Boris the PM - a new beginning

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Old Skier said:
From a few on both sides
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No, in fact I would like to see a sensible and reasonable leader of the Tory Party, and therefore Govt, rather than the current guy. He has led to the deaths of many more people than there should have been, and is about to deepen the economic crisis for all of us. There is no joy of schadenfreude in that.

By the way, I didn't vote Labour at either of the last 2 elections. I will consider to at the next depending how Starmer does.

I can list the reasons I don't support Johnson, and you can tell me what he has done well in your opinion, we can debate them. Or you can just throw whatabouttery instead, I suppose.
 
Ethan said:
OK, blind visceral hatred, then.

Do you not think that any Govt needs an effective opposition to keep it honest?
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No real difference to your hatred for Conservatives and Brexit voters

Yes, I do think an effective opposition us essential, however i dont see one at the moment
 
chrisd said:
No real difference to your hatred for Conservatives and Brexit voters

Yes, I do think an effective opposition us essential, however i dont see one at the moment
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Wrong, I don't hate Conservative voters or Brexit voters, I hate Conservative policies as practiced by the current, especially on Covid, which has been a series of unmitigated disasters, and Brexit which is going to kick the crutches away from the crippled UK economy.

I agree there is not an effective opposition at present, although I think Starmer is potentially good. He seems to be staying quiet and let Johnson deal with his self-inflicted screw ups without too much comment. He must have read The Art Of War. Some Labour purple haven't read it, so like internal divisions more than opposition, though.
 
Ethan said:
No, in fact I would like to see a sensible and reasonable leader of the Tory Party, and therefore Govt, rather than the current guy. He has led to the deaths of many more people than there should have been, and is about to deepen the economic crisis for all of us. There is no joy of schadenfreude in that.

By the way, I didn't vote Labour at either of the last 2 elections. I will consider to at the next depending how Starmer does.

I can list the reasons I don't support Johnson, and you can tell me what he has done well in your opinion, we can debate them. Or you can just throw whatabouttery instead, I suppose.
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I didn’t point a finger at anyone in particular but feel free to go straight into attack mod, I’m not a lover of anyone in government or the current political situation in either side of the spectrum. Starmer has to deal with a major uprising with momentum at present with the NEC elections and it wouldn’t surprise me if we are looking at the birth of another party.
 
Old Skier said:
I didn’t point a finger at anyone in particular but feel free to go straight into attack mod, I’m not a lover of anyone in government or the current political situation in either side of the spectrum. Starmer has to deal with a major uprising with momentum at present with the NEC elections and it wouldn’t surprise me if we are looking at the birth of another party.
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A Labour split was rumoured around the time Tom Watson split off, with the centre-right possibly lining up with Chuka Umunna and that lot, but they are all gone now, so that isn't going to happen. My preference would be for the Corbynistas to split off into Continuity Corbyn or something and let the Starmer wing reshape Labour. Probably means losing another election, but otherwise Labour is never going to be in power.
 
Ethan said:
A Labour split was rumoured around the time Tom Watson split off, with the centre-right possibly lining up with Chuka Umunna and that lot, but they are all gone now, so that isn't going to happen. My preference would be for the Corbynistas to split off into Continuity Corbyn or something and let the Starmer wing reshape Labour. Probably means losing another election, but otherwise Labour is never going to be in power.
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I follow momentum on tweeter and there is a major effort to rally the troops. I agree that if they feel they have the necessary support they should form their own party.
 
Ethan said:
No, in fact I would like to see a sensible and reasonable leader of the Tory Party, and therefore Govt, rather than the current guy. He has led to the deaths of many more people than there should have been, and is about to deepen the economic crisis for all of us. There is no joy of schadenfreude in that.

By the way, I didn't vote Labour at either of the last 2 elections. I will consider to at the next depending how Starmer does.

I can list the reasons I don't support Johnson, and you can tell me what he has done well in your opinion, we can debate them. Or you can just throw whatabouttery instead, I suppose.
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That is easy for you to say. A generalised statement based on party politics, I suspect.
Why don't you tell us how you would have handled this crisis then, if you can be fairminded enough to do it without hindsight. There are many stages where action was required( anadromous was taken by HM government) but nowhere have I seen what you say should have been done based on information at the time.
We all, including the PM , would concede that with hindsight, things could and should have been done differently, but no one has that luxury.
I cannot see any Prime Minister, of whatever party, doing things he knows should not have been done, in this Covid matter.
To suggest otherwise, which your statement does, is not worthy of you.
 
