Coronavirus - political views - supporting or otherwise...

[Doon frae Troon]

It is difficult to support something that is fundamentally wrong.
Do we just turn a blind eye and ignore all of those arrogant mistakes that caused so many unnecessary deaths.

 

[Deleted member 16999]

I agree with your last sentence completely, but I don't attribute the 40000 or any of the deaths at the feet of the Tory politicians ( nor would I have done so at the feet of Labour)
As far as I am concerned this Covid thing would have clobbered any government of the day. It is a terrible affliction upon the world, and I still say that there are many factors which give cause to the apparent success or failure of governments, and incompetency is low on the list.
Things like population strength and density ;ethnicity, affluence or otherwise of nations and sections within nations etc. Now altitude has come into the equation( makes sense).
Responses to medicines and our understanding of them is not stable, and minds are forever changing, like Ibuprofen, hydroxychloroquine( now Lancet are not so sure it is ineffective and causes harm).
All this shows we are dealing with a largely unknown situation, one which does not need the derailing effects of Party politics .
Cooperation is what we need, International, national , scientific, etc - and plenty of it!

There are plenty of examples of tory politicians making mistakes with numbers yet, once again we got Abbott mentioned.

The Government are however responsible for dealing with the crisis and the deaths have occurred on their watch.

Every other Political Party is irrelevant.

 

[Deleted member 16999]

I also agree with the last sentence. And the key point i was trying to make was about the relentless blaming of the government, the members of the government's individual performances in front of the cameras in very difficult and unparallelled circumstances - from someone who clearly hates the government and anything they do on the sepctrum of Covid to EU negotiations. On both points i agree in supporting the national interest - hence being a remain voter who will back the government to obtain a good deal that supports our new indepenadant status and to secure a prosperous future for our country. The same on Covid - nobody has the answers and we are constantly learning, will make more mistakes, change our minds or alter views on issues that affect our day-to-day lives. We need to get behind the government on this not constantly harp on and criticise

Still makes absolutely no sense you bringing Labour, Corbyn & Abbott in to the equation, he may of criticised the Government but didn’t anywhere state a politician from any other Party would of done better.

Your answer was petty and a knee jerk to silh.

 

[PNWokingham]

Still makes absolutely no sense you bringing Labour, Corbyn & Abbott in to the equation, he may of criticised the Government but didn’t anywhere state a politician from any other Party would of done better.

Your answer was petty and a knee jerk to silh.

the point being that the posters here criticising the hell out of everything, with the benefit of hindsight, are fully blaming the government for everything. I am saying that wheatever government was dealing with this in the UK would have likely made similar choices and "mistakes". And i believe that the current team would have done better than anything that would have occured under Jeremy Corbyn

 

[Hacker Khan]

I agree with your last sentence completely, but I don't attribute the 40000 or any of the deaths at the feet of the Tory politicians ( nor would I have done so at the feet of Labour)
As far as I am concerned this Covid thing would have clobbered any government of the day. It is a terrible affliction upon the world, and I still say that there are many factors which give cause to the apparent success or failure of governments, and incompetency is low on the list.
Things like population strength and density ;ethnicity, affluence or otherwise of nations and sections within nations etc. Now altitude has come into the equation( makes sense).
Responses to medicines and our understanding of them is not stable, and minds are forever changing, like Ibuprofen, hydroxychloroquine( now Lancet are not so sure it is ineffective and causes harm).
All this shows we are dealing with a largely unknown situation, one which does not need the derailing effects of Party politics .
Cooperation is what we need, International, national , scientific, etc - and plenty of it!

Utter bilge IMHO. Governments lead (or don't in some cases) a countries response and define how a society reacts and what measures are put in place. Their competence and ability to get a grip on the situation is critical to the success of a countries response.

Of course there would have been deaths no matter what party is in power. But to assume the government's competence is low on the list in impacting how many deaths there have been, how many excess deaths a country has had is silly. From looking around the world I'd argue it is probably the most important factor.

 

[PNWokingham]

I must have missed the point at which the title and purpose(lol) of this thread changed...
That the governement has been, and continues to be, incompetent seems a perfectly reasonable point of view to me. If you don't want to hear it, don't come on the thread, or come on it and just put people on ignore. The virtual equivalent of putting your fingers in your ears and intoning 'la la la', but it's your right.
I will continue to believe that the govt are destroying our economy for an insufficently good reason. I think that they are mostly incompetents. I dont believe that they deserve my support in this, or my coerced silence.
I also know that any of us writing anything here is of no consequence. Except that if someone sees that at least one other person shares their pov then it might cheer them up,

and how exactly are the government destrying our economy?

