Those darts nights can get a bit rowdy

Are none of the RFL bigwigs donors to the Conservative party?

Helps to get the wheels oiled when it comes to lobbying for changes to regulations.

The "rule of six" included very specific exemptions for "grouse shooting".

Sally, as you are somebody who has been pro-lockdown and all for the hiding away from this virus, despite it being blatantly obvious what damage that will do to society, it's interesting that you are seemingly now showing concern for the inevitable collapse of many sports clubs around the country.

Isn't the saying 'reap what you sow' ?...

I'm pro taking precautions on the balance of risk. When the hospitals were overwhelmed with covid cases like in March/April then it was sensible to have tight restrictions to get the caseload down to a level where it could be managed through isolating local outbreaks. Use government support (expensively) to keep the economy afloat till the caseload was down and then have a reopening with appropriate precautions (wearing masks, some distancing, increased cleaning, ventilation) to minimise the risk.

An effective test and trace system, run by public health experts and co-ordinated through local authorities, with the co-operation of the public, with powers to introduce local restrictions when outbreaks start, would have been able to keep the virus at a low enough level to allow more and more things to reopen.

Unfortunately the government has done a really poor job. They have used the pandemic response as a way to dish out huge sums of taxpayers money to favoured companies - eg Tory party donors or tech firms that Cummings has contacts with through previous campaigning. The PPE was a shambles because they didn't award the contracts to the best firms but to their own contacts. Test and trace in other countries is run by public health professionals - here they handed it over to a Conservative peer Dido Harding who is woefully out of her depth and so it has been a shambles. The apps never got off the ground and seem to have been more a way for Cummings to allow favoured tech firms access to peoples' personal data. They messed up a strategy on care homes during the peak of the pandemic because they were more bothered about the media handling and getting the numbers in hospitals down so the virus ripped through care homes and vulnerable elderly people were allowed to die out of sight.

They also lost the co-operation and trust of the public - which was there at the start - through Cummings being seen to have been able to break the rules. Also it doesn't help that social media disinformation campaigns (which they have tacitly encouraged when its been spreading misinformation about migrant rapists, Labour paedophiles and the EU wanting an army) have been saying the virus is all a myth, its 5G, Bill Gates wanting to implant chips in us which a lot of people believe and share on their facebooks hence all these anti-mask protestors.

As a result of the failure of test and trace, when they've tried to reopen things and the caseload has picked up again they have had to rely on the blunt instrument of local lockdowns, and are now warning of national lockdowns again as they can see the caseload following a similar trajectory to early February. We also had the stupid attempts to stoke a culture war by making a big deal about forcing people to go back to the office to try to create a battle with trade unions and rally their support base, but that hasn't even got off the ground before they've backtracked on it.

Just allowing it to rip through the population is not a credible option as when the hospitals get overly full we would get situations of people dying at home, unable to get in to hospitals, with their families stuck with their decomposing body for several days due to backlogs of being able to collect and dispose of the corpses. In that sort of scenario, you aren't going to get people turning out to rugby league matches even if there are no government restrictions.

So we're approaching where we were in March where there will need to be major lockdowns again and there's no sign the government will be able to get on top of the virus when the caseload drops again as the test and trace is still a complete shambles and it will be until they transfer it out of the hands of Dido and Serco and let the health experts run it the way they want to. So we'll be in this kind of destructive cycle for a while longer.

The pandemic would have been very difficult for any government and other countries with better governments and better health infrastructure than us are struggling too, but Boris and his cabal of hopeless suck-ups in Cabinet have been particularly unsuited to dealing with it. Had this happened a couple of years ago on Theresa May's watch I think some of the things would have been done better and she would have been better suited to leading in this situation and less motivated to sacrifice public health in pursuit of handing contracts to cronies.

Would assume that Sky would have an issue with games being shown PPV to non season ticket holders.

An excellent summary. There was a sign at a protest in the USA that read 'Trump, - we knew you'd be bad but fec k me' - you could replace Trump with Johnson. There is astonishing levels of theft from the public purse going on - but please look over there at the asylum seekers getting £30 a week.

The average age of a person dying from Covid is 82. Life expectancy in the UK is 81.

We have chose to destroy our society for it. Go figure.

I think the corruption of all these taxpayer-funded contracts going to Boris' cronies will end up being to him what the Iraq war became to Blair....less of an issue at the time it happened but after a few years when the public realise what happened he will be forever tarnished with it. Same with the housing secretary overruling Tower Hamlets council to get a Tory donor out of paying the levy on his development. This is the kind of dirty stuff that used to happen in European countries with corrupt politicians like Chirac in France or Berulosconi in Italy, where they had that kind of "nudge, wink" relationship with the electorate where people knew they were dodgy feckers but tolerated them for a while, but the UK was relatively free of it because of the strict rules in Whitehall (which Boris and his chums are tearing up under the guise of civil servants being 'enemies of the people').

The whole clash with the EU where they are ramming through that Bill to break their commitments in the Withdrawal Agreement, isn't about the Irish border or the EU "blockading food" like Boris is trying to say - its about being free from restrictions on State Aid (giving taxpayers money to private businesses) because Cummings wants to build his "British facebook", ie use taxpayers money to finance ventures from his tech industry pals.

