Oh, and the airlines are not a crucial service. Silly arses going on their hols when there’s a world wide pandemic. It’ll be interesting to see if the 6months here crowd, six months there crowd, will want to come back home. Ta Ta again.
It is, claims the i, the biggest week for the NHS since it was founded in 1948. The Sun focuses on a plan to recruit 250,000 health volunteers to help tackle coronavirus - describing it as the "National Help Service". The Daily Mirror believes the transformation of the ExCeL Centre in east London into a field hospital for up to 4,000 patients should be a "wake-up call for those still in denial about the horror that is to be unleashed". The Daily Telegraph offers an insight into the pressures facing the service. It reports that in a call between health chiefs yesterday, one of NHS England's national directors said London would run out of intensive care beds in just four days without urgent action. The Sun praises the heroic work being done by the NHS, but it fears it will not cope without a monumental national effort of a kind not seen for 80 years. The main story in the Daily Express is devoted to a pledge by Health Secretary Matt Hancock to buy 3.5 million antibody tests. The Times reports that Mr Hancock is under pressure to spell out when tests for the virus will be available for NHS staff.
The Guardian says there is a risk the massive recruitment drive to help contain the pandemic will be undermined by doctors quitting because of fears about inadequate protective equipment. The Financial Times says it is inexcusable that frontline staff members are dealing with virus patients "dressed in paper masks and their own aprons". The Mirror accuses Boris Johnson and his government of being "criminally slow to respond to the threat" - but thinks there is a faint hope that the NHS is fighting back, bolstered by medical volunteers and recently retired staff. The Times argues that while Mr Johnson may have got it right this week, it questions why Britain has not learned from South Korea - which has so far been conspicuously successful in bringing its outbreak under control by carrying out extensive testing.
The back page of the Daily Star has an image of the Olympic flame still burning, despite Tokyo 2020 being postponed until next year. The Guardian says British athletes endorsed the decision, accepting that sport should take a back seat in the midst of the global pandemic. Matt Dickinson in the Times wonders why the decision took so long. It was, he writes, "insulting the intelligence - not to mention unfair to the efforts of thousands of anxious athletes - to pretend otherwise for any longer".
The sketch writers find plenty of material in the first daily Downing Street briefing conducted with journalists asking questions from remote locations. John Crace in the Guardian describes how deputy chief medical officer Dr Jenny Harries "unexpectedly found herself in the role of agony aunt" as she was asked for guidance on whether or not couples who do not live together should visit each other. For Quentin Letts in the Times that question - from the Sun's Tom Newton-Dunn - was best yet about the lockdown. Another journalist who took part was Paul Waugh, from HuffPost UK. He admits that when he appeared on screen, he looked like a "vicar in a hostage video". His excuse was to blame the dog downstairs who "kept him in the attic".
'Confused, dangerous, flippant': rest of world pans PM's handling of coronavirus Boris Johnson’s breezy and contradictory declarations, similar to those on Brexit, have observers wincing
The international verdict on Boris Johnson and his zigzag handling of the pandemic has been damning, with responses ranging from bafflement and disbelief to anger. Many consider the prime minister’s initial laissez-faire approach to the crisis, followed by contradictory signals about his government’s strategy, as an inexplicable bout of British exceptionalism. “Boris Johnson had gone out publicly and essentially asked Britons ... to accept death,” said the Greek newspaper Ethnos. It declared him “more dangerous than coronavirus”.
On Sunday, Singapore’s national development minister, Lawrence Wong, said the UK and Switzerland had “abandoned any measure to contain or restrain the virus”. The New York Times accused Johnson of sowing confusion. “He has seemed like a leader acting under duress ... playing catch-up to a private sector that had already acted on its own.”
Politicians, scientists and commentators greeted the prime minister’s U-turn on Monday night, when he ordered a UK-wide lockdown, as a belated but welcome decision to join the rest of Europe, and much of the world, in a necessary strategy.
The mystery is why it took so long.
Last week Ireland, which shares a land border with the UK, struggled to understand Downing Street’s hesitation. “Boris Johnson is gambling with the health of his citizens,” said the Irish Times.
On Tuesday, after the prime minister’s sudden reversal, one official in Dublin expressed relief. “The Brits were doing their own thing and it looked like we were going to have to live with it. They got there in the end.”
It was a variation of an observation attributed to Winston Churchill about America doing the right thing after exhausting all other options.
Foreign observers had become accustomed to Johnson’s breezy pronouncements on Britain steering its own course during Brexit showdowns last year but they winced at hearing the same tone in the context of a global health emergency. He appeared at press conferences alongside the chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, and the chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, but instead of reassurance Vallance caused consternation by appearing to endorse the idea of allowing much of the population to become infected to develop “herd immunity”.
