General Chat

I am not and have never been one to defend the government but I do think it is all a bit hard on Boris at the moment.

He, like every other MP was never elected to steer the country through a pandemic, unlike Churchill who was made PM specifically to lead the country through a war.

We, as a country, had nowhere to turn for support in the pandemic as every other country was in the same position as us and nobody had encountered a pandemic, there was no experience to fall back upon.

All sorts of groups are calling to be given money to get them going again because they have a special call on resources and the nurse who cared for the PM when he had Covid has resigned because nurses are not being given the respect they deserve and are only being offered 1%. Of course they have immeasurable respect from everybody but the economy has taken the beating of it's life, I doubt that 1% could be easily spared.

We are lucky we still have an economy at all and are not being forced to fend fo ourselves. Probably the PM made innumerable mistakes trying to stretch health care provision to care for unprecedented numbers of infectious patients as well as doing the job he was elected to carry out.

It really would not matter who was in power, they would have done the best they could with the limited knowledge available and there is nothing to be gained by castigation.

hear hear totally agree
the blame culture is taking over, there are two sides to every coin
perhaps boris should stand up and apologise for everything that has been negative in the past 100 years but that would not beenough for some

Well said Sharron.

Early March last year we had a family funeral. The only people not to turn up were the sportsmen who had been on a training camp in Italy. Others crossed the channel and others, along with family, came from all over the country. For all of us this infection was creeping in to our countries but was still only a major problem in northern Italy. Immediately afterwards my OH had a day op in the local hospital. Yet within a few weeks we were in lockdown.

How was anyone to know that what had been so devastating inItaly would hit the whole world so badly. The State of Victoria has gone back into lockdown showing however hard you work to keep this out it finds a way to creep back in.

Perhaps Boris should do the right thing and go, taking his self-serving lying cronies with him. There is some truth in what Cummings has said but of course it will be swept under the carpet.
It is a great pity that the electorate seem only to have two party choices and base their vote on who they don't want rather than have a decent choice.

Do you think anybody else would have made a better job of it?

It is not really down to party politics is it? It would have been a terrifying thing to have landed on any government who, taken unawares, were forced to think on the hoof how to deal with it.

Better, I think, that the government dealing with the problem should stay and carry it through now rather than have another one try to pick it up half done.

Sadly, people were going to die unnecessarily, it's a pandemic!

If ‘there is some truth….’ Then there is some untruth.

Whether there is truth or untruth this is coming over as something of a revenge attack. If Cummings really thought that no one was talking any notice of his ‘excellent’ advice he should have resigned. There is not a lot of point of forcing people to take their eyes off the ball at this time.

I'm just going to say, we are an island.
Why weren't airports closed when the Government eventually started taking the pandemic seriously?
I mean, we were still letting people in when the vatiants were coming out

I realise borders couldn't be closed as "Mr Johnson responded (on Feb 3rd 2021) by saying that 75% of the UK's medicines come into the country from the European mainland, 45% of food, while 250,000 rely on imports." - well, Brexit went well, didn't it?
But on 27 March 2021, we are told Britain is closing it's borders - from 29 March!
However, it wasn't closed to all. India was reporting more than 100,000 cases a day by 5 April, but was not added to the red list until 23 April.
Hmm - something to do with Johnson wanting to go to India to arrange an imort detail, apparently.

So basically, a lot of faffing about. Some may say 'Boris has done his best' - but his 'best' wasn't enough - and he's not a 3 year old child!

He had as much experience of a pandemic as did a three year old child.

To be a prime minister looks like a huge and terrifying job to me and he took it on prepare to also deal with the complications of Brexit which entailed clearing up a mess made by the mistake of somebody else.

Just dealing with a pandemic would, surely, be a job in itself never mind it being thrust
upon somebody who had already taken on extra duties.

I’m with Island and Maggie

Why were we without nurses and equipment. Could it have something to do with the previous years of austerity under the same government :-|

I agree Maggie about the airports look at where the current variant is most prevalent
places close to Manchester, Luton and Heathrow airports.

There were other solutions that could have been put in place early on and we wouldn’t be in this situation now. As an island we were in a better position than most to contain the virus.

loved to have seen the borders closed but then there would have been a public outcry because brits, family members were trapped abroad and gov not doing anything to help them
you cant win

The reason that high infection rates are near major airports is more that they employ huge numbers of fairly low paid staff who live in properties that were thrown up quickly to provide homes.

All the more reason for closing the airport for travel.

Obviously we need them open for goods and freight. At least the fewer people working at the airport the more chance you have of making it a safer environment in which to work.
Other countries had systems where those people who had to isolate did not miss out financially.
It only needs to be done for a short time.
Why was it nearly a week after the variant was recognised as a problem that only direct flights from India were stopped.
People were still coming in from India on flights from other countries where they had a stop over.
Did we not learn anything from countries that had coped with SARS. After all it was on the cards that sooner or later there would be a pandemic.
It didn’t come as a complete surprise.

Covid is a poisoned chalice for governments and for anyone who wishes to take over that role.

Of course, nobody knew what was coming and, when the borders were close, there were individuals demanding that the government, who had nothing better to worry about, should get them back home at once.

