Brexit, for once some facts.

[Nev]

I think some of you might want to read the following. Its part of a post from another forum. Its a financial forum that has quite a few fairly right wing posters (not uncommon on financial forums I find). The poster is answering some of the points brought up by the right wing historian David Starkey.


"The reason why Covid-19 has killed more people in 3 months in the UK than the Luftwaffe killed in 6 years is because of poor decisions by our politicians. It is politicians who DECIDE and "experts" who advise.
If our politicians had decided to implement "social distancing" even one week earlier then the number of deaths would have been halved. If they had done it two weeks earlier, as advised by the Italian officials and Rory Stewart among others, our death rate would have been one of the lowest on record.

Not implementing social distancing earlier was a POLITICAL DECISION. It was nothing to do with the NHS.
We also had a window of opportunity of two weeks or so for decisions to be made on stockpiling PPE, ventilators and getting a testing regime up to speed but this time was wasted because of political ineptitude, incoherence and inaction. This resulted from a lack of POLITICAL WILL.

The decision to suspend a wide application of testing wasn't made by the NHS. It was a POLITICAL DECISION.
I agree that it was important to protect the NHS. No one wanted to see scenes on BBC news of people dying in hospital corridors as happened in Italy.

But the perceived limited additional capacity of the NHS to cope with exceptional circumstances was the result of previous POLITICAL DECISIONS.
Amazingly the PM, his political advisor and the SoS for health caught the virus and we had a disabled government.
Again this was nothing to do with the NHS. It was simply PERSONAL INCOMPETENCE and not following their own advice."

 

[Barry Shittpeas]

some countries are (Norway, who sit on a massive amount of oil and sovereign wealth, south korea who lead the world in manufacture and export). We are not like them, demographically or ito natural resources (and no amount of trying to smear the messenger will change that).

So now you are saying it is possible. You said in your original post that it was not possible. Make up your mind.

I don’t think the U.K. will make a success of surviving outside the EU, that much we agree upon.

 

[Barry Shittpeas]

if you interviewed cummings or Johnson as a potential ceo at woosh, would you give them the job? that's exactly what the majority of the electorate did. there isn't any mystery as to why we lead the world in covid 19 deaths. its a direct consequence of their decisions and actions.

It would have been exactly the same under Labour. The choices at the last election were appalling, I nearly didn’t vote. Dreadful.

 

[Woosh]

I have to disagree. Johnson, Cummings and Brexit are interlinked as a menace, the first two in making Brexit into a strong democratic probability. The electorate were then foolish enough to additionally directly and indirectly vote for those two in a GE to implement it.

A proven fool and a clever manipulator giving the country very unwise outcomes with both Brexit and now the pandemic that will cost us dear for many years, perhaps permanently.
.

the choice at the last election was seen as between JC and Diane Abbott or the conservatives for 5 years.

 

[oyster]

On 27 March, Downing Street confirmed that Boris Johnson and Health Secretary Matt Hancock had tested positive for coronavirus.

On 27 March Cummings seen running away from Downing St

On 30 March, Downing Street confirmed the top adviser was self-isolating at home after developing symptoms.

Sometime between 27-30 March Cummings and his wife scarpered to Durham - not sure who was well enough to drive.

Mary Wakefield wrote in spectator

My husband did rush home to look after me. He’s an extremely kind man, whatever people assume to the contrary. But 24 hours later, he said ‘I feel weird’ and collapsed. I felt breathless, sometimes achy, but Dom couldn’t get out of bed. Day in, day out for 10 days he lay doggo with a high fever and spasms that made the muscles lump and twitch in his legs. He could breathe, but only in a limited, shallow way.

After a week, we reached peak corona uncertainty. Day six is a turning point, I was told: that’s when you either get better or head for ICU. But was Dom fighting off the bug or was he heading for a ventilator? Who knew? I sat on his bed staring at his chest, trying to count his breaths per minute. The little oxygen reader we’d bought on Amazon indicated that he should be in hospital, but his lips weren’t blue and he could talk in full sentences, such as: ‘Please stop staring at my chest, sweetheart.’

Towards the end of that article, it says:

After the uncertainty of the bug itself, we emerged from quarantine into the almost comical uncertainty of London lockdown.

Which reads to me as track covering by giving every impression that their quarantine ended in London. Or admission that they returned to London before the end of their quarantine period.

Does the Spectator use fact checkers?

