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Boris getting his excuses in early....
I really detest this, where "sources close to Boris", & advisors "expect him to say" etc, & they wheel out his "expected" lines in advance. Make no mistake, every word of this is by Boris.
Politicians really do think we are stupid, don't they?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67597455
Comments
Government, especially No 10, do it all the time of course.
On Tuesday, it is expected that Mr Sunak will announce....
The Chancellor is likely to cut/raise taxes in next week's Mini-Budget...
Sources suggest the Rwanda Policy will continue
And so on, day after day. It's called "briefing", & all the Press get the word before we do. Why should the press & media know these things before we do? How is that right?
PS - if you have not sussed it already, I'm a bit grumpy this morning. I'll shut up now.
I thought he was due a telegram.
One of the reasons the markets crashed and there was media outrage at Trussenomics was because the announcement was a complete surprise that didn't follow the MO.
https://uk.yahoo.com/news/nadine-dorries-defence-boris-johnson-130322640.html
Boris Johnson is giving evidence at the Covid Inquiry, but has so far managed only a few minutes of testimony due to the repeated fire alarms that activate each time he provides one of his ‘answers’.
With exhausted firefighters rushing in and out of the building every few minutes, some have questioned if Boris should be made to give evidence while sitting in a bath of water.
As one attendee told us, “Things got off to a bad start when Boris was sworn in and put his hand on a bible that instantly burst into flames. That should have been a sign of what was to come, really.
“Since then, each question he’s faced has led to a whooshing sound and a small fireball appearing under his table. The alarm goes off, the firemen come in and put him out, we all take our seats, another question gets asked and the alarm goes off again – and so the cycle continues.
“The only time he’s answered a question without his trousers bursting into flames was when he was asked what he wanted for lunch.
“Unfortunately, they were unable to offer him a ‘steak and a ****’.”
https://newsthump.com/2023/12/06/covid-inquiry-faces-seventeenth-evacuation-of-the-day-after-boris-trousers-keep-catching-fire/?fbclid=IwAR12uDiRPEjP_qQidtTltGSemwKKAqX4YwouOClADSJnwNu4ZmtVLMcobOU
https://uk.yahoo.com/news/lazy-fraudulent-saw-true-johnson-183441000.html
Morning.
I'm quite sure many of us - perhaps most of us? - despise Mr Johnson for his habit of lying & his style of Government - I certainly do - but we need to keep it real.
There is no evidence or suggestion that he murdered anyone, or not that I'm aware.
murder; the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another.
Nothing he did or did not do fits that ^^^ bill in my opinion.
Possibly we could try "manslaughter"...
Conduct that was grossly negligent given the risk of death, and did kill
Really, we'd need someone with a legal background to advise ( @Essexphil &/or others) to advise us.
I'm pretty sure though that we can't reasonably suggest he is guilty of murder in it's widest sense.
Did our Government mess up their COVID response? That's not as clear cut as many of us would like to think. A pandemic out of the blue in modern times is a horrendously difficult problem, no matter who is in power there would have been some failures, as almost none of us, or anyone in power, have experienced it before.
Yes, there were definite failures, but I'm reasonably sure that whatever Party was in power would have made mistakes. Similar problems arose in almost every country in the World. Nobody had experience of this dreadful thing that came along with such frightening speed.
There were, let's not forget, successes in the UK too. Boris can take no credit imo, but as a country, we did get the vaccine rollout impressively quickly & efficiently, given it's complexity. That saved a LOT of lives in the UK, certainly hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions. (And yes, it may have inadvertently killed several hundred here too).
I just think we don't need to overdo the rhetoric, as it does our case no good at all.
Modern society seems to love looking in the rear-view mirror & finger-pointing. The problems in the real world are somewhat more nuanced. Even the best Governments will make mistakes.
Do you think that if Labour had been in power & Mr Starmer the PM, he's have done a better job?
By any reasonable yardstick, he's a better human being than Mr Johnson. Whether he could have avoided the same dithering & mistakes is another matter. Less corruption, yes, but the same exceptionally difficult problems.
I believe that whatever Government was in power at the time would have almost certainly made similar mistakes. It was a problem without precedent in modern times, & an extremely complex one to predict how it would all pan out.
Do we really think dithery Keir Starmer would have done a better job? I seriously doubt it.
But, despite this, I do not believe Boris made a bad job of the pandemic. It is easy with the benefit of hindsight to show where mistakes were made. Rather more difficult to deal with stuff as it happened.
Releasing infected people back into Care Homes was certainly the worst mistake. But it was certainly not the only reason-for example, in my area, Cleaners were allowed to work 1 day a week at several care homes at the same time. And I haven't seen clear guidance from the Scientists advising against actions taken in relation to Care Homes.
We went into lockdown 3 weeks or so too late. And probably continued to take measures for too long when Covid had changed into a far smaller risk. But far more difficult at the time without knowing the future.
Various politicians seemed to have taken the opportunity to rip us off with shonky deals in relation to PPE. Although Boris (surprisingly) does not appear to be 1 of them. Quite possibly because, at the key time, he was close to death himself. I cannot understand why the NHS did not have a bigger role there (the PPE, not his health).
People need to stop the blame game. Quite apart from anything else, Boris will (thankfully) never be in a position of power again. And quietly, genuinely, seek to learn lessons for the future
"People need to stop the blame game".
THIS.
I'm not at all sure just shouting & finger-pointing solves anything, especially as we have the luxury of hindsight.
As it happens, I'm utterly convinced the UK did a better job that the USA did.
Agreed.
But I do think that those people who took advantage and made millions from PPE contracts should definitely be brought to task.
No argument there at all. Sue them, take them to Court imo. And I'd like to think that it would not have happened, or at least been as widespread, if Labour had been in power.
Government Ministers & MP's should not even have been involved in procurement, that's the job of the NHS & for all their faults I'm sure they would have done it better, faster & cheaper. It does seem as if a greedy corrupt few took advantage of the situation.
There were so many moody things going off. If we think corrupt PPE Procurement cost the country fortunes, just try & work out how much those "Bounce Back Loans" cost the Country. Companies were being set up expressly to exploit them, & they could "borrow" £50,000 almost no questions asked & at a moment's notice. I bet the cost of all those failed loans comes to 10 times the dodgy PPE procurement deals.
Add to that a series of inappropriate, unauthorised severance payoffs made by clinical commissioning groups in the first year of the pandemic and the impression given falls even further from what we expect.
DHSC singularly failed to manage this crisis, despite years of clear and known risk of a pandemic, and the challenges facing it now are vast, from getting the NHS back on its feet to preparing for the next major crisis. There are frankly too few signs that it is putting its house in order or knows how to.”