At a time of crisis this Government is FAILING

I think this video from Mike Galsworthy on 15th March is a pretty good and fair comment and explanation on the UK's approach at that time and it is interesting to see what has happened since. Mike is an excellent science communicator, but he is a founder of Scientists for EU, NHS for an People's Vote and is a member of the Labour Party. I mention this so you will appreciate he is not likely to be a fan of this government. However he does put Science above everything and is passionately in favour of the scientific approach and evidence based policy.

Importantly, his particular field of expertise is virology, behavioural genetics, health services research, research mapping, and science policy and he is Senior Research Associate at UCL and Visiting researcher at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

 
Think you have crossed the line too their pal.

If someone finds solace and peace, or it keeps their mind of what is about to happen by coming on a message board, who are you to f@cking judge

Let’s keep from personal attacks eh
the personal attacks have been on me eg muppet and scrote and countless others over the weeks. Weegord uses these terms as a matter of routine
not just in the last post.

Yes I agree i may have crossed the line

We have all had bad things on life. I had to see my first born killed at the age of 5 in a car accident over 30 years ago now and it was my fault.
 

Anyone care to defend this?

Or explain how it isn't ideology based?
I'll have a go
Wasn't an order for 10,000 ventilators made on Dyson this morning. And did the EU also order 10,000 form Dyson ?- No.
Its a British company - Brexit in action.

And the answer is factually correct. Do you think we should be following EU policies or just pick and choose the ones that seem good.
 
I'll have a go
Wasn't an order for 10,000 ventilators made on Dyson this morning. And did the EU also order 10,000 form Dyson ?- No.
Its a British company - Brexit in action.

And the answer is factually correct. Do you think we should be following EU policies or just pick and choose the ones that seem good.

So it is ideology?

Also, why go to Dyson and JCB rather than exisiting manufacturers?

 
It's a bit of an own goal by Johnson, his answer was glib at a time when he should be as statesmanlike as possible. Why isn't he using as many suppliers as possible. Surely this would speed up the delivery lead time.
 
As you insist on persisting in bringing this up - I never have by the way

Not as odd as spending the most of that morning on a football message board when attending an important funeral in the afternoon

I really hesitate before posting this but its the 3rd or 4th time you have brought it up to support your argument for stating that more than 50% of the electorate are complicit in mass murder. And as you have noticed
the majority of posters on this thread agree with me,
Just man up and stop deflecting to gain sympathy
Sorry but that wasn't called for, 😔
 
Sorry but that wasn't called for, 😔
You are right Erimus, but to be fair, that was admited a couple of posts up. I am no fan of HundredRooms posts, but there was some give and take previously also. We should really avoid personal attacks at a difficult time. In a few weeks any some of us may be moarning the loss of loved ones, so let's keey the personal animosity out of the debate.
 
From the New York Times.


Boris Johnson has spent decades preparing for his lead role, honing his adopted character, perfecting his mannerisms, gauging the reactions to his performance and adjusting it for maximum effect. Now he has the national stage and the rapt audience he always craved. His speech this week announcing a lockdown drew the biggest television audience in Britain in this century.

The problem is that he has been preparing for the wrong part. The man came to power playing Falstaff, a double-dealing, comically entertaining, shameless rogue; now he is suddenly onstage as Henry V, the wartime king whose solemn judgment, intense focus, charisma and conviction must lead his nation in a time of crisis. Mr. Johnson does not know how to play that part, and it shows. This is not a rehearsal. His careless, inexcusable reluctance to track and halt the virus earlier will have cost lives.

Throughout these last weeks as the coronavirus crisis became apparent to everyone in Britain, Mr. Johnson has been indecisive, contradictory, confused and confusing, jovial when he should be grave, muddled when a frightened nation desperately needs him to be clear. The man picked for his supposed talents as a great communicator has stumbled his way through news conferences, occasionally hitting with evident relief upon a jolly riff he finds familiar. In the rare moments when he has struck the right note, he unerringly hits a jarring one minutes, hours or days later. His switches of strategy and his lack of clarity left far too many Britons oblivious to the importance of social distancing until far too late.

