Johnson's incompetent leadership helped send Covid victims to early graves

[silver fox]

Or is it,

I have gone back to my old friends at the Socialist Worker;

Despite the heroic efforts of healthworkers the NHS has been ill-prepared to cope with the coronavirus pandemic. But the roots of this lie in years of neo-liberal policies, including the marketisation drive in England of the New Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, argues JON DALE.

https://www.socialistpartywales.org....-covid-crisis/

Oh blimey what have I done

Isn't the reality that our country has dodged a bullet since the Spanish Flu epidemic and successive governments haven't done as much as they could have done.

Blaming Johnson is a bit lame he was a bit busy when this started rumbling I and obviously just me didn't think when the coaches went into Arrowe Park that a tsunami would follow.

I have seen many scares around respitory diseases throughout my life and thankfully they didn't get here.

Hang me out to dry but I didn't have pasta and bog rolls in bulk either.

The usual what about etc, etc.

Fact is Johnson was in the driving seat, didn’t do well at all, in fact was more like a rabbit in the headlights, or do you think we all should spend our time dreaming up excuses for HIS incompetence.

[Alikado]

No problem is it inconvenient ?


https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...le-of-pandemic


The health secretary, Matt Hancock, insists the government is rising to the challenge, and has repeatedly said the PPE challenge has been “one of distribution rather than one of supply”. In addition to procuring new supplies from China, the DHSC has been drawing on the emergency stockpile, which it has stored since 2006 under its pandemic influenza preparedness programme.

That stockpile is made up of around 52,000 pallets of equipment worth an estimated £500m. While it contains antiviral medicines and flu vaccines which are of limited use against Covid-19, the bulk of stocks are said to be PPE and hygiene products.

If they had it how come they had to fly in plane loads from Turkey?
They obviously couldn't have been PPE and relevant Hygiene products.

[Toodles McGinty]

Or is it,

I have gone back to my old friends at the Socialist Worker;

Despite the heroic efforts of healthworkers the NHS has been ill-prepared to cope with the coronavirus pandemic. But the roots of this lie in years of neo-liberal policies, including the marketisation drive in England of the New Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, argues JON DALE.

https://www.socialistpartywales.org....-covid-crisis/

Oh blimey what have I done

You really don't get it, do you? It's only you and maybe 3 or 4 others on here that are so besotted with Boris & co they cannot brook a single letter of criticism of them. If Blair screwed up, Blair screwed up. Not 'Oh don't blame Tony'.

I wouldn't expect a columnist for the SW to point out any positives to Blair's administration. They regard 'New' Labour as toxic as the Tories.

The NHS suffered cuts under Atlee before it was launched. No government has fully funded it. I doubt Thatcher or Major were prepared for a pandemic either. But in your desperately Googled display of whataboutery, we can only conclude that all 3 aforementioned Prime Ministers got really lucky. They did indeed dodge a bullet, as has every PM since the end of the Spanish Flu outbreak.

In the 2008 National Risk Register under Brown, it was certainly a recognised risk and under consideration. I don't know if they ran operations such as 'Cygnus'. I haven't a clue.

The fact remains that Cygnus was run and roundly ignored. The fact remains that Tory MPs have published the findings of this inquiry and found the government negligent. It was an exercise in herd immunity that was used to corruptly line the pockets of cronies and Tory donors. The early handling of the coronavirus pandemic has been declared one of the worst public health failures in UK history. It led to thousands and thousands of avoidable deaths. It's a damning indictment.

If you want to put that down to someone 5 Prime Ministers back farming out hip ops to BUPA to absolve your beloved, knock yourself out.

[seivad]

It is nonsense because as was regularly stated the problem was about distribution we went from around 250 recipients of PPE from government (our) stores to over 50,000.

Thats, why the army was sent in the NHS delivery system couldn't cope and every shark in the world circled to make a buck out of PPE.

Personally I would shoot them Tory donors or not.

Nursing homes and others turned to the NHS because their normal suppliers as private businesses couldn't cope.

I couldn't get toilet roll am I to blame?

Forgive me for believing that the NAO report is a more credible source of information than a coal picking resident of NW England (I don't really think that you're a coal picker, but I couldn't resist.)

Distribution was a problem early on when they were trying to get the PPI stockpiles out to the trusts. But once they were distributed, there was nothing left to ship out! The major problem was procurement. As I said earlier on, the stockpiles were hopelessly inadequate. Finding suppliers was difficult. Domestic suppliers couldn't possibly produce the numbers needed. Foreign producers were already flooded with orders from other countries.

