Can either of these two describe any circumstances when they would NOT seek an extension ?

If Emmanuel Macron had developed a bad case of lupus, they would be making exactly the same arguments.

Their start position is that remaining in the EU is the optimal position, and the May model of remaining in the Single Market and Customs Union without a vote - our current colonial status - is clearly absurd, and logically leads back to rejoining the EU.

Why don’t they say this ? Why not argue for EU membership rather than these limp arguments ?

The general public have a basic grasp of everyday economic and organisational life. They have an experiential understanding of the practical issues around purchasing, training, budgets, project delivery and organisation change based on their experience of the businesses that they work in or interact with on a daily basis. We all know that change and delivery is hard won and complex.

This crisis has highlighted the total disconnect of the media class with everyday life.

Burley, Peston, Labour Laura, LBC Hugo etc are invariably privately educated, Oxbridge, arts degree holders who move in the overlapping circles of the Labour Party, London media, EU, and big charities. They live in large houses, within a few miles of each other in North London, and have rarely, if ever, worked in a for-profit organisation or within the blue collar ranks of the public sector.

So we learn that people like Pesto - who holds what purports to be an economics degree from Oxford - seems unable to grasp concepts such as:
Asset scarcity
Prioritisation
Product prototyping
Activity sequencing
Data uncertainty
Etc

Their daily references to “the science”, when any A Level science student would understand that we are in a moment of shifting hypotheses and data uncertainty, only highlights the journalists’ own lack of understanding. We are far from having a single, settled, scientific view on all aspects of this virus, or its treatment, as the experts patiently explain each day.

One interpretation is that the journalists see themselves as Social Justice Warriors, who are using this episode to denigrate the illegitimate Tory government (because all non Labour governments are suspect). Another is that these pompous elitists really don’t grasp how normal businesses work.

They consider themselves experts on the level of the chief officers, yet I wouldn’t trust Peston to report on the Highgate Over 80s Nudists’ Bring & Buy Sale and get the basic facts right.

No wonder that YouTube and many Podcasts are easily able to offer greater depth and subtlety of reporting and analysis.

Very moving and well judged.

By contrast, the snide commentary, and worse, on social media regarding the PM’s brush with near fatal illness is a telling summary of the smug superiority complex that now defines much of the metropolitan left.

The PM’s well judged words remind us of the values of community and common endeavour at a time of national crisis.

That’s probably correct.

He must have chatted to the bar stewards at the Reform Club or the Groucho, when he handed over the 5 quid Christmas Box.

And no doubt he’s patronised Tomasz, his Polish gardener, when he pops round to attend to Lady Starmer’s melons.

Sir Keir is the quintessence of the North London, public sector liberal - an ex Trot, a yuhman reitz lawyer, a beneficiary of a well paid public sector sinecure as DPP, a man with a grand north London villa, paid for with the wages of Blairite public sector largesse.

Here is a man whose knowledge of the working class, in fact of any normal class relations, of private industry, is presumably drawn from books, and Guardian articles.

Labour has truly become a strange coalition of public sector bureaucrats, identity politics bores, and radical islamists - united only anti Americanism and distaste for personal freedom.

The press conferences only serve to illustrate the woeful level of science education of Russell Group arts graduates.

A few minutes googling will also confirm that 75% of the assembled hacks have personal links to Labour (or the LibDems in the case of Hugh Pym).

The questions therefore invariably combine ignorance, arrogance and prejudice. They are invariably founded on the assumption that complacent and evil Tories have organised this crisis as part of some Cadwalladr esque conspiracy, orchestrated by Dominic Cummings.

These are people who - on the whole - believe in some kind of permanent social democratic government, ideally administered by unelected technocrats to avoid the risk of the populus “voting the wrong way”.

The chief officers patiently answer their questions with nuanced and clear answers, which are lost on the hacks.

Yesterday they revealed that they don’t understand that new supply chains must be set up, prototyped and expanded. The hacks seem to believe that new factories can simply emerge overnight, at full production levels, and anything else is a coverup or U Turn about which ministers should “come clean”.

They are truly pitiful.

I enjoy googling the various Hugos and Pestos in the Daily Update to confirm a) which Oxbridge college they attended and b) what their precise personal or family link to the Labour Party is.

Their inability to digest the nuanced and clear explanations provided by the chief officers is striking and consistent.

This episode has provided the general public with a glimpse into the previously shady world of the “lobby” - supposedly the journalists with an inside track into the subtleties of political activity, but now revealed as a kind of museum of Blairite social democracy.

Three trends are clear from these daily updates:

1 the complete lack of basic maths and science understanding of the Oxbridge-educated, arts degree New Labourish journalistic class, who are both unable to ask coherent questions and Equally unable to digest the answers given. Pesto and Rigby are the most obvious example of this class whose self regard massively exceeds their feeble abilities. They seem to have no conception of such basic ideas as prioritisation, data uncertainty or asset scarcity. Yet Pesto and his ilk seem to regard themselves as deep thinkers and qualified to confront people like Dr Van Tam with their politically slanted theories.

Every question is predicated on the assumption that wicked and complacent Tories have a secret plan to do harm to vulnerable groups (who have been deluded into a state of false consciousness and therefore fail to support Labour).

2 the desire of the “Liberal” political and journalistic class to use this crisis as an opportunity to adopt Police state tactics as a mechanism to enforce and impose policies on a recalcitrant population. There is an obvious overlap between the enthusiasts for Police heavy handedness and the “liberal, rules-based order” of the EU. Illiberal liberalism has never been more apparent.

3 the lack, so far, of a public debate about evidence-based costed measures to mitigate the economic damage and reopen the economy. This would include a discussion about enhanced isolation of vulnerable groups, contact tracing and the varieties of testing.

The anti government and innumerate journalistic cadre have nothing to add on this topic, and the PM and new media must take the lead.

I am a supporter of the government and the steps that they’ve taken so far, but more must be done on both the mitigation and communications fronts, and urgently.

The choice is not between Do Nothing and Allowing Millions to Die.

What is needed is a costed plan for mitigation.

Stopping the entire economy for an unknown period, as the Left Populist media (Peston, BBC, Guardian, Sky) seem to be demanding will lead to an unprecedented demand shock and dire health and welfare consequences for decades.

What is needed is a properly costed, risk assessed plan to get the economy moving. This would include plans to isolate the most vulnerable, improve treatment pending a vaccine and formalise SK style contact tracing.

The government’s initial response had been admirable. But they must resist the absurd media demand for an authoritarian “lock down” that will simply destroy the market economy.

So the EU has access to unlimited supply and will allocate this through a bureaucratic procedure to meet the needs of 28 countries ?

The issue is lack of supply and the U.K. government is trying to arrange incremental supply capacity.

Maybe the EU scheme will work, but you have fallen into the default position of assuming that pan European technocracy is the automatic solution to absolutely every problem.