CFC91, on 05 April 2020 - 10:21 AM, said:
How is it **** poor and how much different do you the opposition response would have been had it won the election? Like Brexit, like the election the opposition to me seems to be full of criticism but not very good at offering reasonable, rationale solutions.
I think from reading social media (which in the run up to the election and Brexit was very left wing / remain to the put you’d think the results would be totally different) most people seem to think the economic package for the employed, the vulnerable and self employed to protect people’s incomes, homes, families etc (the thing most every day person cares about) is very good, and not something you’d have expected from a Tory government. There is the expectation that we will be paying this back for years to come, and the economic landscape will be changes for years.
Sunak and co have done as much as they could in my opinion, over a short space of time to implement a system and get it up and running. I don’t think it’s **** poor at all, its surprisingly good and will help out a lot of my friends who I know were ******* themselves for want of a better phrase.
As for the lack of equipment, ordinarily any country wouldn’t have required the volume of ventilators, testing equipment etc for a normal winter so stockpiling this kind of stuff for a once in a century outbreak makes no sense, but that’s been outlined a few times already on this thread.
I’ll be suprised if we are up to 100,000 test per day by the end of the month but as long as we’re testing the people that need to be tested which we are beginning to do so then that is enough - as much as I’d love a test as I believe I could have had it so I can go back outside, it’s not important and I am happy following government guidelines until necessary.
I think some political views are clouding people’s judgements and to take a step back and be impartial in a situation like this helps give a bit of context about what we are up against, and how we are doing.
I've repeatedly given Sunak credit. Okay, there're still groups claiming they're left behind - the self employed paying themselves through dividends, for example - but he's been the most direct and decisive of the Cabinet.
You simply cannot treat the start of this crisis as some 'year zero' though, you can't just absolve politicians from their previous. Years of mocking and ridiculing and opposing public spending increases and creating a 'hostile environment' for the migrants so often doing our dirty work. They had warnings too, in the form of 'Exercise Cygnus' -
https://www.telegrap...ied-government/ - and their own figures which showed the NHS a hundred thousand staff short for even 'normal' seasonal epidemics.
Yet whilst the far east was being consumed by Corona Johnson was hosting Tory Party fundraisers. Whilst Europe was going into lockdown we were being told 'keep calm and wash your hands'. Whilst the EU were procuring ventilators we were snubbing their offers. Or 'missing' e-mails. Or insisting Brexit supporting businesses could quickly churn them out. Infact this PM didn't even chair a COBRA meeting until the beginning of March. Which he took so seriously he used it to taunt his opposite number at PMQ's.
Then '
as long as we’re testing the people that need to be tested which we are beginning to do so then that is enough'? Really? Months into the crisis and after minister after minister made false promise after false promise? After the WHO told countries to 'TEST! TEST! TEST! all along? And exactly who decides those that 'need testing'? Good grief man, it's the frontline staff who're seeing their colleagues fall ill and in some cases die who're saying that's pi** poor, not just the 'politically clouded'!
Also remember it was 'honest' Boris himself who claimed PPE was stockpiled and there'd be hundreds of thousands being tested by now.
I don't know how alternative incumbents would've handled things. The fact Johnson's only just invited them to share input after barring, say, the Mayor of London from early COBRA meetings didn't give them chance, either. But whilst the majority might have some financial foundation I wonder how many suffering all too typical incompetence and, well, let's call them 'contradictions' are judging the current crew's response...
This post has been edited by The Earl of Chesterfield: 05 April 2020 - 01:14 PM
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