 

[oyster]

I think some of you might want to read the following. Its part of a post from another forum. Its a financial forum that has quite a few fairly right wing posters (not uncommon on financial forums I find). The poster is answering some of the points brought up by the right wing historian David Starkey.


"The reason why Covid-19 has killed more people in 3 months in the UK than the Luftwaffe killed in 6 years is because of poor decisions by our politicians. It is politicians who DECIDE and "experts" who advise.
If our politicians had decided to implement "social distancing" even one week earlier then the number of deaths would have been halved. If they had done it two weeks earlier, as advised by the Italian officials and Rory Stewart among others, our death rate would have been one of the lowest on record.

Not implementing social distancing earlier was a POLITICAL DECISION. It was nothing to do with the NHS.
We also had a window of opportunity of two weeks or so for decisions to be made on stockpiling PPE, ventilators and getting a testing regime up to speed but this time was wasted because of political ineptitude, incoherence and inaction. This resulted from a lack of POLITICAL WILL.

The decision to suspend a wide application of testing wasn't made by the NHS. It was a POLITICAL DECISION.
I agree that it was important to protect the NHS. No one wanted to see scenes on BBC news of people dying in hospital corridors as happened in Italy.

But the perceived limited additional capacity of the NHS to cope with exceptional circumstances was the result of previous POLITICAL DECISIONS.
Amazingly the PM, his political advisor and the SoS for health caught the virus and we had a disabled government.
Again this was nothing to do with the NHS. It was simply PERSONAL INCOMPETENCE and not following their own advice."

I have very often disagreed with Starkey but he quite often speaks well and pertinently. As here.

 

[oyster]

This is worth a read from the BBC web site. Its about the risk of catching and dying from the virus. There is a graph from David Spiegelhalter that compares the risk of dying if you get the virus vs normal annual risk.

Coronavirus: How scared should we be?

As lockdown restrictions begin to be eased across the UK, understanding risk will be crucial.

www.bbc.co.uk

We feel vulnerable on the grounds of age and health. Partner has disorders that defy understanding so there simply cannot be any guidance for her. Is it the case that, eventually, we will get covid-19? Just as part of the tail where the number ill will be much lower? Could we escape entirely? Or can we somehow defer it long enough to get a vaccination?

The article says: If your risk of dying was very low in the first place, it still remains very low.

You have to read more to see that if your risk of dying isn't very low in the first place, it rises, possibly very significantly. It also seems to miss that fact that going through possibly weeks of ICU treatment and everything else delivered by covid-19 is in itself a horrible experience. It considers two possibilities - dying and not-dying. As if ICU is not an extremely unwelcome experience for both the sick and those who care. And other issues like either of us dying and leaving the other to cope. That's all right, YOU survived. So our numbers were right.

 

[Nev]

I have very often disagreed with Starkey but he quite often speaks well and pertinently. As here.

I haven't explained things very well in my post. The words inside the quotation marks are not Starkey speaking they are from a poster on another forum. He was talking about an article Starkey had written for a right wing publication in which he was blaming the NHS for all the deaths.

The poster was correctly pointing out that although blame can be shared around to a lot of people it was the politicians that finally make the decisions and its they that should really carry the can at the end of all this.

 

[oyster]

I haven't explained things very well in my post. The words inside the quotation marks are not Starkey speaking they are from a poster on another forum. He was talking about an article Starkey had written for a right wing publication in which he was blaming the NHS for all the deaths.

The poster was correctly pointing out that although blame can be shared around to a lot of people it was the politicians that finally make the decisions and its they that should really carry the can at the end of all this.

Ah right - quite obviously, the government is responsible for the NHS. As such, it gets the blame for the things that go wrong, and the praise for things that go right - except when they go right DESPITE the government!

 

[sjpt]

So, it’s been stated on the record by Number 10 that Cummings was not spoken to by the police. Durham police have said they did speak to him. What’s going on there?

This could put the yellow streak of pi$$ hidden Prime Minister in a very uncomfortable position.

What they meant was that he didn't listen to what the police were saying.

 

[flecc]

the choice at the last election was seen as between JC and Diane Abbott or the conservatives for 5 years.

By people who'd lost the capacity to think clearly, so were believing what they were told to think by some media elements.
.

 

[oyster]

The BBC have reported the police bit like this:

A spokesman for the force said officers made contact with the owners of the address who confirmed the individual in question was present and was self-isolating in part of the house.

Which means that number 10 is trying to squeeze the meaning - police spoke to the owners of the property not DC. Watch for the "we didn't say the police didn't talk to anybody" get-out.

