His account of this was read in a statement for him by the ward member for his family in Exmouth, and is available to read online in full. 

His reward for making these reports was for both him and his family to be threatened by the local police, he alleged.

He also could not understand why nobody had done anything about Humphreys carrying on as a councillor beyond 2016, when he was first charged, let alone 2017 when a full file had been sent to the Crown Prosecution Service.

Were we seriously to credit that nobody connected to him politically knew this?

If nobody knew, why was his re-selection as a district councillor stopped by the Conservatives for the May 2019 elections? And why on earth did they then put his name forward to be an Alderman in December 2019?

On hearing his statement, I immediately wrote to the Chief Constable requesting that he refer his force to the Independent Office for Police Conduct with regard to the alleged behaviours by officers towards the victim 2004-15.

I also wrote to the East Devon Conservatives asking if they have launched an enquiry. It hasn’t been a week yet since I wrote and I’ll chase on Thursday.

I’ll let you know.

From Politico Newsletter:

There is frustration in Whitehall that Tory MPs did not grasp the arguments made to them by Johnson and Javid. Multiple figures from across the government privately blasted Tory backbenchers as out of touch with what is happening with Omicron. One Tory suggested that their MPs suffer from their own COVID “lag” — only realizing how serious things are well after everyone else. Another thought some MPs had backed themselves into a corner by publicly committing to opposing the measures before the extent of the Omicron danger became clear. 

There is also annoyance that MPs did not seem to accept that even if the vast majority of the population is vaccinated, and even if Omicron is milder, the sheer numbers mean that hospitalizations could still breach hospital capacity. Another minister said a rebellion on vaccine passports paled into insignificance when compared to the prospect of the NHS being overwhelmed: “To be honest arguments about masks and certification are out of date. The focus is on boosters and saving lives.”

“All of you don’t want to be seen leaving having popped down to Tesco to get your drinks”

Laurie Churchman (Extract) metro.co.uk

No 10 staff were told to ‘go out the back’ after staying in Downing Street to take part in a Christmas quiz while lockdown restrictions were in place, it has been reported.

While households were banned from mixing socially under Tier 2 restrictions in London, Downing Street staff are said to have quaffed fizz and competed under team names including ‘Hands, Face, First Place’, ‘The 6 Masketeers’, and ‘Professor Quiz Whitty’.

Then at 9.39pm, No 10’s head of HR sent a message to the quiz group chat advising staff to leave ‘out the back’.

The event on December 15 last year – which the Prime Minister helped host – was held virtually, but many participants reportedly joined from the office.

The revelations, made in the The Mirror newspaper, show organisers knew days ahead some staff would be taking part in person, in an apparent breach of lockdown rules.

Official guidance at the time stated: ‘You must not have a work Christmas lunch or party, where that is a primarily social activity and is not otherwise permitted by the rules in your tier.’

An image published by the Sunday Mirror showed the Prime Minister flanked by colleagues, one draped in tinsel and another wearing a Santa hat, in the No 10 library.

The newspaper quoted a source who said many staff were huddled by computers in their Downing Street offices, conferring on questions and drinking alcohol.

No 10 previously said Downing Street staff were ‘often required to be in the office to work on the pandemic response’ during lockdowns – and ‘those who were in the office for work may have attended virtually from their desks’.

A Government spokesperson said: ‘Given there is an ongoing review, it would be inappropriate to comment while that is ongoing.’

Yesterday’s Strategic Planning Committee which considered the responses to the working draft of the Local Plan 2020-2040, drawn up after a first round of consultation, lasted for over 6 hours.

This is just a snippet from the early part of the meeting that caught Owl’s attention.

Unlike under the Old Guard, the New Guard is trying to make the compilation of the Local Plan more transparent and open to public consultation, a difficult task given the contentious nature of Local Planning. 

In previous rounds the process had been cloaked in secrecy. The last plan was driven by the Old Guard’s choice of adopting a high growth jobs-led “policy-on” scenario. This time the New Guard has to respond to housing figures dictated from Whitehall.

The process starts with a call for sites from landowners to establish what land is potentially available. This appraisal of the amount of land available for housing and economic use is called a Housing and Economic Land Availability Assessment (HELAA), and the potential sites are referred to throughout the meeting as HELAA sites. These sites are given scores for suitability and not all will enter the final plan.

