And yet the media give him a free ride. Is it just because he is leader at a time of national crisis? I don’t think so. I was no fan of Corbyn, and of course I can’t know if he would have done a better job, but I am sure that if he had done such a bad one the media would have had his head months ago.
Anyone else when out of their depth would say to themselves “I don’t know, so I’m going to ask an expert”. It’s called “Conciously incompetent” in management training.
Corbyn wouldn’t have allowed multi-million pound contracts for PPE, testing, etc. to be awarded, without tender, to his ministers’ inexperienced chums. I’m pretty sure of that.
There’s no reason to think that an urgent tender process would necessarily have led to any considerable delay, nor to assume that Corbyn would have resorted to corruption in order to expediate matters.
Yes there might have been a process under Labour, you’d hope a streamlined one given the cicumstances, but other things like track and trace would have been left to the NHS, ie experts, not people who just fancy taking some government money and who are given it because of connections. In short, no government would have found this easy but Labour wouldn’t have treated it like a business opportunity. The current government can’t get to grips with the idea that some things aren’t just about profit.
Well I think there would have been more Parliamentary debate under Corbyn, but not sure that would have been helpful with a need for swift action not words.
He would have called for the setting up of a committee and after a month of argument about who should be on it, they might have made a decision to act by May or June.
The media give him a free ride because he’s one of them, and serves as some kind of wish-fulfilment figure (yechh)Gary Bushell could be PM and he’d get treated like the Dear Leader.
Those blowhard columnists. We said, “Well if you’re so clever, we’ll put you in charge and see how good you are at running things”. If only we hadn’t given them the idea.
And yet look at those polls. The next three PMs will probably be Julia Hartley-Brewer, Toby Young and Richard Littlejohn.
The straggly yellow headed, yellow bellied bastard didn`t have a clue before the pandemic. He never even bothered attending the first Cobra meetings dealing with C-19. He hasn`t got a fucking clue now and never will have a clue.
In total agreement Baron. And just wait until the shit hits the fan over Brexit. I work in freight and there are some very large freight companies out there who have suspended their services because of the absolute mess of paperwork.
It is not getting reported in the press which makes me suspect that the news is being controlled.
I will make a prediction – now that the scientists are openly stating that the death rate is higher because of the mistakes that we have made. This effectively opens the govt to legal challenges of death by negligence. If one case gets proven watch the floodgates open up.
Someone somewhere has suggested Humility may be the way forward.
“I take full responsibility for all the Govermnent has done”
What about taking responsibility for all the Goverment HASN’T done
Possibly unfair because there is no precedent for this situation – but the bluster and promises were misplaced and wearing.
It’s impossible. He’s so much the wrong PM at the wrong time. An imperfect storm killing thousands in it’s wake. The Covid conferences allow non answers to be left unchallenged. Piers Morgan has managed to make the great unwashed feel sympathy for ministers “bullied” in the vain hope of a straight answer and they’re still ahead in the polls… Not one resignation and Edwina Currie offered hers over eggs. Its pitiful, shameful and criminal. I said on another thread that I have an world class, oven ready fear that they’ll fuck up the vaccine roll out too…..
UK is actually doing very well regarding the vaccine at least regarding first dose, certainly better than Canada (UK needs it more though). 10% of population in about a month is pretty impressive.
The part of the response which is being handled by the state/NHS instead of being punted out to an unqualified and inexperienced friend of the cabinet’s to make a fortune from. Coincidence?
No doubting those geniuses that created the vaccines nor those administering. It’s the bit in the middle especially the supply and despite reassurance from Tigger and Retro I can’t shake the fear of the 12 week gap. Brought to you by the people who said masks were no use and herd immunity was a good idea etc…
The 12 week gap is about getting as many people jabbed as possible. The actual efficacy of those jabs is irrelevant: it’s about creating the illusion of safety.
Fat Boy’s just riding the waves. Why wouldn’t he? He wants to be P.M. What’s the best way of being that? Answer: Being exactly what he is, and acting how he does. Book on Churchill, plenty of bluster, bit of Latin (it’ll be be incorrect bollocks, but who’s to know?), old school chums round every corner, and keep mentioning that war, again and again and again. Stick a blue rosette on, job done.
The public like Eton Schoolboys. The P.M. of 2050 is from Eton. And, if they thought they’d get another £500 per year, they’d sacrifice any number of things (lives, why not?), as long as it’s not on their doorstep. It’s the do-gooders they hate, the kind of people who might actually want to “do good.” “Ideas above their station,” you can hear them now.
Spoke to a guy the other day … “I don’t doff my cap to anyone.”
Zat right, Grandad?
Every day, at the same time, buys the same newspaper, “Look at this, I don’t know why I buy this.” I know why you buy it, it’s racist and so are you. Tomorrow will buy it again, COMPLETELY doffs his cap to Eton Schoolboys. Every day. Has done since he was born. He’s 80, hasn’t got a pot to piss in.
My theory is that the over 70s who are most in the Tories’ pockets are the ones who missed the 60s. He did. All the artists, the more hip of that age-group that I know, didn’t vote to leave Europe, didn’t vote for Fat Boy, don’t talk about “them immigrants.”
Ever heard Paul McCartney talk about our “glorious” war? I haven’t.
Checking in last night with the 82-y-o FIL, a man who married a Spanish immigrant (she escaped Franco as a stowaway in a fishing boat), and who spent the majority of his working life in France.
“It’s all them foreigners’ fault, bringing their virus over here…”
We switched to speakerphone and left the room, only to return once it had gone quiet again.
I agree. The witless electorate are to blame. Grifters grift, it’s what they do. Voting for them is the act of a complete moron. Mind you having an unelectable alternative didn’t help either.
The newspapers told the people who were never going to vote for him that he was unelectable. The ones who might have voted for him worked it out for themselves.
He lost largely because of a negative media campaign unlike which any other candidate has ever had to contend with. It’s completely understandable and to be expected that those who were completely suckered by it would ever admit as much, even to themselves.
And the same is true of course of those who knew all about the influence of the media, but still backed a grumpy, charmless backbench rebel with a dodgy past, who didn’t even want the job and had no leadership skills whatsoever, and was in thrall to his public school millionaire handlers, and who demanded loyalty from a PLP whose whip he had defied more than any other MP, to win an election for them. But they’d never admit as much, even to themselves.
Personally I didn’t find him grumpy or charmless. They’re just subjective opinions. Nor do I consider him to have had a dodgy past.
“was in thrall to his public school millionaire handlers” Whether true or not, that’s pretty hard to credit as a factor responsible for him losing the election, given that his main opponent was Boris Johnson.
Johnson never presented himself as a socialist, as far as I’m aware. Milne the wealthy communist ex-journo (oh how we berate the revolving door between Government and media!) and Drummond-Murray the Picasso-owning Stalin apologist were a absolute tap-in for the Right
I’m sure 95% of voters never had a clue who Milne and Drummond-Murray were, and your caricatures of them reveal your own prejudices. If we’re looking for political cartoon figures then the Right is full to overflowing. The Britannia Unchained mob now hold the levers of power. These neoliberals on steroids who said Brits were lazy and work shy. Opposing them should have been a tap-in for the Left. Why do you think it wasn’t?
