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Thing could have only been better..

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This interview, which is getting quite a bit of social media traction again, was recorded at the start of March. It feels like a Twilight Zone episode where a message from the future is beamed in as a warning, which everyone ignores.

I am far from being a Conservative voter, but can’t help feel our country would be in a much better place if Stewart was at least in the cabinet.

The trouble is, in our hyper-connected world, a UK with grown-up politicians – who can show leadership – is just an idealistic dream now, no?

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  1. This is complete nonsense. What we ought to do is to run down government stocks of ‘just in case’ PPE to levels so thin you can read the Telegraph through them, underfund the NHS so that it’s virtually on its knees, piss off all the foreign nationals who do all the really hard jobs so they stop applying for them, throw the care home sector to the private sector dogs and then wait while the proles die in their thousands. Oh, hang on a mo….

    *lights cigar, considers another gin and tonic, coughs, books into private hospital for a check-up*

    Rory is in the wrong party.

  2. I shall be forwarding this video to everyone I know. It was clear from the off that this is what we should have done. I’m sick of hearing the words ‘hindsight’ and ‘unprecedented times’, we had the hindsight by what Italian authorities were advising us to do. Johnson is proud of what his government have done. What, like arranging an emergency meeting for three days later, so he could have his customary weekend off? Something I will never forget was when the Chief Scientific Officer said, when explaining that we didn’t need to shut down major sporting events, that these events are not a big risk because “you can only infect those directly around you”. That is is far away from what a scientific/medical advisor would actually advise that it was clear he was following instructions. I wonder who could have been attending the SAGE meetings and giving those instructions. It was preposterous that any expert would come out with that.

    We never had a lockdown. You can’t call it a lockdown when 18m people fly into the country and are allowed to just wander out of the airport and go where they want. Or when the London Underground trains are packed with commuters. Or when the elderly are chucked out of NHS hospitals that are rife with the virus without being tested and back into care homes full of vulnerable people and staff with inadequate safety equipment. This government seem to be getting off lightly at the moment, by just blustering through things and hoping that people will just forget and move on, which seems to be Johnson’s modus operandi and appears to have worked with the Dominic Cummings episode. They need to be brought to account for what they have done and what they didn’t do and really made to answer for all the avoidable deaths. Led by scientific advice my arse.

  4. It doesn’t take a genius to work out the number of people infected would have been much lower if we’d had lockdown earlier.

    If cases of infection were doubling every week and the UK had locked down a week earlier, half as many would be infected. As it was, it was doubling every 3-4 days, or quadrupling every week, so one week earlier we’d have a quarter of the infected cases.

    Or, to put it another way, BoJo is responsible for three-quarters of the C-19 deaths in the UK.

    As Mrs F noted over breakfast: “he’s not very clever, is he?”

  5. Well Stewart would most certainly have done a better job as PM in all respects than the waffling blonde bombshell. I think he is big loss to the Tories who were so short sighted in their strategy and a loss to politics generally.
    Ive held off criticising the govt most of the way through this crisis but the abject nonsense of their educational plan (or rather no plan) and still feeling they can pat themselves on the back about what a success this has been is just appalling.
    Piers Morgan for once made a very witty remark about that oily Williamson who the media said was asleep on the job. To which Morgan replied ‘I don’t think he’s even that far advanced’.

  6. I remember in Feb having water cooler conversations at work and wondering if we shouldn’t have already closed our borders to China and Italy (at that time), in the end Canadian response beat the UK one by a week or so and that has helped and our borders have been closed throughout (about a week later for the one with US). It has always been about finding a balance between the economic factors, inconvenience and hospital overloading. In the UK, they will say that they avoided much much worse by doing the shutdown. It should have been earlier. Countries like Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand handled it well, will be interesting what economic effects there will need be to completely avoid a second wave and whether that is acceptable.

    Another thing that interests me is what will the overall death total in 2020 be? As weaker, older, sicker people have sadly been picked off by Covid-19, will there now be less deaths when the disease is less prevalent in society during the rest of the year? However, every death is a tragedy and losing a loved one in such circumstances is the worst.

    • That reads to me like an article pleading for understanding from someone who used to wave a flag for an incompetent, detail-avoiding, over-privileged, self-serving oaf. Doesn’t wash with me I’m afraid. Support the buffoon along the way, go down with the buffoon come judgement time. Quit the weaseling and piss off Montgomerie, there’s no sympathy here.

    • “the Prime Minister’s reputation for competence”
      Well, that quickly showed the author’s blindness to Johnson’s career of coasting on other people’s hard work, deceit, laziness and profligacy with public money.

      The only reason I can think that Johnson is in No10 is because he’ll push through a No Deal Brexit his hedge fund backers want.

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