Swinglowandslow said:
That is easy for you to say. A generalised statement based on party politics, I suspect.
Why don't you tell us how you would have handled this crisis then, if you can be fairminded enough to do it without hindsight. There are many stages where action was required( anadromous was taken by HM government) but nowhere have I seen what you say should have been done based on information at the time.
We all, including the PM , would concede that with hindsight, things could and should have been done differently, but no one has that luxury.
I cannot see any Prime Minister, of whatever party, doing things he knows should not have been done, in this Covid matter.
To suggest otherwise, which your statement does, is not worthy of you.
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Spare me the hindsight argument. Plenty of strong advice was offered to this Govt prospectively and repeatedly at the time as they got a preview of what was about to happen by looking at Italy and there places. Most of this advice essentially boiled down to taking a traditional tried and tested public health approach.

You are also making a political point as an apologist for the Govt, so not to prolong the inevitable interminable back and forth of cherrypicked points, I will just mention a few things. This is not intended to be comprehensive, just illustrative.

1. Failure to lock down fast enough. It was clear that the rising toll of disease in Italy was going to happen here. We should have closed down sooner, as advocated by many public health experts, including WHO, and we should have imposed a quarantine for all incoming travellers. If done effectively and in a timely manner, this would have reduced the amount of virus that entered the country. Johnson's advice not to go to the pub was a good example of his fecklessness. Even his own Dad said he would not follow it.

2. Stopping testing in the community and tracing on Match 12th was a terrible mistake, and widely condemned at the time. We should have done precisely the opposite, scale up testing and tracing (they can be done separately) using existing PHE resources as well as healthcare staff seconded from other activities. And then starting up NHS Test and Trace with the serial failure Dido Harding and well known incompetents Serco was foreseeably a disaster. Indeed, almost all the stuff they claimed credit for was actually done by local PHE. Which Johnson then scrapped.

3. Basing the strategy on a herd immunity plan, using mathematical modelling and behavioural psychology. There are two problems with this. One is that herd immunity was not known to be achievable in this biases, we didn't know if immunity was conferred after exposure, and the price to pay was obviously a he death toll. Protecting the elderly was always impossible because the whole thing would take months to play out. Second was that the mathematical modelling was, fundamentally, based on data that was unreliable, and the behavioural psychology argument that lockdown fatigue would occur delayed lockdown and was later proven wrong anyway.

4. The NHS. Pandemic planning is a responsibility of central Govt. The lessons of the 2016 pandemic planning were not put into practice. The UK was consequently slow to get on board on PPE and ventilators, and Brexit ideology cant they would not work with the EU, and lied about being invited to do so. NHS staff did not have the PPE they needed, the Govt sneakily and quietly downgraded the legal classification of Covid from a High Consequence Infectious Disease so that they could soften PPE requirements. They put NHS staff in harms way and offered them a round of applause as thanks. They issued advice to move care home patients out of hospitals without tests and thereby put the virus into the care homes, which also did not have adequate PPE or access to tests until too late.

5. The whole response has been characterised by ideological considerations, ranging from throwing vast amounts of money for PPE, ventilators, lab testing, tracing and data services to private companies, donors and mates. Money has been squandered on companies which were obviously unqualified, totally unsuitable and incompetent for the task and public services, academia and other cheaper options with capabilities were ignored. Another aspect of ideology has been the fear of being seen to impose unpopular regulations. That ranged from the initial confused lockdown regulations, left to local police forces to interpret differently in different places, to the unwillingness to impose masks because of opposition from some of the Tory backbenchers. This is all mainly a question of leadership, which Johnson does not do very well.

There are many more issues and points, some big picture strategy, some local policy. On the doctors social media site which I frequent, and where many of the participants are usually much more supportive of the Govt than I am, and many are front line docs who have seen cases, including in the ICU at St Thomas's, there are few who think the Govt has not made a complete balls up of the whole thing.

Germany basically did everything the UK should have done, had prepared from previous epidemics, moved quickly and locked down hard, tested widely and traced carefully. It wasn't rocket science. Their per capita death rate is less than a fifth of ours. The basic principles are simple. Stop the virus getting in, stop it moving around. If you do the first one well, the second one looks after itself.

