Damning Parliamentary Report on COVID 19.

As I have said many times. Boris Johnson needs to be held accountable for his criminal negligence in what effectively amounted to killing at least 20,000 through his laziness and dithering.
Now we know why the coward has gone on holiday this week. Desperately trying to avoid scrutiny. By next week there will be another crisis caused by the lack of competence in his sycophantic government with someone else to take the heat.
 
catinstalbans said:
As I have said many times. Boris Johnson needs to be held accountable for his criminal negligence in what effectively amounted to killing at least 20,000 through his laziness and dithering.
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Yet again Cats - please post a link to his conviction for "criminal negligence"?

Hindsight is a wonderful thing when you face something you never have before.

..and for the record, I think Boris is an idiot!
 
seasideone said:
Yet again Cats - please post a link to his conviction for "criminal negligence"?

Hindsight is a wonderful thing when you face something you never have before.

..and for the record, I think Boris is an idiot!
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Can I remind you that Jimmy Savile had no criminal convictions. Does that mean he wasn't a sex offender in your eyes?
 
By the way, this government's negligence continues to this day over Covid with the deliberate infection of hundreds of thousands of school children over this autumn and the worst death rate in Western Europe as Boris Johnson pretends that it has all gone away in the way that only a sociopath who is happy to let the bodies pile up or state that life expectancies don't matter could!
 
catinstalbans said:
That is not the point I'm making as you fully well know.
Or other examples. Blair and Bush with their war crimes over Iraq. Many on the right on this site correctly call Blair a war criminal but he has never been convicted. I've never seen you post to take on them for unwarranted accusations!
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You can't compare an Apple as an Orange, Saville is dead and therefore will never be in the dock..

I really do not like what Blair and Bush did - but for them to be war criminals, they need to be convicted, and they are not.

The problem with people like you Cat is that you are quite happy to throw around accusations with no legal basis - you would get a lot more interaction on here if you were balanced.

What do you teach by the way and what age group?
 
seasideone said:
You can't compare an Apple as an Orange, Saville is dead and therefore will never be in the dock..

I really do not like what Blair and Bush did - but for them to be war criminals, they need to be convicted, and they are not.

The problem with people like you Cat is that you are quite happy to throw around accusations with no legal basis - you would get a lot more interaction on here if you were balanced.

What do you teach by the way and what age group?
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Balance and cat is the best oxymoron I've seen on this site. his left wing diatrab and peculier outlook on life, particularly as a teacher, is the main reason I have banned his posts. I sometimes wonder how people in certain jobs get away with spouting their left or right wing politics, when I'm sure their contracts of employment state they shouldn't.
 
seasideone said:
I really do not like what Blair and Bush did - but for them to be war criminals, they need to be convicted, and they are not.

The problem with people like you Cat is that you are quite happy to throw around accusations with no legal basis - you would get a lot more interaction on here if you were balanced.
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Cat was asking why you don't pick other people up on here who frequently call Blair a war criminal in the same way that you pick Cat up when he calls Johnson criminally negligent.
Neither have ever been convicted but you only seem to question Cat.
It is a fair point.
 
ElBurroSinNombre said:
Cat was asking why you don't pick other people up on here who frequently call Blair a war criminal in the same way that you pick Cat up when he calls Johnson criminally negligent.
Neither have ever been convicted but you only seem to question Cat.
It is a fair point.
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Boris is current Blair isn't.
 
20togo said:
Boris is current Blair isn't.
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Hitler isn't current, but he's still a war criminal. Not sure I get your point.

Every time Blair is in the news, giving opinions, he's cited as a war criminal by some on here. Therefore, it is still relevant.
 
seasideone said:
You can't compare an Apple as an Orange, Saville is dead and therefore will never be in the dock..

I really do not like what Blair and Bush did - but for them to be war criminals, they need to be convicted, and they are not.

The problem with people like you Cat is that you are quite happy to throw around accusations with no legal basis - you would get a lot more interaction on here if you were balanced.

What do you teach by the way and what age group?
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Pre school hopefully
 
seasideone said:
You can't compare an Apple as an Orange, Saville is dead and therefore will never be in the dock..

I really do not like what Blair and Bush did - but for them to be war criminals, they need to be convicted, and they are not.

