Test-trace disgrace as our taxes soar...
WEWERE treated to a lesson on financial responsibility with the Budget last week – indeed it covered just about everything from cladding to champagne and booze to building houses.we were told about a “moral mission” to ensure the nation could move to a “high-wage, leading global economy”.
And along the way we were told we’d be forced to accept a huge rise in taxes, the like of which we’ve not seen for around 70 years.
But as tax soared, we were assured the nation would set sail on a path of fiscal security and management that would ensure our economy would be a world leader.
At that point in Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s speech which, in less time then it takes to play a game of football, he had promised to splurge £150billion, it was surely time to press pause.
And indeed the rewind button too, and go back about 18 months.
If you remember, that was when we were promised a “world beating” testand-trace system that would help the nation stare Covid down and would be the envy of the planet.
By some ghoulish coincidence only believable in the “Yes, Prime Minister” world of Whitehall politics, a devastating report into the breathtaking incompetence and near criminal financial irresponsibility of the doomed scheme was published on the very same day Chancellor Sunak delivered his Budget.
Excuse me, but this would be like being told about the virtue of a sound defence in football by Manchester United boss Ole Gunnar Solskjaer!
This was a flawed initiative that swallowed up £37BILLION of our cash, but to the majority delivered nothing.
The report, released by a panel of MPS, made for devastating reading.
The NHS test-and-trace system was an “eye-watering” waste of our cash that was “muddled” and “overspent”.
The bloated budget, which would have funded the entire National Health Service for three months, was used in part to hire over 2,000 consultants, each earning more than £1,000 a day.
On some occasions just 11 per cent of the legions of contact tracers who were recruited were actually working. The highest figure ever attained was less than half. One call handler reported they were paid £4,500 while sat at home watching Netflix, without ever being given a contact to trace.
This was a scheme that was meant to enable us to “return towards a more normal way of life”, but in reality led to a spike in cases and two lockdowns, as
THERE’S something gloriously British about the picture above. Confronted by the deluded loons who people Insulate Britain, one inconvenienced motorist happened upon a unique way to ensure his displeasure was made plain.
To remind you, these are the deranged numbnuts who think it’s entirely acceptable to stop people going to work, visiting sick relatives, watching their daughter give birth or even halt someone who was actually employed to insulate people’s homes!
While the number of people travelling through Dartford in Kent who actually posses a set of bagpipes is unlikely to ever be known, it’s safe to assume any who actually carry the pipes in the vehicle would be vanishingly slim.
Which makes the image of a furious and frustrated motorist trapped the wrong side of the demo deciding to blast the bagpipes directly into the ears of one protester even more compelling.
Suggestion: if the pipes don’t work, how about trying a full-on Morris Dance round the barmy blockers ?
under increased pressure last Christmas and this Easter it simply collapsed.
Indeed last December just 17 per cent of those using the system were getting tests within 24 hours.
This colossal cluster-shambles delivered 691 million lateral flow tests, but a
WHY the confected row over Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s views on the recycling of plastics? He never suggested we shouldn’t do it, rather we should go “up river” and try to limit the production of plastic bottles and other products. The eco-zealots who piled in without actually listening would do well to realise what he actually said.
mere 14 per cent of that number have been registered. That means 595 million tests appear to have produced... nothing!
It was against this shaming backdrop that the Chancellor chose to lecture us all about the Government’s financial goals and the nation’s economic position.
Yet not one mention of a financial catastrophe so huge it must have been visible from outer space.
And isn’t that the rub? Being told we’re about to be saddled with a tax take many of our grandparents can’t even remember is hard enough. To be told this by a government that effectively flushed £37billion down the drain on an illthought-out, seemingly unaudited disaster, is a harder pill to swallow.
MUCH is being made of the fact the Queen will not physically attend the COP climate conference – but I, for one, am delighted at the news. The reason is blindingly obvious. As variants of the coronavirus abound, it seems half of the world (some of which is poorly vaccinated) is headed to Glasgow.
Explain therefore the wisdom of putting a 95-year-old woman in the middle of that?
It has been reported that as every year rolls around this longestserving monarch vows that the one event she will NOT miss is Remembrance Sunday at the Cenotaph. For someone who knows everything about duty, she would never fail to honour those who paid the ultimate price.
If a video appearance at the climate conference allows her to fulfil her heartfelt desire to honour those who gave their lives, can any of us call that into question?
AND the world arrives in Glasgow to what? Piles of litter uncollected due to industrial action and a plague of over-sized rats.
Quite some advert for the UK eh? So what do we hear on this disgrace from Nicola Sturgeon, normally so keen to grab the mic? Nothing.
If they can’t even clear the rubbish from their biggest city, the idea of Scottish independence is surely just a pile of garbage.