Last week the prime minister made an initial concession to physical distancing – a key tactic to slow contagion – by asking people to avoid pubs. But he did not close them and many people, including his own father, Stanley, cheerily said they still planned to go out for a drink. Nevertheless, Johnson expressed confidence such limited measures were working and could “turn the tide” within 12 weeks.
Many outsiders were aghast. The pandemic was out of control in Italy and Spain, killing thousands, and surging across the globe, prompting a scramble to emulate Chinese-style lockdowns.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, reportedly threatened to close France’s border with Britain last Friday if it did not intensify measures. Others worried about the fate of friends and relatives in Britain. Giorgio Gori, the mayor of Bergamo, the city hardest hit by Italy’s coronavirus outbreak, flew his two daughters out of the UK, deeming them safer at home. “When I saw what the English government was thinking about this problem, I decided to bring them back, because I think that even if we are at the centre of the epidemic, probably they are more secure here than in England, because I don’t understand why the government didn’t decide in time to protect their citizens,” he told Sky News.
Greece, an early adopter of draconian measures, also became alarmed. It has one of the largest overseas student communities in the UK, much of which has been repatriated and ordered into a 14-day quarantine. Athens suspended all flights to Britain on Monday until 15 April.
Not everyone lamented the UK’s foot-dragging. On Monday, before Johnson’s U-turn, a son of Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, defended his father’s much-criticised response to the pandemic by citing Johnson. Advertisement
Eduardo Bolsonaro tweeted a 22 March video of Johnson encouraging British citizens to use local parks. “Coronavirus is very serious but the country cannot stop,” he said. “The British prime minister advised his people to take exercise in public parks.”
Why do most threads on here turn in to a Government/Prime Minister bashing exercise? If all people want to do is criticize and force their own agendas onto everyone else then start a separate thread or post in any of the numerous other anti-government threads.
Why do most threads on here turn in to a Government/Prime Minister bashing exercise? If all people want to do is criticize and force their own agendas onto everyone else then start a separate thread or post in any of the numerous other anti-government threads.
Wouldn't that be called censorship?
Usually people debate differing views on forums.
I will often post articles that I don't necessarily agree with, to encourage debate.
There is nothing wrong a bit of scrolling on forums.
When people defend freedom of speech, they usually say, I might not agree with their views, but I absolutely defend their right to voice them.
We don't live in China, and don't have to defend The Government at all times.
I have not personally criticised The Government much on this thread, although I have posted some articles that have.
Isnt it up to other people to respond by defending The Government.
Shouldn't people be entering into debates about what other people post, rather than just whinging about the post itself.
If I was going to criticise them, it would be for their complete failure to provide NHS staff with adequate protection, and putting them at risk.
I watched a Chief Constable on Sky News this morning, he was being interviewed regarding the travel restriction, during which he made it absolutely clear that he was completely unaware of who should be travelling, and who shouldn't.
How do you police it if the rules aren't clear.
I would criticise them for preaching social distancing, then reducing the size, and frequency of trains, and tubes making this impossible.
I would criticise Boris for trying to con people into thinking this may be over and done with in 12 weeks.
How on earth could that be possible?
They said last week they would increase the testing to 25,000 per day.
The maximum they did was 8,000.
Lets say they do get up to the 25,000.
That means 175,000 per week assuming they test 7 days per week.
By my reckoning that would be just over 2 million tests in 12 weeks.
Only 64 million to go.
I don't claim to be a genius, and have just read the coronavirus headlines.
I may be completely wrong, but it seems to me that you can put an end to this in two mays.
You either develop herd immunity or a vaccine.
A vaccine is apparently going to take 12 to 18 months.
You need around 70% of the population to contract the virus to develop herd immunity.
This makes it difficult for the virus to spread, and stops the spread in big numbers.
Their policy is understandable. Social distancing to restrict the spread, and therefore lower the number of cases, so the NHS is able to cope, while protecting the most vulnerable.
The policy makes it impossible to solve in 12 weeks.
If he stopped the lockdown at the end of 12 weeks, we would get another surge.
Coronavirus: Woman, 21, believed to be UK's youngest to die with no health conditions
A healthy 21-year-old woman has died from coronavirus despite having no underlying health conditions, her family have said. Chloe Middleton's family took to social media to describe the "unimaginable pain" they are going through after her death. The young woman was described as healthy by her family who are urging people to strictly follow government measures to stay at home.
Why do most threads on here turn in to a Government/Prime Minister bashing exercise? If all people want to do is criticize and force their own agendas onto everyone else then start a separate thread or post in any of the numerous other anti-government threads.
You could ask the 5 million self employed people how they think Boris is looking after them? Then there is the 500,000 new claims for Universal Credit from desperate people that have gone in during the last 9 days. I wont be holding my breath until they are processed.