The problem with people like you Cat is that you are quite happy to throw around accusations with no legal basis - you would get a lot more interaction on here if you were balanced.

What do you teach by the way and what age group?
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The focus here is the report from the “lessons learned to date” report, prepared by two Commons committees into the UK's handling of Covid. After gathering a huge amount of evidence it has concluded that the delay to impose a first lockdown last spring was “one of the most important public health failures the United Kingdom has ever experienced”; planning for a possible virus outbreak smacked of “British exceptionalism”; the lack of early testing capacity was “an almost unimaginable setback”.
The only area that does not come in for blunt criticism is the vaccine rollout and that activity succeeded primarily because of the joint efforts of the NHS and local authorities.

Nor can this massive level of criticism be laid at the door of the Parliamentary Opposition trying to give the Government an opportunistic, hard time. The Commons health committee and science and technology committee are cross-party, taking in Labour and SNP members as well as Conservatives, and they are led by Tory ex-ministers, Jeremy Hunt and Greg Clark.
 
"Let the bodies pile high", a comment attributed to the lazy incompetent Buffoon, and never denied by No10! Well, he has certainly lived up to that! The several emergency Cobra meetings he missed at the start of the pandemic; allowing major sporting events to go ahead before the lockdown; his own attendance at Twickenham and seen shaking hands with all and sundry; visiting patients in hospital and similarly seen shaking hands; his view that the Coronavirus was simply like swine flu and would be over in a matter of weeks; his decision to move elderly patients out of hospital and in to care homes without testing! The list goes on and on. No wonder he wants to delay the independant review until next year, in the hope it will not report until after the next election!
If he possessed an iota of contrition, HE WOULD RESIGN NOW!
 
Britain did not lock down sooner because ministers failed to challenge poor scientific advice, - Telegraph

I'm at a bit of a loss here to be honest, how are ministers supposed to challenge "poor scientific advice"? How are they supposed to recognise "poor scientific advice"? "Should they just ignore it all and make decisions based on what's trending on Twitter?

What practical alternatives do ministers have to following the recommendations of the CSA's and CMO's of all four nations.
 
EPM46 said:
"Let the bodies pile high", a comment attributed to the lazy incompetent Buffoon, and never denied by No10! Well, he has certainly lived up to that! The several emergency Cobra meetings he missed at the start of the pandemic; allowing major sporting events to go ahead before the lockdown; his own attendance at Twickenham and seen shaking hands with all and sundry; visiting patients in hospital and similarly seen shaking hands; his view that the Coronavirus was simply like swine flu and would be over in a matter of weeks; his decision to move elderly patients out of hospital and in to care homes without testing! The list goes on and on. No wonder he wants to delay the independant review until next year, in the hope it will not report until after the next election!
If he possessed an iota of contrition, HE WOULD RESIGN NOW!
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He doesn't and he won't.
 
EPM46 said:
"Let the bodies pile high", a comment attributed to the lazy incompetent Buffoon, and never denied by No10! Well, he has certainly lived up to that! The several emergency Cobra meetings he missed at the start of the pandemic; allowing major sporting events to go ahead before the lockdown; his own attendance at Twickenham and seen shaking hands with all and sundry; visiting patients in hospital and similarly seen shaking hands; his view that the Coronavirus was simply like swine flu and would be over in a matter of weeks; his decision to move elderly patients out of hospital and in to care homes without testing! The list goes on and on. No wonder he wants to delay the independant review until next year, in the hope it will not report until after the next election!
If he possessed an iota of contrition, HE WOULD RESIGN NOW!
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Is that the only thing he said or are you taking it out of context?
 
Lost Seasider said:
Britain did not lock down sooner because ministers failed to challenge poor scientific advice, - Telegraph

I'm at a bit of a loss here to be honest, how are ministers supposed to challenge "poor scientific advice"? How are they supposed to recognise "poor scientific advice"? "Should they just ignore it all and make decisions based on what's trending on Twitter?

What practical alternatives do ministers have to following the recommendations of the CSA's and CMO's of all four nations.
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The report recognises the poor scientific advice but recognises that there was far more to the Government's failings than that.
 