 

[Deleted member 16999]

the point being that the posters here criticising the hell out of everything, with the benefit of hindsight, are fully blaming the government for everything. I am saying that wheatever government was dealing with this in the UK would have likely made similar choices and "mistakes". And i believe that the current team would have done better than anything that would have occured under Jeremy Corbyn

Fairy story, I believe The Monster Raving Loony Party would of cured it.

Taking responsibility doesn’t mean blame, fact is the present Government are 100% totally responsible for the handling and outcomes from Covid-19 in this Country, that doesn’t mean it is a blame game.

I’ve many a time backed them as we are in a totally new and unknown situation and point scoring over another party is pathetic.

 

[PNWokingham]

Worse than the second highest death toll in the world? Gotta tell you if we could go back a year and try again with practically any credible alternative I’d take that chance. Even Corbyn, hopeless though he was.

As it is we are stuck with Johnson and our best chance of getting through it is to scrutinise everything they do so that mistakes can be minimised and addressed before they happen. Suppressing these discussions mean that measures, even well-meaning and sincere come from a single place in terms of ideology, experience and subconscious bias. Every policy can be improved by having more diverse voices helping to shape it.

Sadly there seems to be a move to ban any political dissent in real time and dismiss subsequent debate as “hindsight”. Classic authoritarian tactics and most definitely not what the country needs now.

i have no problem pointing out mistakes and holding to account but i do not think in this country any alternative parties would have doen better. Easy with hindsight to recognise mistakes but different to put the blame firmly at a government to make huge choices. Would locking down the country a week or 10 days earlier have changed things? Probably but it may not have made much difference as the virus probably did most of its damage in January and February when the issues were far less known. They did the right thing in having a committee of science experts and leaning on them to help form the roadmap of decisions that were taken. Any other UK government would have done the same. As a country, we were not equiped on the supply chains, health quangos etc in dealing with this tragic outbreak and, again, likely would not have been much different under labour or the Greens or anyone else. It is clear the whole way.

 

[Deleted member 16999]

i have no problem pointing out mistakes and holding to account but i do not think in this country any alternative parties would have doen better. Easy with hindsight to recognise mistakes but different to put the blame firmly at a government to make huge choices. Would locking down the country a week or 10 days earlier have changed things? Probably but it may not have made much difference as the virus probably did most of its damage in January and February when the issues were far less known. They did the right thing in having a committee of science experts and leaning on them to help form the roadmap of decisions that were taken. Any other UK government would have done the same. As a country, we were not equiped on the supply chains, health quangos etc in dealing with this tragic outbreak and, again, likely would not have been much different under labour or the Greens or anyone else. It is clear the whole way.

So the Labour/Corbyn/Abbott comments were not true then as you are clearly contradicting yourself with the bits in bold.

 

[PhilTheFragger]

I agree with PaulDJ42 that the government, by definition is 100% responsible for the outcomes of this virus
They are in charge, goes with the territory. And a healthy level of scrutiny is expected and hopefully welcomed.
My concern is that we reach a point of over scrutiny which has the politicians constantly looking over their shoulder, looking out for the next journo to try and trip them up or catch them out, that ultimately results in a type of paralysis, where nobody does anything for fear of being found wrong later

That is where we are currently heading I fear

 

[Red scorpion]

It is difficult to support something that is fundamentally wrong.
Do we just turn a blind eye and ignore all of those arrogant mistakes that caused so many unnecessary deaths.

I assume your talking about nike confrence in edinburgh in feb and care homes contributing almost 50% deaths in scotland.

 

[Deleted member 16999]

I agree with Paul that the government, by definition is 100% responsible for the outcomes of this virus
They are in charge, goes with the territory. And a healthy level of scrutiny is expected and hopefully welcomed.
My concern is that we reach a point of over scrutiny which has the politicians constantly looking over their shoulder, looking out for the next journo to try and trip them up or catch them out, that ultimately results in a type of paralysis, where nobody does anything for fear of being found wrong later

That is where we are currently heading I fear

Which Paul

I agree with what you say, the problem the Government faced was the unknown in the beginning, mistakes would of easily, and sadly, been made.

Some of those mistakes needed highlighting and sorting immediately, others, imo, should be left until an enquiry as they’d serve no purpose discussing them at the time and taking focus away from the fight.

 

[PNWokingham]

So the Labour/Corbyn/Abbott comments were not true then as you are clearly contradicting yourself with the bits in bold.

i mean that the steps of involving civil service and experts would be the same but i have more faith in the abilities of the current government than i do in the alternatives - albeit in this case i do not think the results would be a lot different

 

[ColchesterFC]

Which Paul

I agree with what you say, the problem the Government faced was the unknown in the beginning, mistakes would of easily, and sadly, been made.