In a few years time when everyones taxes go up and services are cut to pay for it and we're told "there's no money left" and they start finding out it was frittered away during Boris' days as PM in easy handouts to favoured donors they will go apepoop.

Johnson is like Trump but he's a lesser version of him and surprisingly weak in public performances. In the scenario which I suggested earlier where this had happened on Theresa May's watch, Boris would have been writing columns in newspapers taking the same position Dita's Slot Meter does on here, acting as the champion of "common sense" and "British freedoms" against the lockdown, because he'd be positioning for May's job. He was suited to that kind of outsider critique, he's not suited to being PM. He dithers about making decisions, then does something, mumbles about it when questioned, and U-turns later. I never liked him but thought he would have had a bit more personality and charisma about him as PM, but he's very weak in debates. I think the knives are being sharpened behind the scenes by some of his colleagues, notably Gove.

I’m not sure Sky would allow the RFL to make money from their live feeds. Let’s not forget, Superleague are not allowed to show any game live without the say so of Sky...

And it has also now been widely reported that Serco in turn have sub-contracted the work to dozens of smaller firms, some of whom have been involved in dodgy activity before, and others whose usual business in debt collecting.

Do you mean rather than a position that will, in the long term, cause far more health and social disaster than the virus itself ever will?

I actually agree with you over our ineffective government. Combined with an equally ineffective opposition and a gormless and easily manipulated population, we have all the ingredients for the absolute mess we are currently in and far from getting out of.

Out of curiosity, you often speak of not wanting this virus to 'rip' through our population - Do you seriously believe this hasn't already happened?

We currently have daily cases of over 6,000, with just over 30 daily deaths. Back in April, when testing was non existent and we had upto a 1,000 deaths a day, how many positive daily cases do you think there was?.. with the present figures, you could easily say it was well over 100,000 a day?

Like I have always maintained, we are hiding from a virus that behaves like flu. Kills the vulnerable, is an inconvenience to the vast majority. Our reaction to it, while predictable, begs the question of why we never react like this to flu and also suggests we can't ever return to normality, simply because we have set a precedent that any virus that kills must be hidden from and not lived with.

Flu doesn’t overwhelm healthcare systems with cases that require hospitalisation. You had hospitals in other parts of Europe having to make decisions about who to try and save because there weren’t enough respirators to go round to treat so many people. We locked down and stopped that from happening.

We actually closed our health system and turned it into the covid service. By doing so, we have just made a far bigger problem for further down the line.

For about the last 8 weeks, covid has been 8th on the list for causes of death in the UK. Even flu has claimed more victims in that time. So the question has to be asked of why don't we close our society down on annual basis for flu?

I totally supported that at the time, as it was an unknown virus and we didn't fully understand it or the best treatment for it. Hospitalisations and deaths are not at the same level now because they know how to deal with it. It will still kill thousands but not at the same rate it did previously. The statistics around the age of those dying and prevalence of pre-existing conditions also simply cannot be ignored.

The current restrictions are going to result in millions of people losing their jobs and millions of people losing their homes. That alone will create a far bigger problem than say 100,000 dying from Covid 19 would. Financially we are digging a hole that our children and grandchildren will likely still be paying for in 40 years. There is also the cultural impact this will have. It's inevitable that some professional RL clubs will go, the sport will be lost to towns all over the North West. Semi-pro football is also going to be bankrupted and out of existence. Amateur rugby teams, bars, restaurants, music venues. A lot of the places and activities we attend to enjoy life and distract ourselves from the depressing realities of life will be gone. The relationships and friendships built up in those places will be lost as well and the cultural loss is probably as significant as the economic one.

There's a balance to all this. What they should be saying is use a common sense approach. Everything can exist as it used to, but wear a mask in public places other than when eating/drinking. Temperature checks on doors of shopping centres and pubs/restaurants and sporting events etc. Anyone with symptoms HAS to isolate. Anyone found violating that is fined, any employer found with obviously positive cases on premises also fined. Visitations to care homes limited and non-physical etc. Schools moving to more digital solutions than in school education etc. Kids who don't have a laptop or internet or carer at home can go in, you'd minimise the number of kids in school, but can alternate it so all get to be around their friends part of the time. Protection of those with pre-existing conditions with a semi-permanent furlough scheme that helps them long term if they are unable to safely return to work, which we could then afford if the economy wasn't being frozen. There's so much we could be doing.

Instead we're willingly and deliberately self-creating one of the worst economic depressions there has ever been and recklessly ruining the lives of MILLIONS of people. All to save 100,000 people from dying, when given the demographics most of whom would die in a similar time frame anyway.

I've no doubt that in 10, 20, 50 years people will look back on this and view it in hindsight as a huge error. The Covid Calamity or The Willful Cancellation of Society.

Great post Saddened.

Sadly, we have a large number of our population who have been frightened into believing our only escape is a zero-covid society and our politicians (of all sides) are playing to that audience, despite it being obvious that it is highly unlikely to ever happen.