Critical analysis of Tories is nowhere to be found
I don’t want my kids to go back, pick the virus up from another child and pass it to us, otherwise the last 8 weeks will have been a waste of time.
Ted Dexter, former cricketer, 85; Ralph Steadman, cartoonist, 84; Madeleine Albright (pictured), exUS Secretary of State, 83; Brian Eno, musician, 72; Mike Oldfield, musician, 67; Greg Wise, actor, 54; Zara Phillips, 39; Patrice Evra, footballer, 39; Andy Murray (pictured), tennis player, 33.
JUST imagine Labour had won the 2010 General Election. Taking office, the new government cuts the annual increase in the NHS budget to 1% – effectively a 5% cut in real terms. Local government resources are also cut.
In 2016 an exercise in preparedness warns of deficiencies in the country’s capabilities should there be an outbreak of infectious disease. Three years later a report warns of the acute shortage of Personal Protective Equipment as stocks have been run down.
These warnings are ignored as is the news from China and then Italy of the seriousness of the coronavirus outbreak in early 2020 and major sporting events are allowed to go ahead.
The PM fails to attend the first five COBRA meetings and goes away for a break.
The Government’s first actions are guided by the false notion of ‘herd immunity’ which imagines large numbers will get ill, with many, unfortunately, dying. It requires widespread testing.
As the government has made no real provision for testing this idea is soon abandoned. Later than most of our neighbours, a full lockdown is introduced. The supply of PPE is exposed as inadequate. First attempts to purchase more end in a fiasco. Meanwhile, as predicted, the death rate in care homes rises. Advice from ministers is often contradictory.
Was this in fact a Labour government, most popular national papers would be lambasting ministers suggesting they had blood on their hands. Cartoons would feature ‘the PM’s nightmare’ of the ghosts of dead health workers.
But much of the national press remains pro-Tory so we are spared critical analysis let alone scathing abuse.
And not surprisingly, in your Great Big Lockdown Survey, (May 8) many people still think the Johnson administration is doing a good job.
If so, what on earth would a bad job look like?
Comparisons have... disappeared
HOW strange that in the first seven weeks or so of the daily Government Covid-19 briefings, there was always a comparison of the number of virus-related deaths in this country with those in other countries – and on the day that the Office for National Statistics reported there were now in excess of 40,000 virus related deaths in this country, these comparisons stopped.
Soon after the daily government Covid-19 briefing started both Sir Patrick Vallance, chief scientific advisor to the Government and Stephen Powis, national medical director, told us that keeping the number of Covid-19 related deaths below 20,000 would be ‘a good result.’ Whilst it is obviously extremely unlikely we will know the answers, it would be very interesting to know:
A. What kind of ‘result’ they think a death toll of 40,000 plus and still rising, represents; and far more importantly,
B. Why they think it turned out that the number of virusrelated deaths could not be contained below 20,000?