Dunno. Maybe because they realised their attempts to highlight real weaknesses would be dismissed as caricatures, cartoons and ‘revealing their own prejudices’
You seem to be asserting that Milne and Drummond -Murray were ‘real weaknesses.’ Is this opinion or fact? Because real tends to imply something factual.
Martin, you just wrote ‘these neoliberals on steroids who said Brits were lazy and work shy’ so let’s not get into a discussion of what’s real and factual or not
I’m not sure what your point is. Britannia Unchained is an extreme vision of a neoliberal UK. I think neoliberalism on steroids is an apt description. Milne’s vision could be described as socialism on steroids. Both visions are ‘real weaknesses’ to a centrist.
On those last two sentences we agree. But ‘moderate Social Democrat’ rather than ‘Centrist’ please. Let’s not peddle the Owen Jones ‘extreme centre’ bullshit. This isn’t Twitter.
The negative media campaign may be a factor, but he was not a strong, charismatic or even very present leader. It isn’t an easy job, of course, but when confronted, he wasn’t able to present a very good picture of himself and seemed to withdraw from public life. He had campaigned for the party leadership on an inclusive, strength-on-all-sides platform. It felt like he ‘led’ the party from a position of entrenchment.
I don’t know if he was charismatic or not. I thought he was. He seemed very popular with da yoof. Charisma can be a bit of a ‘false friend’ in politics.
Charismatic (imho):
Thatcher; Kinnock; Blair; Cameron; Johnson
Charisma isn’t a sufficient quality, but it ‘s a bit of a no-brainer to say it’s a necessary one. If you cannot appeal (ideally beyond your political base) then you won’t win sufficient support to implement your policies. He was popular with da yoof (and his natural base, when he was listing problems with the world. Protesting is one thing, selling your policies as solutions, he just didn’t have the capacity to to do.
Did Kinnock have charisma? I never felt it. Cameron thought he did, but the reaction I picked up on was ‘slimy’. Thatcher didn’t care whether she had charisma or not, she had unlimited self-belief, which can take you far. Blair and Johnson, of course, but hubris was Blair’s downfall, and that is pretty much all Johnson has got in his toolkit. I see nothing else apart from being able to lie his way out of situations he has created, if you think that is a quality.
Of the not charismatic politicians you list, over half of them I would argue, have little else to redeem themselves either. Duncan-Smith? Howard? May? Horrible people responsible for awful political decisions. Major, Hague and Miliband were less awful, but could really have benefitted from charisma injections. B(r)own, as far as I know, the engineer behind the New Labour years, really suffered from low charisma – he needed Blair to sell the policies he was responsible for.
(I should stipulate, my lists of those I found charismatic/non charasmatic have no relation at all with who I liked/didn’t like.)
I’ve never voted in my life. I could say that’s because I left the country when I was but a sprightly young lad and wasn’t allowed a vote in my new homeland. But in truth, Corbyn was the first party leader I’ve ever felt worthy of my vote. The first who spoke my language.
I liked a lot of what Corbyn stood for. When somebody went out on the streets of a Home Counties town and canvassed opinion over his policies without naming him or his party, there was general approval. That isn’t enough, unfortunately.
I was responding to what i thought was implicit when you mention false friend – that those with charisma failed, those without charisma succeeded. (not necessarily whether you liked any of them). Otherwise, what was the point of the comparison?
Not sure what the point of my comparison was. I suspect there wasn’t one. Just idle observation on the distribution of charisma among both successful and usuccessful party leaders.
He was an easy target for a negative media campaign.
An obscure figure, barely known by the public before suddenly getting elected leader of his party. Not particularly sociable or outgoing, he tended to retreat when attacked rather than fight, he was unable to win people over by force of personality because he didn’t have enough of it.
Oh please. Are you too young to remember how Foot was treated? Or Kinnock?
I would not have voted him, nor Johnson, nor any of them. The blunt truth is that England is, by and large, populated by political and intellectual pygmies, Corbyn included.
His addition of Milne to his team should have been the big indication that he’s an idiot who shouldn’t be let near power. Other than as a TU Rep, he has never held a job in the real world, and I would argue that TU Rep in the 70s isn’t the real world. He is the perpetual 6th former who never grew up to understand how the world actually works – at least Starmer gets that.
You know why Corbyn was unelectable? Because he was.
Dont forget a large part of the population view elections like an episode of “I”m A Celebrity” without Ant and Dec. Corbyn would have been first out Johnson like some loveable bumbling Harry Redknapp figure would win at a canter. Not right but the world we live in…
Interesting that the death rate per 100,000 people was higher (more or less) in the period 2000-2010 than it was in 2020. There must have been all sorts of undetected viruses going around as well as the regular influenza varieties.
Less deaths from RTAs is probably the most significant factor. Better workplace Health & Safety and a bit of improvement in diet/general fitness have probably contributed too.
Without wanting to come across as gloating, just to put some perspective on this, the total deaths due to COVID as reported here in Singapore is 29. That is in a population of approx 5 million, which if you scaled up to that of the UK (60 million ?) would only be 350 deaths total, which is a far lot less than 100,000.
I know there are many factors that affect the death rate (and you could argue that being a much more densely populated place, we should be higher), but surely government management of it is a major one and this surely shows that something is amiss……..
Yup.
Although larger, the total deaths in Australia is less than one day in the UK.
WA hasn’t had a case in over 300 days.
NT has had a total of 98 cases and 0 deaths.
Hard lockdowns and quarantines work. So too do effective T&T systems. But above all else you need strong leadership and a cooperative population, and UK struck out on both there.
Late to lockdown 3 times, Trace and track (remember that?) useless, The eat out to help out superspreading, the mixed messages, giving billion pound contracts to their mates, the lack of PPE, and of course Dominic f***ing Cummings.
I’ve never quite worked to why EOTHO in August is being held responsible for the spike in hospitalisations at the end of September. Surely you’d have seen the rise start in mid-August? Could it be the opening of schools and universities that started the superspreading?
In August the message was “Stay Alert’ not ‘Stay at Home’
Well-managed hospitality premises weren’t the issue. The 10pm curfew that came in later, alongside the return of universities, was what threw crowds of young, pissed people out of those premises, just as it was getting too cold to stay outside. And… bang.
Vulpes here, alleging that 52,000 independent restaurants, cafes, and pubs that had been left without income for three months by the Government’s bungled response to the first wave were Tory sponsors.
Well, mostly because the Eat Out To Help Out scheme is completely indicative of this government’s crassly botched attempts at balancing economy and health, which in any case happened far too early resulting in much unnecessary infection spreading.
I don’t really come here to argue so I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree…
…I’ve already addressed that one, but believe what you believe, I guess. Not looking for an argument either, just offering a different and apparently unpopular opinion
There is very little hard evidence that EOTHO caused a rise in infection.
People are at liberty to believe it was a shit idea, but the real spike started happening post October, when universities returned and schools had been back a few weeks.
