Brexit

People voted for the Tories for two main reasons - 1. To get Brexit done. 2 Because the opposition leader was clearly unelectable.
I don't believe most voters knew that Cummings wants to dismantle two of the tried and trusted cornerstones of our democracy - the independence of the judiciary and the civil service. He is, without doubt, a very clever and skilled operator. But he is also a very dangerous person at the heart of government.

His integrity is, of course, at issue over his hypocritical flouting of the rules that he helped make and publicise.

 

Sorry Park, that doesn't wash. The government listened to a small cohort of scientists whom their party appointed and who were largely saying what they wanted to hear. There were many other scientists saying different things who were ignored. Not to mention the centuries of international experience in dealing with pandemics that other countries followed and we didn't. And they undermined the independent scientific advice by putting Cummings in the meetings that were supposedly independent, which several scientists have said had an impact on the advice. They also failed to have Public Health experts in any positions of influence and have consistently cut the local public health services out of the loop. Most countries that have managed the virus well have utilised the knowledge, expertise and proximity of local public health teams to run efficient testing and tracing systems. Ours has farmed these out to private outsourcing firms like Serco, with predictably chaotic results.
The government's bad decisions are down to the government, not the scientists.

 

Italy and Spain had the virus significantly ahead of us. We had time to learn from their mistakes but chose not to. Compare our response to South Korea, Germany and Greece, who were all hit by the virus ahead of us but followed tried and tested methods (shut the borders; lockdown fast and hard; test, test, test; track & trace). They did all the things right that we did wrong, despite having less warning and without our advantage of being an island.

 

I don't know what time Germany went into lockdown but it wasn't in lockdown when i was there at the end of February. In fact there was very little if any sign of the Corona virus. I have no idea about the other two countries.

 

That's one hell of a comment, suggesting they could have had better advice but they only listened to people they had appointed, and didnt take notice of other because they weren't appointed by the Tories.

 

I never said that they didn't listen because they weren't appointed by Tories. I said that they listened to a narrow range of advice from doctors that they appointed. Subtle but important difference.
What is clear is that the government chose to follow advice that was out of line with established pandemic practice and against World Health Authority advice.

https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-scientists-split-coronavirus-advice-to-government/

 

Germany went into full lockdown the same weekend as us but closed schools and nurseries ten days before that. They also closed their borders on 15th March, which we still haven't done.
The other big difference was that they had efficient and extensive testing and contact tracing in place for weeks before then, as well as plentiful PPE, so their death rate was much lower than ours.

 

Do you seriously expect the general public to have been clamouring for lockdown? Of course they weren't. It's in situations like this that governments have to lead. Johnson chose to disappear to the country when he should have been attending Cobra meetings.

The timing of lockdown is only one aspect of it. Every successful attempt to combat a pandemic involves timely and widespread testing, diligent contact tracing and stopping inward movements. This is obvious common sense and established pandemic practice. Our government abandoned the first two at the first hurdle and has never done the latter (under pressure from business leaders and the airlines). Sorry, there's no getting away from this; they had a series of choices and made all of the wrong ones.

 

Our unpreparedness was certainly a big factor. The running down of PPE stocks was unforgivable. But the government compounded the problem big time by its failure to plan in February and its decisions to keep our borders open and abandon testing/contact tracing early. As a result the virus was widespread by the time they acted.

 

You're implying they took the advice of Tory appointed scientists rather than other scientists who weren't even though it was offered.
If they had taken notice of the others are you suggesting things would be better as I've not seen any scientists telling the media we told them that was the ways to go but unfortunatly they took other advice (ironically scientists they had appointed) ?.
Let's not beat about the bush Steve no matter who the leader had been as a socialist you would have criticised as and when ever you could ( and I get that) but the fact that it is Boris who has laid the road to brexit out makes you even more annoyed, you say dely the dead line yet talks were going on and they will continue again in June.

