After nearly eight months of lockown the unionist media seem to have noticed the various legislatures have adopted their own approach to the Covid paramedic , for the most part failing to mention that rules or their relaxation in England promoted by Boris Johnson's government and failing to mention it did nt apply to Scotland , Wales and Northern Ireland.
To some extent this has been mitigated by Nicola Sturgeon in Scotland and yes Mark Drakeford here emphasising thir own response . sometimes well before any announcement from West5minster.
It has however led to9 £English travelling to Wales breaking Lockdown Rules claiming
"Boris said it would be alright".
The fault however lay with the London Media not doing their job in pointing out that rule changes applied to England only.
However all of a sudden the same London are claiming that differences in UK quarantine rules are "confusing" for travellers, Grant Shapps has admitted, as the four nations take varying approaches to countries with rising Covid-19 cases".
The BBC one of the offenders clam that
The transport secretary acknowledged people's frustrations, as Scotland and Wales asked arrivals from Portugal and parts of Greece to isolate, but England and Northern Ireland held off.Wales' rules, including only six Greek islands, began at 04:00 BST on Friday.Travel firms called for urgent clarity.Mr Shapps told BBC Breakfast the difference in quarantine rules was similar to the way lockdown had been applied across the UK."It is similar, unfortunately, with the quarantining where we look at the data and then we do speak, but, I'm afraid, quite often come to slightly different outcomes, which I appreciate is confusing for people," he said.He described Portugal as being on a "borderline", adding that "the opinion of England and Northern Ireland is that it did not justify quarantine this week".Mr Shapps told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that Scotland "sort of jumped the gun" by introducing restrictions for arrivals from the whole of Greece."I'm very keen and do try to coordinate... with the other administrations so we can both announce at the same time, and ideally both announce the same things, and this week that didn't work out," he said.The seven-day infection rate in Portugal has increased from 15.3 to 23 per 100,000 people, above the threshold of 20.
It has been followed by a number of news channels carrying out "Vox Pops" segments with holidaymakers decrying their "confusion".
The thing is such "Vox Pops" are not opinion polls and can select to publish or screen only those segments , which seem to support their headlines.
They never seem to carry a holiday maker saying.
No I am not confused , because I pay attention to what my tells us and not Westminster"
Can this have anything to do with this report in Nation Cymru that
Over twice as many people trust the Welsh Parliament to look after the interests of Wales as trust Westminster, according to a new YouGov poll.
The poll shows that, with ‘don’t knows’ removed, 65% trust the Senedd to look after the interests of the people of Wales but only 28% trust the UK Parliament to do so.
Only 35% didn’t trust the Senedd while 72% didn’t trust Westminster.
The poll also asked respondents how well or badly they thought the Welsh and UK Governments were handling the coronavirus pandemic.
Over twice as many favoured the Welsh Government, with 78% saying they had handled the crisis well compared with only 36% who said the same about the UK Government.
Only 22% thought the Welsh Government had done badly while 64% thought the UK Government had done badly.
Reacting to the poll, political scientist, Dafydd Trystan, said that there were two striking aspects of the data.
“The Welsh Government is seen to have responded well to the Coronavirus pandemic by supporters of all parties,” he said.
“The contrast couldn’t be starker with the UK Government that is rated poorly generally, including by a significant minority of Conservative supporters.
“We also find that voters of all parties trust the Welsh Parliament generally to look after the interests of Wales – the same is far from true of the UK Parliament with Labour voters taking a particularly dim view of Westminster’s trustworthiness.”
Can it be that there is panic in Unionists circles , that devolution has emphasised rather than decreased support for devolution and the fact that the Welsh and Scottish , are trusting their own governments , rather than what is in effect the English goverment.
If there is any confusion it is the UK media failure after months and months of evidence that they can't not only point out that whatever Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock announce about any Lockdown changes only applies to England, and that if they claim to be covering the whole of the UK give equal time to any changes in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
1 comment:
As you say, some selective reporting going on. In fairness, "People not at all confused" doesn't make much of a story.
On the other hand, the mainstream media could be indulging in a bit of pro-unionist dog-whistling. If so we're likely to see a lot more of this as Scotland ramps up (to borrow one of Mr Johnson's favourite phrases) towards independence.
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