1966_and_all_that said:
The report recognises the poor scientific advice but recognises that there was far more to the Government's failings than that.
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Obviously, although it seems that those failings were by the civil service and thus the failure to challenge scientific advice is the only criticism directly addressed to ministers.

Personally, although I've only read the executive summary, I think it's a poor report and I find myself taking issue with at least part of almost all the points in the summary.
 
1966_and_all_that said:
What on Earth has that got to do with the Covid report? That is, apart from petty point scoring.
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Whooooooooosh!

You’re a funny old pumpkin, 1966, albeit a well-meaning one

I can see that my attempt on satire was lost on you on this occasion. I, more or less, repeated what Seasiderone said to Cat in a post near the top of the thread

With your long held aspirations, which have seemingly disappeared, of being the site peace-maker, i thought you would have known that Wiz and I haven’t had a fall out on this board for as long as I can remember, despite the fact that we can both upset people at the drop of a hat or the raising of a black fist.

I assumed, wrongly in this case, that you, of all people, might have picked up on this

👍

p.s. Jonathan Swift wasn’t being entirely serious when he said that poor Irish people should eat their own babies, either, tho’ funnily enough, one or two on here seemed to be suggesting something not too dissimilar to that as a solution to the jobs crisis and people too lazy to work just the other day

Toicfaidh ár lá 👍
 
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Recidivist3 said:
Yet again, Wiz - pls post a link to his conviction for war crimes
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You're quite right. He wasn't a war criminal, and in no way responsible for the Second World War or any crimes committed during it. Because he took the easy way out.
 
Lost Seasider said:
Obviously, although it seems that those failings were by the civil service and thus the failure to challenge scientific advice is the only criticism directly addressed to ministers.

Personally, although I've only read the executive summary, I think it's a poor report and I find myself taking issue with at least part of almost all the points in the summary.
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How many times...? The Civil Service carries out the instructions of Ministers. The buck stops at the top and quite rightly so. Civil servants were not guilty of promoting the myth of British exceptionalism. The Civil Service did not command that the early response to the pandemic should be one of herd immunity. Th Civil Service did not command that the Liverpool European tie should go ahead. The Civil Service cannot command anything. The report states: "This slow and gradualist approach was not inadvertent, nor did it reflect bureaucratic delay or disagreement between ministers and their advisers. It was a deliberate policy." (my italics).

Of course, it is important to recognise that this wasn't a case of the Government turning a blind eye to SAGE advice. As the Chair of the Health Committee, Greg Clarke has said: "It wasn’t that the government went against the scientific advice, or that there was some great row about it. Everyone agreed that this was the right thing to do. We now know that it wasn’t – that is using the benefit of hindsight. But it’s important to do so."
Nevertheless, Ministers failed to extend the range of scientific advice they could have used from other countries, particularly from Korea in the early stages of the pandemic.
 
Recidivist3 said:
Whooooooooosh!

You’re a funny old pumpkin, 1966, albeit a well-meaning one

I can see that my attempt on satire was lost on you on this occasion. I, more or less, repeated what Seasiderone said to Cat in a post near the top of the thread

With your long held aspirations, which have seemingly disappeared, of being the site peace-maker, i thought you would have known that Wiz and I haven’t had a fall out on this board for as long as I can remember, despite the fact that we can both upset people at the drop of a hat or the raising of a black fist.

I assumed, wrongly in this case, that you, of all people, might have picked up on this

👍

p.s. Jonathan Swift wasn’t being entirely serious when he said that poor Irish people should eat their own babies, either, tho’ funnily enough, one or two on here seemed to be suggesting something not too dissimilar to that as a solution to the jobs crisis and people too lazy to work just the other day

Toicfaidh ár lá 👍
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I stand guilty of the Wooosh assertion. I only speed-read some of the posts - I should know not to do that. I seem to have gone AVFTT-native over time. Just think, I can now make wild assertions about posters without resorting to evidence!
 
Wizaard said:
You're quite right. He wasn't a war criminal, and in no way responsible for the Second World War or any crimes committed during it. Because he took the easy way out.
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I didn’t know that Hitler went to Marbella, too. Probably to see that nice Mr Franco
 
Lost Seasider said:
Obviously, although it seems that those failings were by the civil service and thus the failure to challenge scientific advice is the only criticism directly addressed to ministers.

