What's the betting the Covid thing goes tits up this weekend

The electorate had the clear and huge distinction of choice at the last general election. Right-wing or left-wing. Capitalism or socialism. Greed or altruism. And the majority very clearly voted for more of the same. More austerity, continued nationalistic jingoism with added ignorance of the law and constitution.

 

it was a personality contest and the media made out Corbyn was unelectable, social media decides everything

 

The left wing media have already had enough.

From the Guardian today:

 

Well if the crowded beaches were safe last year I'm sure we'll be fine.

 

Starmers trying to sell capitalism lite to the masses in an era where trust is at an all time low in politicians . The Tories will always get the pensioner vote hence the favourable pension increases during the height of austerity . Labour need to offer something that's actually going to change people's lives otherwise apathy will ensue and no one will vote . Corbyn probably came the closest but the media did their work to discredit him and it worked . Funny how anti semitism is a non issue now in the labour party even though all the same faces are still there .

 

I've always said the time to review the governments response isn't until the end of the pandemic. It certainly looks as though they were very, very slow off the mark in terms of nailing down the track and trace which will be their biggest failure. Contracts handed out which will need to be investigated fully post covid as well.. I've never understood this stance about closing airports etc and saying this will happen from next week etc. Every day counts in saving lives, if the problem of increased infection rates were spiralling there should be none of these notice periods where people are allowed to rush home to avoid quarantine etc. I may have missed it but I've not heard the opposition parties mention this either. It's a bit like seeing someone getting mauled by a Tiger on a Friday evening and saying we'll send in help next Tuesday morning. Clearly the UK got something wrong, but I also remember opposition to any strong action at the outset from the general public. I think that most folk thought this would blow over like the bird flu scenario etc and carried on as normal.

You mention that you are loathed to start criticising the public who have been locked away for 12 months. I partially agree in that many people have indeed done everything they have been asked and made massive sacrifices. There are as usual though quite a large amount of people who have never given a damn about anyone else but themselves and carried on as normal. In my opinion they have to also carry a lot of the blame for the loss of life etc.

It seems as though the governments approach to the vaccine procurement and lockdown has been up to now generally good, again though we are only half way through the programme so let's not count any chickens quite yet.

I would still like to have had a cross party executive group created in situations like this to set national policy and response. Some emergencies are far bigger than party politics, this being one of them.

In fact it would be a breath of fresh air for a political party to write this into their manifesto. Any national emergency ie Pandemic response / War etc, emergency powers be handed to this cross party group for the good of the nation. We should have done it with Brexit negotiations no doubt in my mind.

 

Social media is currently destroying Starmer.

I agree with pretty much all that you've posted there.

 

No doubting there were some excellent policies within the Corbyn era election manifesto. I liked a lot of the policies. Nothing to do with the media but I was never sold on Corbyn as a leader, much the same way as I see Starmer tbh just how they come across persona wise. I also had real concerns that there wasn't enough detail in the labour manifesto around how quick these massive changes were supposed to happen. Surely it's not fair to put stuff in a manifesto that you can't deliver in a single term of office. If they intended to deliver everything, then it was back to my concern about how it would be paid for, I didn't quite trust the figures. In the end though I voted for them with those concerns. Let's face it the alternative was likely to be more of the same. I'm not sure we will answer that now with the pandemic, would Johnsons government have levelled up the country as they promised I doubt it, but it certainly won't happen now with the public purse set back a decade. Next general election promises should be interesting.

 

Spot on. Starmer looks very much like a bog standard status quo Labour bloke. It's looking already like the next election will be about who will run the capitalist system the most efficiently not which party is going to change capitalism for the benefit of the vast majority. In other words which party will be the best Tories. Looks like it at the moment.

 

Whinging about other people's behaviour for a whole year....

Can't believe some aren't bored of this yet

 

Between slim and **** all.

Stop worrying that every little social interaction that you see will lead to a spread of the Covids and youll be better for it.

 

A handful of people yeah maybe you can easily brush it aside. But if the large amounts of people who have flaunted the guidance had just been more considerate, even taking into account the governments response, we may already have been back to some sort of normality already.

 

Stop whingeing about other people whingeing or you'll have more people whingeing!

 

What he said

 

Unfortunately this is what we are stuck with. Labour/Blair won on a Tory lite manifesto. We haven’t had a true socialist government in over 50 years. We never will again.

I’m proud to vote labour, I’m proud of its values and standards but I’m a realist and making labour electable to the masses is a bloody hard job, people have got used to having their cake and eating it, survival of the fittest, I’m all right jack.... call it what you want it’s here to stay.

 

I voted for Corbyn, and for years ignored the anti-semitism stories. I did though think JC was an appalling leader, he’d spent his whole life opposing the party leadership, and then when he became leader he spent most of his efforts fighting the members who didn’t wholly support him, and he held Tories in contempt, which is a laugh when it’s your mate down the pub, but childish when it’s the leader of HM’s opposition.

But I’ve recently read up a bit on antisemitism, spurred on oddly from BLM. Remember ‘all lives matter’? Is it not just a mirror of ‘against all forms of racism’? It’s a statement designed to shift the conversation rather than accepting the premise of the question.

There’s always been an issue with antisemitism on the far left, where ‘rich bankers’ and ‘Jewish overlords’ are almost interchangeable.

 

So if large amounts of people who flaunted guidance had been more considerate then where do you stand on the massive percentage of cases that come from in healthcare settings?

 

What has that got to do with people not willing to follow guidance?

 

We have over half the adult population vaccinated the vulnerable and elderly vaccinated. We have been just existing for a year now. Don't worry be happy no going back now.

 

Because up to 50% of cases and deaths depending on the trust/Date relate to healthcare settings. In hospital transmission has been a massive issue. For example the 25th of March, 39% of the cases in the South East NHS relate to infections caught inside the regions hospitals by patients who where admitted for 7 days or longer.

So from 454 cases 177 came from this source.

Why are we not focusing how bad infection control is in healthcare settings and stop blaming large amounts of people for spreading Covid?