As the virus spread into Europe in mid-February, an alert prime minister would have taken immediate charge, turbocharging preparations, aware that a possible pandemic posed a grave danger to Britain. Instead, he vanished from public view for 12 days, most of it spent on a private holiday with his pregnant fiancée at a palatial country house.

It was only at the end of February, with 80,000 known coronavirus cases worldwide and the World Health Organization on the edge of declaring a pandemic, that Mr. Johnson began to wake up. By that time there were 20 confirmed cases and one death in Britain already — and surely many more coming.

On Feb. 28, after the FTSE index had suffered its biggest one-week fall since 2008, Mr. Johnson finally said the virus was the country’s top priority. Only not enough of a priority, it turned out, for him to start work on it that weekend. He could have convened an immediate meeting of the government’s top emergency committee, Cobra, but he postponed it to Monday, as if the virus’s unseen and exponential spread would also be taking the weekend off.

The next week Mr. Johnson announced that “we should all basically just go about our normal daily lives’’ so long as we washed our hands for 20 seconds, several times a day. It was advice he immediately undermined by boasting cheerfully that he was still shaking hands, as he had indeed done at a hospital with several virus patients just days before. He did not recommend stopping.

Two days later, as Italy and Spain were shutting down, pleading for other countries not to repeat their mistakes, Mr. Johnson was explaining jauntily that one of the options for handling the virus was not to close schools or sporting events but to “take it on the chin, take it all in one go and allow the disease, as it were, to move through the population, without taking as many draconian measures.” The policy, it was later revealed, was to encourage “herd immunity.” That implied some 40 million people getting ill and another 800,000 ending up in intensive care.

It was instantly apparent to an aghast public that a creaking, underfunded health service with fewer than 5,000 intensive-care beds; an acute shortage of ventilators, masks, suits and gloves; an inadequate testing capacity; and a disease running free would fall apart just as Italy’s had done.

“Herd immunity” was quietly reversed. Suddenly restrictions started piling on, but sometimes only as recommendations: 14-day isolations, a warning against pubs, restaurants, theaters; a ban on mass gatherings; school closings. Each day brought new shocks as the government ran to catch up. Each day it acted as if taken by surprise by the virus’s spread.

Mr. Johnson found it impossible to maintain either consistency or seriousness. He delighted in describing cutting peak death rates as “squashing the sombrero” and declared with verve that we would soon “send coronavirus packing.” He has veered among solemnity, evident boredom and grins, as if his virus briefings were the Boris Johnson Entertainment Show, not the grimmest of necessary broadcasts.

He said the elderly must be protected from contact, then declared he hoped to visit his mother. Desperate doctors and nurses were warning of imminent disaster, and some of his cabinet were in revolt at his failure to grip the crisis, risk his jolly image and order Britain closed. On Monday, finally, he had to announce that Britain’s lockdown had begun.

Even then, at this time of profound national fear and disorientation, Mr. Johnson could not speak with gravitas, only with the odd, stagy emphasis of a man pretending while half his mind is elsewhere. His whole political appeal has always rested on his capacity for artful ambiguity, for never necessarily meaning anything he says, for amusing and uplifting people, for avoiding hard facts. It’s what he knows, but not what we need. He is trapped in his unsuitable role, and we are trapped with him, fearing he will not grow into the part. Britain is going into battle without the armor a Henry would have found. We do not know how badly this play might end
Well written and thought out, enjoyed reading that, thanks
 
It's a bit of an own goal by Johnson, his answer was glib at a time when he should be as statesmanlike as possible. Why isn't he using as many suppliers as possible. Surely this would speed up the delivery lead time.

Have the Dyson ones been thoroughly tested? Do they work, are they safe, when will they be ready, will they last longer than their hoovers?

Why are existing manufacturers being ignored? Didn't they contribute enough to Tory Party coffers? Did they speak out against Brexit and it's impact on the NHS or supply chains?
 
Have the Dyson ones been thoroughly tested? Do they work, are they safe, when will they be ready, will they last longer than their hoovers?

Why are existing manufacturers being ignored? Didn't they contribute enough to Tory Party coffers? Did they speak out against Brexit and it's impact on the NHS or supply chains?
To quote:

"
Several small suppliers of ventilators have said the government has not responded to their offers to make more.