Add in the fumbled messaging around Xmas and the virus apparently taking 3 days off because it’s allergic to mincemeat, and combine that with Mr Great British Public thinking they know best and no bastard’s stopping ME seeing my family because we’re special, and you get us here.
That and a massively more transmissible variant which may or may not have originated here.
Government have fucked up many times. I’d say they’re 60% to blame.
40% to blame, and here I’m really just operating on suspicion based on prejudice, is a section of the comfy middle class who are closer to Cummings than they’d like to admit: “the rules are for all of us, but much MORE for all of Them. Not me. I’m different. When I break the rules it’s because I’m responsibly weighing risk, on the basis of being considerably cleverer and specialer, than Yow.”
Between 8-17% of new infections apparently at a time when they were at their lowest.
The article says this is an unpublished pre-paper (does that mean not peer reviewed?) and quotes a Professor in Medicine expressing reservations about the study’s methodology. More evidence needed, perhaps.
I decided to have a look at that University of Warwick report that claimed EOTHO caused 8-17% of Covid infections. It’s really interesting in the context of the discussion we were having up this thread about the pernicious influence of media.
Here’s a left wing commentator quoting the upper end of the report’s figure to his one million Twitter followers, in a piece entitled “Is Rishi Sunak the Most Dangerous Man in Britain?”
But no one wants to hear that, do they, so the number gets circulated and suddenly it’s true.
If you look at the rise in infections, you’d struggle to believe that pubs and restaurants opening on July 4, and being supported in August, could be responsible for the surge in infections from October 2, and you would maybe conclude it was the opening of schools and universities in Mid-September that did that. https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=uk+coronavirus+infection+rate&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
So when we talk about how right-wing ‘old’ media skews the truth, perhaps we should also accept that left-wing ‘new’ media does exactly the same.
But there’s a million Twitter followers who lap up his bullshit, all of whom would swear that the Daily Mail (circulation 1.1 million) is what lost Labour the last election.
Although Mail, Sun and Express were the most constant, every major UK newspaper, joined in with the Corbyn kicking.
“The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses. The press is so powerful in its image-making role, it can make the criminal look like he’s the victim and make the victim look like he’s the criminal. This is the press, an irresponsible press. If you aren’t careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”
Malcolm X
Dunno, different ball game. Seems to me social media is giving Johnson a right old bashing at the moment, whereas the Tory-bankrolling press is less critical. But that might just be the social media that comes my way. (I see Jim Davidson’s caused a bit of a stir on social media by defending Johnson). Anyway, upshot is that without a kicking from the press Tories are still slightly ahead in the polls.
Again, with the socials I guess it depends who you follow, what comes your way. I’ve not seen much Starmer bashing (not seen much about Starmer at all really), but a plethora of negative posts aimed squarely at Johnson.
He once said that every time James Delingpole opens his mouth someone becomes a socialist. I think every time Owen Jones opens his mouth someone becomes a Conservative.
I’d say “send all these self-important bell-ends to an island to argue it out and leave the rest of us in peace”, but unfortunately I think we’re living on that island.
Early on there was a perception that it will kill you only if you’re weakened by an underlying condition or if you’re over 80. Most Governments consciously decided that they could live with that.
If the virus was particularly deadly to the under 10s, wouldn’t everyone have agreed to a severe lockdown for as long as it takes? Even a really clueless PM wouldn’t willingly put children at risk fur the sake of business- would they?
It was the decision that some lives aren’t that important – not just leaders but also a significant amount of the general public – that will be seen as shameful
My impression is that it is not so much a conscious decision that some lives aren’t that important, but more a bleak exposure of the effect of 10 years of a culture of ‘hard-working families’ and high-earning, high-skilled, high-value immigrants. These are the people who POWER our economy, the rest of you are free-loaders.
My daughter, home from Uni, got a job in a local supermarket last summer. God I was glad when she finished, and I bet it’s got far worse since then. Some of the public are an absolute disgrace at times but the management of these stores don’t always help matters.
It isn’t only the Conservative government running the UK’s policy. Each nation makes its own policies and they have been pretty much the same, as they are based on the same scientific advice. Labour in Wales, SNP in Scotland and DUP/Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland. I don’t think this is often taken into account, even by journalists. Matt Hancock was asked the other day about the slow role out of the vaccine in Scotland, which is not his responsibility. If there’s criticism, fair enough, but don’t let the other parties off the hook.
How many dead without the flawed policies that have been put in place? 300,000? Johnson can then say he saved 200,000 lives.
At the risk of repeating myself, UK had less deaths per 100K people in 2020 than pretty much any year from 2000 to 2010.
I agree that social distancing, masks etc need to be in place. However there is a lot of righteous fury directed at any naysayers. Canada is now set on closing it’s borders completely reducing flights from 5 to 10% to almost nothing. It is estimated that since the initial lockdown about 1% of cases have resulted from people flying in and that is before there was a requirement for a negative test before getting on a plane, so that would be about 200 people dying who may have caught it some other way or passed on from something else anyway. We will never know.
What we currently have is mass hysteria which will remain for pretty much all of 2021 it seems.
I’m sorry and this isn’t having a go but search for the BBC News film about mortuary workers from a couple of days ago before accusing us of being in the grip of mass hysteria. It was horrific.
Probably by there being more of them. Given that most morticians children join the family firm and families bigger in those days, even if they then had to bury some of them. (Sorry, but you did ask…..)
When considered carefully. Putting aside political differences. Considering the evidence and checking facts. The government did do everything it could. ….. Everything that Covid 19 would have requested. At every step. It’s almost like Covid 19 was advising them…
Social distancing and masks are sticking plasters. Major government policy apart from severe lockdown have failed. He’s brought us out of Lockdown too early twice. Lockdowned too late 3 times. Cummings, care homes and Christmas. Airports, trust and trace, schools,universities. Just the vaccine left for them to mess up as Covid whispers in their ear “jab twice the people half as effectively…”
And if my granny had wheels she’d be a bicycle. And if he had taken the correct decisions, based on the science rather than the opinion polls and the tabloids, it could have been much, much lower.
Assuming the way in which deaths blamed on Covid are counted, a controversial topic in itself, there is no justifiable reason why the UK should have a vastly higher death total, and rate, than, say, Germany – a landlocked country with a larger population.
Under-investment in the NHS has been linked to it, Dai. Although Johnson has only been PM for a year, he’s been in a govt for a decade (during which the NHS has had a 25% cut in funding, according to Radio 4 this morning while I was in the shower). https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55820178
Exactly. And 10 years of austerity has also created absurd levels of poverty; another one in their back yard, another significant contributor to the death toll.
They’ve also left their grubby footprint all over the rolling clusterfuck of social care in England, and care homes being almost exclusively private run.
Knowingly discharging ill / infected elderly people back to care homes short of PPE and the skills to manage the infection will hopefully be the source of a future enquiry that will show shower of weasels for what they are and holds them fully to account for what they did.
Despite reading Rory Stewart, pandemic expert having been involved in Ebola management saying lockdown in the first week of march I forgave him for locking down first time when he did. I screamed at the TV when he let us out after his ridiculous “mugger” analogy. While there were still more cases and deaths when we first locked down. I used the phrase “January will be carnage” in early December when his enthusiasm for a yet to be approved vaccine and “I’m saving Christmas ” mantra ensured the current 50000 deaths in 77 days happened.