For the 2020-2040 Plan EDDC has used sites that were put forward for the Greater Exeter Strategic Plan (GESP) in 2017, which EDDC has now withdrawn from, and from a new appeal for sites earlier this year.

At the point of the meeting (36.31) when each committee member made the usual declaration of interest. Councillor Skinner declared that he had a piece of land in Talaton that was in the “process” and also a longstanding interest with F W Carter and Sons. 

Questions from councillors started after a presentation on the Draft Plan at around 57min. At this point Councillor Skinner asked for clarification on the status of sites “found”. He received an answer from Ed Freeman that all those sites identified as appropriate and acceptable for development from both the 2017 and 2021 HELAAs still left a shortfall of 900 houses.

At this point Councillor Paul Arnott intervened on a point of order asking  the Chair for confirmation that Councillor Skinner had declared a land interest. Through the Chair, Councillor Skinner replied that he had declared ownership of a site that was in the HELAA process. Councillor Arnott then raised the point that such an interest was a pecuniary one and not personal and therefore presented possible difficulties in subsequent debate. 

The Chairman pointed out  that declarations were up to individual Councillors and that the advice of Mrs Shaw (Legal Officer) could always be taken. Councillor Skinner immediately agreed to take the advice of  Mrs Shaw. 

Her advice was that a registered interest in land would amount to a disclosable pecuniary interest in this case. She read out various sections of the constitution, and pointed out that Councillors with pecuniary interests, and without any dispensation from either the Monitoring Officer or Standards Committee, should declare, withdraw from debate and leave the chamber. She also said that as this particular debate was wide ranging, Councillor Skinner would need to consider at what point it would be appropriate for him to “step away” from this debate. 

Councillor Skinner decided that he would step away immediately and take further advice from the Monitoring Officer on this matter.

Owl copies below the relevant section from the rules governing members conduct:

19.4 Disclosable Pecuniary Interest 

Unless a dispensation has been granted, a member shall not participate in any discussion of, or vote on, any matter in which they have a Disclosable Pecuniary Interest and having first declared to the meeting the existence and nature of that interest shall withdraw from the room where the meeting is being held at the commencement of the consideration of that business, or (if later) the time at which the interest becomes apparent. 

Where the Disclosable Pecuniary Interest is sensitive (as defined on the Member Code of Conduct of the respective Councils) the member need not disclose the nature of that interest but must still state there is a Disclosable Pecuniary Interest and otherwise follow the requirements of the previous paragraph.

Currently the experts are in the realm of trying to make sense of limited data on Omicron.

It is quite proper in these circumstances to look at possibilities or “scenarios” that cover the range from pessimistic assumptions to optimistic ones. But at all times infection projections must be subject to common sense “reality” checks, as Professor Spieglehalter points out.

It looks like the Health Secretary has failed this test, to the detriment of government credibility at a critical time.

www.independent.co.uk

A Covid expert has poured scorn on government claims that omicron infections have reached 200,000 a day, branding the figure implausible.

Ministers have failed to explain how the estimate – announced by health secretary Sajid Javid one day before a huge Tory revolt against the Plan B restrictions – was calculated.

Now David Spiegelhalter, a statistician at the University of Cambridge, has attacked the sudden use of the figure – suggesting the real daily tally was 45,000 new cases on Monday.

“It’s bit naughty to give this number without having a justification behind it,” Prof Spiegelhalter said.

“It’s not based on the published modelling that came out from UK Health Security Agency a few days ago.

“If you put that through their model it comes to 45,000 infections yesterday – which is high, but does seem more plausible.”

The professor of the public understanding of risk, and a regular commentator on pandemic modelling, added: “From what has been made public, I can’t see how you can derive this number.”

The latest estimate is that omicron cases are doubling every 2-3 days – the reason why Plan B curbs are coming in – which implies 1.2 million new infections by Christmas Day.

But Prof Spiegelhalter suggested a tailing off is inevitable, telling BBC Radio 4: “Whatever the line is, it’s got to curve over sometime – because we are not going to get up to these vast numbers of millions of people getting it every day.”

After the shock of the 200,000 figure put out by Mr Javid, his officials were unable to explain how it had been calculated, other than to say it is based on “modelling”.