I make no apology for saying, and I restate, that Govt incompetence on handling Covid has cost lives. Sorry if you don't agree, but if not, please explain why the excess deaths in the UK are one of the highest per capita in the world, and provide a comprehensive rebuttal of my points rather than selecting a few phrases.
 
I think that's a brilliant post, Ethan.

I almost lost a relative due to hospitals dumping older patients in care homes without testing. That move alone has contributed to a high number of total deaths.

Yes theres an small element of hindsight that can applied but it's the job of a wealthy and well run country to have plans in place. The government have handled this situation woefully from the start. Even the furlough scheme was far too generous and has propped up failing businesses, as well let fraudsters run amok with bounceback loans.
 
Ethan said:
Spare me the hindsight argument. Plenty of strong advice was offered to this Govt prospectively and repeatedly at the time as they got a preview of what was about to happen by looking at Italy and there places. Most of this advice essentially boiled down to taking a traditional tried and tested public health approach.

You are also making a political point as an apologist for the Govt, so not to prolong the inevitable interminable back and forth of cherrypicked points, I will just mention a few things. This is not intended to be comprehensive, just illustrative.

1. Failure to lock down fast enough. It was clear that the rising toll of disease in Italy was going to happen here. We should have closed down sooner, as advocated by many public health experts, including WHO, and we should have imposed a quarantine for all incoming travellers. If done effectively and in a timely manner, this would have reduced the amount of virus that entered the country. Johnson's advice not to go to the pub was a good example of his fecklessness. Even his own Dad said he would not follow it.

2. Stopping testing in the community and tracing on Match 12th was a terrible mistake, and widely condemned at the time. We should have done precisely the opposite, scale up testing and tracing (they can be done separately) using existing PHE resources as well as healthcare staff seconded from other activities. And then starting up NHS Test and Trace with the serial failure Dido Harding and well known incompetents Serco was foreseeably a disaster. Indeed, almost all the stuff they claimed credit for was actually done by local PHE. Which Johnson then scrapped.

3. Basing the strategy on a herd immunity plan, using mathematical modelling and behavioural psychology. There are two problems with this. One is that herd immunity was not known to be achievable in this biases, we didn't know if immunity was conferred after exposure, and the price to pay was obviously a he death toll. Protecting the elderly was always impossible because the whole thing would take months to play out. Second was that the mathematical modelling was, fundamentally, based on data that was unreliable, and the behavioural psychology argument that lockdown fatigue would occur delayed lockdown and was later proven wrong anyway.

4. The NHS. Pandemic planning is a responsibility of central Govt. The lessons of the 2016 pandemic planning were not put into practice. The UK was consequently slow to get on board on PPE and ventilators, and Brexit ideology cant they would not work with the EU, and lied about being invited to do so. NHS staff did not have the PPE they needed, the Govt sneakily and quietly downgraded the legal classification of Covid from a High Consequence Infectious Disease so that they could soften PPE requirements. They put NHS staff in harms way and offered them a round of applause as thanks. They issued advice to move care home patients out of hospitals without tests and thereby put the virus into the care homes, which also did not have adequate PPE or access to tests until too late.

5. The whole response has been characterised by ideological considerations, ranging from throwing vast amounts of money for PPE, ventilators, lab testing, tracing and data services to private companies, donors and mates. Money has been squandered on companies which were obviously unqualified, totally unsuitable and incompetent for the task and public services, academia and other cheaper options with capabilities were ignored. Another aspect of ideology has been the fear of being seen to impose unpopular regulations. That ranged from the initial confused lockdown regulations, left to local police forces to interpret differently in different places, to the unwillingness to impose masks because of opposition from some of the Tory backbenchers. This is all mainly a question of leadership, which Johnson does not do very well.

There are many more issues and points, some big picture strategy, some local policy. On the doctors social media site which I frequent, and where many of the participants are usually much more supportive of the Govt than I am, and many are front line docs who have seen cases, including in the ICU at St Thomas's, there are few who think the Govt has not made a complete balls up of the whole thing.

Germany basically did everything the UK should have done, had prepared from previous epidemics, moved quickly and locked down hard, tested widely and traced carefully. It wasn't rocket science. Their per capita death rate is less than a fifth of ours. The basic principles are simple. Stop the virus getting in, stop it moving around. If you do the first one well, the second one looks after itself.