Not sure what deaths in November and December preceding the 25th have to do with “saving Christmas”, but it has got worse in January (now improving rapidly), also the case in pretty much every country.
People did what they wanted at Christmas/New Year irrespective of what the government rules were. We had much tighter restrictions in Canada, but there was nevertheless a spike in January.
It’s hard to keep up with your argument, Dai but what exactly are you saying? You appear to be defending the UK handling of Covid using “They did their best, sure they made mistakes but they did their best” argument. Jeeze.
And you keep on about those “excess death ” figures – Jeeze.
I just think blaming one guy for 100K deaths is not the right thing to do. I need to say that I am in no way a supporter of him or his party. However, I think that forming views along party lines is unhelpful.
It has been handled in a poor way for sure, however this was an unprecedented situation in modern times and mistakes were almost inevitable. UK is also a particularly rebellious country and people would never go along with the sort of lockdown that has worked in some other countries. Also, as others have mentioned Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and, indeed, Ireland made their own decisions and have ended up with there not being too much difference in numbers of infections or deaths.
The number of deaths is horrific, but running about 15% above 2019 figures I believe. From some of the media reports one might believe it was at 4 or 500% of the normal number. Flu deaths are down 80% this season I believe, perhaps indicating that masks, social distancing and periodic lockdowns would also have reduced deaths in any other badly hit flu season.
I think Canada has handled it a bit better, we are probably at about 1/3 of the UK deaths per capita, but helped by being an enormous country with a population density of around 1/80th of that of the UK. Naturally the densest areas e.g. Toronto area, Montreal have been badly hit. We have handled things in a pretty similar way to the UK, the main difference being an immediate closing of the land border and an implementation of a 14 day quarantine for arriving visitors very early on. This was however blamed for an initial surge in infections when the “snowbirds” who winter in Florida all came rushing back before it became very difficult to do so. Also Universities went purely to online learning when their academic year started last Sept. Many measures have not been universally welcomed, but I think in general people are more likely to go along with restrictions than in the UK. Nevertheless there is much sadness at the economic price we will pay and the fact that many small businesses are going under.
Let’s also add some other Western European figures, all of which I believe have less dense populations than the UK.
Italy 87,000 deaths
France 74,000
Spain 57,000
Germany 55,000
And countries with similar population density to the UK have similar per capita death rates.
But that one guy as head of the UK Government has repeatedly said “I take full responsibility”. If he had said, like what you said “Pandemic, nobody knew what the fuck was going on and looking back we made some bummer decisions” that’s one thing. But no, he keeps on saying “I take full responsibility”. He therefore has two courses of action open to him. 1. Resign or 2.Carry on saying “I take full responsibility”.
Well you’ve convinced me. I’m glad we had a loveable buffoon in charge who wouldn’t make his mind up on a major issue say like Brexit on a personal desire to further his career, a government that has been in charge for 10 years and running the NHS down for that time, the most empathetic Home Secretary in history who is definitely not a Sociopath, a Health Secretary who definitely doesn’t make it up as he goes along.
Thank God they’ve been in charge and not someone incompetent.
PS He couldn’t even comb his f***ing hair last night, 100,000 dead FFS.
Ex-PM’s wife in “actually experiencing some inconvenience as a result of her husband’s incompetence” shocker. I expect to see them at the food bank imminently.
I would’t give a toss about how he looks (yes, of course it’s an affectation) if he was doing a good job. He isn’t.
A smartly-suited-and-booted incompetent statesman would still be an incompetent statesman.
I seem to recall Mo Mowlam getting a fair bit of that from the Tory press. Especially after first becoming ill with the brain tumour that eventually killed her.
And yet the media give him a free ride. Is it just because he is leader at a time of national crisis? I don’t think so. I was no fan of Corbyn, and of course I can’t know if he would have done a better job, but I am sure that if he had done such a bad one the media would have had his head months ago.
Likewise, Gatz.
Anyone else when out of their depth would say to themselves “I don’t know, so I’m going to ask an expert”. It’s called “Conciously incompetent” in management training.
Priti Patel is unconciously incompetent.
She’s Priti vacant…
Corbyn wouldn’t have allowed multi-million pound contracts for PPE, testing, etc. to be awarded, without tender, to his ministers’ inexperienced chums. I’m pretty sure of that.
That’s true – it would have been Milne and Drummond-Murray’s inexperienced chums instead
I doubt that very much. On what basis do you think so?
Because if a Labour PM had delayed contracting out PPE to allow for a full and fair tender process, we’d have reached 100,000 deaths a lot sooner.
There’s no reason to think that an urgent tender process would necessarily have led to any considerable delay, nor to assume that Corbyn would have resorted to corruption in order to expediate matters.
Yes there might have been a process under Labour, you’d hope a streamlined one given the cicumstances, but other things like track and trace would have been left to the NHS, ie experts, not people who just fancy taking some government money and who are given it because of connections. In short, no government would have found this easy but Labour wouldn’t have treated it like a business opportunity. The current government can’t get to grips with the idea that some things aren’t just about profit.
THIS
Well I think there would have been more Parliamentary debate under Corbyn, but not sure that would have been helpful with a need for swift action not words.
He would have called for the setting up of a committee and after a month of argument about who should be on it, they might have made a decision to act by May or June.
Because that’s what he usually did when dealing with a pandemic?
Probably, yes.
Probably, no.
https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/opinion/imagine-if-jeremy-corbyn-was-in-charge/05/05/
The media give him a free ride because he’s one of them, and serves as some kind of wish-fulfilment figure (yechh)Gary Bushell could be PM and he’d get treated like the Dear Leader.
The majority of our news media are owned and run by people who bankroll his party.
It would be surprising if they DID give him a hard time.
Those blowhard columnists. We said, “Well if you’re so clever, we’ll put you in charge and see how good you are at running things”. If only we hadn’t given them the idea.
And yet look at those polls. The next three PMs will probably be Julia Hartley-Brewer, Toby Young and Richard Littlejohn.
Fuck, if that comes true, I will emigrate.
People said that about Boris Johnson, and then shortly after he won the election it became impossible to leave the country. Coincidence?
Research, sheeple!
I really must get round to applying for my Irish passport.
Lucky man. I am one generation out.
It was evident that he is already looking forward to celebrate a day of remembrance in 2022 from his early statement.
Nothing wrong with that but he will try and bask in the glory.
There is no glory!
The straggly yellow headed, yellow bellied bastard didn`t have a clue before the pandemic. He never even bothered attending the first Cobra meetings dealing with C-19. He hasn`t got a fucking clue now and never will have a clue.
In total agreement Baron. And just wait until the shit hits the fan over Brexit. I work in freight and there are some very large freight companies out there who have suspended their services because of the absolute mess of paperwork.
It is not getting reported in the press which makes me suspect that the news is being controlled.