 

You can choose to believe that if you want Dave. But I'm capable of differentiating between competent Tories and incompetent ones.
This has nothing to do with Brexit, except in the the sense that Johnson has appointed a cabinet nearly full of subservients who will go along with want he wants, even though many of them - Raab, Patel, Hancock, Truss - are clearly hopeless. And I mean that by comparison with other competent Tories.

I hated Thatcher, but I can recognise that she was competent and a leader, even if I didn't like what she did. John Major would have been a competent leader at this time too. But Johnson isn't. He showed himself to be an incompetent liar well before he led the Brexit charge. He was an utterly terrible Foreign Minister.
Johnson didn't appoint the Chief Medical Officer and other government scientists. But, because he's lazy and has poor grasp of detail, he failed to question why the advice they gave him was out of step with the WTO and established pandemic practice. And also against what some members of Sage were saying at the time. He was too busy sorting out his divorce when he should have been heading up Cobra meetings and planning for the pandemic.
It's beyond me that you can't see that trying to sort out a compromise EU deal is difficult and needs careful negotiation, not being rushed through while all of Europe is consumed with pandemic issues. The fact is that you want us to leave without a deal, whether or not that is disastrous for our economy. Your priority is to get us out as quickly as possible, regardless of the consequences. Which is why you are apparently prepared to turn a blind eye to Johnson's monumental bungling, that has led to so many unnecessary deaths, and forgive anything he does, however crass and disastrous.

 

Just a couple of points,
Why are you surprised he's mainly a cabinet of pro brexit, we don't need falling out over Brexit we need it delivering by the end of the year.
You say "It's beyond me that you can't see that trying to sort out a compromise EU deal is difficult and needs careful negotiation" that's all well and good as long as the people at the other side of the table realise we dont want to be any part of the EU going forward and they are saying (Macron's especially) fishing waters have to be part of a deal, no they dont but I'm sure Frost would be quite prepared to offer an annual quote for a little give from the EU side.
We dont need brexit to drag on hence the December deadline, there is no reason why negotiation cant carry on, many businesses are doing it without being face to face over a table, so yes if it cant be done within the 12 month deadline or we leave.


Not sure your last comment with regards Boris is correct the PPE and other things at the start of this pandemic were poor organisation and I post such.
He's hardly had any chance to put other things in place

 

Agree, what's wrong with us fishing OUR waters then selling the fish to the EU ?

 

Exactly.
What committed Brexiteers like @Bronco seem to want is for the EU to give us our preferred 'have cake and eat it' option. So we choose to leave the club, stop paying our subs and insist on being free to make our own rules, with which to undercut their competitiveness. But we still want to retain the main benefits of membership - tariff-free trade and no customs checks! You really couldn't make it up.
When the EU declines to shoot itself in the head by giving us these absurd advantages, they are labelled as 'threatening', 'rigid' or 'intransigent'.

What exactly are we putting on the table as part of any attempt at compromise? Nothing that I can see. All of May's red lines are still in place, so what are we offering them as payment for access to their free market?

Fishing is one of those red herrings (ha!) that is often bandied about by Brexiteers. But in the broad scheme of things it's insignificant. 70% of the fish we eat is imported. Most of what is caught in our waters is fish that Brits don't much like, such as herring, and is exported to Europe. The fishing rights issue is really not something that we should be getting our knickers in a twist about.
It represents around 0.01% of our economy.

 

EU now offering a 2 year transition period to allow negotiations, Then Another 2 years, Then another 2 years, Etc Etc

Thankfully the UK team have seen through it and said no thanks, We fully leave in December with whatever deal we have

 

Tariffs and quotas work both ways, A limit or even ban on cars, wines, and some foodstuffs that are allowed to imported from EU countries will concentrate minds with industry putting immense pressure on the EU to make a deal,
Meanwhile the goods imported from the EU can easily be replaced maybe even at a lower cost.