Some of those mistakes needed highlighting and sorting immediately, others, imo, should be left until an enquiry as they’d serve no purpose discussing them at the time and taking focus away from the fight.

I agree. I think decisions that were made that don't affect us going forward should be left until after. If, like me, you think that the government locked down too late and not strictly enough, then that should be left to be argued later as it can't be changed. If you think that the lock down is being lifted too quickly then that should be argued now as it's an ongoing decision.

 

[SocketRocket]

Politicians are not really experts in anything much, I dont know if any of them have any qualifications in dealing with viral pandemics. As such they have to take guidance from people that do understand these things and all the complex logistics and infastructure. OK, there will be choices to make at certain points in the timeline such as balancing the effects of locking down verses damage to the ecconomy. Unfortunatly many people will look at the statistics and pull from them data to support their own political agendas which will be amplified by pulling support from the biased sensationalism in the media of their choice.

Of course retrospect will expose certain decisions that could have resulted in better results but every decision has not been a bad one. What I find concerning are the levels of outright party political dogma and outrage being used by so many to dismiss absolutely everything the Government does, this now seems to have created an anti Government feeding frenzy that is blinkered beyond belief.

Yes, discuss decisions, find lessons that we can learn from but try and be objective without the overt political dogma.

 

[Deleted member 16999]

Politicians are not really experts in anything much, I dont know if any of them have any qualifications in dealing with viral pandemics. As such they have to take guidance from people that do understand these things and all the complex logistics and infastructure. OK, there will be choices to make at certain points in the timeline such as balancing the effects of locking down verses damage to the ecconomy. People will look at the statistics and pull from them data to support their own political agendas which will be amplified by pulling support from the biased sensationalism in the media of your choice.

Of course retrospect will expose certain decisions that could have resulted in better results but every decision has not been a bad one. What I find concerning are the levels of outright party political dogma being used by so many to dismiss absolutely everything the Government does, this now seems to have created an anti Government feeding frenzy that is blinkered beyond belief.

Yes, discuss decisions, find lessons that we can learn from but try and be objective without the political dogma.

The Politicians are the only ones accountable to the people.

Re the bit in bold: Absolutely no different to the pro-government blinkered view that they’ve done everything right and better than any other Party would of done.

 

[rulefan]

So the Labour/Corbyn/Abbott comments were not true then ...

If you are suggesting eg that they would have got supplies of PPE in place sooner, you are wrong. The civil service's procurement processes would still have has the same issues.

Would they have introduced lockdown sooner? Only if they had been using different advisors possibly giving different advice. Certainly Corbyn et al would have been unqualified.

Was the decision to move elderly hospital patients to care homes actually a Johnson decision or was it made by the NHS hierarchy off their own bat?
With hind site it seems a bad decision but the fear was that leaving them in hospital would have overwhelmed the hospitals.

 

[Doon frae Troon]

We need unity within the UK to sort out this mess.

First ministers of the devolved nations, the leaders of the other political parties and even in some cases members of the UK Cabinet hearing new UK policy on Covid 19 for the first on the BBC news is NOT the way to go. It is not WW2 and we have to keep mum.

 

[GB72]

I do not think that the government has done everything right but they have done ok. The early work to preserve job bs was excellent, the PPE etc not so. The lockdown I felt was about right. Anything more would have needed troops on the street and I am not sure how that would have played. As for easing the lockdown, I am not sure there is much choice. The economy has to start moving. The results already will be a disaster but if we are in lockdown and those furloughs start turning to redundancies then the problems will be far further reaching.

My opinion, I think much depends on personal circumstance. I feel much of the calls to keep the lockdown going comes from those that can ride it out. Those who need to work, who see their whole industry threatened or those just starting out on their working life who see far less of a threat from the virus may see it differently. Equally, those struggling in their own I suspect will be overjoyed to be able to see a few people again.

No easy answers at all and no one solution will sit we with everyone. As I said before, I am seeing this all from a position where I have kept working, have access to a garden and the countryside and have very little personal impact from covid. As such I will not judge anyone who has acted in a way that they felt was necessary for them.

 

[GB72]

If you are suggesting eg that they would have got supplies of PPE in place sooner, you are wrong. The civil service's procurement processes would still have has the same issues.

Would they have introduced lockdown sooner? Only if they had been using different advisors possibly giving different advice. Certainly Corbyn et al would have been unqualified.

Was the decision to move elderly hospital patients to care homes actually a Johnson decision or was it made by the NHS hierarchy off their own bat?
With hind site it seems a bad decision but the fear was that leaving them in hospital would have overwhelmed the hospitals.

There are articles around that the whole idea of delaying lockdown and herd immunity was the expert advice and actually the lockdown was the government bowing to public pressure and ignoring it.