Omicron is believed to make up around one-fifth of all Covid cases, but as many as 44 per cent in London, the UK hotspot for the new variant.

It is expected to become the dominant strain in the capital by the end of Wednesday at the latest, Mr Javid told MPs on Monday.

However, the government is struggling to persuade its own MPs to back curbs already introduced – let alone more severe measures many are calling for before Christmas.

Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, warned the cabinet to expect a “significant increase” in hospitalisation, while hospital leaders warn parts of the NHS are already “beyond full stretch”.

But around 70 Tory MPs have signalled they will vote against Covid passes for crowded venues – with less opposition against the extension of mask-wearing to cinemas and theatres.

It is not the first time Prof Spiegelhalter has criticised the government’s use of Covid statistics as the pandemic is progressed.

Last May, he attacked the announcement of “unreliable” daily test totals, as “number theatre”, when the public was crying out for “proper detail”.

In the three Covid votes last night, Simon Jupp voted against covid passes, abstained on mandatory vaccination of NHS staff, and even abstained on the retrospective extension of mandatory face coverings.

A Tory MP who voted for the measures said it was “good of the nutters to self-identify”.

Fleur Anderson (Lab) asked why the Tories MPs opposed to the “papers please” aspect of Covid passes are not opposing the elections bill, which is requiring people to produce photo ID when they vote.

Will anyone be joining Simon when he next goes nightclubbing?

Neil Parish supported the Government and Opposition on all three.

Including from Industry:

And more from Happy Toast

Watch Happy Toast here.

A leaked image has revealed that Tory aides threw a Christmas party last year – during the middle of last years coronavirus lockdown.

Looks suspiciously like a gathering to Owl

Jonathon Manning www.devonlive.com 

The photograph shows around two dozen people crowded together in the Conservative party’s Westminster headquarters.

The event was organised by Shaun Bailey’s mayoral campaign and took place on December 14, 2020. At the time London was in Tier 2 lockdown, according to The Mirror.

Mr Bailey was approached for comment by The Mirror tonight. He then abruptly quit as the chair of the London Assembly’s police and crime committee.

The image shows 24 people, many wearing paper hats and eating party food at the Conservative campaign headquarters.

Shaun Bailey can be seen in the middle of the crowd of closely packed party-goers.

He is thought to have left the party early in the evening, soon after the picture was taken.

A spokesperson for Shaun Bailey’s campaign said: “On the evening of December 14 2020, at the end of the working day, the campaign hosted a post-work event to thank campaign staff for their efforts over the course of the year.

“This was a serious error of judgement and we fully accept that gathering like this as that time was wrong and apologise unreservedly.”

Also present was billionaire Tory donor Nick Candy, who is shown raising a glass of wine while the photo was taken. Another guest is thought to have been a senior figure within Boris Johnson’s leadership election campaign.

A spokesperson for Mr Candy said: “Nick Candy attended the office of the Shaun Bailey campaign for an end of year review on 14 December 2021. He gave a short thank you speech to the team and spent some time with Shaun Bailey to discuss campaign matters before leaving shortly afterwards.”

Those at the party are understood to have danced and drank wine late into the night, while the revellers also damaged a door at the “raucous” event.

But at the time, London was in the midst of Tier 2 restrictions. It meant that social mixing between households indoors was banned. The capital was later moved into Tier 3.

The Conservative Party has now launched disciplinary action against four of the CCHQ staff seconded to the campaign.

A spokesman for the Conservative Party said: “Senior CCHQ staff became aware of an unauthorised social gathering in the basement of [CCHQ] organised by the Bailey campaign on the evening of 14th December.

“Formal disciplinary action was taken against the four CCHQ staff who were seconded to the Bailey campaign.”

Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner has slammed Shaun Bailey’s campaign for deliberately breaking lockdown rules.

She said: “This is damning new evidence of a party, with a buffet, drinks, Christmas attire and absolutely no social distancing held at Conservative Party HQ.

“Shaun Bailey is an elected official that is clearly breaking Covid regulations in this photo and encouraging the same of his staff.

“Whilst everyone else was making sacrifices to keep their community safe, the chair of the Police and Crime committee in the Greater London Authority was partying.

“His position as chair was untenable and he knew that.”

This is the latest in a series of controversial stories regarding the Conservative Party that has suggested politicians have broken lockdown rules last Christmas.