The head of Direct Access, Steven Mifsud, told the Nantwich News he had sourced 5,000 ventilators and millions of face masks and personal protective equipment through its United Arab Emirates partners. He registered the supply on the “ventilator challenge” page of the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy website, but after five days he had hear nothing and the supplies went elsewhere."
 
Perhaps wee gord and hundred room can agree to disagree, no pint winding each other up.
But .. This has simmered away for months. I have not ever never name called or directly insulted Weegord or anyone else unless someone can point me to one.

But I do get on the end of "no mark , troll scrote muppet" and worse as a matter of routine from him. Maybe I finally got sick of it.
 
the personal attacks have been on me eg muppet and scrote and countless others over the weeks. Weegord uses these terms as a matter of routine
not just in the last post.

Yes I agree i may have crossed the line

We have all had bad things on life. I had to see my first born killed at the age of 5 in a car accident over 30 years ago now and it was my fault.

You used an extremely personal issue to make a point , i can only put it down to not losing a parent. It was below the belt.

I’m sorry to hear about your first born, no parent should ever have to bear the loss of a child.

I don’t know what happened, but I hope you have had ways to help you deal with the blame you have put on yourself
 
But .. This has simmered away for months. I have not ever never name called or directly insulted Weegord or anyone else unless someone can point me to one.

But I do get on the end of "no mark , troll scrote muppet" and worse as a matter of routine from him. Maybe I finally got sick of it.

Why don't you just concentrate on explaining why you think refusing to join the EU initiative but instead going to JCB and Dyson is not ideology based?

Or why chosing Dyson and JCB to come up with new ventilators and ignore existing manufacturors offers is not incompetent?

This thread is about the Governments handling of the crisis.
 
While I agree with most of what you say Gaz. It just isn't sensible to bring personal tragedy in to debates about something else.
I know that sounds hard and cold. Google Lynton Crosby for a better explanation.
 
Ok - well first the EU initiative is based on getting them at a good price by using their purchasing power. I would have thought getting a good price was the least of our worries.
Second Using JCB and Dyson are 2 companies that have already proved have the ability to switch production to ventilators.

Why rely on someone else when you van do youself
 
As for ‘manning up’ you’re the anonymous username coward and I can guarantee you wouldn’t try goading me in such a way in person. Typical troll, why don’t you ‘man up’
While I agree with most of what you say Gaz. It just isn't sensible to bring personal tragedy in to debates about something else.
I know that sounds hard and cold. Google Lynton Crosby for a better explanation.

Your loss is tragic, and I can't imagine what that must have been like to deal with, and no doubt how it continues to affect you. Truly the worst thing anyone can ever go through is losing a child.

Losing a parent, especially suddenly, is also one of the worst and intensified when you are the person that sadly has to find your deceased father on the floor in his living room as I unfortunately had to. The difference between us is that I would never, ever use what happened to you to try and score points that would be a truly horrendous thing to do. You, on the other hand, have used my situation against me and indeed edited posts on several occassions to try and illicit a response from me even though I'd made clear earlier in that particular thread that it was the day of his funeral. Perhaps that's something you need to consider.
 
Ok - well first the EU initiative is based on getting them at a good price by using their purchasing power. I would have thought getting a good price was the least of our worries.
Second Using JCB and Dyson are 2 companies that have already proved have the ability to switch production to ventilators.

Why rely on someone else when you van do youself
When were they proved? The government say neither are approved. The order will only be conformed if they are approved. The Airbus, Meggit, GKN consortium is working to ramp up the production of an existing design but no order has been placed.
 
Ok - well first the EU initiative is based on getting them at a good price by using their purchasing power. I would have thought getting a good price was the least of our worries.
Second Using JCB and Dyson are 2 companies that have already proved have the ability to switch production to ventilators.

Why rely on someone else when you van do youself

Can you link to some evidence that this EU initiative is based on purchasing power to screw suppliers on price?

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_523

Have JCB and Dyson proved they have the ability to switch production to ventilators?

Have existing manufacturers shown they cannot step up production?

Any links are helpful.
 
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