Why do most threads on here turn in to a Government/Prime Minister bashing exercise? If all people want to do is criticize and force their own agendas onto everyone else then start a separate thread or post in any of the numerous other anti-government threads.
“A few days’ pay lost is catastrophic for them. And time and time again Government ministers have told us that workers affected by the crisis could get help via Universal Credit. “Last night there were queues of over 110,000 people trying to get on to the DWP system in order to register to apply for Universal Credit. “Will the Prime Minister now put extra resources and funding to boost the DWP capacity and relax the often quite draconian requirements on people claiming so that money gets where it’s needed quickly to those people who have got to feed the kids, got to pay the rent, got to survive somehow?”
Why do most threads on here turn in to a Government/Prime Minister bashing exercise? If all people want to do is criticize and force their own agendas onto everyone else then start a separate thread or post in any of the numerous other anti-government threads.
“I know that heroic efforts are happening to ramp up testing. “Could the Prime Minister give us an idea as to when we will be able to get back to routine testing in the community, as happens in Korea, Germany and other countries? “And should we not introduce weekly tests for NHS staff so we can remove from them the fear they might be infecting their own patients?”
Mr Johnson said:
“I can tell the House that both on antibody testing and on antigen testing, we are making huge progress – we are buying millions of antibody tests to show whether or not you have had the disease. “And on this point that has been raised several times about how soon can we get NHS staff and other public sector workers tested to see if they have the disease, the answer to that is as soon as we can.”
Under pressure to set out support for the self-employed, Boris Johnson said: “I cannot in all candour promise the House that we will be able to get through this crisis without any kind of hardship at all.” The Prime Minister told MPs: “We will do whatever we can to support the self-employed, just as we are putting our arms around every single employed person in this country.”
Why do most threads on here turn in to a Government/Prime Minister bashing exercise? If all people want to do is criticize and force their own agendas onto everyone else then start a separate thread or post in any of the numerous other anti-government threads.
He added: “We clearly cannot lock down the country for a year. “The challenge that many countries in the world are dealing with is how we move from an initial intensive lockdown… to something that will have societal effects but will allow the economy to re-start. “That is likely to rely on very large-scale testing and contact tracing. It should be stated that the entire world is in the very early stage of developing such strategies.” Prof Ferguson said countries were looking to China, which was lifting its lockdown, to see what would happen next. But he added: “The long-term exit from this is clearly the hopes around a vaccine.”
Professor Neil Ferguson told the Science and Technology Committee current predictions were that the NHS would be able to cope if strict measures continued to be followed. He said: “There will be some areas that are extremely stressed but we are reasonably confident – which is all we can be at the current time – that at the national level we will be within capacity.” He said the current strategy aim was to suppress transmission indefinitely until other counter measures are put in place, including a vaccine. Prof Ferguson said widespread testing was needed to help move the country from suppression measures and lockdown into something the country can manage longer-term. If he looked back to January, he said “it was very clear” from Public Health England (PHE) that at that time the UK had “nowhere near” the testing capacity to adopt that strategy.
Coronavirus: Eviction protections watered down, says Labour
Labour has accused the government of breaking its promise to protect renters hit by the coronavirus crisis. Shadow housing secretary John Healey said ministers had last week promised a "complete ban" on evictions. Instead, the measures contained in emergency coronavirus legislation extend the notice period that a landlord is required to serve before starting eviction proceedings. This period will now be three months, up from two months in most cases. This has no effect on proceedings currently in court, so some renters could still be evicted during the three month period. Mr Healy said the new law "just gives them some extra time to pack their bags"
Coronavirus: British nationals stranded abroad in 'dire' situation
British nationals unable to return home due to the coronavirus pandemic are in a "dire" situation, a former minister has warned. Tory MP Caroline Nokes said many were stranded as countries closed their borders and airlines cancelled flights. The government's call for people to return home as quickly as possible were like "empty words" to them, she added.
Coronavirus: GP given masks with expiry dates that have passed
A GP has criticised the practice of giving doctors surgical masks with expiry dates that have passed. Dr Kate Jack said doctors felt "like cannon fodder" after discovering the paper masks had expired in 2016. A box delivered to her Nottingham surgery had a 2021 label placed over the original date of 2016. The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said equipment underwent "stringent tests" and was given a "new shelf-life" where appropriate.
"I don't feel protected at the moment," said Dr Jack, a GP of 22 years.
"They are really not designed for prevention of infection and are practically useless.
"But they do give a message to patients to take this infection seriously if they see us with the masks, gloves and aprons." Dr Jack, from the West Oak Surgery in Mapperley, said concerns had been raised by doctors nationwide who had received the same boxes.