I will make a prediction – now that the scientists are openly stating that the death rate is higher because of the mistakes that we have made. This effectively opens the govt to legal challenges of death by negligence. If one case gets proven watch the floodgates open up.
Someone somewhere has suggested Humility may be the way forward.
“I take full responsibility for all the Govermnent has done”
What about taking responsibility for all the Goverment HASN’T done
Possibly unfair because there is no precedent for this situation – but the bluster and promises were misplaced and wearing.
It’s impossible. He’s so much the wrong PM at the wrong time. An imperfect storm killing thousands in it’s wake. The Covid conferences allow non answers to be left unchallenged. Piers Morgan has managed to make the great unwashed feel sympathy for ministers “bullied” in the vain hope of a straight answer and they’re still ahead in the polls… Not one resignation and Edwina Currie offered hers over eggs. Its pitiful, shameful and criminal. I said on another thread that I have an world class, oven ready fear that they’ll fuck up the vaccine roll out too…..
UK is actually doing very well regarding the vaccine at least regarding first dose, certainly better than Canada (UK needs it more though). 10% of population in about a month is pretty impressive.
The part of the response which is being handled by the state/NHS instead of being punted out to an unqualified and inexperienced friend of the cabinet’s to make a fortune from. Coincidence?
No doubting those geniuses that created the vaccines nor those administering. It’s the bit in the middle especially the supply and despite reassurance from Tigger and Retro I can’t shake the fear of the 12 week gap. Brought to you by the people who said masks were no use and herd immunity was a good idea etc…
The 12 week gap is about getting as many people jabbed as possible. The actual efficacy of those jabs is irrelevant: it’s about creating the illusion of safety.
The Guardian’s science editor seems pretty supportive of the vaccination strategy / delayed second jab.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jan/24/ive-had-my-first-vaccine-jab-it-gives-me-hope-of-liberation-but-not-yet?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
…and yet, the people I most blame are the public.
Fat Boy’s just riding the waves. Why wouldn’t he? He wants to be P.M. What’s the best way of being that? Answer: Being exactly what he is, and acting how he does. Book on Churchill, plenty of bluster, bit of Latin (it’ll be be incorrect bollocks, but who’s to know?), old school chums round every corner, and keep mentioning that war, again and again and again. Stick a blue rosette on, job done.
The public like Eton Schoolboys. The P.M. of 2050 is from Eton. And, if they thought they’d get another £500 per year, they’d sacrifice any number of things (lives, why not?), as long as it’s not on their doorstep. It’s the do-gooders they hate, the kind of people who might actually want to “do good.” “Ideas above their station,” you can hear them now.
Spoke to a guy the other day … “I don’t doff my cap to anyone.”
Zat right, Grandad?
Every day, at the same time, buys the same newspaper, “Look at this, I don’t know why I buy this.” I know why you buy it, it’s racist and so are you. Tomorrow will buy it again, COMPLETELY doffs his cap to Eton Schoolboys. Every day. Has done since he was born. He’s 80, hasn’t got a pot to piss in.
My theory is that the over 70s who are most in the Tories’ pockets are the ones who missed the 60s. He did. All the artists, the more hip of that age-group that I know, didn’t vote to leave Europe, didn’t vote for Fat Boy, don’t talk about “them immigrants.”
Ever heard Paul McCartney talk about our “glorious” war? I haven’t.
Checking in last night with the 82-y-o FIL, a man who married a Spanish immigrant (she escaped Franco as a stowaway in a fishing boat), and who spent the majority of his working life in France.
“It’s all them foreigners’ fault, bringing their virus over here…”
We switched to speakerphone and left the room, only to return once it had gone quiet again.
I agree. The witless electorate are to blame. Grifters grift, it’s what they do. Voting for them is the act of a complete moron. Mind you having an unelectable alternative didn’t help either.
If 40+% of the people haven’t seen through this lot after all this, they never will.
All Hail King Littlejohn!
The newspapers told the electorate the alternative was “unelectable”, they swallowed it, so he became unelectable.
The newspapers told the people who were never going to vote for him that he was unelectable. The ones who might have voted for him worked it out for themselves.
Nonsense.
…and that’s why he lost
He lost largely because of a negative media campaign unlike which any other candidate has ever had to contend with. It’s completely understandable and to be expected that those who were completely suckered by it would ever admit as much, even to themselves.
And the same is true of course of those who knew all about the influence of the media, but still backed a grumpy, charmless backbench rebel with a dodgy past, who didn’t even want the job and had no leadership skills whatsoever, and was in thrall to his public school millionaire handlers, and who demanded loyalty from a PLP whose whip he had defied more than any other MP, to win an election for them. But they’d never admit as much, even to themselves.
Personally I didn’t find him grumpy or charmless. They’re just subjective opinions. Nor do I consider him to have had a dodgy past.
“was in thrall to his public school millionaire handlers” Whether true or not, that’s pretty hard to credit as a factor responsible for him losing the election, given that his main opponent was Boris Johnson.
Johnson never presented himself as a socialist, as far as I’m aware. Milne the wealthy communist ex-journo (oh how we berate the revolving door between Government and media!) and Drummond-Murray the Picasso-owning Stalin apologist were a absolute tap-in for the Right
I’m sure 95% of voters never had a clue who Milne and Drummond-Murray were, and your caricatures of them reveal your own prejudices. If we’re looking for political cartoon figures then the Right is full to overflowing. The Britannia Unchained mob now hold the levers of power. These neoliberals on steroids who said Brits were lazy and work shy. Opposing them should have been a tap-in for the Left. Why do you think it wasn’t?
Dunno. Maybe because they realised their attempts to highlight real weaknesses would be dismissed as caricatures, cartoons and ‘revealing their own prejudices’
You seem to be asserting that Milne and Drummond -Murray were ‘real weaknesses.’ Is this opinion or fact? Because real tends to imply something factual.
Martin, you just wrote ‘these neoliberals on steroids who said Brits were lazy and work shy’ so let’s not get into a discussion of what’s real and factual or not
I’m not sure what your point is. Britannia Unchained is an extreme vision of a neoliberal UK. I think neoliberalism on steroids is an apt description. Milne’s vision could be described as socialism on steroids. Both visions are ‘real weaknesses’ to a centrist.
On those last two sentences we agree. But ‘moderate Social Democrat’ rather than ‘Centrist’ please. Let’s not peddle the Owen Jones ‘extreme centre’ bullshit. This isn’t Twitter.
The negative media campaign may be a factor, but he was not a strong, charismatic or even very present leader. It isn’t an easy job, of course, but when confronted, he wasn’t able to present a very good picture of himself and seemed to withdraw from public life. He had campaigned for the party leadership on an inclusive, strength-on-all-sides platform. It felt like he ‘led’ the party from a position of entrenchment.
I don’t know if he was charismatic or not. I thought he was. He seemed very popular with da yoof. Charisma can be a bit of a ‘false friend’ in politics.