It has been claimed that a Christmas party was hosted at Number 10 last year, while footage has also emerged of Boris Johnson hosting a Christmas quiz at Number 10 surrounded by colleagues.

Johnson staggers from crisis to crisis unable to lead a team that can deliver, clutching at straws in the wind, then throwing them under a bus when things go wrong. Owl expects casualties this week.

We can’t hit Covid booster jabs target, warn NHS bosses

Chris Smyth, Oliver Wright www.thetimes.co.uk 

Boris Johnson’s goal of giving everyone a booster jab by the end of the year is unlikely to be met, NHS leaders warned as huge queues formed outside vaccine centres.

Waits of up to five hours were reported at some clinics and the central booking website repeatedly crashed as it struggled to keep up with demand.

The UK Health Security Agency estimated that 200,000 people were infected with Omicron today, far more than previously known to have caught Covid-19 in a single day and suggesting that the variant has already outpaced Delta. The prime minister launched an appeal for vaccine volunteers to help the NHS “hit warp speed” on boosters. Councils, fire brigades and police have been asked to offer up any staff trained in delivering jabs.

Vaccination centres were told last night to be ready to run 24 hours a day and through Christmas as ministers insisted that boosters take precedence over routine care. Hospitals and GP surgeries were ordered to redeploy staff to support what Amanda Pritchard, head of NHS England, called “an immediate, all-out drive” on boosters.

Deliveries of vaccine doses to units will be doubled today and centres were told to put up tents and portable buildings to get through as many jabs as possible. Omicron is more transmissible than previous variants and better at evading vaccine protection. Data last week showed two doses offered minimal protection against the strain but a third jab could be up to 75 per cent effective against symptomatic infection.

Despite the vaccine mobilisation, NHS leaders fear they are being “set up to fail” by Johnson’s promise of a million jabs a day and a goal of offering all adults a booster by the end of the month. They said the booster programme may not be finished until well into the new year.

There were 397,532 boosters reported yesterday and the rolling average now stands at 425,869, about half the record daily total of 844,285 in March. It means 18 million people in England are yet to have a third jab. Johnson acknowledged that to hit his target “we’ll have to attain a pace and a number of daily booster doses that will exceed anything that we’ve done before”.

After Johnson made a televised commitment on Sunday night that all adults in England “will have the chance to get their booster before the new year”, NHS leaders clarified that they were not promising to jab all remaining adults in the next two and a half weeks.

They said the health service can only commit to offering people the chance to make appointments by the end of the year, with large numbers of jabs expected to be administered in January. Some may even run into February if people are slow in coming forward.

Javid suggested the target would be met if people had received a text from the NHS before New Year’s Eve, insisting he could not make promises about how many people would be vaccinated.

Challenged in the Commons on when boosters would be completed, Javid said: “There’s a distinction between the NHS being able to offer an individual a jab, so they might receive an email or text saying ‘please come forward’ … but it does take that individual to come forward.” Although 390,000 people booked online yesterday, the NHS website crashed repeatedly. People have been warned they face long waits if they do not book.

NHS chiefs believe it is feasible to reach five million jabs a week, a million more than the programme’s best week so far, but have resisted giving firm commitments. One senior NHS source said the vaccine target would be harder than adapting to coronavirus in March last year or dealing with January’s peak in admissions, expressing irritation at Johnson for not acknowledging this.

Ministers “have a duty to set realistic expectations so they don’t set up the public services they lead to fail”, they said, likening the pledge to Johnson’s promise last year of a “world beating” test and trace service that would avoid the need for further restrictions.

They added that there was also “a real question of how quickly the required increase can happen”, saying it would take several days even to know what was feasible given workforce shortages.

But the source also said that the NHS was treating the booster programme as an emergency akin to the arrival of Covid-19 itself, saying “I don’t feel ready to say a million a day by Christmas is ludicrous. It might just happen”.

A Downing Street source said Johnson knew he had set an “ambitious” target but stressed that “no one is going to get the blame if that doesn’t happen”.

As East Devon MP Simon Jupp goes full ostrich in the face of the Omicron wave, my new column for the Midweek Herald and Sidmouth Herald challenges the sheer irresponsibility of his and other Tories’ opposition to even the minimal Plan B proposed by the government:

seatonmatters.org 

“If the rapidly escalating Omicron wave of Covid puts the country into some kind of lockdown by New Year, please remember to blame the knee-jerk responses of backbench Tories like Simon Jupp as well as the weakness of Boris Johnson and his action plan. 

