Covid Inquiry

Casdon, let us hope we never have another Prime Minister like Boris Johnson, because we are likely to be subjected to more pandemics.

I remember seeing that clip of Mark Drakeford's frustration at Johnson.

Callistemon21

paddyann54

"We can FIX the economy...we cant bring back the dead " said more than once by Ms Sturgeon who URMS appears to hate above her own government...even though Urms isn't a scot nor does she live here .Most folk here and elsewhere in the UK appreciated Ms Sturgeons daily reports and felt it gave us confidence things were being dealt with .
Whatever your political affiliation we felt she held our interests and health dear and was on our side .
Unlike your own dear leader !!

Unlike your own dear leader !!

As Prime Minister of the whole United Kingdom, he was your (and our) leader too, paddyann, like it or not.

Many of us didn't.

As you were, growstuff

I think it’s really important to understand what that meant in practice Callistemon, in fact for me it’s one of the most important points of the inquiry, because we need to understand whether if we have another pandemic the nations should act individually, and to what extent. I fail to understand why Boris Johnson refused to discuss issues with the first ministers in the height of the pandemic for example, and what if any, the consequences of that were.

Apologies if you think I am straying. I thought it relevant.
If not, I’m sorry. I’ll not revisit that particular aspect and move along.

paddyann54

"We can FIX the economy...we cant bring back the dead " said more than once by Ms Sturgeon who URMS appears to hate above her own government...even though Urms isn't a scot nor does she live here .Most folk here and elsewhere in the UK appreciated Ms Sturgeons daily reports and felt it gave us confidence things were being dealt with .
Whatever your political affiliation we felt she held our interests and health dear and was on our side .
Unlike your own dear leader !!

Unlike your own dear leader !!

As Prime Minister of the whole United Kingdom, he was your (and our) leader too, paddyann, like it or not.

Many of us didn't.

As you were, growstuff

so sad and scary when things come to this

growstuff

Has this thread now strayed so far from the inquiry that it's no longer worth contributing?

No, there are attempts to keep it on track

I'm sure your contribution will be worthwhile.

Has this thread now strayed so far from the inquiry that it's no longer worth contributing?

No, sorry paddyanne I’m not buying into this ‘I’ll keep you all safe by imposing more draconian measures’. Anything to differ from Westminster was the overall feeling when she was at the daily podium. I can understand the yearning to be reassured and the comfort it must have brought to feel everyone was being looked after. But the sad fact is it didn’t work anything like the SNP hoped and, as events showed in hindsight, things were made considerably worse by some of her decisions. Not everyone in Scotland thought she was doing a sterling job - there were many dissenters.

It must be so hard though, if you have trusted your Government and your Prime Minister to have your best interests at heart, when you have stuck up for him on social media, made excuses for him, and by extension Dominic Cummings, and then found out that he didn't actually give a fig what happened to you and even joked about it.
No wonder you might want to think that no one else would have done better.

paddyann54 yes, I used to wish our Prime Minister was as clear and sensible as Nicola Sturgeon. She sounded as if she cared what happened.

"We can FIX the economy...we cant bring back the dead " said more than once by Ms Sturgeon who URMS appears to hate above her own government...even though Urms isn't a scot nor does she live here .Most folk here and elsewhere in the UK appreciated Ms Sturgeons daily reports and felt it gave us confidence things were being dealt with .
Whatever your political affiliation we felt she held our interests and health dear and was on our side .
Unlike your own dear leader !!

sazz1

So do you think Labour under KS would have done any better? He chose to ignore many many complaints as head of CPS about Jimmy Savile. Makes you think what else would he have ignored during the pandemic.

"Whataboutery":
the technique or practice of responding to an accusation or difficult question by making a counter-accusation or raising a different issue.

I have no idea how Labour would've dealt with the pandemic and it's irrelevant anyway because they were not in office. I don't know why you think it is - unless you're assuming I'm a Labour voter?

As for the accusation against Starmer. Here is the Reuters Fact Check finding on the repeated claim. And, as there is no evidence to support it - I was tempted to report your post for continuing the slur... not because I'm a fan of Starmer, but because defaming someone on such a serious matter is ugly and dangerous.

But I didn't report it - I'll just let it stand for others to see. Boris Johnson made the same claim, for the same purpose - to detract from the matter in hand. Ad was rebuked by The Speaker - as well as others in his party. Even those who defended him were not willing to repeat the accusation.

I think it's a below the belt punch.