I have to now question my whole lifetime’s attitude toward the social benefits structure....
As a socialist I’ve always believed in a system that helps and supports those in need in our society and I’ve been fortunate in never needing to access help in any way-ignore 2 weeks dole when I was 17 or so-from our system...until now
My fundamental error upon semi retiring was to take my actuarially reduced pension to contribute towards my household expenditure and set up a self employed business.
What I should have done is park my pension for 5 years, access pension credits/mortgage Relief/ blah blah or whatever support I would have ‘legitimately’ been entitled to and sat back and played poker...who’s the mug now....I never thought I would say this, but yep..it’s me
So as it stands, my entitlement to support to pay my mortgage and other necessary bills stands at.....£0 per week( unless good old Richy Sunak says something different over the next weeks)
Pantomime clown Boris Johnson flounders as crisis deepens
Hopelessly out of his depth, PM is levitas incarnate as he addresses half-empty Commons
The Labour benches had already long since stopped cheering on their leader at prime minister’s questions, but now the Tories have also fallen silent. This is politics in the time of coronavirus. No braying. No waving of order papers. No wild acclaim for the repetition of mindless soundbites. The silence of MPs breaking the habit of a lifetime and trying to treat one another with respect and leading by example. Not that there were many MPs. For what is normally a guaranteed full house, there were barely 100 members in the chamber, all of whom were trying to maintain a safe distance from one another. And on Tory faces there were growing flickers of concern. Choosing Boris Johnson as their leader suddenly wasn’t looking like such a good idea. Boris is a good-time party guy. The sort of man who can be the life and soul of the Olympics and be relied on for any upbeat **** about Brexit.
But Boris just can’t do the serious stuff. He is levitas incarnate. A man with an unbearable lightness of being. At a time of national crisis, the country wants a man who is willing to put in the hard yards. Who can be bothered to read briefing papers longer than two sides of A4. What’s more, deep down, Boris knows he is floundering. That he is hopelessly out of his depth. Up till now he’s always got away with somehow coming up with the right words. The master of the glib. A catchphrase for every occasion. Now though, those same words are dying in his throat. They don’t even convince him, let alone the other members of the cabinet. Rishi Sunak and Michael Gove could barely look at him. Liz Truss was lost in a world of her own. But then she often is.
The pantomime clown with the pantomime hair has morphed into a pantomime villain. Someone even children can identify as inherently untrustworthy. And it’s taking its toll. Over the last few weeks – since he first got round to taking the pandemic seriously – he has aged years. His eyes are red and puffy, his complexion pallid and the bags deepening into furrows. At night he weeps, though mostly for himself. Of all the gin joints in all of the towns in all of the world, why did he have to walk into this one? This may well have been Jeremy Corbyn’s last PMQs, if rumours that parliament might shut for ordinary business at the end of the week are true or self-isolation for the over-70s is brought in at the weekend. If it is, then at least he can say he went out on a high, for his questions struck just the right tone and manner. While promising to work with the government in doing whatever was required, he pointed to some abject failures in the government response. Why couldn’t statutory sick pay be raised to EU levels? Were families really meant to get by on £90 per week? What about those on zero-hours contracts? What about those who couldn’t pay the rent? And why wasn’t more being done to test NHS workers – as well as the rest of the population – and provide more vitally needed protective clothing and ventilators?
Unusually, the Tory benches were just as keen – if not more so – to hear the answers. Because up till now most of Johnson’s public announcements have been somewhat on the vague side, and their constituents are just as concerned as Labour’s. Trying to convince the country that the UK’s science is miles ahead of the rest of the world’s science hadn’t been a spectacular success, and it’s often felt like the rest of the country has been streets ahead of the government in its preparations for coronavirus. Just suggesting that people might like not go to pubs too often is hardly groundbreaking advice. Even if it does help bail out the insurance industry. Important to have your priorities right.
Here Boris unwisely felt himself to be on stronger ground. The government had been doing a brilliant job by employing the nudge economics of such superb super-forecasters as Dominic Cummings and Steve Hilton, who have so far managed to get just about every forecast wrong. The thing was, these geniuses had managed to subvert nudge theory into turning it on its head. Long live the weirdos and the misfits. The model the government was using was to do nothing and just wait until everyone introduced sensible panic measures of their own. Then once the public had done its job for it it, the government would then be nudged into turning it into official policy. Ideal for the Boris with No Clothes, who couldn’t face the responsibility of decision making.
Every question was on the coronavirus and the longer the session progressed, the more Tories began to further self-isolate from Boris. His answers on protective wear, ventilators and widespread testing sounded borderline delusional. How can one man have done so little when NHS staff have been begging him to do more for weeks? The prime minister couldn’t even bring himself to contemplate a possible extension to the Brexit transition. Imagine it. When the country might be economically on its knees, we have a prime minister happy to bankrupt it completely just to keep the rightwing Brexiters on board.