Within hours the East Devon MP tweeted, ‘I don’t support Plan B. … I won’t vote for these measures.’ Perhaps Mr Jupp would like pop down to the RD&E to explain in person to patients queuing in ambulances? To the ambulance staff, prevented from doing their job and getting to other patients on time? To those whose operations have been postponed over and over again, now looking at even longer waits? To exhausted hospital staff, now facing a new surge of Covid patients on top of everything else? To those whose relatives have died because of delayed treatment?

I’m sure that Mr Jupp will be able to convince them that because ‘working from home won’t help our social or economic recovery’, as he claimed on Twitter, he is right to try to stop this proven method of slowing infections. Mind you, if they don’t agree with him, and take to Twitter themselves to express their views, they’ll find that Mr Jupp has blocked them from replying to him.

Mr Jupp believes that ‘Plan B will cost jobs in many sectors, including hospitality’. He doesn’t even seem to have read the small print, which excludes pubs and restaurants from the requirement to wear masks. In fact, it’s almost certain that limited protective measures like working from home and masking in shops and public transport – which might have been sufficient to reduce the high levels of infection that we already had before Omicron hit – will not now be enough. This weak, discredited government, overly scared of backbenchers like Mr Jupp, is setting itself up for another massive U-turn by yet again doing too little and too late.

There is no excuse for Mr Jupp’s ignorance. I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but he doesn’t seem to be looking at the evidence, or learning from experience. Even after three difficult lockdowns, he still hasn’t grasped that letting the virus rip is only a recipe for another lockdown down the line. He hasn’t understood that, far from blocking economic recovery, measures like home-working, mask-wearing and requiring people to be vaccinated or tested before entering public spaces are the only way to let normal economic life carry on in a pandemic.

Sadly, even before Omicron, the government’s protective measures were too little. It would not have harmed the economy to require masks and install ventilation filters in schools – it would have protected education. But by refusing to slow the schools epidemic this autumn, the government ensured that the UK continued to have a very high level of Covid transmission, feeding through into consistently high levels of hospitalisations and deaths. Where was Mr Jupp’s protest about that?

It’s not just that our hypocritical prime minister has been listening to his ill-informed backbenchers. They in turn are in thrall to the anti-vax warriors, the anti-maskers and the people who call entry requirements ‘vaccine passports’, which Mr Jupp says are ‘divisive and discriminatory’. So, we should simply allow unprotected and potentially infected people into every crowded space? 

When more than 1 person in 40 in East Devon has Covid – more in younger age groups – this is a recipe for disaster. I have news for Mr Jupp. With our boosters, many of us were just beginning to feel safer, and going again into the very pubs and restaurants which seem to be the only part of our local economy that he cares about. But unless the government halts the Omicron wave, those who care about their health and the state of the NHS will vote with their feet once more. Protect our health – or you won’t have an economic recovery to talk about.”

Does Simon know the difference between social housing and so-called “affordable” housing (many don’t) – Owl?

This is what Cornwall’s temporary housing “pods” look like:

MP Jupp would happily live in ‘pod’

Ollie Heptinstall, local democracy reporter www.radioexe.co.uk

Eco-friendly modular homes to be built by Mid Devon District Council for social housing have been described as ‘awesome’ by a Devon MP.

An initial 14 properties, designed to be ultra-low to net-zero carbon with low running costs, are planned for sites in Tiverton and Cullompton in collaboration with producer Zed Pods. They will all be classed as ‘affordable’ at 80 per cent of market rates.

“Awesome” homes “don’t fill developers’ pockets”

The modular units are factory-made before being transported to site. The company claims they are “built to higher standards than conventional houses” and are “super insulated,” with triple-glazing and solar panels.

Applications are in for eight such apartments at Shapland Place in Tiverton and six more at Cullompton’s St. Andrews Estate. Mid Devon District Council planners will have to decide whether to approve them.

East Devon MP Simon Jupp cited Mid Devon’s plans for the modular homes as an innovative way of providing much-needed housing in Devon “that don’t basically fill the pockets of developers.”

