My honest assessment of our gov in this pandemic

Bit of war n peace..lol.

Initially when we were put into lockdown, I backed the steps and advice form the government and their reasoning for doing certain things.

I never bought into the media outcry that instructions were not clear about what we could and couldn't do. Anybody with a sprinkling of common sense should be able to understand what to me were simple instrcutions about social distancing. Some of the questions were unreal and pathetic.. Can we do this or that.. Most folk I spoke to thought the same.

Moving on from this restrictions increased and the chancellor announced all the measures to help us get though this. I was quite impressed by the wide ranging measures announced, I didn't expect them to go that far. Looking back on these measures, I still think the government has done well on the financial help. It was always going to be impossible to protect the entire population and businesses etc. There could have been a case to introduce a compulsory basic income for everyone, but something else would have had to give so again it wouldn't have been all encompassing.

....

I'd say we were well under way to moving towards our new normality so looking back what do I think. I'll start by saying that I've always been traditionally a Labour voter but based on my personal experiences don't share the same ingrained hatred of the tories as many people on here. I often try and look at things from different viewpoints for that reason.

So after initially being full of praise for the government response, I agree with the viewpoint now that they acted initially too late in putting us into lockdown and my initial view that the government acted at the right time was incorrect. I'm thinking probably by about 2 weeks. I also think we should have had more stringent measures put in place around quarantine at airports than we have seen, not sure on the thinking around that one.

As above though, I think in general the measures announced by the chancellor were on the whole very good. I hope we can see a route to recovery with economy boosting measures when things do start to get up and running again. We have a massive chance to get a boost from internal tourism (lets hope we have decent weather over the summer months as it always helps).. We also have a chance to reboot in some way our green manufacturing specialisms.. Things like the Trevor Jackson aluminium fuel cell should be government funded, can you imagine what impact on the public purse a UK government licencing groundbreaking battery tech around the globe to car manufacturers.. Just one idea..

As for the PPE issue, heard so many conflicting stories on this, even now it is difficult to form a solid opinion as to the real facts. I'm not counting the PPE issue as part of the crisis response, this should have been part of routine disaster planning anyway. So on a wider issue, it is clear that PPE availability has been a major failure and needs to be addressed post pandemic to ensure any future waves or new pandemics, we can react quicker. This needs to be cross party working and minimum standards and quantities agreed for the future, there isn't the will within any party to really co-operate with each other though, regardless of the noises they make on this. Our politics really needs to change for the better as a result. Another point on this one is that where we do have supply chains, we need to ensure that we can manufacturer everything in an emergency within our own country (again a great way of boosting manufacturing within the UK).

Testing looks on the whole to have been a bit of a mess, same learnings from PPE apply here. It is also worth noting though that many tests done in other countries were proper rubbish and not fit for purpose. If we had been faster off the mark, we would have been the world leader in quality and quantity, rather than seemingly behind the curve.

As for coming out of lockdown and relaxing of the measures. I agree with the pace it is happening and the government shouldn't feel afraid to pull on the handbrake if things start to go pear shaped. Not sure where a lot of the criticism comes from when they have changed their minds on schools, most people were asking for it, yet complained when they did change policy.

So in summary, I reckon they have got lots wrong stemming mainly from timing and preparation. Support during lockdown decent, and final judgement reserved on how we recover.

 

Don’t know how you’ve come to those conclusions, even the govt don’t think they acted properly saying they’d do things different with hindsight .
Not going to sage meetings etc etc . advising to act as normal , shaking hands at hospitals where the virus had taken hold .
Not sure what information you’ve used to come up with that tbh when even the govts don’t agree with you .

 

Think I have to agree with you there, MDG.

Some good balanced points without slagging anyone off.

 

Exactly my point surely, acted too late. If measures had been in place sooner they wouldn't have been shaking hands etc.. Not sure what angle you are coming from tbh.
If you note, my only real praise was that when we did lockdown the financial support seems decent and personally think the instructions were perfectly clear on the stay at home message.. same with how we are slowly relaxing things. Apart from that I'm not full of praise in any way, just fair.