Can you imagine the uproar from the many, many people denied the liberty to do who knows what who would have made had the borders been closed at a time that did not suit them?

If we'd closed the borders properly - ie given time for those who needed to travel home, to get there, then not let anyone in, we'd have had a lot fewer deaths.
If people think they're so 'entitled' that they don't have to follow the rules, then they should just have to learn the hard way, that they aren't special.

Mind you, the way this Government, and members' relations, has flaunted its 'entitlement' isn't a good example to us plebs.

Johnson attending COBRA meetings would have been helpful, too, but obviously, he had 'better' things to do.

Operation Cygnus in 2016 highlighted shortcomings in the UK's preparation for a pandemic. These were not addressed. The nation should have been able to cope far better than it did.

Boris wanted the job of PM because of the kudos and status it offers, in spite of the salary being less that his living wage.

As for Brexit what mess has he cleared up? He has implemented Brexit but not solved any of the problems. So far no brexiter has been able to show any advantage .we have gained. All the trade deals that have been signed are either cut and paste of the deals we had with those countries as EU members, or they are worse deals eg Japan.

The vaccination success is perhaps something he can be proud of but is something he could have achieved if we were still in the EU even though he says otherwise.

The problems with our government as related by Cummings were widely rumoured for some time, though I must admit I thought Cummings was more responsible for them.

Well said Kense! :-D :-D :-D

I'm tending to agree with Island here. It would be a shame if much of what DC spoke about was swept under the carpet as I, too, think he spoke much truth. I am no DC fan but I believe a man such as he will have copious notes to refer to. Let me say that I'd be gobsmacked if he had made none!

Losers: Boris, Matt Hancock

Winners: Dominic Raab, Rishi Sunak

Outright, Total and Overall Winners:
the Scientists (can't speak too highly of them)

About nine days before the March 2020 lockdown, my coffee group had all decided we'd waited long enough, we made the decision ourselves to lock down at home.

Boris & Co were privvy to a lot more information than the man in the street yet, well before he took action, we were screaming at him to make the decision. If we could see the writing on the wall, why couldn't he? Without a doubt I think he put the economy first - it is a natural tendency to 'keep in with the money men' and Boris needs a job when he's finished at Number 10 because he seems to have done his dash as far as newspaper editorialship is concerned - remember his sacking from one newspaper, it seems to me that he had a fairly loose relationship with truth.

I remember feeling how useless Boris was at making such an essential decision and that it was indicative of his natural tendency for bonhomie. I also remember thinking that the only one worse at the time was Trump.

I am no fan of DC but he, himself, could have made a better fist of the job. In fact, anyone who would be guided by scientific facts would have done better!

Matt Hancock - well, could he lie straight in bed was what I asked myself??

I'm afraid I did not notice Dominic Raab much so I'm guessing that his mantra was, 'First, do no harm."

Sunak, I thought, played a blinder when he worked with the Treasury to come up with the furlough scheme and put a rest to the minds of so many people who feared having no work meant no pay. He came up with an ace at a time when others - like Boris - were floundering.

Scientists - it took them a while but they won through at last, not before screaming and hammering to get through to Boris.

I am no fan of DC so I listened carefully to his Durham explanation. The security of his family at stake? It rang true, but under no circumstances should his wife and child have returned to London with him, however, DC said he could not persuade his wife to stay in Durham.

I am surprised he mentioned Barnard Castle again - quite an error for a man of his ability. He could have done a quicker round trip from his Durham base to test his eyesight and driving capability and many people are well aware of that.

So, all-in-all, I believe much of what DC spoke about was as it happened.

It will be interesting to hear what the rest of them have to say.

On another tack, did anyone catch mention of procurement of supplies for the NHS. Dom wants to centralise buying to reduce costs which is something I gleaned from his talk on telly a while ago. I sincerely hope that it's only the procurement process and it's not an assault on our NHS.

I am not BJ so I can't say why he became PM.What I can say is that I would not want the job, it is unimaginably hard without having to deal with not one but two unprecedented situations.

The problems caused by Brexit may not have been rectified but they did need to be accommodated on top of running an economy that would ensure future employment for as many of the population as possible.

There was one unprecedented situation that needed to be dealt with when along came another. The scientists may have had a great deal of information about epidemics, they, also, had never dealt with the Covid pandemic.

It is very unlikely that anybody had any evil intent toward the populace and I really feel they could have made a far worse fist of it than they did and that there is nothing to be gained from apportioning blame for mistakes that my or may not have been made with no ill intent. there is, after all, another enormous job to come, to get the economy running again.

JoyLouise, Sunak was the creator of the 'Eat Out, Help Out' fiasco, which led to the second rise and further lockdown.

As for deaths - rarely mentioned here, we're hearing about the millions dying of covid in India, which is, on the whole, a lot worse off financially than the UK, but so far their death rate is 22.79 per 100,000 population, whereas the UK's death rate is 191.52 per 100,000 population.
Obviously, there may be more covid deaths in India than so far announced - but the same could be said for the UK, where only those who die within 2 weeks of a positive test are counted. What about those who die 15 days or more after a test, or those who die without a test?