From the NAO

'The Parallel Supply Chain’s procurement processes were designed to enable rapid procurement, but this meant that some PPE was procured that did not meet requirements, wasting hundreds of millions of pounds. The chaotic nature of the PPE market during the pandemic increased the risks involved ?in purchasing PPE, including that suppliers might not provide products of the standard required. The Parallel Supply Chain had a process to check suppliers’ equipment against government’s PPE specifications so that equipment that failed to meet requirements could be placed into quarantine and not issued to local organisations. However, in some cases the Parallel Supply Chain bought equipment that did not meet the specifications. Across two contracts within?our audit sample, it ordered 75 million respirator masks, with a total cost of?£214 million, that the NHS will not use for the original purpose (although one ?of these suppliers has since agreed to vary the contract). Tens of millions of respirator masks ordered from other suppliers and some other types of PPE are also likely to have problems being used for the original purpose. The Department told us that 195 million items are potentially unsuitable. We have not been able to verify this figure (paragraphs 2.16 to 2.20).'

[salus.populi]

You really don't get it, do you? It's only you and maybe 3 or 4 others on here that are so besotted with Boris & co they cannot brook a single letter of criticism of them.
.

Johnson could eat their grandchildren and they'd say he was just doing his best.

[silver fox]

If they had it how come they had to fly in plane loads from Turkey?
They obviously couldn't have been PPE and relevant Hygiene products.

One major problem with PPE was quite simply by the time our lot woke up, the rest of the world had already bought up existing stocks AND placed future orders, I well remember one British importer of PPE products telling the government that he had access to a large quantity of products, but needed a decision, our government passed this information from pillar to post and surprise, surprise, those products were snapped up by other governments, working from memory, this particular guy wasn't in some unrelated business with no idea of what was actually required.

[local]

Johnson could eat their grandchildren and they'd say he was just doing his best.

Usual tosh I am more than happy to point out Boris's lamentable failings to address the covid underpinning health and obesity crisis an absolute car crash.

His current failings to get to grips with the Insulate deadbeats pathetic.

Control immigration, pathetic.

If you just concentrate on things such as covid where it is certainly not clear cut why were both here in Boris's Britain then what do you expect.

Blaming Boris for decades of failure to prepare a nation for crisis in health is frankly just stupid as above doing nothing when he did see the problem is the failure in this.

Blaming him for following experts advice on the pandemic is again just stupid he went from dealing with the most brazen attempt to subvert democracy in recent history to a world health crisis.

[Toodles McGinty]

Usual tosh I am more than happy to point out Boris's lamentable failings to address the covid underpinning health and obesity crisis an absolute car crash.

His current failings to get to grips with the Insulate deadbeats pathetic.

Control immigration, pathetic.

If you just concentrate on things such as covid where it is certainly not clear cut why were both here in Boris's Britain then what do you expect.

Blaming Boris for decades of failure to prepare a nation for crisis in health is frankly just stupid as above doing nothing when he did see the problem is the failure in this.

Blaming him for following experts advice on the pandemic is again just stupid he went from dealing with the most brazen attempt to subvert democracy in recent history to a world health crisis.

So 'don't blame Boris, Covid was bad because people are fat'.

'Don't blame Boris because he was very very very busy because people voted against Brexit 5 years before and he can't just think about two things'.

'Don't blame Boris, even though his own MPs say he was to blame'.

'Don't blame Boris when he's f**ked up everything he's ever done'.

'Don't blame Boris for not attending Cobra meetings, he must have had something more pressing than a pandemic to bother his beautiful blond head with'.

'Don't blame Boris because even though his party had been in power for 10 years, they did nothing but cut, cut, cut'.

'Just don't ever ever ever blame my lovely Boris'.

[Alikado]

Usual tosh I am more than happy to point out Boris's lamentable failings to address the covid underpinning health and obesity crisis an absolute car crash.

His current failings to get to grips with the Insulate deadbeats pathetic.

Control immigration, pathetic.

If you just concentrate on things such as covid where it is certainly not clear cut why were both here in Boris's Britain then what do you expect.

Blaming Boris for decades of failure to prepare a nation for crisis in health is frankly just stupid as above doing nothing when he did see the problem is the failure in this.

Blaming him for following experts advice on the pandemic is again just stupid he went from dealing with the most brazen attempt to subvert democracy in recent history to a world health crisis.

Boris takes the blame because he is the head of the Government and he makes everything 'All about' Boris'.

[local]

So 'don't blame Boris, Covid was bad because people are fat'.

'Don't blame Boris because he was very very very busy because people voted against Brexit 5 years before and he can't just think about two things'.

'Don't blame Boris, even though his own MPs say he was to blame'.

'Don't blame Boris when he's f**ked up everything he's ever done'.

'Don't blame Boris for not attending Cobra meetings, he must have had something more pressing than a pandemic to bother his beautiful blond head with'.

'Don't blame Boris because even though his party had been in power for 10 years, they did nothing but cut, cut, cut'.

'Just don't ever ever ever blame my lovely Boris'.

That's an odd reading of my criticism of Boris's failings you turn it into don't blame my lovely Boris?

I know it plays well to the lefty loser coterie but it is a bit desperate.

