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Comment by onphonenow | Hacker News Reader

What I don't get is why the conservatives were so draconian over covid. Your partner is dying, you can't see them. Folks couldn't walk around outside. Some guy driving to walk around outside was like national news.

I mean, if you go to this extreme, and then are throwing parties. (Rules for thee, not for me) it would make me furious as well. Let me go sit on the beach with sunshine and fresh air instead of having to cram into a grocery store or whatever.

In the US DeSantis or whatever right wing politico could easily go to a public event, not because its a good idea, but because they haven't banned others from going to activities.

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They went draconian because the media pushed for it and the public seemed to support it.

Righto, it was "the medias" fault, not the government running the country for 10+ years.

It is in Tory DNA to be authoritarian, the pandemic was simply an opportunity to act on those impulses. While laughing about it from No. 10 (see Cummings, the parties, et al).

The UK is barely-democratic. All key decisions are controlled by Westminster and number 10. The rights under devolution for Scotland and Wales (such as they are) are "lent" and can be taken back.

Real democracies have regional federated governments with real powers to set taxes etc. The UK is a bureaucratic monolith with almost 70 million people controlled by one office in Westminster.

I think only France has a similar centralization of power.

A strong centralized democracy with very little in terms of local government is not an outlier; it's the norm. Europe and Africa mostly run on central authority, as does Ireland. I think your view is skewed because you're an American (I think?)

Yes there are certainly other centralized democracies. The UK and France have some of the largest populations under such a system however, by a decent amount to my knowledge.

They completely messed up their response to covid, had partial lockdowns that didn't work and thus went on longer, didn't screen people coming into the country, didn't shut schools for ages, and now UK has the highest infection rate of any large country, 22%.

Yet still half of the conservatives are against the meager restrictions we have now, want to get rid of asking people nicely to wear masks.

>What I don't get is why the conservatives were so draconian over covid.

Because hundreds of people were dying every day? Because that would have been worse without widespread restrictions?

But you can't have it both ways. If you do lockdown etc, you can't then throw parties.

In the US some right wing folks didn't do the full lockdowns. My point was if they are "caught" out at the beach, regardless of if it is bad health policy, folks won't be as mad.

What makes folks mad is the lockdown, then the party, the beach, the fancy dinner. So yeah, Boris is going to be hurting from this, because its infuriating.

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