Charismatic (imho):
Thatcher; Kinnock; Blair; Cameron; Johnson
Not charismatic (imho):
Major; Hague; Duncan-Smith; Howard; Brown; May; Miliband; Starmer
Charisma isn’t a sufficient quality, but it ‘s a bit of a no-brainer to say it’s a necessary one. If you cannot appeal (ideally beyond your political base) then you won’t win sufficient support to implement your policies. He was popular with da yoof (and his natural base, when he was listing problems with the world. Protesting is one thing, selling your policies as solutions, he just didn’t have the capacity to to do.
Did Kinnock have charisma? I never felt it. Cameron thought he did, but the reaction I picked up on was ‘slimy’. Thatcher didn’t care whether she had charisma or not, she had unlimited self-belief, which can take you far. Blair and Johnson, of course, but hubris was Blair’s downfall, and that is pretty much all Johnson has got in his toolkit. I see nothing else apart from being able to lie his way out of situations he has created, if you think that is a quality.
Of the not charismatic politicians you list, over half of them I would argue, have little else to redeem themselves either. Duncan-Smith? Howard? May? Horrible people responsible for awful political decisions. Major, Hague and Miliband were less awful, but could really have benefitted from charisma injections. B(r)own, as far as I know, the engineer behind the New Labour years, really suffered from low charisma – he needed Blair to sell the policies he was responsible for.
(I should stipulate, my lists of those I found charismatic/non charasmatic have no relation at all with who I liked/didn’t like.)
I’ve never voted in my life. I could say that’s because I left the country when I was but a sprightly young lad and wasn’t allowed a vote in my new homeland. But in truth, Corbyn was the first party leader I’ve ever felt worthy of my vote. The first who spoke my language.
I liked a lot of what Corbyn stood for. When somebody went out on the streets of a Home Counties town and canvassed opinion over his policies without naming him or his party, there was general approval. That isn’t enough, unfortunately.
I was responding to what i thought was implicit when you mention false friend – that those with charisma failed, those without charisma succeeded. (not necessarily whether you liked any of them). Otherwise, what was the point of the comparison?
Not sure what the point of my comparison was. I suspect there wasn’t one. Just idle observation on the distribution of charisma among both successful and usuccessful party leaders.
Fair enough. Out of curiosity, which were the successful ones without charisma?
Major and May both won a general election.
I would say they won by default against, respectively, Kinnock and Corbyn.
He was an easy target for a negative media campaign.
An obscure figure, barely known by the public before suddenly getting elected leader of his party. Not particularly sociable or outgoing, he tended to retreat when attacked rather than fight, he was unable to win people over by force of personality because he didn’t have enough of it.
Oh please. Are you too young to remember how Foot was treated? Or Kinnock?
I would not have voted him, nor Johnson, nor any of them. The blunt truth is that England is, by and large, populated by political and intellectual pygmies, Corbyn included.
His addition of Milne to his team should have been the big indication that he’s an idiot who shouldn’t be let near power. Other than as a TU Rep, he has never held a job in the real world, and I would argue that TU Rep in the 70s isn’t the real world. He is the perpetual 6th former who never grew up to understand how the world actually works – at least Starmer gets that.
You know why Corbyn was unelectable? Because he was.
Dont forget a large part of the population view elections like an episode of “I”m A Celebrity” without Ant and Dec. Corbyn would have been first out Johnson like some loveable bumbling Harry Redknapp figure would win at a canter. Not right but the world we live in…
This is a good article, shows that there is more to it than just incompetence by the Conservative government.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55757790
Interesting that the death rate per 100,000 people was higher (more or less) in the period 2000-2010 than it was in 2020. There must have been all sorts of undetected viruses going around as well as the regular influenza varieties.
It is too early to make any kind of definitive data comparisons.
November, for example, saw an uptake in the death rate. It’s also worth noting that generally the death rate has been falling YOY.
Hey – deaths in RTAs were down 70%.
Simply to say that the death rate was down and therefore this isn’t all that bad is a simplistic and fatuous argument.
Less deaths from RTAs is probably the most significant factor. Better workplace Health & Safety and a bit of improvement in diet/general fitness have probably contributed too.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/new-zealand/
Without wanting to come across as gloating, just to put some perspective on this, the total deaths due to COVID as reported here in Singapore is 29. That is in a population of approx 5 million, which if you scaled up to that of the UK (60 million ?) would only be 350 deaths total, which is a far lot less than 100,000.
I know there are many factors that affect the death rate (and you could argue that being a much more densely populated place, we should be higher), but surely government management of it is a major one and this surely shows that something is amiss……..
Yup.
Although larger, the total deaths in Australia is less than one day in the UK.
WA hasn’t had a case in over 300 days.
NT has had a total of 98 cases and 0 deaths.
Hard lockdowns and quarantines work. So too do effective T&T systems. But above all else you need strong leadership and a cooperative population, and UK struck out on both there.
Late to lockdown 3 times, Trace and track (remember that?) useless, The eat out to help out superspreading, the mixed messages, giving billion pound contracts to their mates, the lack of PPE, and of course Dominic f***ing Cummings.
It’s surprising its only 100,00 dead.
I’ve never quite worked to why EOTHO in August is being held responsible for the spike in hospitalisations at the end of September. Surely you’d have seen the rise start in mid-August? Could it be the opening of schools and universities that started the superspreading?
You’re not allowed to say that. Public discourse about schools has been based on two ideas:
1. The only people in schools are children. Those children do not have families.
2. Children are 100% immune to Covid.
It’s the message. Hey everyone forget the deadly disease, stuff your faces. I know we said stay at home but get eating.
I forgot about the million students criss crossing the country and of course the failure to protect Care home residents and staff.
In August the message was “Stay Alert’ not ‘Stay at Home’
Well-managed hospitality premises weren’t the issue. The 10pm curfew that came in later, alongside the return of universities, was what threw crowds of young, pissed people out of those premises, just as it was getting too cold to stay outside. And… bang.
Stay at home, mostly, but hey, please, here’s a tenner, go and fill your face at an eatery owned by one of our sponsors.
Vulpes here, alleging that 52,000 independent restaurants, cafes, and pubs that had been left without income for three months by the Government’s bungled response to the first wave were Tory sponsors.
Well yeah, but they could hardly just allow eating out to take place in their sponsors eatablishments could they?
No they offered the opportunity to everyone in hospitality regardless of their political affiliation… not sure why anyone thinks this is wrong.
Well, mostly because the Eat Out To Help Out scheme is completely indicative of this government’s crassly botched attempts at balancing economy and health, which in any case happened far too early resulting in much unnecessary infection spreading.
I don’t really come here to argue so I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree…
…I’ve already addressed that one, but believe what you believe, I guess. Not looking for an argument either, just offering a different and apparently unpopular opinion
There is very little hard evidence that EOTHO caused a rise in infection.
People are at liberty to believe it was a shit idea, but the real spike started happening post October, when universities returned and schools had been back a few weeks.
Add in the fumbled messaging around Xmas and the virus apparently taking 3 days off because it’s allergic to mincemeat, and combine that with Mr Great British Public thinking they know best and no bastard’s stopping ME seeing my family because we’re special, and you get us here.
That and a massively more transmissible variant which may or may not have originated here.
Government have fucked up many times. I’d say they’re 60% to blame.
