Coronavirus (COVID-19) Outbreak

[RandoEFC+]

Several countries managed to sort this out overnight and it's going to take us over 3 months from the start of the pandemic to do the same.

Beneath the government's spinning of the truth and flat out lying to make themselves sound better than they are, the decisions made at government level along with the contributions of SAGE, public health England and the parts of the NHS, such as procurement of PPE, which aren't the nurses and doctors reacting on the front lines has been an absolute national embarrassment by almost every measure.

More data from the FT today suggests that excess deaths per capita in the UK is worse than anywhere else in the world that has published comparable data, including USA and Italy.

We had longer to prepare than most comparable countries, we have the unique geographical advantage of being an island and therefore having more control over the virus entering the country, we have a national health service that may be understaffed and underfunded compared to previous years but still much stronger than most other countries have to fall back on.

Set the Cummings incident and the government taking the absolute piss out of their own lockdown rules to defend one man while the death toll approaches 40,000 against this backdrop.

The handling of this in the UK has categorically been an abject failure and a combination of our clown government, corrupt and irresponsible sections of our media, the lack of a viable testing strategy even now, and the general idiocy of many sections of the public mean that there's no guarantee we won't see a second wave either.

Don't forget this embarrassing shambles of a country under this tin pot populist administration is supposed to be big and strong enough to leave the biggest trading bloc in the world without a single trade deal in place with any other major economical power while relying on a demented psychopath who tries to shut down social media for fact checking one of his tweets and might not even be reelected in a few months' time as their primary ally.

[Stan]

Durham Police have concluded that Cummings [obviously] did break the rules when he took his trip to Barnard Castle.

This, after the government were adamant he didn't, and made announcements & statements as such.

 

[RandoEFC+]

Again, if they'd said yes he made a mistake, he's very sorry and he won't do it again, but he won't be leaving his position as he's too important to the government at this stage in the crisis, enough people would have accepted that by now that this story would have faded from sight for the general public and been restricted to people like who spend too much time on the internet banging on about it.

By pretending he didn't break the rules and forcing the police to investigate it, they've caused this themselves, Cummings will be back on the front pages tomorrow a full week after this first broke. More bad press for the government and more noise distracting everyone from getting this crisis right.

The anti-Tory in me definitely enjoyed this for most of the weekend and I'm glad that a lot of people are starting to see this bunch for what they are but the actual human being in me is back in the driving seat now and this farce needs to end. It's the media's job to report on it and the police's job to investigate the matter, no doubt they'll get abused for doing their jobs but theres one man who wants the country to move on from this and has access to one very simple solution which will allow that to happen.

[Danny]

13 minutes ago, Stan said:

Durham Police have concluded that Cummings [obviously] did break the rules when he took his trip to Barnard Castle.

This, after the government were adamant he didn't, and made announcements & statements as such.

 

Will find a way to get past this somehow

[Carnivore Chris]

 

The best leader right now. She's brilliant.

[Stan]

1 minute ago, Carnivore Chris said:

 

The best leader right now. She's brilliant.

Was speaking about this to a mate just now funnily enough. Totally agreed.

Everything you'd want in a leader - honesty, compassion, openness, clarity, responsibility, humility, accountability and much more.

Compare that to some other leaders where they speak in cliches, rhetoric, confusion and whip up debate for a laugh and she is absolutely miles ahead in what you'd desire in a country's leader. 

Granted I've only seen stuff every now and then of how she handles things but the fact you don't see her whipped up in any controversies (unlike Johnson, Trump, Bolsonaro to name a few) really does speak volumes.

[Carnivore Chris]

She's young as well compared to many world leaders. 

She actually seems to care, her heart and head are in the right place.

[Honey Honey]

The Norwegian PM was asked the other day why countries with female leaders seemed to do better with COVID, like New Zealand. Her response was that though she'd like to think it is because they're women her social psychologists would tell her it is more likely down to being flat hierarchies with high levels of public trust and that those environments also allow women to be leaders.

As opposed to the UK where the ranting nonsense of males like you lot fuels a society that looks to masculine forms of leadership 

 

[SchalkeUK]

Probably has something to do with the way the scum Press reacts to males and they seem scared to give the same to females - thus making it easier for them to concentrate on real problems rather than trying to watch their and their colleagues backs.  I have never been politically branded, but Angela has always seemed to be ahead of most of the present idiots and the Scottish Press TV each day is a much easier watch than Boris and gang trying to avoid all question with answers to something else not even mentioned.  As for Gove.......

[Bluebird Hewitt]

Does this confirm Margaret Thatcher as a great leader? 

