Government simply haven’t done enough

IN HANDLING the Covid pandemic, the Government used to claim to be “following scientific advice” though it later leaked out that the March lockdown which the SAGE team of experts recommended was delayed at least a week while Boris Johnson dithered.

A delay which a scientist from SAGE estimates has caused 20,000 extra deaths.

Then the Government switched to saying it was “taking account of” the SAGE evidence, weasel words which meant they were cherry-picking the scientific advice and doing only the easy bits which would not upset rebellious Tory MPs.

And now they have abandoned even that position and have moved on to refusing to implement SAGE’s advice to impose a two-week lockdown across the country, as a circuit breaker to stop the virus from spreading. Whilst harassing people like Manchester’s Andy Burnham, who is only trying to prevent some of his people moving from poverty to destitution.

Rather like someone who refuses to get a lump in their body seen by a doctor because they are too busy at work, they seem to imagine that a health problem, which is doubling every week even in the low-Covidincidence parts of the country, can be neglected until it reaches a disaster level.

By which point many more of us will have died and there will still be considerable damage done to the economy by locking it down – for much longer than a short, sharp circuit breaker- with more economic damage, than if they had acted earlier.

As Boris’ hero, surely, would have said: “Action this day!” We, however, will be sitting waiting for the next U-turn from our favourite donkeys.

Ian Gibson, via email Written before full lockdown announced

HOW can our excellent Park and Ride facility be introduced to new visitors when there is a lethal lack of noticeboards mentioning it?

At last, I have seen one use of the words Park and Ride on a main road approaching Southport (the A 565 from Preston) but it is largely unreadable because of the branch of a tree and that road leads to a main roundabout where there is no mention of Park and Ride at all only that wretched icon of a bus and a P so that the message is clearly made that this is where coaches park – and no mention of cars!

When I retired to my birthplace of Southport in 2013, I spent about 45 minutes one Sunday finding the Park and Ride facility, going round in circles – I knew it was somewhere near the coast – and eventually found a small noticeboard mentioning it about 500 yards away from it but no noticeboard mentioning it at the next junction so I had to get out of the car and ask a passer-by where it was!

The words Park and Ride are known all over the UK so why are they not clearly used at every junction between the main roads leading into Southport and the destination which is indeed an excellent facility as long as you can find it!

This is so obvious that I despair that nothing has been done about it. The phenomenon of the lazy comment “Oh, everyone knows” once again is the feeble avoidance of the truth which is “Everyone does NOT know unless they are told!”

Angela Robinson

Southport

GOVE GAVE IT TO EU

WELL done Michael Gove for his awesome round of interviews over the weekend before last.

Whilst Boris Johnson and Matthew Hancock had a well earned rest, Mr Gove was in tip top form and absolutely right to stand up to the stubborn EU in regards to Britain potentially leaving without a deal and equally right to stand up to a similar bureaucratic institution in the form of Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham.

You really would think that a man with ministerial experience like Mr Burnham would at least understand how lives are being put at risk by people not obeying social distancing rules as was yet again so obvious over the weekend yet this man behaves like a cross between a spoilt little public schoolboy still harbouring a silver spoon in his