Matt Hancock….

Ok, there's too much of this slagging off the government. I agree that mistakes were made but this was an unprecedented situation. They did their best in an unfamiliar and fast changing situation. I for one am grateful for the way they handled it. And before someone lists the mistakes that were made - I know! I have every sympathy for those who lost friends and relatives, particularly in care homes, but it could actually have been a lot worse.

*I think Matt did the best he could." That's like something my granny would have said to put someone in their place. Damning with faint praise I think you'd say.

I think he's been pretty useless but maybe that's because I work in a care home, having said that I think they set him up to be the fall guy and I think their plan is working.

I know! I have every sympathy for those who lost friends and relatives, particularly in care homes, but it could actually have been a lot worse. Like if they'd gone in with machine guns?

Ridiculous to equate dissatisfaction with Matt Hancock to “slagging off England”

I’m sorry but I think he is as his boss described him.

Fran72

Lucca

Ridiculous to equate dissatisfaction with Matt Hancock to “slagging off England”

I’m sorry but I think he is as his boss described him.

What or who is England? As far as I know it's a geographic entity occupied by tens of millions of people. Nobody is slagging off the piece of land or the people who live here.

Kiplet - where overseas are your family who think we have done well in England?

NotTooOld, seriously? Doing their best? They are not children. They are highly paid Public Servants. In any other job they would have been sacked, for their incompetence and failure to learn from their mistakes. At least the voters in Chesham and Amersham have seen through them.

Criticism of this Government is not "slagging off England" . That is a ridiculous assertion.
In fact, perhaps those who do criticise are the ones who really do love this country, and all our United Kingdom because we hate to see it losing its credibility under this shower of incompetents.

You'd rather support Cummings than Hancock?
I can't stand Cummings, he's a self-serving, unkind, dreadful person. I prefer to believe Hancock - he did his best, no-one knew this was coming and how dreadful it was going to be. All very easy with hindsight!

How many times do we have to say the threat of a pandemic was ignored by this government. Check out operation cygnet.

I'm so fed up with the hindsight thing. People, me included, were crying out for lockdown last year when the govt let Cheltenham go ahead, Crufts, big pop concerts. The FA called off matches showing the govt a lead and eventually they did something. It wasn't hindsight, well it was for the govt but not for many of us.

Sending people out of hospitals to care homes was something else we knew was wrong without hindsight. Homes were being forced to take people in to "honour" contracts when they knew it was a disaster in the making.

How about fighting with London boroughs and making them stay open for the last week of term in December not to mention schools going back for a day in January. How many people were trying to stop it, saying it was wrong and Williamson threatening them with legal action.

Please can we stop with the hindsight nonsense.

LuckyFour

You'd rather support Cummings than Hancock?
I can't stand Cummings, he's a self-serving, unkind, dreadful person. I prefer to believe Hancock - he did his best, no-one knew this was coming and how dreadful it was going to be. All very easy with hindsight!

Not hindsight for goodness sake. I had a friend In italy who was texting daily asking what our government was waiting for to lockdown, so how come the,government didn’t know ??? It’s because Johnson didn’t want to, because he didn’t get it, bragging about shaking hands with people and letting huge gatherings go ahead because he didn’t want to lose popularity.
This “ oh it’s easy with hindsight” argument is nonsense.

And Boris Johnson doing the "Captain Hindsight" thing is so bloody childish. He needs to grow up and take a bit of responsibility. There is blood on his hands and on Hancock's.

It isn’t a case of supporting Cummings or Hancock. It’s down to finding the truth, which is something sadly lacking with this government. Probably a case of who gains the most from exposing the truth: not for the electorate but for themselves.

he did his best, no-one knew this was coming

"No one saw this coming"! I could scream with frustration every time I see this statement. The 'world' has known for years that there was the possibility of another global pandemic. We've had a number of scares in the last few decades. We've had SARS, MERS, Ebola, avian flu, swine flu.. all possible candidates for starting a global pandemic.

Emergency planning is a government task and until the tories and flipping Brexit took charge that's what our governments have done, planned for emergencies such as a global pandemic.

At the turn of the century the UK's global pandemic planning was reckoned to be among the best in the world, but owing to their obsession with cutting public spending, privatising the NHS and dealing with Brexit the tories let it all slide. Maybee reminded us of 'operation cygnus'. a big rehearsal of putting pandemic planning into operation in 2017. Many shortcomings were reported as a result but the tory government did nothing to correct them.

I am baffled as to what people expect of governments. It should be clear that one of their tasks is to ensure the safety and welfare of the nation's citizens. That they were totally unprepared and in panic mode indicates a massive failure of their duty of care. They failed to do their job.

Lucca I was speaking to someone in Italy in Feb/March last year, not a friend it was a business thing but he kept asking me why we weren't doing anything, couldn't we see what was happening in Italy.

I don't understand why people keep talking about hindsight unless Johnson has totally mesmerized them.

MaizieD

^he did his best, no-one knew this was coming^

"No one saw this coming"! I could scream with frustration every time I see this statement. The 'world' has known for years that there was the possibility of another global pandemic. We've had a number of scares in the last few decades. We've had SARS, MERS, Ebola, avian flu, swine flu.. all possible candidates for starting a global pandemic.

Emergency planning is a government task and until the tories and flipping Brexit took charge that's what our governments have done, planned for emergencies such as a global pandemic.

At the turn of the century the UK's global pandemic planning was reckoned to be among the best in the world, but owing to their obsession with cutting public spending, privatising the NHS and dealing with Brexit the tories let it all slide. Maybee reminded us of 'operation cygnus'. a big rehearsal of putting pandemic planning into operation in 2017. Many shortcomings were reported as a result but the tory government did nothing to correct them.

I am baffled as to what people expect of governments. It should be clear that one of their tasks is to ensure the safety and welfare of the nation's citizens. That they were totally unprepared and in panic mode indicates a massive failure of their duty of care. They failed to do their job.

I must stop calling it cygnet!

theworriedwell

Lucca I was speaking to someone in Italy in Feb/March last year, not a friend it was a business thing but he kept asking me why we weren't doing anything, couldn't we see what was happening in Italy.

I don't understand why people keep talking about hindsight unless Johnson has totally mesmerized them.

Don't forget that we could see what was happening in Italy, but that was because those pesky Italians all live in multi-generation households and hug and kiss each other. It couldn't happen in the UK. Oh no! we're British and exceptional!

If the search facility on GN were better, I could find some threads where exactly those kind of views were expressed.

@growstuff that is crazy.

Yes I remember all that,stuff too!

I also was in contact with someone in Italy. They couldn’t believe what we were doing over here.
I’d already bought all our family N95 face masks before we shut down here… and not to do enamelling or sanding either…

Good planning NotSpaghetti, I wish I'd done the same. My DIL couldn't get one from the NHS and she was frontline on a covid ward, holding people up in her arms as they said goodbye to their families on ipads.

Of course there were no shortages...............

Still they did their best, shame their best wasn't better.

I think the reason Boris was so quick to procure massive amounts of vaccine is because they made such a hash of the first and second lockdown they had to redeem themselves somehow! Now he's trying to take all the credit while the NHS works flat out to administer it.
Unfortunately people often have short memories and gratitude for the vaccine may result in them forgiving the Tories' failings!
I don't have much respect for Cummings but I'm glad he's dishing the dirt as we need to know the truth, whatever the source. Hopefully all the evidence will be forthcoming eventually.