Infected, leaderless. How Boris Johnson’s brush with death revealed a lethal amateurism at the heart of government

I see an earlier post of mine on this thread has been deleted.

lemongrove Scotland can easily be compared to England by looking at figures per thousand or per million of the population, for instance.

^ It is quite sympathetic to Boris and his cronies.^

I thought so Grammaretto. That makes me think that, whatever you may think of this particular government and its politics there is a problem with propping up our way of government and not moving into this century - or in some cases at least the last.

Scotland has a population of almost 5 and a half million. London has almost 9 million.

Can't really compare the two when it comes to Covid

Nor do they all want to leave the Union....you can be proud to be Scottish without voting SNP.

Quite a lot of proud Scots don’t like the SNP much.

Glasgow has 1.2 million and London a little under 9 million.

Janpt

paddyanne Just the sort of nasty comments we have come to expect from a Labour supporter. Boris is by far a better option than your Marxist Corbyn. Any member of the Labour party would be a disaster as leader of this country. People need to be encouraged to take pride in their own achievements not to be constantly propped up by the government.

Paddyanne is a proud Scot. I suspect she takes a lot of pride in what she and her country have achieved. That's possibly why she supports the SNP and wants independence from Westminster. It's probably why so many former Labour voters in Scotland vote SNP too.

lemongrove

*FarNorth*.....Scotland cannot be compared to England regarding Covid cases ...the entire population of Scotland is about similar to London.

I wouldn't mind betting that parts of Glasgow have a similar population density and the same kind of overcrowding as parts of London have.

Janpt

No, there are very many decent caring Labour supporters!

paddyanne has made it clear she is member of the Scottish Nationalist Party, a devotee of Nicola Sturgeon and wants to be freed from the despicable Westminster and England.

FarNorth.....Scotland cannot be compared to England regarding Covid cases ...the entire population of Scotland is about similar to London.

paddyanne Just the sort of nasty comments we have come to expect from a Labour supporter. Boris is by far a better option than your Marxist Corbyn. Any member of the Labour party would be a disaster as leader of this country. People need to be encouraged to take pride in their own achievements not to be constantly propped up by the government.

It is an account of what we already know was happening, and emphasises the shambolic lack of preparedness in the UK government, in general, and of this particular bunch who had no idea how to cope.

England now has a rising rate of infection with numerous new cases each day, while Scotland has almost none.

Yet Scotland is already seeing tourists from England and is likely to see more of them and likely to see infection increasing as a result.

Here, in a 5 min news clip, Conservative MP Huw Merriman claims that it is a good idea for English people to go to countries which have a low R number as that will be safer for them (the English people).
www.channel4.com/news/travel-changes-led-more-by-economics-than-public-health-says-professor-devi-sridhar?fbclid=IwAR25W2Q6yq90tg5175A5QPHwustDqUyTYT6qiVdOaYElDGKrl22Dj9wlOdw

I have listened to it. It is quite sympathetic to Boris and his cronies. No condemnation of Cummings but Mrs Cummings is an editor of the Spectator of course.

Thank you for flagging up that podcast GGumpteenth

I listened to it with my OH and we both thought it shed quite a lot of light on the sad sequence of events.

Thanks to those who have posted that they liked my post.

So often I have seen some really nasty responses to others' posts on this forum which are just personal insults.

I am not surprised that some people think that the response so far by the UK Government to the coronavirus outbreak looks unprofessional - that is because it has been so shambolic.

Examples include the failure to impose quarantine early enough on those returning in February from skiing trips to Northern Italy and other countries when it was known that virus cases were increasing there and in other countries (oddly only the cruise ship holiday makers were quarantined!), Matt Hancock's lies about protecting care homes while he stood by as the NHS evicted infected people in hospital to care homes without waiting for their test results, the selective data on the number of cases and deaths at the start until it was exposed that the data was understating the true figures because it excluded deaths in care homes and other settings (since addressed).

This Government does not want to be told by "professionals" what to do and how to do it. They also hate Government interventions - even in the case of public health! Astonishing! ,

They have showcased the professionals (the main professional advisers are the Chief Medical Officer and the Chief Scientific Adviser) in their daily briefings (thankfully at an end) but that does not mean that they have always taken their advice. Now one of them is expressing concerns about a second wave because he has seen that people don't care about social distancing and would prefer to drive hundreds of miles on a crowded beach to become infected and infect others.

Before anyone complains that hindsight is a wonderful thing they should look at how other countries have managed their response to the virus so far without the benefit of hindsight and see how much better they have done than us.

I suspect that Boris Johnson doesn't like looking at what other countries have done because he knows that the comparison will be unfavourable.

I read it, too, GGumpteenth (thanks to Calli for pointing out the link). It was quite frightening, really.

But notable that there was little reference to the general ill preparedness that happened long before Johnson was ill.

Also, height of the panic seemed to be when Cummings was missing as well...

And, although d'Ancona seems to have personal liking for Johnson, he's got the measure of the hopeless ministers..

That was my take on it Avalon. It is this lack of professionalism that seems to be the issue. If any government had been in power we do not seem to have the professional systems to deal with real life incidents.

OK went back ad had another read of Paddannes comments, this time with my glasses on, which I am always forgetting where they are. Anyway yes she did say she wished him ill, as probably many people secretly think, but that is not a reason for others to attack her in the way they did. The rest of my statement stands and it is against Boris not the hospital. Ramblingrose you posted an excellent comment.

Ggumteenth this is very interesting. I have read it all although it was quite long. Paddyann and others you really should read it too even if you hate Boris Johnson or especially if you do. It is quite clear that BJ did have the virus and was in a perilous state. I well remember that panic struck look on Raab’s face as he faced the nation and tried to play it down. The thing is it is not so much about BJ as about the rocky state of the government.

I understood that The Home Secretary was the designated Deputy for the PM.

The appropriate Ministers took care of their own briefs

I will not apologise for being a Conservative, but would like to point out that I am not a Boris Johnson Fan

My post is not a defence of Boris before anyone starts posting that.
It is a defence of the staff at St Thomas's
I also believe that Boris was very ill but did not, in the end, need intubation. He came back too soon. Running two weeks afterwards, if he did do that, was foolish and proved nothing.
He should have appointed a deputy, one person to take charge instead of a succession of ministers.

We could have had Rees-Mogg!

Not be rich

That was autocorrect taking charge.

besmirch

paddyanne can speculate all she likes (and does) about Boris's illness and, no the staff at St Thomas's cannot discuss his stay there for reasons of patient confidentiality.

But no ICU in the country, let alone at that excellent hospital, would keep a patient in ICU taking up a valuable and desperately needed bed, just to collude with a politician and keep him out of the limelight for a couple of weeks.

Anyone who thinks that must be deluded.

And again, how dare you be rich the reputations of the staff of St Thomas's paddyann.
But such is your hatred that you will trample the reputation of these medical staff in order to try to validate your opinions.

FarNorth

MaizieD there is a transcript further down on the page linked to.

Where Boris's illness is discussed.