Lazy, lazy Boris

Urmstongram Isn’t that because he’s PRIME Minister? He has a team of other Ministers alongside him. If personally he read (fully) every piece of information he’d have no time to eat or sleep!
Good points you make. This lot don't seem to understand how real leadership works.

What on earth have the Labour Party got to do with it. They weren’t governing the country during this pandemic. I’d still like to know if you’re taking the advice of the government or SAGE though, because it’s not an option to do both.

Another day another right winger banging on about Corbyn.

MayBee70 Either option is going to be better than whatever the Labour party come up with.

Janpt: have you not noticed that government advice and SAGE advise have now gone off in different directions? So which one are you going to listen to ?

biba70

how redacted will it be though?

Probably illegible?

The Chief Nurse has said that she was dropped by Cummings/Johnson as she refused to back Cummings after his breaking the lockdown rules.

Cumming’s job more important than people’s health obvs.

how redacted will it be though?

Money given to Tories by a Russian.. I wonder why?

Russian report tomorrow.

Urmstongran Thu 16-Jul-20 08:39:34
He already said he is aware of it.
He does have a Minister at the helm of every department.
He’s not daft - seen as lazy perhaps - but I’m one amongst many who are happy with what he’s doing in very difficult times. He’s had C-19 himself, unlike the majority of us, so he has first hand knowledge of how awful it can be.
I trust him (and the SAGE advisers) to be discussing all the necessary precautions to keep us safe.
urmstongran Well said. The lefties won't give him credit for anything. Thank god we haven't got Corbyn trying to run the country or indeed any of his Marxist cronies.

Do you follow the Independent SAGE meetings? They're available on YouTube.

I think they are telling the truth when they say they strongly advised a lockdown on 16th March, which would have saved many lives.

Which things do you mean Maizie?

I think Vallance did get it wrong at the beginning, but since then it's difficult to know how much of what he says is what he truly believes and what he's been saying to cover the government's back.

There is no doubt that mistakes were made in the second and third weeks of March.

The death rate was doubling every two or three days. People still didn't believe that what was happening in Italy could happen in the UK. The government was indecisive and dithered. Johnson was talking in silly, childish terms about sombreros.

All along, there has been tension between those concerned with the "economy" and those who know something about public health. The irony, of course, is that if public health had been put first, the economy wouldn't have been so badly hit in the long term.

The government will do anything to blame everybody else - just wait until the effects of Brexit hit us.

No matter how much you are paid, you only have the same amount of hours in the day as the next day. I don't think it is practical for Boris to read every single report word for word but I think that he should have at least a good Summary of something as important as this so he is able to talk knowledgeably about it.

varian

"World beating" is one of Johnson's favourite boasts. The only aptitude he appears to have which could be described as "world beating" is passing the buck.

Witty and Vallance put up with that for too long but have now woken up and started to tell the truth.

Are they telling the truth, though, varian?

Did you read this:

Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser and Sage chair, initially told Johnson the best way to handle the disease would be to suppress the virus’s peak, which would happen during the summer months, while ensuring that the most vulnerable were shielded at the height of the epidemic. Johnson called this “squashing thesombrero”.

The idea was that by the winter flu season much of the country would have had the disease and acquired some immunity. This was very different to the “hard stop” suppression strategy being adopted around the world — including by China and Italy — to stop the virus in its tracks. “It was British exceptionalism,” says one Treasury official.

www.ft.com/content/aa53173b-eb39-4055-b112-0001c1f6de1b

There are one or two odd things in that report that don't actually ring true, though...

"World beating" is one of Johnson's favourite boasts. The only aptitude he appears to have which could be described as "world beating" is passing the buck.

Witty and Vallance put up with that for too long but have now woken up and started to tell the truth.

Boris Johnson gravely underestimates the intelligence of the British people.

Do you think so, Happygirl?

I think his estimation was spot on...

Boris Johnson gravely underestimates the intelligence of the British people.
He is such a poor liar.
Its the only transparent thing about him

It seems to be true that Vallance didn't start off well. After that, it's difficult to know how much he was being a loyal poodle, until it dawned on him he was being made a scapegoat.

At the time, SAGE meetings were still very secretive. The names of the participants weren't even published and the minutes, even when published, were redacted.

Some former members of SAGE insist that they didn't advise the government to delay lockdown. They claim they advised lockdown from 16 March and the claim that the public would tire of lockdown is nonsense. Apparently, there is no evidence in behavioural science that the public would tire after a certain time and, anyway, the sooner lockdown had started, the sooner the country would have been able to come out of it.

Even before Professor Ferguson was stupid enough to see his girlfriend and was sacked, he was being smeared in certain sections of the media as "Professor Lockdown" and it was all framed as the evil nanny state depriving people of their liberty, rather than a measure which needed to be taken for thee public good.

That "framing" has continued with "Santa" Johnson throwing out sweeties to please people every so often. The messaging has been an absolute mess. People didn't know whether they were vulnerable, highly vulnerable, at risk, at extreme risk or whatever. Some people received letters; others received texts. Some people received food parcels, while others in the same situation didn't. Local authorities outsourced the "support", which was also muddled and inadequate.

SAGE has now effectively been sidelined. It would appear that they stopped being loyal followers of the government and have been speaking out. Once their minutes were published, they couldn't do anything in secret. Its role has now been taken over by NERVTAG and the Joint Biosecurity Centre. The Joint Biosecurity Centre is under the control of Dido Harding, whom I wouldn't trust as far as I could throw her.

We need transparency and efficiency, not bumbling, making stuff up on the hoof, lies and handing out contracts to cronies.

Maizie thanks for the article, quite disturbing.
But the scientific adviser,[Vallance]formerly president of research and development at GlaxoSmithKline, was a leading sceptic about the merits of a lockdown and his public musings on herd immunity continue to rankle with ministers
Not quite what he said to the Select Committee?

Only the delusional believe anything uttered by Boris. Even Boris doesn’t believe it.

I wonder if proportional representation would have produced a more sensible result?

'Sensible' in that it probably wouldn't have given a single party enough seats to run an 'elected dictatorship' and so would have given us a more competent Executive.

Lucky, we haven't got a leader with integrity because people voted for him and his party, taken in by the bonhomie and bluster.

Of course things will not be back to normal by Christmas - it is total nonsense and he knows it - he is just trying to curry favour with the electorate; but it will backfire come December.

Why oh why can we not have trustworthy leaders with true integrity at such a time?