Speaking to the BBC’s Politics South West, he said: “I’ve been inside several modular homes. They’re awesome. I would very happily live in one and they’re a cheaper way…. to actually provide affordable housing on both rent and when you come to buy it.”

Mr Jupp, a Conservative MP since 2019, added they are “a much cheaper of producing and building a house. Bricks and mortar takes time and costs money. Modular housing is a heck of a lot cheaper, and the government is actually looking at ways to support modular housing across the country.”

Speaking about them in the summer, Councillor Bob Evans (Conservative, Lower Culm), Mid Devon’s cabinet member for housing said: “We are committed to providing more social housing across the district and these homes will provide this as well as help us strive towards our goal of being carbon-neutral by 2030.”

The NHS was put on a crisis footing tonight as hospitals in England were told to discharge as many patients as possible while estimated daily Omicron cases hit 200,000 and the variant claimed its first life in the UK.

Rowena Mason www.theguardian.com 

Boris Johnson is braced for his biggest rebellion as prime minister on Tuesday, with about 80 Tory MPs confirmed to be preparing to vote against measures on working from home, Covid passports and more mask wearing. He will have to rely on Labour support for the votes to pass.

Amid a scramble for tests and booster jabs, the country’s doctors called for further restrictions to be imposed to stem the rise in cases and Downing Street did not rule out fresh measures.

In a letter to hospitals, NHS England chiefs said patients who could be discharged to care homes, hospices, their own homes or hotels before Christmas to free up beds, should be. The letter from NHS England’s chief executive, Amanda Pritchard, and medical director Prof Stephen Powis said the service was facing a level 4 “national incident”.

Hotels are already being turned into temporary care facilities staffed with workers flown in from Spain and Greece to relieve rising pressure on NHS hospital beds.

Hospitals and GPs have also been told to scale back normal services and limit care to those needing urgent attention so that NHS staff can be freed up to deliver boosters. Hospitals will undertake fewer non-urgent operations, but “highest clinical priority patients”, including people with cancer and those who have been waiting a long time, will be given priority.

They have also been told to take ambulance-borne patients into A&E more quickly so that paramedics can get back on the road to answer more 999 calls, speed up efforts to bring in nurses from overseas to help tackle the NHS’s lack of staff, and send as many patients as possible for surgery at private hospitals.

A campaign to give boosters to more than 1 million people a day got under way, prompting the NHS website to crash and people to queue in the street for up to five hours for their jabs.

But the British Medical Association said the vaccination campaign would not be enough to stop the spread of Omicron, with one in four still not eligible for a booster. They called for a return to face masks in pubs and restaurants, 2-metre social distancing indoors, limits on public gatherings, legal requirements for ventilation in schools and other settings, more rapid testing and advice to wear FFP2 masks.

No 10 insisted that the booster campaign was its immediate priority, with a senior government source describing the main strategy as “keep on jabbing”. But Boris Johnson refused to rule out tougher restrictions if necessary to maintain public health. No 10 said all options were still on the table, leaving open the possibility of closing schools “as a last resort” and bringing in curbs without consulting MPs “in extremis”.

Addressing MPs, Sajid Javid revealed there may now be as many 200,000 Omicron infections a day. He said around 20% of confirmed cases in England had been identified as the Omicron variant, and warned of “difficult weeks ahead”. In London, the centre of the Omicron outbreak, it accounted for over 44% of cases and was expected to become the dominant form within 48 hours, the health secretary said.

He said Covid passports would be toughened to require people to have a booster or recent lateral flow test (LFT) in the new year, risking inflaming Tory backbench anger against restrictions ahead of Commons votes on “plan B” restrictions.

Labour backed the government’s booster campaign and stopped short of calling for any new restrictions, with Keir Starmer saying it was Labour’s “patriotic duty” to vote for plan B.

The prime minister confirmed the first death of a patient with Omicron and 10 people hospitalised with the variant, saying people needed to “set aside” the idea that the variant was mild.

Meanwhile, head teachers warned of “chaos” in schools, with high levels of staff and pupil absences and reports that some parents were planning to keep children home to avoid the virus before Christmas.

On the first day of the new vaccine campaign, 386,000 people in England are understood to have booked booster jabs – almost 50,000 an hour. But there was confusion over whether all eligible over-18s would be able to get a booster by the end of the year, with No 10 insisting they would, while the NHS cast doubt on the goal. Javid suggested the target was to “offer” rather than deliver the boosters.

