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Morning @mrjamesob. Feeling irked by this tweet and underlying assumptions ... here’s why ... https://twitter.com/mrjamesob/status/1313374749502902272
You wrote this book. I even bought and read it. I don’t remember the key message to readers to be, ‘passive aggressive questioning’ is the key to being right. So much of this tweet is wrong.
(In fact this was the Intro ...you talk about the need to understand others’ points of view and how important it was to challenge ‘firmly held, but evidentially flawed, opinions’.) This tweet is one.
Firstly there was no incentive to ‘pile en masse’ into venues. There was an incentive to help the socially-distanced hospitality industry and its 3m employees from going under. I don’t remember the bit in your book about sweeping over-exaggerations or misstatements of fact.
Secondly hospitality venues don’t ‘carry a high risk of infection’. They are probably amongst the safest places you can socialise at the moment (although I accept that socialising carries a risk, I’ll come back to it). This is a ‘firmly held, but evidentially flawed, opinion’.
The question was, ‘is it possible that EOTHO contributed?’. The answer is obviously yes because ‘possible’ and ‘contributed’ are exceedingly low bars. The answer was ‘don’t jump to simplistic conclusions’ (like ‘EOTHO was a principle cause’). What are you complaining about here?
But follow the data (pro tip on How to Be Right). Hospitality was open for 8 weeks before the spike. We served millions of people. Where was the spike then? Neither timing nor details of where the spread is happening back you up here ...
Where is the spread in the South-West then? Where so many people were in August, spreading all their infections in EOTHO venues? The truth is that people are socialising, the question is where do you want them to do it?
It may be your answer is to just shut everything down again and ban all socialising (or shout hospitality and accept that people will socialise in unregulated private spaces). Well, fair enough, but ...
You told a caller on your show recently that if a child died of Covid it would be ‘on him’. Following your logic, when the UK hospitality industry goes under, when 3m jobs are lost and people lose a big part of what makes their lives happy, is that on you?
Very happy to have you explain it all. You who knows how to be right, who is “the conscience of liberal Britain”. Because your tweet sounded neither right nor conscientious.
OK, so my timeline is insane now. Lots of people agreeing (many who would be disappointed to know what a bleeding heart London liberal I am 
). I just got frustrated at #BlameHospitality. Thanks to @mrjamesob for acknowledging and replying. Support your local pub/restaurant 
). I just got frustrated at #BlameHospitality. Thanks to @mrjamesob for acknowledging and replying. Support your local pub/restaurant