There were no answers on closures of schools either, despite several questions on them. Looks like the plan is to be nudged into doing it later after Scotland and Wales have taken the lead. It won’t be long before cities are in lockdown. A policy many people have already taken for themselves. Lions led by donkeys.
Comments
Silly arses going on their hols when there’s a world wide pandemic.
It’ll be interesting to see if the 6months here crowd, six months there crowd, will want to come back home.
Ta Ta again.
It is, claims the i, the biggest week for the NHS since it was founded in 1948.
The Sun focuses on a plan to recruit 250,000 health volunteers to help tackle coronavirus - describing it as the "National Help Service".
The Daily Mirror believes the transformation of the ExCeL Centre in east London into a field hospital for up to 4,000 patients should be a "wake-up call for those still in denial about the horror that is to be unleashed".
The Daily Telegraph offers an insight into the pressures facing the service. It reports that in a call between health chiefs yesterday, one of NHS England's national directors said London would run out of intensive care beds in just four days without urgent action.
The Sun praises the heroic work being done by the NHS, but it fears it will not cope without a monumental national effort of a kind not seen for 80 years.
The main story in the Daily Express is devoted to a pledge by Health Secretary Matt Hancock to buy 3.5 million antibody tests. The Times reports that Mr Hancock is under pressure to spell out when tests for the virus will be available for NHS staff.
The Guardian says there is a risk the massive recruitment drive to help contain the pandemic will be undermined by doctors quitting because of fears about inadequate protective equipment.
The Financial Times says it is inexcusable that frontline staff members are dealing with virus patients "dressed in paper masks and their own aprons".
The Mirror accuses Boris Johnson and his government of being "criminally slow to respond to the threat" - but thinks there is a faint hope that the NHS is fighting back, bolstered by medical volunteers and recently retired staff.
The Times argues that while Mr Johnson may have got it right this week, it questions why Britain has not learned from South Korea - which has so far been conspicuously successful in bringing its outbreak under control by carrying out extensive testing.
The back page of the Daily Star has an image of the Olympic flame still burning, despite Tokyo 2020 being postponed until next year.
The Guardian says British athletes endorsed the decision, accepting that sport should take a back seat in the midst of the global pandemic.
Matt Dickinson in the Times wonders why the decision took so long. It was, he writes, "insulting the intelligence - not to mention unfair to the efforts of thousands of anxious athletes - to pretend otherwise for any longer".
The sketch writers find plenty of material in the first daily Downing Street briefing conducted with journalists asking questions from remote locations.
John Crace in the Guardian describes how deputy chief medical officer Dr Jenny Harries "unexpectedly found herself in the role of agony aunt" as she was asked for guidance on whether or not couples who do not live together should visit each other.
For Quentin Letts in the Times that question - from the Sun's Tom Newton-Dunn - was best yet about the lockdown.
Another journalist who took part was Paul Waugh, from HuffPost UK. He admits that when he appeared on screen, he looked like a "vicar in a hostage video". His excuse was to blame the dog downstairs who "kept him in the attic".
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-52029364
'Confused, dangerous, flippant': rest of world pans PM's handling of coronavirus
Boris Johnson’s breezy and contradictory declarations, similar to those on Brexit, have observers wincing
The international verdict on Boris Johnson and his zigzag handling of the pandemic has been damning, with responses ranging from bafflement and disbelief to anger.
Many consider the prime minister’s initial laissez-faire approach to the crisis, followed by contradictory signals about his government’s strategy, as an inexplicable bout of British exceptionalism.
“Boris Johnson had gone out publicly and essentially asked Britons ... to accept death,” said the Greek newspaper Ethnos. It declared him “more dangerous than coronavirus”.
On Sunday, Singapore’s national development minister, Lawrence Wong, said the UK and Switzerland had “abandoned any measure to contain or restrain the virus”.
The New York Times accused Johnson of sowing confusion. “He has seemed like a leader acting under duress ... playing catch-up to a private sector that had already acted on its own.”
Politicians, scientists and commentators greeted the prime minister’s U-turn on Monday night, when he ordered a UK-wide lockdown, as a belated but welcome decision to join the rest of Europe, and much of the world, in a necessary strategy.
The mystery is why it took so long.
Last week Ireland, which shares a land border with the UK, struggled to understand Downing Street’s hesitation. “Boris Johnson is gambling with the health of his citizens,” said the Irish Times.
On Tuesday, after the prime minister’s sudden reversal, one official in Dublin expressed relief. “The Brits were doing their own thing and it looked like we were going to have to live with it. They got there in the end.”