^maddyone
MerylStreep
I wish I’d gone to my daughter and carried on doing the childcare for her. I didn’t mind the lockdown as I thought it was protecting us, but it didn’t protect my daughter from being persuaded by her manipulative husband from taking advantage of our absence to persuade her to move away from her loving family to New Zealand. He would never have achieved that without lockdown. She had refused for eleven years to move abroad because we were/are a close family, but he had always wanted to dispose of family, both his and hers.
They’re separated now, divorce will follow in a few months. He refuses to allow her to bring the children home to the UK to live.
Maybe if we hadn’t obeyed lockdown this would never have happened.^

maddyone I so sorry that this happened to your family. I hope your DD and DGC are OK and a resolution can be found. I understand how this must make you feel towards those partying during lockdown.

Grandmabatty

Again I would like this thread to stay en pointe as it were. The focus of the inquiry is the Westminster Government's handling of the pandemic and how to move forward. I started it commenting on the statements made regarding elderly people by Johnson and other conservative MPs as reported by mainstream media. Can we keep it relevant?

Totally agree GMB

Not only government but a lot of the young public believed the same "why should we bother with the old they are going to die soon way". Heard that several times along with "well that will help speed the inheritance along". Absolutely terrible time.

Again I would like this thread to stay en pointe as it were. The focus of the inquiry is the Westminster Government's handling of the pandemic and how to move forward. I started it commenting on the statements made regarding elderly people by Johnson and other conservative MPs as reported by mainstream media. Can we keep it relevant?

I am so angry. How dear he say we are of no consequence. All of us who have contributed in various ways over the years and deserve respect. Something in short supply amongst the Conservative Government. Their track record is appalling.

Celieanne86, this is what it's all about. Hard to lose a brother. Devastating for it to happen this way. Sorry for your loss.

My brother died of Covid in hospital with no visitors allowed to be with him at the end apart from a sweet kind nurse who told my nephew she had held his hand and talked to him so you can imagine how we in his family feel listening to the statements made and foul language used. I feel sick I loved my brother he didn’t deserve to be used as a statistic.

Oh Urmstongran, I thought you actually meant it when you said,
'we should avoid the 'goady' comments alluding to perceived uncritical tribal political affiliations.'
And oh yes, let's all trust the unbiased Telegraph.

Oh, and Simon Case hasn't yet come before the Inquiry, he's just gone off sick for an unspecified period...

Ooh, timing ...

Just after my last post about WhatsApp messages from NS look what the Covid Inquiry had to say about them....
(Souce: today’s Telegraph)

“THE UK Covid Inquiry has “ridden a coach and horses” through Nicola Sturgeon’s claim she cannot disclose whether she deleted her WhatsApp messages from the pandemic because it is confidential.

Witness statements and other written documents and materials prepared for the inquiry must be kept under wraps until they are used in evidence.

But the inquiry confirmed that there were no other restrictions on what witnesses can say to the media about their actions during the pandemic.

This undermined the former first minister’s claim that she was not even allowed to state whether she had deleted her WhatsApps because it was part of her confidential evidence to the inquiry.

Humza Yousaf, the First Minister, and Kate Forbes, the former Scottish finance secretary, both confirmed this week they did not destroy their messages without reading directly from their written witness statements.

Douglas Ross, the Scottish Tory leader, said Ms Sturgeon’s “pathetic confidentiality defence lies in tatters” and urged her to come clean about whether she has deleted her messages.

The inquiry heard last week that “very few messages appear to have been retained” from key decision makers in Holyrood – despite UK ministers handing over similar material “in high volumes”.

Ms Sturgeon insisted this week she had “nothing to hide” but refused four times to state if she had destroyed her WhatsApps.”

Maddyone
I remember your story. I’m so sorry that it panned out the way it has.
I have 2 stepdaughters with different health issues. They both got full support from us during lockdown. My family’s mental health is very important to me so there was no way rules were going to stop me maintaining that.

If deaths are used as a measure Urmstongran, Scotland did do well compared with England and Wales.
www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/16/what-do-we-know-about-people-who-died-covid-uk
The outcomes can be measured in many different ways of course, and a comparison between approaches will no doubt reveal successes and failures all round. I highly doubt though that the Scottish government saw elderly people as dispensable.

The Response to Covid was down to the Doctors and Specialists of SAGE the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies. The Government are not Medical Experts and just provided the Money.

The medical response would rightly be informed by the advice of the medical and scientific experts, Trurider1, but the government had much more than just the medical response to covid to consider. There were profound economic and social considerations, too. And, as we are discovering, the medical and scientific advice was not always followed.