 

Nothing wrong with expounding a view. Well put too.
However, there are many issues that you don't mention (have not considered). For example, LONG-TERM, the Government noticeably failed to adequately prepare for a pandemic. There is plenty of evidence for this lack of long-term planning. Similarly there was lack of prep and planning for the impact on care homes after the Government had been warned prior to this year. The PPE issue is clear cut for me..it was handled badly with the Government not getting involved in EU procurement schemes when given several chances. There were other badly-managed issues with PPE as well. Johnson himself has not led on the issues, avoiding COBRA meetings on several occasions. Similarly the Government have not led with regard to setting proper examples (Cummings is but one example). They have also spun statistics to suit (the 100000 tests by end of April one for instance). They have also failed to engage with local authorities but preferred to use a catch-all approach without discussion. Personally I think that's an error. As to the lifting of restrictions it remains to be seen how the infection rate will be affected so I'll reserve judgement on that. The lockdown itself WAS too late in being implemented. Several businesses and organisations were actually already taking their own precautions before the 23rd March. The Government effectively followed the prevailing trend there and did not lead even after they had witnessed what was happening in other countries.
There were some good measures in the financial assistance schemes and it's interesting that there was suddenly a magic money tree when necessary. The chancellor deserves some credit for that.
Overall, for me, the Government have been crap however. Crap in the long-term, crap with speed of response, crap with leadership and setting the right example. The financial boosts do not compensate for the woeful response and the concomitant dreadful death rate. There are other crap issues I've not even mentioned (BAME, 'following the science' comments, SAGE make-up).
Government's marks out of 10 = 1 (for writing their name on the top of the paper).

p.s If this had been a Labour Government apart from the long-term stuff I'd be slagging them off too.

 

The easiest way to distinguish whether the government has done a good job throughout this isn't listing everything they've done wrong, it's listing what they've done right.

I'll start. Erm. Struggling here.

Sunak did a decent job with Furlough.

Any more?

 

Surely a banning offence on this board!!!

 

Incompetent.(government) lying.(Cummings) Arrogant (Gove) Pathetic. ( Boris)
I’ve nothing but contempt.
Do I know labour would have done better. Not interested. I’ll never know. You can only argue what is, not what if.
Ps 100% honest assessment.

 

Had to have a little chuckle when you said there are many issues I didn't mention. Haha, yeah I already thought my post was long enough. I didn't want to end up conducting my own public enquiry. However pm me your address and I'll send the other 450 pages on in the post. Let me know if you prefer hardback or paperback

 

It’s been a sh1tshow from day one

 

Sounds like you'd need a hatchback

 

i think the government have been appalling throughout this situation for example:
It was clear the lockdown was too late even at the time. the high profile cheltenham festival and the liverpool v madrid game are just widely seen examples, but we were seeing pictures of the virus effect in Europe, particularly in Italy, daily that showed what was coming. we didn't respond and gave the wrong messages
PPE and ventilators were highlighted in a number of pandemic risk exercises and nothing was done. We made a big thing about getting ventilators, but manufacturing change should have been focussed on the consumable items, namely PPE
we all know Boris is a liar and chancer. this situation should have terrified the whole country with what he can achieve in the next 4 years. the Cummings episode is a disgrace
we have had mob rule for a weekend with both the Black Lives Matter protests and the huge numbers on the beaches that the lack of leadership meant the police couldn't respond when the lockdown was being ignored. this was exacerbated by the cummings episode
these are just the quick and major issues, but the ONS are now saying excess deaths (the number boris said we should use at the outset!) is nearly 64k

 

My point being at no point have the government done anything well .
The furlough is a socialist policy anyway and there was no way he could have achieved lockdown without it .and it took three rushed attempts to put it in place as the first attempt was an absolute disgrace and the second attempt not much better before he realised the seriousness of it under pressure from all opposition party’s and members from their own ranks .
He had continually had chop and change his third attempt to get it anywhere near what the opposition party’s have recommended.
I’m not going into a 5k worded rant it’s Well documented on the internet with credible news outlets explaining exactly why they’ve been all round incompetent. There is obviously a very tiny minority of these that trying to stem the tide of criticism but looking at your verdict I see you’ve already seen them .

 

Furlough scheme is the one shining light out of this whole thing. Sunak has done a really good job of protecting people's livelihoods where possible.

I know this situation is unprecedented so they have had to make decisions that no one has had to make before. However, I do believe many of those decisions have been the wrong ones.

Someone asked me what government would have done better and my answer was plenty of others around the world have done far better. Our leader simply hasn't lead and seems to be leaving it to others. There will be plenty he hangs out to dry when we finally taken stock of what has happened these last few months.

 

The Scientists will be the next LibDems , no danger about that .

 

Think that's a given - 'following the science' showed us where the fingers will be pointing when this is over.

 

I've seen it suggested that the PM and Ministers made decisions that overrode the pandemic response that was already in place. In many cases, these decisions made things worse than they would have been without any government *at all*.

Examples included: Not introducing a quarantine, not learning from the lessons of other countries, not having a workable track and trace system in place, abandoning track and trace, etc

 

That was my point about what other government could have done better - the simple response is lots of them have if you look at the figures.

 

An ingrained hatred of the Tories, (which I readily admit to for good reasons) does not automatically mean that my criticisms of them are flawed or inaccurate. Their own actions, lies and inactions tend to show what a terrible shower we have in govt.