Personally, although I've only read the executive summary, I think it's a poor report and I find myself taking issue with at least part of almost all the points in the summary.
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It's never their fault is it? No responsibility for anything. Always lay the blame at the feet of others. This is why they get away with everything they do. If the opposition agreed with them; they were weak. If they disagreed with them: they were political point scoring. Is this what we have become??
 
southshorepool said:
It's never their fault is it? No responsibility for anything. Always lay the blame at the feet of others. This is why they get away with everything they do. If the opposition agreed with them; they were weak. If they disagreed with them: they were political point scoring. Is this what we have become??
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You wouldn’t want to be in Matt Hancock, Sir Patrick Vallence or Chris Whitty’s shoes right now would you? I fear a - so beloved of Johnson - big red bus is heading their way, it’s icy and all three are wearing glass slippers!
 
Scandalous neglect and lack of leadership from Johnson. This is still happening now. As usual he was making jokes about Covid at the beginning. We didn't learn from what other countries were doing . Now we still have 40,000 cases per day , near neighbours in Europe have about 2 or 3,000 per day. Wales has more idea what to do it seems . Limited mask wearing,no vaccine passes required here, schools allowed to be lax about it and not given support.
 
Always tangerine said:
Scandalous neglect and lack of leadership from Johnson. This is still happening now. As usual he was making jokes about Covid at the beginning. We didn't learn from what other countries were doing . Now we still have 40,000 cases per day , near neighbours in Europe have about 2 or 3,000 per day. Wales has more idea what to do it seems . Limited mask wearing,no vaccine passes required here, schools allowed to be lax about it and not given support.
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Learn from which countries?
 
1966_and_all_that said:
How many times...? The Civil Service carries out the instructions of Ministers.
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Yes, often slowly and incompetently, which is where the problems have come from.

If it's any consolation I don't think the report is particularly damning, and much of the criticism is misguided as well.


1966_and_all_that said:
The Civil Service did not command that the early response to the pandemic should be one of herd immunity.
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No, that was SAGE advice, in any event all responses to Covid are eventually herd immunity.


1966_and_all_that said:
Nevertheless, Ministers failed to extend the range of scientific advice they could have used from other countries, particularly from Korea in the early stages of the pandemic.
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That's a huge mistake by the report, the assumption that differences in outcome between the UK and other countries were due to policy response and not other factors outside of the government's control, or indeed that there were substantial differences in policy response in the first place.
 
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Lost Seasider said:
Yes, often slowly and incompetently, which is where the problems have come from.

If it's any consolation I don't think the report is particularly damning, and much of the criticism is misguided as well.




No, that was SAGE advice, in any event all responses to Covid are eventually herd immunity.




That's a huge mistake by the report, the assumption that differences in outcome between the UK and other countries were due to policy response and not other factors outside of the government's control, or indeed that there were substantial differences in policy response in the first place.
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You really are unbelievable. You have no concept of accepting a criticism of the Tory Party. The joint report heard reams of evidence from lots of people:Govt Ministers, scientific advisors, the NHS and other important people. You were party to none of that evidence and yet you have the gall to call out the results of the report.
 
1966_and_all_that said:
You really are unbelievable. You have no concept of accepting a criticism of the Tory Party. The joint report heard reams of evidence from lots of people:Govt Ministers, scientific advisors, the NHS and other important people. You were party to none of that evidence and yet you have the gall to call out the results of the report.
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And I very much doubt if the report has been read in full either.
 
southshorepool said:
It's never their fault is it? No responsibility for anything. Always lay the blame at the feet of others. This is why they get away with everything they do. If the opposition agreed with them; they were weak. If they disagreed with them: they were political point scoring. Is this what we have become??
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1) If you correctly criticise the government for not making preperations before a crisis then you are scare-mongering.

2) If you correctly criticise the government for making wrong decisions during a crisis then you hate this country and are unpatriotic.

3) If you correctly criticise the government for making wrong decisions after a crisis then you are captain hindsight.

You can tick the above off time after time by the apologists.
 