[Danny]

1 hour ago, Carnivore Chris said:

 

The best leader right now. She's brilliant.

Was massively refreshing living in New Zealand with her as PM as opposed to here and having Cameron, May and now Johnson.

She does have her critics and they generally fall into the angry right wing category but overall everyone seemed to love her and she deals with issues with a personal approach that actually shows she cares about the people’s she’s serving 

[Stan]

14 minutes ago, Bluebird Hewitt said:

Does this confirm Margaret Thatcher as a great leader? 

She's not gonna shag you mate

[Bluebird Hewitt]

1 hour ago, Stan said:

She's not gonna shag you mate

I'd rather stick to sheep in fairness. 

Edited May 28, 2020 by Bluebird Hewitt

[Stan]

7 minutes ago, Bluebird Hewitt said:

I'd rather stick sheep in fairness. 

You'd rather stick sheep in a dead woman? 

You odd man. 

[Bluebird Hewitt]

23 minutes ago, Stan said:

You'd rather stick sheep in a dead woman? 

You odd man. 

Fuck sake, my typing is atrocious. 

[CaaC (John)]

33 minutes ago, Stan said:

You'd rather stick sheep in a dead woman? 

You odd man. 

 

9 minutes ago, Bluebird Hewitt said:

Fuck sake, my typing is atrocious. 

Been drinking red wine and thought WTF are they talking about   

[Stan]

What is Boris'/government's obsession with making announcements or letting press know things on a Thursday, when the plans themselves don't come in to force until the Monday?

It just paves the way for temptation to strike and the public to do what they're not allowed to before Monday, made even worse given we're in the middle of a spate of great weather and beaches/parks have already been packed out over past few weeks anyway?

Do they let media know in advance, on purpose? From a cynical perspective, do they want public areas to be packed out so the attention is on that, as opposed to them the government? 

I just don't get why the announcement that restrictions are easing can't be made on a Sunday evening or even Monday itself? Why a Thursday evening?

[SchalkeUK]

Just to try and tie this one up a bit for the moment I was never a great fan of Thatcher, but just consider what she would have made of Cummings, Gove and Johnson and what she would have called the resultant soup! perhaps Crème De La Faussete

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Stan]

Not sure why UK government have stopped posting these figures...

 

[RandoEFC+]

I swear they included the testing figures yesterday.

[Stan]

16 minutes ago, RandoEFC said:

I swear they included the testing figures yesterday.

Nope

 

[Honey Honey]

3 hours ago, Stan said:

What is Boris'/government's obsession with making announcements or letting press know things on a Thursday, when the plans themselves don't come in to force until the Monday?

It just paves the way for temptation to strike and the public to do what they're not allowed to before Monday, made even worse given we're in the middle of a spate of great weather and beaches/parks have already been packed out over past few weeks anyway?

Do they let media know in advance, on purpose? From a cynical perspective, do they want public areas to be packed out so the attention is on that, as opposed to them the government? 

I just don't get why the announcement that restrictions are easing can't be made on a Sunday evening or even Monday itself? Why a Thursday evening?

Great questions. Would love to know the thinking behind it. 

Speculating but could be for business purposes. Could be to see if there is a spike in new cases before the rule day. Majority will stick to rule day.

Could be because they're so excited to have come up with a new idea they can't hold it in 

[Bluewolf]

1 minute ago, Harvsky said:

Speculating but could be for business purposes.

Could be that... didn't they do the 'Those that can work' can go back starting Monday and they announced that on a Sunday giving businesses a little over 12 hours notice which was clearly not enough time for them to prepare properly?? Maybe they got a lot of negative feedback for that so doing it Thursday allows a little more flexibility in preparing.. 

[RandoEFC+]

I'm sure they have to have a fairly significant time lag so that police can be informed and briefed of what they need to do and it gives people time to see the news, digest the changes and a clear deadline for the change of rules. Can you imagine if they announced it on Monday 5pm, as of right now you can visit your grandparents, you drive round for a barbecue in their back yard half an hour later, their neighbours who haven't seen the news might then report a gathering next door. Police who started shift at 3pm come round not being fully aware of new rules and procedures and confront you for doing something you've just seen the government announce is fine on national television.

The timing has been unfortunate as it's not the first time we've been told "it's now okay to do this stuff but please don't do it this weekend even though we've said it's fine and the weather's going to be fucking great". I think that's potentially linked to the review of the lockdown that happens every three weeks on the same day, which itself depends on when we went into lockdown, that's just happened by circumstance if I'm right. It does seem more sensible if they could announce it on Wednesday and say the rules change at 5pm on Friday or whatever.

[Harry]