40% to blame, and here I’m really just operating on suspicion based on prejudice, is a section of the comfy middle class who are closer to Cummings than they’d like to admit: “the rules are for all of us, but much MORE for all of Them. Not me. I’m different. When I break the rules it’s because I’m responsibly weighing risk, on the basis of being considerably cleverer and specialer, than Yow.”
The University of Warwick study showed that Eat Out To Help Out caused a significant increase in new coronavirus cases.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/eat-out-to-help-out-second-wave-coronavirus-rishi-sunak-covid-b1446586.html
Between 8-17% of new infections apparently at a time when they were at their lowest.
The article says this is an unpublished pre-paper (does that mean not peer reviewed?) and quotes a Professor in Medicine expressing reservations about the study’s methodology. More evidence needed, perhaps.
I decided to have a look at that University of Warwick report that claimed EOTHO caused 8-17% of Covid infections. It’s really interesting in the context of the discussion we were having up this thread about the pernicious influence of media.
Here’s a left wing commentator quoting the upper end of the report’s figure to his one million Twitter followers, in a piece entitled “Is Rishi Sunak the Most Dangerous Man in Britain?”
But a couple of paragraphs into the report’s Abstract the author himself says that these numbers are a ‘back of the envelope calculation’ which is an amazing admission from an academic
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/centres/cage/manage/publications/wp.517.2020.pdf
But no one wants to hear that, do they, so the number gets circulated and suddenly it’s true.
If you look at the rise in infections, you’d struggle to believe that pubs and restaurants opening on July 4, and being supported in August, could be responsible for the surge in infections from October 2, and you would maybe conclude it was the opening of schools and universities in Mid-September that did that.
https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=uk+coronavirus+infection+rate&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
So when we talk about how right-wing ‘old’ media skews the truth, perhaps we should also accept that left-wing ‘new’ media does exactly the same.
Your point is well made. But I think anyone with half a functioning brain cell knows that Owen Jones is a tosser and is…flexible with the verite.
But there’s a million Twitter followers who lap up his bullshit, all of whom would swear that the Daily Mail (circulation 1.1 million) is what lost Labour the last election.
Although Mail, Sun and Express were the most constant, every major UK newspaper, joined in with the Corbyn kicking.
“The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses. The press is so powerful in its image-making role, it can make the criminal look like he’s the victim and make the victim look like he’s the criminal. This is the press, an irresponsible press. If you aren’t careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”
Malcolm X
I think, had it existed, he’d have included social media in that. Don’t you?
Dunno, different ball game. Seems to me social media is giving Johnson a right old bashing at the moment, whereas the Tory-bankrolling press is less critical. But that might just be the social media that comes my way. (I see Jim Davidson’s caused a bit of a stir on social media by defending Johnson). Anyway, upshot is that without a kicking from the press Tories are still slightly ahead in the polls.
That’s coz bitter old Corbynites are kicking the shit out of Starmer on the socials. Genuinely makes you wonder which side they’re on
Again, with the socials I guess it depends who you follow, what comes your way. I’ve not seen much Starmer bashing (not seen much about Starmer at all really), but a plethora of negative posts aimed squarely at Johnson.
Owen Jones… ugghhhh
He once said that every time James Delingpole opens his mouth someone becomes a socialist. I think every time Owen Jones opens his mouth someone becomes a Conservative.
I’d say “send all these self-important bell-ends to an island to argue it out and leave the rest of us in peace”, but unfortunately I think we’re living on that island.
Very, very occasionally the reason someone gets a kicking is not because they’re Labour, but because they are shit and actually deserve a kicking.
Tony Blair was many things, but he at least knew how to win and turn the press around. Corbyn…seemed determined to do the opposite of that.
Weatherspoon.
Wetherspoons.
Isn’t it”Spoons”?
…it’s always… spoons…
With a spoon.
Gag me Wetherspoons
Barf out to help out
Early on there was a perception that it will kill you only if you’re weakened by an underlying condition or if you’re over 80. Most Governments consciously decided that they could live with that.
If the virus was particularly deadly to the under 10s, wouldn’t everyone have agreed to a severe lockdown for as long as it takes? Even a really clueless PM wouldn’t willingly put children at risk fur the sake of business- would they?
It was the decision that some lives aren’t that important – not just leaders but also a significant amount of the general public – that will be seen as shameful
My impression is that it is not so much a conscious decision that some lives aren’t that important, but more a bleak exposure of the effect of 10 years of a culture of ‘hard-working families’ and high-earning, high-skilled, high-value immigrants. These are the people who POWER our economy, the rest of you are free-loaders.
Meantime, in shops:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/27/lockdown-job-supermarket-customers-infection-stress
They’ve had nearly a year of this shit. No clapping for them though.
The public, eh? What absolute fuckpigs.
My daughter, home from Uni, got a job in a local supermarket last summer. God I was glad when she finished, and I bet it’s got far worse since then. Some of the public are an absolute disgrace at times but the management of these stores don’t always help matters.
It isn’t only the Conservative government running the UK’s policy. Each nation makes its own policies and they have been pretty much the same, as they are based on the same scientific advice. Labour in Wales, SNP in Scotland and DUP/Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland. I don’t think this is often taken into account, even by journalists. Matt Hancock was asked the other day about the slow role out of the vaccine in Scotland, which is not his responsibility. If there’s criticism, fair enough, but don’t let the other parties off the hook.
How many dead without the flawed policies that have been put in place? 300,000? Johnson can then say he saved 200,000 lives.
At the risk of repeating myself, UK had less deaths per 100K people in 2020 than pretty much any year from 2000 to 2010.
I agree that social distancing, masks etc need to be in place. However there is a lot of righteous fury directed at any naysayers. Canada is now set on closing it’s borders completely reducing flights from 5 to 10% to almost nothing. It is estimated that since the initial lockdown about 1% of cases have resulted from people flying in and that is before there was a requirement for a negative test before getting on a plane, so that would be about 200 people dying who may have caught it some other way or passed on from something else anyway. We will never know.
What we currently have is mass hysteria which will remain for pretty much all of 2021 it seems.
I’m sorry and this isn’t having a go but search for the BBC News film about mortuary workers from a couple of days ago before accusing us of being in the grip of mass hysteria. It was horrific.
How did mortuary workers deal with the higher death counts earlier in the century? I am sure that it is horrendous, but death is never much fun.
Probably by there being more of them. Given that most morticians children join the family firm and families bigger in those days, even if they then had to bury some of them. (Sorry, but you did ask…..)
When considered carefully. Putting aside political differences. Considering the evidence and checking facts. The government did do everything it could. ….. Everything that Covid 19 would have requested. At every step. It’s almost like Covid 19 was advising them…
So Covid 19 would have advised social distancing, masks, closing of most work places where people can work from home, border closures etc?
Nonsense.
Border closures – well if you must, but give me a completely clear run for about ten months first.
And don’t bother enforcing those silly quarantine rules.
Weren’t quarantine rules for incoming flights introduced last summer?
Rules? Like the one about marijuana being illegal?
