My honest assessment of our gov in this pandemic

wonderful another politcal post, surely this belongs in one of the many others on the board.

 

Not their finest hour.

 

Rapid building of nightingale hospitals a plus readmission of residents into care homes from hospital without testing a major failure could have gone into nightingale hospitals to recuperate and then tested before going back to homes..

 

Was

Wasn’t their a staffing issue with the Nightingale Hospital, but yes they did put them in place fairly quickly Once the decision was made

 

We should have locked down 2-3 sooner, protected the elderly better and made it mandatory in confined spaces to wear a face covering from the start. It's the lowest Friday figure for 12 weeks, but we should be much further on by now.

 

quick summary:

chancellor - good
the rest - shockingly bad


*Other viewpoints are available

 

The message could have been clearer. A simple message, yes I agree but not clear if you were over 70 or possibly in a vulnerable category. I thought we were told that over 70's and vulnerable people would receive a letter from their doctor - I never got one and it left me unsure of my vulnerability status and therefore what advice to follow. We had people (plenty on here) inferring that as over 70's we should not be out of the house - wrong. Also we had people stating that daily exercise was for one hour only - also wrong. A number of mixed messages that were never cleared up. I got my info from Gov.Uk and ignored the rest.

 

Chancellor gets marked as good for largest shrinkage in our economy in one month - probably ever.

Strange times.

 

We found ourselves with exactly the worst government at exactly the wrong time. The things that people like about Johnson. The affability. The lazy charm. The broad strokes. They are exactly the wrong skill set. You need someone obsessed by detail and driven by hard work. Systematic underfunding and a lack of ny long term planning did for us.

Sunak has done well in the economics but you have to judge us against the rest of the world. Comparatively we have been poor.

lockdown too late. Didn’t use the lockdown to plan.

3/10. The Tom Kennedy of Govt.

 

I think Theodore Roosevelt put it quite well:

 

like most things I’m guessing that isn’t totally his fault?

 

Chortle, Boris in the Arena, the guy who chose to miss COBRA meetings and has past for hiding in fridges

 

Fair point well made.

 

I could go on, but as you’ve said, point made

 

Nope. The Chinese are to blame.

 

The lockdown was definitely 2 weeks too late. I don't know why they waited because it was clear from the rest of Europe that it was coming and needed to be done, there was no way they could have ridden it out. Many companies were putting plans in place before it was official, we all knew it was coming. I am a consultant but my company pulled us all off the road two weeks before lockdown.

Other than that, I agree about the baffling decisions, quoting the 'following the science' line. It was said all along that the numbers coming through the airports and ports into the country had a negligible affect of our numbers. But, if I was in charge, my view would have been well, it can't harm to close the border can it and politically it would be the wise thing to do.

I hold no truck with people saying that everything was wrong, like everything in life, it is not black and white like that. Our population density affects our numbers making it difficult to draw comparisons with other countries death rates and to do serves no real purpose to me. Some things undoubtedly have been badly handled and at times it seems a bit headless chicken in the way it has been managed. But the BIG one is that we locked down too late. Our numbers would be miles better, regardless of population density, had it been earlier. And everything else would have played a lesser part had we done so

My concern now is that we will be slowest major nation to recover. The cost of this, and the size of the deficit must be treated for the next several years now as just a side issue. We really need an investment government now to fire the recovery. In terms of the economic damage, it's not even started yet.

 

I noticed this week that Tesla are investigating a factory in Bristol and there is talk of an enormous battery giga factory in Wales. Good start. We need much more of that. The emergency budget needs to spray investment incentives everywhere, particularly green ones.

This idea of a 6k scrappage scheme - right idea, wrong adoption. It should just be a 6k bung on top of the 3k one already in place, regardless of scrapping a car. The sooner there is a wide take up of EVs, the sooner there is a viable 2nd hand market and everyone can switch. That's the approach they are taking in Germany, who get it right again. In my mind, people driving about in a car old enough to justify scrapping it for 6k do so because they can't afford new cars. So they certainly can't afford a new EV, which comes with a big price differential, even with a govt bung.

 

Vietnam.

Pop 97m. Cases 333. Deaths 0

Nuff said.

 

If masks had been mandatory all along we'd be pretty much out of this by now. The virus takes about three weeks in someone it infects. So if everyone anywhere outdoors had worn a mask for a month then by the end of April cases should have been minimal at most.