Johnson and Pritchard launched a joint plea for the public to volunteer in vaccination centres, calling for tens of thousands of people to act as unpaid stewards and thousands to sign up as paid vaccinators. It is understood No 10 will also launch a new effort to reach the unvaccinated, using a publicity campaign potentially involving faith leaders and celebrities.

On Monday people trying to get LFTs were told they were unavailable despite a new requirement for Covid contacts to take them daily for a week.

The call from the BMA for tougher restrictions echoed warnings from scientists that vaccination alone would not be able to stop Omicron causing a dangerous second wave. Leaked documents from the UK Health and Security Agency showed on Friday that public health officials believe there should be “stringent national measures” by 18 December at the latest, with sources saying plan B will not be enough.

The BMA, which represents 150,000 doctors, is the first major medical organisation to call for stricter measures. Dr Chaand Nagpaul, BMA council chair, said: “Despite describing the current situation as an ‘emergency’ with a ‘tidal wave’ of infections on the horizon, the government’s response, relying entirely on the vaccine booster programme, is missing the wider measures required to control the spread of Omicron, including protecting millions of people who will not be eligible for the booster programme by the end of December.”

Chris Hopson, the NHS Providers chief executive, said the new guidance “gives an indication of what a monumental effort this will be”.

The former chair of the South African ministerial advisory committee on Covid-19, Prof Salim Karim, told BBC News early data from South Africa looked good.

“In the past three waves, about two out of every three patients admitted were cases of severe disease, and right now we have only one out of four cases that is severe.”

However, it is important to note that South Africa has a younger population than the UK.

No 10 has been resistant to new measures before Christmas but is planning to review the situation on 18 December.

Wouldn’t it be a great idea to have community hospitals as “half way” accommodation … oh wait …

Robert Booth www.theguardian.com 

Hotels are being turned into temporary care facilities staffed with workers flown in from Spain and Greece to relieve rising pressure on NHS hospital beds.

Three hotels in the south of England are being used, including one in Plymouth into which 30 hospital patients have been discharged to be looked after by live-in carers. It is understood that the staff are staying on upper floors while patients are below.

At least three other health authorities are considering the move, which is partly driven by the severe shortage of domiciliary care workers able to look after people in their own homes, according to Anne-Marie Perry, chief executive of Abicare, a home care company contracted to set up the facilities. She said they were for people who are ready to be discharged to their homes but couldn’t be because care packages were not available.

“The hospitals are on their knees and we are being contacted fairly regularly by clinical commission groups,” said Perry. “The problem Plymouth have is there is not enough domiciliary care provision, so that’s one of the reasons why they can’t discharge patients.”

A similar tactic was used at the start of the pandemic in spring 2020, when hotels were used to help discharge tens of thousands of hospital patients in anticipation of hospitals being filled to breaking point with Covid cases. It happened again in some places in January this year.

Now, with similar warnings that the NHS faces being overwhelmed by the Omicron variant, Abicare said it has converted whole floors of hotels, and has recruited British nationals living in Greece and Spain, as well as some from the north of England, to staff them in a shift pattern of three weeks on and three weeks off.

On Monday, NHS Providers said bed occupancy in hospitals was at 94%–96%, and its chief executive, Chris Hopson, said on Sunday that the shortage of social care staff was a big driver of delayed discharges, with more than 10,000 beds last week occupied by medically fit patients.

Perry said the cost of care – around £300 a night – was well under half that of an NHS bed, but the move is likely to raise questions about levels of care, as hotels are not equipped with sluice rooms and other facilities normally available in care homes.

Jane Townson, the chief executive of the Homecare Association, described the move as “unacceptable” and said it “feels like [people] being warehoused”. She called for greater funding to boost the workforce that helps people in their own home.

Nadra Ahmed, executive chairman of the National Care Association, said she was shocked by the arrangement because hotels were not configured to deliver care and questioned the safety and wellbeing of residents if they need urgent medical assistance.

“Is home care so broken that we can’t support people in their own homes where they need to be?” she said. “This is another sticking plaster and the person being moved into the hotel is the person being let down.”