It was a variation of an observation attributed to Winston Churchill about America doing the right thing after exhausting all other options.
Foreign observers had become accustomed to Johnson’s breezy pronouncements on Britain steering its own course during Brexit showdowns last year but they winced at hearing the same tone in the context of a global health emergency.
He appeared at press conferences alongside the chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, and the chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, but instead of reassurance Vallance caused consternation by appearing to endorse the idea of allowing much of the population to become infected to develop “herd immunity”.
Last week the prime minister made an initial concession to physical distancing – a key tactic to slow contagion – by asking people to avoid pubs. But he did not close them and many people, including his own father, Stanley, cheerily said they still planned to go out for a drink. Nevertheless, Johnson expressed confidence such limited measures were working and could “turn the tide” within 12 weeks.
Many outsiders were aghast. The pandemic was out of control in Italy and Spain, killing thousands, and surging across the globe, prompting a scramble to emulate Chinese-style lockdowns.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, reportedly threatened to close France’s border with Britain last Friday if it did not intensify measures.
Others worried about the fate of friends and relatives in Britain. Giorgio Gori, the mayor of Bergamo, the city hardest hit by Italy’s coronavirus outbreak, flew his two daughters out of the UK, deeming them safer at home.
“When I saw what the English government was thinking about this problem, I decided to bring them back, because I think that even if we are at the centre of the epidemic, probably they are more secure here than in England, because I don’t understand why the government didn’t decide in time to protect their citizens,” he told Sky News.
Greece, an early adopter of draconian measures, also became alarmed. It has one of the largest overseas student communities in the UK, much of which has been repatriated and ordered into a 14-day quarantine. Athens suspended all flights to Britain on Monday until 15 April.
Not everyone lamented the UK’s foot-dragging.
On Monday, before Johnson’s U-turn, a son of Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, defended his father’s much-criticised response to the pandemic by citing Johnson.
Advertisement
Eduardo Bolsonaro tweeted a 22 March video of Johnson encouraging British citizens to use local parks. “Coronavirus is very serious but the country cannot stop,” he said. “The British prime minister advised his people to take exercise in public parks.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/24/confused-dangerous-flippant-worlds-media-pans-pms-handling-of-coronavirus-boris-johnson
I have to scroll past a whole Sun scum newspaper to see peoples chat spurts.
@haysie please stop force feeding us.
Post a link and a summary if you like and people can click it if they want .
Heres how.
CALL THE LINK ANTHING YOU LIKE HERE,
Usually people debate differing views on forums.
I will often post articles that I don't necessarily agree with, to encourage debate.
There is nothing wrong a bit of scrolling on forums.
When people defend freedom of speech, they usually say, I might not agree with their views, but I absolutely defend their right to voice them.
We don't live in China, and don't have to defend The Government at all times.
I have not personally criticised The Government much on this thread, although I have posted some articles that have.
Isnt it up to other people to respond by defending The Government.
Shouldn't people be entering into debates about what other people post, rather than just whinging about the post itself.
If I was going to criticise them, it would be for their complete failure to provide NHS staff with adequate protection, and putting them at risk.
I watched a Chief Constable on Sky News this morning, he was being interviewed regarding the travel restriction, during which he made it absolutely clear that he was completely unaware of who should be travelling, and who shouldn't.
How do you police it if the rules aren't clear.
I would criticise them for preaching social distancing, then reducing the size, and frequency of trains, and tubes making this impossible.
I would criticise Boris for trying to con people into thinking this may be over and done with in 12 weeks.
How on earth could that be possible?
They said last week they would increase the testing to 25,000 per day.
The maximum they did was 8,000.
Lets say they do get up to the 25,000.
That means 175,000 per week assuming they test 7 days per week.
By my reckoning that would be just over 2 million tests in 12 weeks.
Only 64 million to go.
I don't claim to be a genius, and have just read the coronavirus headlines.
I may be completely wrong, but it seems to me that you can put an end to this in two mays.
You either develop herd immunity or a vaccine.
A vaccine is apparently going to take 12 to 18 months.
You need around 70% of the population to contract the virus to develop herd immunity.
This makes it difficult for the virus to spread, and stops the spread in big numbers.
Their policy is understandable. Social distancing to restrict the spread, and therefore lower the number of cases, so the NHS is able to cope, while protecting the most vulnerable.
The policy makes it impossible to solve in 12 weeks.
If he stopped the lockdown at the end of 12 weeks, we would get another surge.
I dislike Boris because he is dishonest.
You just need to be a happier scroller.
Everyone has the choice of whether they read any particular post or not, and therefore makes force feeding impossible.
A healthy 21-year-old woman has died from coronavirus despite having no underlying health conditions, her family have said.
Chloe Middleton's family took to social media to describe the "unimaginable pain" they are going through after her death.