1966_and_all_that said:
You really are unbelievable. You have no concept of accepting a criticism of the Tory Party. The joint report heard reams of evidence from lots of people:Govt Ministers, scientific advisors, the NHS and other important people. You were party to none of that evidence and yet you have the gall to call out the results of the report.
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It’s a Bozza trait
 
www.bbc.co.uk

Cummings: Government system for crises 'a disaster'

Dominic Cummings calls for a "new political system" as the UK has a "joke" PM and opposition leader.
www.bbc.co.uk

Nice sidestep from the Dominic Cummings, he knew all about the problems in 2019 and had nothing to do with any of the mistakes that happened, despite being at the centre of all of the decision making during the early days of the pandemic.
I do actually agree with him about the political system.
 
1966_and_all_that said:
You really are unbelievable. You have no concept of accepting a criticism of the Tory Party. The joint report heard reams of evidence from lots of people:Govt Ministers, scientific advisors, the NHS and other important people. You were party to none of that evidence and yet you have the gall to call out the results of the report.
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The testimony was televised and I watched a lot of it, particularly the bits involving the CSA and CMO.

The bits I'm calling out now are exactly what I noticed at the time, the fact that the chair seemed to believe that we could have avoided it all if we'd simply followed the Korean system was obvious, it was also bulls***.
 
I’ve not read the report but have heard lots of media discussion including interviews with MPs and others.

What I’ve picked up so far is:-

1. Many failings - including historical ones around preparedness when Jeremy Hunt was Health Minister

2. Our slowness to respond initially was primarily due to a ‘group think’ by the scientists. They thought there was nothing we could do once community transmission had begun.

3. The same people that presided over poor decisions were the ones who presides over the success of the vaccination programme.

4. There was huge uncertainty at the beginning and we perhaps thought we could manage it like the flu.

5. We failed to put a ring of protraction around care homes.

6. Test and trace was introduced too late. By the time it got going there was widespread community transmission.

There were many failings but there would have been many failings no matter who was in charge.

This thread shouldn’t be an excuse to bash Boris about the number of kids he has etc. He’s the PM of course and ultimately responsible. But it’s doing a disservice to make this about Boris. It’s so much wider than that. We need a mature analysis of what went wrong so we can make sure mistakes are learned and we are better placed for the future.

By the way, it’s worth considering the mistakes made by the World Health Organisation. They took a position of advising countries not to discourage travel. They did this because they considered a travel ban was more harmful to public health due to the economic impact (which affects health as poorer nations have poorer health). So they took a judgement that travel should continue despite what they knew about Covid 19 at the time. That proved to be a calamitous position to take.
 
Malced said:
I’ve not read the report but have heard lots of media discussion including interviews with MPs and others.

What I’ve picked up so far is:-

1. Many failings - including historical ones around preparedness when Jeremy Hunt was Health Minister

2. Our slowness to respond initially was primarily due to a ‘group think’ by the scientists. They thought there was nothing we could do once community transmission had begun.

3. The same people that presided over poor decisions were the ones who presides over the success of the vaccination programme.

4. There was huge uncertainty at the beginning and we perhaps thought we could manage it like the flu.

5. We failed to put a ring of protraction around care homes.

6. Test and trace was introduced too late. By the time it got going there was widespread community transmission.

There were many failings but there would have been many failings no matter who was in charge.

This thread shouldn’t be an excuse to bash Boris about the number of kids he has etc. He’s the PM of course and ultimately responsible. But it’s doing a disservice to make this about Boris. It’s so much wider than that. We need a mature analysis of what went wrong so we can make sure mistakes are learned and we are better placed for the future.

By the way, it’s worth considering the mistakes made by the World Health Organisation. They took a position of advising countries not to discourage travel. They did this because they considered a travel ban was more harmful to public health due to the economic impact (which affects health as poorer nations have poorer health). So they took a judgement that travel should continue despite what they knew about Covid 19 at the time. That proved to be a calamitous position to take.
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Mature and Boris are completely incompatible. Someone with a complete inability to act on detailed information was the worst.possible character type to be in charge as the pandemic struck.

He was always going to avoid making a decision and would ignore anything he felt would make him unpopular, such as introducing a timely lockdown.

I've no time for Theresa but she would have acted more decisively having actually read and considered the options.
 
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