I make no apology for saying, and I restate, that Govt incompetence on handling Covid has cost lives. Sorry if you don't agree, but if not, please explain why the excess deaths in the UK are one of the highest per capita in the world, and provide a comprehensive rebuttal of my points rather than selecting a few phrases.
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Can we make the above a sticky please - so that it pops up with every new post in this (and, probably more appropriately, the 'Covid Political') thread?!
 
Ethan said:
Spare me the hindsight argument. Plenty of strong advice was offered to this Govt prospectively and repeatedly at the time as they got a preview of what was about to happen by looking at Italy and there places. Most of this advice essentially boiled down to taking a traditional tried and tested public health approach.

You are also making a political point as an apologist for the Govt, so not to prolong the inevitable interminable back and forth of cherrypicked points, I will just mention a few things. This is not intended to be comprehensive, just illustrative.

1. Failure to lock down fast enough. It was clear that the rising toll of disease in Italy was going to happen here. We should have closed down sooner, as advocated by many public health experts, including WHO, and we should have imposed a quarantine for all incoming travellers. If done effectively and in a timely manner, this would have reduced the amount of virus that entered the country. Johnson's advice not to go to the pub was a good example of his fecklessness. Even his own Dad said he would not follow it.

2. Stopping testing in the community and tracing on Match 12th was a terrible mistake, and widely condemned at the time. We should have done precisely the opposite, scale up testing and tracing (they can be done separately) using existing PHE resources as well as healthcare staff seconded from other activities. And then starting up NHS Test and Trace with the serial failure Dido Harding and well known incompetents Serco was foreseeably a disaster. Indeed, almost all the stuff they claimed credit for was actually done by local PHE. Which Johnson then scrapped.

3. Basing the strategy on a herd immunity plan, using mathematical modelling and behavioural psychology. There are two problems with this. One is that herd immunity was not known to be achievable in this biases, we didn't know if immunity was conferred after exposure, and the price to pay was obviously a he death toll. Protecting the elderly was always impossible because the whole thing would take months to play out. Second was that the mathematical modelling was, fundamentally, based on data that was unreliable, and the behavioural psychology argument that lockdown fatigue would occur delayed lockdown and was later proven wrong anyway.

4. The NHS. Pandemic planning is a responsibility of central Govt. The lessons of the 2016 pandemic planning were not put into practice. The UK was consequently slow to get on board on PPE and ventilators, and Brexit ideology cant they would not work with the EU, and lied about being invited to do so. NHS staff did not have the PPE they needed, the Govt sneakily and quietly downgraded the legal classification of Covid from a High Consequence Infectious Disease so that they could soften PPE requirements. They put NHS staff in harms way and offered them a round of applause as thanks. They issued advice to move care home patients out of hospitals without tests and thereby put the virus into the care homes, which also did not have adequate PPE or access to tests until too late.

5. The whole response has been characterised by ideological considerations, ranging from throwing vast amounts of money for PPE, ventilators, lab testing, tracing and data services to private companies, donors and mates. Money has been squandered on companies which were obviously unqualified, totally unsuitable and incompetent for the task and public services, academia and other cheaper options with capabilities were ignored. Another aspect of ideology has been the fear of being seen to impose unpopular regulations. That ranged from the initial confused lockdown regulations, left to local police forces to interpret differently in different places, to the unwillingness to impose masks because of opposition from some of the Tory backbenchers. This is all mainly a question of leadership, which Johnson does not do very well.

There are many more issues and points, some big picture strategy, some local policy. On the doctors social media site which I frequent, and where many of the participants are usually much more supportive of the Govt than I am, and many are front line docs who have seen cases, including in the ICU at St Thomas's, there are few who think the Govt has not made a complete balls up of the whole thing.

Germany basically did everything the UK should have done, had prepared from previous epidemics, moved quickly and locked down hard, tested widely and traced carefully. It wasn't rocket science. Their per capita death rate is less than a fifth of ours. The basic principles are simple. Stop the virus getting in, stop it moving around. If you do the first one well, the second one looks after itself.

I make no apology for saying, and I restate, that Govt incompetence on handling Covid has cost lives. Sorry if you don't agree, but if not, please explain why the excess deaths in the UK are one of the highest per capita in the world, and provide a comprehensive rebuttal of my points rather than selecting a few phrases.
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Germany has one of the largest concentration of medical companies with inventory.