The young woman was described as healthy by her family who are urging people to strictly follow government measures to stay at home.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/coronavirus/coronavirus-woman-21-believed-to-be-uks-youngest-to-die-with-no-health-conditions/ar-BB11GxC4?ocid=spartanntp
Then there is the 500,000 new claims for Universal Credit from desperate people that have gone in during the last 9 days.
I wont be holding my breath until they are processed.
“Last night there were queues of over 110,000 people trying to get on to the DWP system in order to register to apply for Universal Credit.
“Will the Prime Minister now put extra resources and funding to boost the DWP capacity and relax the often quite draconian requirements on people claiming so that money gets where it’s needed quickly to those people who have got to feed the kids, got to pay the rent, got to survive somehow?”
“Could the Prime Minister give us an idea as to when we will be able to get back to routine testing in the community, as happens in Korea, Germany and other countries?
“And should we not introduce weekly tests for NHS staff so we can remove from them the fear they might be infecting their own patients?”
Mr Johnson said:
“I can tell the House that both on antibody testing and on antigen testing, we are making huge progress – we are buying millions of antibody tests to show whether or not you have had the disease.
“And on this point that has been raised several times about how soon can we get NHS staff and other public sector workers tested to see if they have the disease, the answer to that is as soon as we can.”
How long has he been saying that for?
“I cannot in all candour promise the House that we will be able to get through this crisis without any kind of hardship at all.”
The Prime Minister told MPs:
“We will do whatever we can to support the self-employed, just as we are putting our arms around every single employed person in this country.”
“We clearly cannot lock down the country for a year.
“The challenge that many countries in the world are dealing with is how we move from an initial intensive lockdown… to something that will have societal effects but will allow the economy to re-start.
“That is likely to rely on very large-scale testing and contact tracing. It should be stated that the entire world is in the very early stage of developing such strategies.”
Prof Ferguson said countries were looking to China, which was lifting its lockdown, to see what would happen next.
But he added:
“The long-term exit from this is clearly the hopes around a vaccine.”
Professor Neil Ferguson told the Science and Technology Committee current predictions were that the NHS would be able to cope if strict measures continued to be followed.
He said: “There will be some areas that are extremely stressed but we are reasonably confident – which is all we can be at the current time – that at the national level we will be within capacity.”
He said the current strategy aim was to suppress transmission indefinitely until other counter measures are put in place, including a vaccine.
Prof Ferguson said widespread testing was needed to help move the country from suppression measures and lockdown into something the country can manage longer-term.
If he looked back to January, he said “it was very clear” from Public Health England (PHE) that at that time the UK had “nowhere near” the testing capacity to adopt that strategy.
Labour has accused the government of breaking its promise to protect renters hit by the coronavirus crisis.
Shadow housing secretary John Healey said ministers had last week promised a "complete ban" on evictions.
Instead, the measures contained in emergency coronavirus legislation extend the notice period that a landlord is required to serve before starting eviction proceedings.
This period will now be three months, up from two months in most cases.
This has no effect on proceedings currently in court, so some renters could still be evicted during the three month period.
Mr Healy said the new law "just gives them some extra time to pack their bags"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-52021045
British nationals unable to return home due to the coronavirus pandemic are in a "dire" situation, a former minister has warned.
Tory MP Caroline Nokes said many were stranded as countries closed their borders and airlines cancelled flights.
The government's call for people to return home as quickly as possible were like "empty words" to them, she added.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-52023501
A GP has criticised the practice of giving doctors surgical masks with expiry dates that have passed.
Dr Kate Jack said doctors felt "like cannon fodder" after discovering the paper masks had expired in 2016.
A box delivered to her Nottingham surgery had a 2021 label placed over the original date of 2016.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said equipment underwent "stringent tests" and was given a "new shelf-life" where appropriate.
"I don't feel protected at the moment," said Dr Jack, a GP of 22 years.
"They are really not designed for prevention of infection and are practically useless.
"But they do give a message to patients to take this infection seriously if they see us with the masks, gloves and aprons."
Dr Jack, from the West Oak Surgery in Mapperley, said concerns had been raised by doctors nationwide who had received the same boxes.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-52025950
As a socialist I’ve always believed in a system that helps and supports those in need in our society and I’ve been fortunate in never needing to access help in any way-ignore 2 weeks dole when I was 17 or so-from our system...until now
My fundamental error upon semi retiring was to take my actuarially reduced pension to contribute towards my household expenditure and set up a self employed business.
What I should have done is park my pension for 5 years, access pension credits/mortgage Relief/ blah blah or whatever support I would have ‘legitimately’ been entitled to and sat back and played poker...who’s the mug now....I never thought I would say this, but yep..it’s me
So as it stands, my entitlement to support to pay my mortgage and other necessary bills stands at.....£0 per week( unless good old Richy Sunak says something different over the next weeks)
Bitter? No.....
