Western Daily Press (Saturday)
What do you think?
Should the Prime Minister face a vote of no-confidence? Join the debate by emailing letters@westerndailypress.co.uk and including your name and address
would have to close the Sunderland factory and transfer production to Spain in the EU. It never happened, what really happened was Nissan increased production at Sunderland and has just shut down its Barcelona production plant after 42 years.
Stuart Eels Chippenham seems to be a greater emphasis on protecting statues rather than women.
This is an attempt to shut down democracy but the limits of the
Bill would extend beyond this Government to future ones and give the police unprecedented powers.
As Lord Blunkett said: “Banning protest would make us more like Putin’s Russia than the UK. It would be a lasting toxic legacy for Boris Johnson.”
On Monday, the Bill passed to the House of Lords, who defeated it by 14 votes, but that’s not the end of the story as it will ‘ping pong’ between the two Houses until it’s finally approved. So, it’s important that while this process continues we make our voices heard.
As Bath MP Wera Hobhouse said on Saturday, “Keep gathering, keep marching” to defeat this and the next batch of undemocratic Bills – while we can.
Jane Riekemann Newbridge, Bath here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you”, etc, etc...
Leo Amery MP used Cromwell’s dismissive words in 1940, when he expressed a similar wish of Conservative PM Neville Chamberlain. Now we have MP David Davis echoing his betters to Boris Johnson. Someone should have said it to him, as he played around negotiating a ‘leave’ deal with the EU. Davis should have said it when he saw the mess of potage Johnson signed up to with his EU trade agreement that was infinitely worse than the one Mrs May had negotiated – that he voted against.
Now we are witnessing Mr Johnson’s henchmen playing the John Wayne card to protect him against a no confidence vote. We are being told he led all the battles... personally. When it came to the Covid war, Mr
Johnson thought of everything, drew everything up, implemented everything, and personally led the NHS and organised overpaid private industries’ NHS contracts as well. We are told he has been the inspiring light that led the way for his Government – not the NHS – to claim victory over Covid-19. Nobody else had anything to do with it. So now you know.
I think we know better. We not only know, we witnessed it, that commitment of our overworked, undermanned NHS staff over the last 12 years of Conservative tutelage, as they protect the nation. Added to that, the reasoning and judgmental skills within the Civil Service and the legions of volunteers we have all seen who calmly and safely ushered us in our millions through the processes of vaccinations. Even this Prime Minister would admit when it came to the science answer to the virus he, like all of us, just stood and looked through the window.
I would challenge him to name one tactical advance against the Covid enemy that he designed and initiated that had not already been planned and recommended by the medical and statistical people within the NHS and used in the battle against Covid-19 and all its variants.
Let us be sensible that the job of tackling a pandemic was ordered by the Government – they had no alternative – and the strategy was organised and run by the experts in every respect. Politicians did as they were told and passed it into law – as it should be. When the
Prime Minister withdrew with a Covid infection, when ministers in turn withdrew or resigned and new ministers were appointed, the work against Covid-19 continued uninterrupted. At no time was any minister indispensable.
The truth is the party he leads has neglected to properly fund and staff the NHS for a decade. The party he leads had failed to pick up the clear message that a pandemic was not ‘if’ but ‘when’. The party he leads failed miserably to properly protect the most fragile members of our society – the elderly - and those who cared for them in the early weeks of the pandemic and both experienced a dreadful death rate.
The party he leads failed to ensure adequate supplies of PPE clothing were available to NHS staff in their efforts to save the lives of those most seriously infected; as a result many died. Now the high-ups of this party wish us to believe that all the success – and there were successes – was due to Mr Johnson, while any slip-ups produced a dragged out, mumbled half admission and apology. All that makes me quite angry. And must I mention the catalogue of overpriced, uncontested, undisclosed NHS contracts to party affiliates?
For two years he has totally failed to man a tight ship. But if we are now, hopefully, moving to calmer waters with Covid, is it important that we measure our performance, our casualty rate, our progress towards the invisible Covid winning post against our neighbours? These politicians think we are simpleminded people who need Boys’
Own answers. They see the defeat of Covid data as a dog race ending with an infantile “Ya Boo, we are better than you-oooo!!”
Mr Johnson has told us we will have x-thousand extra nurses and doctors this year. If they do grow on trees, they take up to seven years to mature. So we will buy these doctors and nurses from other countries who trained them, who can ill-afford to lose them.
Mr Johnson was a very good salesmen for his party at the election and a number of MPs can credit him for their being in the Commons. He has the gift of the gab. Read anything about his history and it talks of incompetence, deception, lies and untrustworthiness. That is how he is seen by many of his contemporaries. The leaders of other nations will also take note. This, along with the findings of a No 10 report and no doubt other things, is what Conservative MPs must countenance very soon and give an answer.
Don Frampton Newton Abbot, Devon