Social distancing and masks are sticking plasters. Major government policy apart from severe lockdown have failed. He’s brought us out of Lockdown too early twice. Lockdowned too late 3 times. Cummings, care homes and Christmas. Airports, trust and trace, schools,universities. Just the vaccine left for them to mess up as Covid whispers in their ear “jab twice the people half as effectively…”
There have been many errors for sure, but without “sticking plasters” the death count would have been twice or 3 times higher in all likelihood.
And hindsight is very easy, what were your views about each lockdown as it happened?
If he had locked down the whole country for a year and nobody had died everyone would be saying the British economy was ruined for nothing.
There is no way to win.
And if my granny had wheels she’d be a bicycle. And if he had taken the correct decisions, based on the science rather than the opinion polls and the tabloids, it could have been much, much lower.
Assuming the way in which deaths blamed on Covid are counted, a controversial topic in itself, there is no justifiable reason why the UK should have a vastly higher death total, and rate, than, say, Germany – a landlocked country with a larger population.
Germany has been catching up lately. They dealt with the first wave much better, but less so second wave.
There are other factors that need to be taken into account when comparing countries.
Density of population.
Poverty.
State of health service.
Climate.
Percentage of older people
How care homes are run
Obesity levels etc
Some of these could be issues resulting from decades of neglect and incompetence rather than one year of cock-ups.
Under-investment in the NHS has been linked to it, Dai. Although Johnson has only been PM for a year, he’s been in a govt for a decade (during which the NHS has had a 25% cut in funding, according to Radio 4 this morning while I was in the shower). https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55820178
Exactly. And 10 years of austerity has also created absurd levels of poverty; another one in their back yard, another significant contributor to the death toll.
They’ve also left their grubby footprint all over the rolling clusterfuck of social care in England, and care homes being almost exclusively private run.
Knowingly discharging ill / infected elderly people back to care homes short of PPE and the skills to manage the infection will hopefully be the source of a future enquiry that will show shower of weasels for what they are and holds them fully to account for what they did.
Despite reading Rory Stewart, pandemic expert having been involved in Ebola management saying lockdown in the first week of march I forgave him for locking down first time when he did. I screamed at the TV when he let us out after his ridiculous “mugger” analogy. While there were still more cases and deaths when we first locked down. I used the phrase “January will be carnage” in early December when his enthusiasm for a yet to be approved vaccine and “I’m saving Christmas ” mantra ensured the current 50000 deaths in 77 days happened.
Not sure what deaths in November and December preceding the 25th have to do with “saving Christmas”, but it has got worse in January (now improving rapidly), also the case in pretty much every country.
People did what they wanted at Christmas/New Year irrespective of what the government rules were. We had much tighter restrictions in Canada, but there was nevertheless a spike in January.
It’s hard to keep up with your argument, Dai but what exactly are you saying? You appear to be defending the UK handling of Covid using “They did their best, sure they made mistakes but they did their best” argument. Jeeze.
And you keep on about those “excess death ” figures – Jeeze.
I just think blaming one guy for 100K deaths is not the right thing to do. I need to say that I am in no way a supporter of him or his party. However, I think that forming views along party lines is unhelpful.
It has been handled in a poor way for sure, however this was an unprecedented situation in modern times and mistakes were almost inevitable. UK is also a particularly rebellious country and people would never go along with the sort of lockdown that has worked in some other countries. Also, as others have mentioned Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and, indeed, Ireland made their own decisions and have ended up with there not being too much difference in numbers of infections or deaths.
The number of deaths is horrific, but running about 15% above 2019 figures I believe. From some of the media reports one might believe it was at 4 or 500% of the normal number. Flu deaths are down 80% this season I believe, perhaps indicating that masks, social distancing and periodic lockdowns would also have reduced deaths in any other badly hit flu season.
I think Canada has handled it a bit better, we are probably at about 1/3 of the UK deaths per capita, but helped by being an enormous country with a population density of around 1/80th of that of the UK. Naturally the densest areas e.g. Toronto area, Montreal have been badly hit. We have handled things in a pretty similar way to the UK, the main difference being an immediate closing of the land border and an implementation of a 14 day quarantine for arriving visitors very early on. This was however blamed for an initial surge in infections when the “snowbirds” who winter in Florida all came rushing back before it became very difficult to do so. Also Universities went purely to online learning when their academic year started last Sept. Many measures have not been universally welcomed, but I think in general people are more likely to go along with restrictions than in the UK. Nevertheless there is much sadness at the economic price we will pay and the fact that many small businesses are going under.
Let’s also add some other Western European figures, all of which I believe have less dense populations than the UK.
Italy 87,000 deaths
France 74,000
Spain 57,000
Germany 55,000
And countries with similar population density to the UK have similar per capita death rates.
Belgium 22,000
Netherlands 13,000 (better)
Ireland 3,000
But that one guy as head of the UK Government has repeatedly said “I take full responsibility”. If he had said, like what you said “Pandemic, nobody knew what the fuck was going on and looking back we made some bummer decisions” that’s one thing. But no, he keeps on saying “I take full responsibility”. He therefore has two courses of action open to him. 1. Resign or 2.Carry on saying “I take full responsibility”.
OK, good point
Well you’ve convinced me. I’m glad we had a loveable buffoon in charge who wouldn’t make his mind up on a major issue say like Brexit on a personal desire to further his career, a government that has been in charge for 10 years and running the NHS down for that time, the most empathetic Home Secretary in history who is definitely not a Sociopath, a Health Secretary who definitely doesn’t make it up as he goes along.
Thank God they’ve been in charge and not someone incompetent.
PS He couldn’t even comb his f***ing hair last night, 100,000 dead FFS.
The point is he deliberately messes his hair up as if he’s on fucking Tiswas.
Imagine that – before going out to announce to the nation that 100,000 people have died, he takes a moment to mess his hair up.
What an absolute cunt.
Apparently he combs it with a balloon…
Cameron’s mother wouldn’t have stood for it.
Now I understand their longstanding rivalry – dress sense and hair care.
That clip reminds us just how weak David Cameron is. Let’s not forget that this was the PM that put this shitshow on the road.
Pity poor Sam…
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-55839256
Ex-PM’s wife in “actually experiencing some inconvenience as a result of her husband’s incompetence” shocker. I expect to see them at the food bank imminently.
He does. It’s a deliberate and infuriating affectation.
He’s a Statesman. Yet he chooses to stand with other world leaders looking like he’s woken up in a skip.
Why is this allowed?
I would’t give a toss about how he looks (yes, of course it’s an affectation) if he was doing a good job. He isn’t.
A smartly-suited-and-booted incompetent statesman would still be an incompetent statesman.
You’re right. But a suit and tie and a hair parting is an attempt to convey competence and dignity.
That fucker revels in his scruffiness and the lack of both it implies.
Imagine if a female prime minister (or any minister) looked as disheveled as he did then. The mailonline would have a field day.
I seem to recall Mo Mowlam getting a fair bit of that from the Tory press. Especially after first becoming ill with the brain tumour that eventually killed her.
Every cloud has a silver lining though but…
Gotta love the Borisgraph. God save the Dear Leader!
Yup, the money to piss away on crackpot nepotism gotta come from somewhere….