Disappointed? For sure!
Last post on pretty much anything
Gl guys..in life and at the tables!
Hopelessly out of his depth, PM is levitas incarnate as he addresses half-empty Commons
The Labour benches had already long since stopped cheering on their leader at prime minister’s questions, but now the Tories have also fallen silent. This is politics in the time of coronavirus. No braying. No waving of order papers. No wild acclaim for the repetition of mindless soundbites. The silence of MPs breaking the habit of a lifetime and trying to treat one another with respect and leading by example.
Not that there were many MPs. For what is normally a guaranteed full house, there were barely 100 members in the chamber, all of whom were trying to maintain a safe distance from one another. And on Tory faces there were growing flickers of concern. Choosing Boris Johnson as their leader suddenly wasn’t looking like such a good idea. Boris is a good-time party guy. The sort of man who can be the life and soul of the Olympics and be relied on for any upbeat **** about Brexit.
But Boris just can’t do the serious stuff. He is levitas incarnate. A man with an unbearable lightness of being. At a time of national crisis, the country wants a man who is willing to put in the hard yards. Who can be bothered to read briefing papers longer than two sides of A4.
What’s more, deep down, Boris knows he is floundering. That he is hopelessly out of his depth. Up till now he’s always got away with somehow coming up with the right words. The master of the glib. A catchphrase for every occasion. Now though, those same words are dying in his throat. They don’t even convince him, let alone the other members of the cabinet. Rishi Sunak and Michael Gove could barely look at him. Liz Truss was lost in a world of her own. But then she often is.
The pantomime clown with the pantomime hair has morphed into a pantomime villain. Someone even children can identify as inherently untrustworthy. And it’s taking its toll. Over the last few weeks – since he first got round to taking the pandemic seriously – he has aged years. His eyes are red and puffy, his complexion pallid and the bags deepening into furrows. At night he weeps, though mostly for himself. Of all the gin joints in all of the towns in all of the world, why did he have to walk into this one?
This may well have been Jeremy Corbyn’s last PMQs, if rumours that parliament might shut for ordinary business at the end of the week are true or self-isolation for the over-70s is brought in at the weekend. If it is, then at least he can say he went out on a high, for his questions struck just the right tone and manner. While promising to work with the government in doing whatever was required, he pointed to some abject failures in the government response. Why couldn’t statutory sick pay be raised to EU levels? Were families really meant to get by on £90 per week? What about those on zero-hours contracts? What about those who couldn’t pay the rent? And why wasn’t more being done to test NHS workers – as well as the rest of the population – and provide more vitally needed protective clothing and ventilators?
Unusually, the Tory benches were just as keen – if not more so – to hear the answers. Because up till now most of Johnson’s public announcements have been somewhat on the vague side, and their constituents are just as concerned as Labour’s. Trying to convince the country that the UK’s science is miles ahead of the rest of the world’s science hadn’t been a spectacular success, and it’s often felt like the rest of the country has been streets ahead of the government in its preparations for coronavirus. Just suggesting that people might like not go to pubs too often is hardly groundbreaking advice. Even if it does help bail out the insurance industry. Important to have your priorities right.
Here Boris unwisely felt himself to be on stronger ground. The government had been doing a brilliant job by employing the nudge economics of such superb super-forecasters as Dominic Cummings and Steve Hilton, who have so far managed to get just about every forecast wrong. The thing was, these geniuses had managed to subvert nudge theory into turning it on its head. Long live the weirdos and the misfits. The model the government was using was to do nothing and just wait until everyone introduced sensible panic measures of their own. Then once the public had done its job for it it, the government would then be nudged into turning it into official policy. Ideal for the Boris with No Clothes, who couldn’t face the responsibility of decision making.
Every question was on the coronavirus and the longer the session progressed, the more Tories began to further self-isolate from Boris. His answers on protective wear, ventilators and widespread testing sounded borderline delusional. How can one man have done so little when NHS staff have been begging him to do more for weeks? The prime minister couldn’t even bring himself to contemplate a possible extension to the Brexit transition. Imagine it. When the country might be economically on its knees, we have a prime minister happy to bankrupt it completely just to keep the rightwing Brexiters on board.
There were no answers on closures of schools either, despite several questions on them. Looks like the plan is to be nudged into doing it later after Scotland and Wales have taken the lead. It won’t be long before cities are in lockdown. A policy many people have already taken for themselves. Lions led by donkeys.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/mar/18/pantomime-clown-boris-johnson-flounders-as-crisis-deepens
https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/24/brit-abroad-dragged-pool-arrested-breaking-quarantine-spain-12447248/