What did I say?

Ridge asks about police reports confirming that Cummings had been in contact with police, which had been denied by the government.
Shapps said the police was contacted by Cummings’ father, not the other way around.

Doing everything they can not to accept the police involvement. Seems fine for them to say they weren't actually there so cannot be certain of details. But an allegation, which is being broadly upheld, has to be word-perfect. If the police contact was on a just past midnight on a Friday night, they would insist there had been no contact on Friday. Ten seconds later, on Saturday, ...

 

[Woosh]

By people who'd lost the capacity to think clearly, so were believing what they were told to think by some media elements.
.

lots of voters are not that concerned about who govern them.
It's the choice between a basket of apples with some wormy ones or a basket of pears with some wormy ones too.
The choice between JC and Johnson is rubbish anyway.

 

[Barry Shittpeas]

By people who'd lost the capacity to think clearly, so were believing what they were told to think by some media elements.
.

It didn’t require any media involvement to cast Abbot and Corbyn as a pair of idiots unfit and incapable of fulfilling any government role, both did that very nicely for themselves. You only had to listen to them being interviewed.

As an alternative, we were left with a confirmed and proven liar supported by a bunch of equally untrustworthy morons who all lacked integrity. This was the more attractive choice.

Now we have Starmer, who I believe supports many of Corbyn’s policies, as the alternative. Starmer comes across as more competent and genuine than his predecessor. Maybe a bit dull, but that doesn’t matter, I think he could lead the country and we haven’t had anyone who can do that for a long time.

I think Tory votes will move in Labour’s direction. The present government have very quickly been found to be dishonest, deceitful, contemptuous, arrogant and reckless to such an extent, that I don’t think the Daily Mail can cover for them anymore.

 

[oldgroaner]

It would have been exactly the same under Labour. The choices at the last election were appalling, I nearly didn’t vote. Dreadful.

WRONG! Corbyn would not have listened to the wrong advice from the monkey, nor be swayed by American Paymasters, he would have reacted much sooner, thus saving thousands of lies.
Theoretical now as idiots voted Boris into power, isn't it?

 

[Barry Shittpeas]

So, returning to Cummings. The reason given by No10 for him traveling 260 miles whilst having Coronavirus symptoms was to go to a place to isolate and not move. They stated several time that he did not move. The not moving formed a major part of the justification for not sacking him. It was the claim that he didn’t move from isolation which they used to give credibility to his actions.

So why was he 30 miles away from isolation visiting a castle on April 12, still within the 14 days isolating period? Why did he make a second journey from London to Durham and back when everywhere you looked, the government were telling people to stay at home? Why was Cummings making 520 mile round trips when families were refused permission to spend a few last minutes with their loved ones as they died alone, probably unnecessarily due to government incompetence, from Coronavirus? Why is Boris Johnson shouting support for Cummings behaviour from behind the sofa, afraid to stand up and explain to the public, or answer questions? What a coward. That’s another badge we can now pin on the fat useless ****.

 

[Woosh]

Johnson does not do himself any favour by keeping Cummings.

 

[flecc]

It didn’t require any media involvement to cast Abbot and Corbyn as a pair of idiots unfit and incapable of fulfilling any government role, both did that very nicely for themselves. You only had to listen to them being interviewed.

As I posted, you're showing lack of thought and believing what the media told you to think.

I'm old enough to well remember the insults Clement Attlee and his team suffered, with the right wing media undermining them in just the way they did Corbyn. Winston Churchill, another useless Tory buffoon in the same mould of Boris Johnson said of Attlee, "A modest man with much to be modest about".

But Attlee and his team achieved more for us than all our other governments of the 20th and 21st centuries. Corbyn and McDonnell could have surprised you all, but of course you ignore the competent and far more influential McDonnell in order to attack the weak point of Abbott, such is your bias.
.

 

[wheeler]

Johnson does not do himself any favour by keeping Cummings.

If Cummings is sacked, who will run the UK?

 

[Barry Shittpeas]

WRONG! Corbyn would not have listened to the wrong advice from the monkey, nor be swayed by American Paymasters, he would have reacted much sooner, thus saving thousands of lies.
Theoretical now as idiots voted Boris into power, isn't it?

I disagree with you. Under a Corbyn / Abbott Labour, we would still be discussing if a lockdown would disadvantage gender neutral sausage rolls, or something similar. The reaction wouldn’t have got past the talking about it stage.