General Chat

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?

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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!

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.

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!

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.

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.

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

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.