I call his insulate Britain inaction pathetic, his failure to control immigration pathetic and his inability to get hold of our health crisis which incidentally is not just about obesity a car crash,

I suppose they are words of comfort and encouragement in lefty loser land but they are not in mine.

[Alikado]

That's an odd reading of my criticism of Boris's failings you turn it into don't blame my lovely Boris?

I know it plays well to the lefty loser coterie but it is a bit desperate.

I call his insulate Britain inaction pathetic, his failure to control immigration pathetic and his inability to get hold of our health crisis which incidentally is not just about obesity a car crash,

I suppose they are words of comfort and encouragement in lefty loser land but they are not in mine.

He / they need to come clean on immigration and also to clarify their policy. The vast majority of those crossing the channel are legitimate claimants, the only way to stop the chancers is to have a robust, efficient and quick processing service whereby those not entitled are swiftly returned, only then will the word get round that it is not worth trying. If all the legitimate claimants were also processed quickly they would soon be part of the workforce and start contributing to society.
The current policy appears to be one of do the absolute minimum, take as long as possible to process claims and keep the applicants in substandard accommodation little better than refugee camps all in the hope that they will give up and return to their homelands.

The Insulate Britain protesters serve a useful purpose to the Government, they keep unpleasant headlines away and they garner support for the Government.
With all the Health Service problems everywhere we must take comfort in the fact that they still manage to collect and analyse all the statistics about what the medics are doing and not doing, how long it takes, how much it costs, how many are overweight / obese and which ones are Gay, Lesbian black, white or a mixture of everything thrown in.

[local]

He / they need to come clean on immigration and also to clarify their policy. The vast majority of those crossing the channel are legitimate claimants, the only way to stop the chancers is to have a robust, efficient and quick processing service whereby those not entitled are swiftly returned, only then will the word get round that it is not worth trying. If all the legitimate claimants were also processed quickly they would soon be part of the workforce and start contributing to society.
The current policy appears to be one of do the absolute minimum, take as long as possible to process claims and keep the applicants in substandard accommodation little better than refugee camps all in the hope that they will give up and return to their homelands.

The Insulate Britain protesters serve a useful purpose to the Government, they keep unpleasant headlines away and they garner support for the Government.
With all the Health Service problems everywhere we must take comfort in the fact that they still manage to collect and analyse all the statistics about what the medics are doing and not doing, how long it takes, how much it costs, how many are overweight / obese and which ones are Gay, Lesbian black, white or a mixture of everything thrown in.

How the Insulate Britain protests garners support for the government is a bit of a stretch to me most hate the protestors and think they should be shifted.

Collecting most statistics is useful, wokeism unfortunately, undermines the statisticians' work.

The channel migrants (there are many more) are economic migrants who understandably will do anything to get to Boris's Britain

They clearly aren't the needy of their countries, who I have great sympathy for they can't get here and need help in their countries.

[Toodles McGinty]

That's an odd reading of my criticism of Boris's failings you turn it into don't blame my lovely Boris?

"Blaming Johnson is a bit lame he was a bit busy when this started rumbling"

And the 'Better Blame Boris' brigade?

The buck stops with your beloved. He's a snivelling little coward who disappears when there is work to be done, or he's required to answer for his actions. Or inactions.

He's a gutless $h!t that hides in fridges. That hides from the media unless it's a carefully managed interview, where even then the gutless POS comes up with "I've given you the most important metric which is, never mind life expectancy, never mind cancer outcomes, look at wage growth."

He was missing at he start of the pandemic, he's been missing all the way through the pandemic. And when his own MP's inquiry was ready to be published, the yellow-bellied **** ran away to Spain. The craven gobshite knew he'd have to face the country, so off he scuttled like the feeble, thin-skinned poltroon he is.

Though I suppose when you're also so thin skinned you need to remind yourself almost daily that you've 'won' something because you voted the same way as just over half the population, and such a POS you look down on 'social housing' tenants, I guess it's easy to see why you're so besotted.

[duncet]

I am in no way defending Boris - the man is a blustering imbecile - but the fact that he was following the advice of the scientists and they are the "experts" who we are told we should follow, surely whichever party - whichever prime minister - were in power, they would have followed the same advice? Perhaps the lesson to be learned is that scientific modelling isn't always accurate - in fact is rarely accurate.

[Desert Region]

With the UK persistently having the 2nd highest daily case rates of Covid in the world, and with those rates increasing, and with a virulent and early flu season widely predicted, it's becoming increasingly dull listening to senior Conservatives banging on about office-working.

I was thus somewhat sceptical when reading this story...

‘People were left to the Taliban who could have been saved’: Ministers’ fury that, with four out of five working from home, civil servants couldn't access secret documents and wasted critical days during Afghan exit as UK citizens
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ers-claim.html

Conceivably true, but interesting how Raab's failings are being buried under a new yet familiar Government narrative of blaming the homeworkers.