Abicare said it had been unable to find live-in care workers based in the UK so it was using expats. But has warned that with more health authorities approaching it to set up hotel facilities in the new year, it may not be able to find staff to meet much greater demand.

In January, NHS England issued guidance about using hotels for discharges which said it “should only be used as a short-term measure (days, rather than weeks) for the specific purpose of reducing length of stay for people in hospital and ensuring they are discharged when they no longer meet the ‘criteria to reside’ in a hospital.”

Abicare said it has previously worked with Holiday Inn and Best Western hotel groups. A spokesperson for NHS Devon clinical commissioning group said: “Thirty-two beds are currently available to support people who would be delayed in hospital waiting for support at home. Feedback from patients has been excellent and since March 2020 this has saved several thousand hospital bed days. This has freed beds for people who needed inpatient care in a hospital setting.”

NHS England has been approached for comment.

“Drinks, nibbles, games”: three words delivered in a studiously measured tone that have added to serious stress headaches at the heart of government and sparked nagging rumours of the prime minister’s exit.

Alexandra Topping www.theguardian.com 

The BBC’s Ros Atkins, who delivered the deadpan words in a video explainer of the “partygate” scandal that went viral, has become an unlikely star of the festive saga. Admirers from across the political divide – from Piers Morgan to James O’Brien – have praised his commitment to the cold, hard presentation of facts, while he has been credited with creating a “whole new genre of reporting”.

In a series of short explainers, the BBC News Channel’s Outside Source presenter has repeatedly skewered the Boris Johnson administration, while never coming within striking distance of seeming to have an opinion.

“Forensic, measured, factual, brilliant,” wrote veteran broadcaster Andrew Neil after Atkins’ explainer on 6 December. Two days later Morgan tweeted: “Ros once again brilliantly illustrating that the best journalism is often the simplest: just damn people with cool, calm, collected & utterly irrefutable facts.”

The first video on the Christmas parties was posted on 2 December, two days after the story broke, and two more have followed. In nine days the 3-4 minute clips – long for viral videos – have been watched over 11m times, far more than any other digital news series, with insiders in the BBC admitting that their popularity has confounded expectations about the desires of online news consumers.

Watch them here

The 47-year-old is no hotshot newcomer. He has been at the BBC for 20 years, joining the corporation weeks after 9/11. He started out as a producer on Simon Mayo’s 5 live show, before becoming a presenter on the BBC World Service in 2004.

Atkins, a former DJ who ran a club night in Brixton in the 2000s and performed at Womad, was part of the team that launched Outside Source, a daily show that curates news from wires, video feeds and social media on the News Channel and BBC World News, in 2014.

His explainers started with coverage of the Australia bush fires in late 2019, and earlier this year the BBC launched Ros Atkins On, promising 10 minutes of his “straight-talking style of analysis and explanation” on the biggest issues of the day on iPlayer, BBC Breakfast and the BBC’s news website.

His films, covering the heatwaves in the States and the Belarus migrant crisis as well as domestic political issues, “explain the background and context to current events in a scrupulously impartial, accessible way”, said Jamie Angus, senior controller, news output and commissioning, at BBC News. “He’s made this type of explainer his own, and it’s proved wildly popular with audiences across the world, and very shareable on social media,” he said.

The explainers, very much seen as Atkins’ baby, were created in an attempt to make live TV also work as an on-demand digital product, with one former BBC news executive describing their style as “assertive impartiality”.

“Ros is just brilliant at this,” the executive said. “If you look at what he’s done, it’s stripped down ‘this is what happened’ in three minutes flat – there’s no florid tedious language, there’s no self indulgence to it.”

Atkins’ unflinching presentation manages to get the viewer to raise an eyebrow through facts alone, said the former executive. “I think sometimes the BBC mistakes impartiality for sucking the life out of something. But Ros is human and has a personality, while never making it about him, or leaving himself open to accusations of bias.”

Colleagues say Atkins, who is married with two teenagers, is dedicated, rehearsing lines and tweaking scripts until he is sure they will have the greatest impact. One former colleague compared his approach to news to his love of squash. “He makes things look effortless but they’re not effortless. Just like being a very good squash player takes years of practice, being a really good TV craftsman takes a long time too – he works bloody hard to make it spot on.”

[The “BBC Outside Source” series of short explainers are well worth looking at – Owl]