Every year people die because of lack of spending on health; many because they chose a way of life that is unwise (smoking, drunkeness, etc). Consequently after every and any economic decision/choice made by any Government you can claim and blame it is the fault of a PM. It has been the same for almost a century.

'Excess' deaths may be caused by many variables: poor health, poor housing, stupidity, the UK as a hub of international travel, high density population, multi-racial demographic, as well as the impact of COVID . Most of the extraneous variables will have a very long gestation period - certainly longer than the PM's 12 months in post.
 
drdel said:
Germany has one of the largest concentration of medical companies with inventory.

Every year people die because of lack of spending on health; many because they chose a way of life that is unwise (smoking, drunkeness, etc). Consequently after every and any economic decision/choice made by any Government you can claim and blame it is the fault of a PM. It has been the same for almost a century.

'Excess' deaths may be caused by many variables: poor health, poor housing, stupidity, the UK as a hub of international travel, high density population, multi-racial demographic, as well as the impact of COVID . Most of the extraneous variables will have a very long gestation period - certainly longer than the PM's 12 months in post.
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The UK has a lot of 'medical companies', as well as a lot of reserve in academia for testing. This went unused and ignored.

The determinants of health are not very different between Germany and the UK, Germany has a higher rate of smoking, the UK higher rate of obesity, age structures are similar. Not much to choose between, and no reason to believe there should be such a gross difference in either base death rates or excess deaths.

The effects of provision of healthcare are much more responsive than determinants of health, and the UK badly failed on that, with aspects of healthcare outside Covid paralysed. Many of these deaths have a very short gestation period.
 
Ethan said:
The UK has a lot of 'medical companies', as well as a lot of reserve in academia for testing. This went unused and ignored.

The determinants of health are not very different between Germany and the UK, Germany has a higher rate of smoking, the UK higher rate of obesity, age structures are similar. Not much to choose between, and no reason to believe there should be such a gross difference in either base death rates or excess deaths.

The effects of provision of healthcare are much more responsive than determinants of health, and the UK badly failed on that, with aspects of healthcare outside Covid paralysed. Many of these deaths have a very short gestation period.
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I agree there's a debate to be had on the points you make which I do believe aren't quite as black and white as you suggest.

My main issue was your determination to lay blame on this PM when the capability/response lead times were set way before his tenure. In a market led economy such comments can always be made (to a greater or lesser degree) on any decision maker - "guns n butter" etc.

The NHS staff make 'value for money' v the 'value of life' decisions all the time.
 
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drdel said:
I agree there's a debate to be had on the points you make which I do believe aren't quite as black and white as you suggest.

My main issue was your determination to lay blame on this PM when the capability/response lead times were set way before his tenure. In a market led economy such comments can always be made (to a greater or lesser degree) on any decision maker - "guns n butter" etc.

The NHS staff make 'value for money' v the 'value of life' decisions all the time.
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My argument is that the social determinants of health do not explain differences in the performance of different European countries. The differences lie mostly with the political response.

For a pandemic like this, there are basically two main objectives. 1. Keep the virus out. 2. Contain whatever virus gets in. This is old school public health that goes back to ancient times before anyone even knew how infections occurred.

The UK dropped the ball on both. A firmer and faster lockdown, including quarantining inbound travellers would have had a greater impact on keeping the virus out, then the task of containing the virus is proportionate to how much gets in, and we did not do well on that either. There is no debate over whether Johnson ordered stopping community testing on March 12th, he did. That was a ghastly error which not only failed to take WHO advise but went in the precisely opposite direction. Then the pitiful NHS Test and Trace was always going to fail because tracing is not a call centre algorithm task. We lost control during that time.

There were other problems, and various explanations and debates why some of those decisions were taken, e.g. herd immunity but basically the UK's worse performance tracks directly to failing to keep the virus out, then failing to get control of it fast enough.

The social determinants of health, smoking, diabetes, obesity etc all have a role in the outcomes of infection in individual patients, but stopping infection from occurring in the first place is the policy objective.
 
So Sunak proposing tax rises, raids on second homes, pension pots to pay for the corona deficit. Unless Boris steps in, Sunak is turning into a Corbyn

Hopefully this is not a u-turn on the Tory idea of low tax
 
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