Where will it end... 12th September as it happens

And the reason for that is the measures that are in place. If the goverment relax the rules all these people calling for change will be silent if we get a second wave Starmer for instance won’t say whether or not he was in favour of cutting the 2 metre rule

 

And rightly so he shouldn’t. He won’t be at the sage meetings so won’t know science behind it

 

Why should he? He's not in the Sage meetings. He doesn't have a team of scientist around him.

It's not up to Labour or any other party to come up with alternatives in this situation. It's down to Boris and the Conservatives to make sure they get things right but currently the UK is a mess because of them.

 

This government have had to be told and told before they act on something. Nothing is planned or before the event it seems. They flip flop between whatever is current and have had to do a fair few u turns recently. A pandemic is hiding a truly awful cabinet who were only designed to sort out brexit and nothing else

 

Your right he doesn’t have a team of scientist behind him but you for one want him to ignore the scientists. But will be blowing your usual hot air when the rate goes up. He should ease the distances rule when the scientists say so

 

We have to get the infection rate down and quick. We are still running at a lot of new infections every day despite a lengthy lockdown. It’s looking clear from China and South Korea we will get flare ups when we think we have beat it. Ours will be much worse if we don’t get on top of it

 

I won't be blowing my hot air if the rate goes up.

However, it's not Labours job to say what the country should do. It's up to Boris to lead the country.
Highest ever unemployment rate
Highest deaths in Europe from Covid 19
In the top 3 deaths from covid 19 in the world
GDP at a record low.
Embarrassed by a football player
Furlough scheme with so many holes it
Cummings situation
Education mess


I could go on but Labour just need to sit back and watch one of the worst leaders this country has ever had just hang himself.

Think it's time to lead the country rather than listen to scientists myself

 

Have to agree, and the best defence of Boris I've read is 'He's doing his best in difficult times'.

It increasingly looks like Boris Johnson's best is nowhere near good enough.

 

I agree it’s not Labours job they just sit there being opportunistic
The unemployment rate would be much higher if it wasn’t for the excellent furlough scheme
We have a much higher population than most European countries with a very high desensitised
Haven’t you noticed we have been shut down for three months
No embarrassment at all they listened and acted
Probably the best Furlough scheme anywhere
Cummins broke no laws
Ask your friends the unions and labour controlled councils about education
Unlike other countries our NHS coped with the virus noe shortage of ventilation and the lowest rate of fatalities in care homes in Europe
We are also leading the world in the search for a vaccine funded by the goverment

 

Let’s see where we are in another 4.5 years that will be the time to judge

 

When the country has handled a crisis as badly as any other country on Earth by any significant measure, I'd say it's already a good time to pass some level of judgement.

There has been nothing good or successful about Boris Johnson's leadership so far - but of course he only wanted the post so he could be Mr Brexit. It was supposed to be much easier than this...

When you pretend you're a hardline Eurosceptic when you've previously espoused pro-EU sentiment, you should get an easier ride than this.

Poor Boris. He's not looking quite as Churchillian as he'd like, is he?

 

The furlough scheme isn't excellent at all. It felled to protect new starters, new businesses, directors about 3m people.

Then the Furlough is like a life support machine and when it's turned off many will lose their jobs. That process has started and this week it will go to another level.

Other countries have been shut but handled the situation 10 times better

We can't make excuses for failure and this country failed unless you're proud of our death rate, high unemployment and lack of direction from a useless PM.

 

I knew we should have all voted for The Hindsight party...

 

Very few prime minister in history have had to deal with what has had to do in the last 6 months. The country had no preparation for this at all because of previous administrations. No stockpile of PPE zero testing capacity unlike countries like Germany which had at the outset capacity for a million tests. The government have at all stages acted on scientific advice. It’s very easy to be critical sitting on the sidelines.
As I say the time to judge him will be at the end of this parliament plenty of time to make a difference good or bad

 

It's full of disenfranchised ex Tories, Corbynites, Lib Dems, Nutters and George Galloway from the NoRespect party

And other no-hopers like that idiot from Leave (the one who was an MEP in Brussels for years, and thought we shouldn't be in Europe)

 

We HAD a stockpile of PPE, actually, but it was allowed to expire under the Conservative government. That has proved an enormous failure.

We HAD opportunity to prepare as well as any other nation, but somehow have performed worse. Could it be that Boris didn't take the opportunity to prepare seriously when he refused to attend emergency meetings, failed to heed WHO advise, and effectively put himself in the ICU by way of his own actions?

The government have NOT at all stages acted on scientific advice, and still fail to update their stance on scientific advice.

These are all ways you attempt to defend Boris, but are all ways in which Boris, personally, has chosen to fail.

 

Where have gone against scientific advice. Can you remember all the talk of how the NHS was going to be overwhelmed and how we didn’t have the ventilators.
The goverment have made scientifically lead mistakes and how badly that cost us when a fair comparison is made at the end of this pandemic

 

Don't know about back home but if it is anything like here, the "scientists" is simply a device to shift blame. How often do you actually get statements from these scientists that unequivocally supports what seem to be political decisions? How often does a talking head say "the data says" and then not offer any supporting data? (I'm thinking a state south of here). We are lucky that we have a fella, Fauci, who is happy to offer a different view when States and the current leaders of the country make mention of policy decisions based on spurious science or data or even worse, outright wilful misrepresentation of that data or science. But who cares, the talking heads speak with relative impunity.

 

Where have we gone against scientific advice? Will the basics do?

The virus was mapped in January.
There were candidates for vaccines in February.
We eventually closed down in March 23, months after the advise of bodies like the World Health Organisation.

As @Tennesseebantam points out, there's this nonsense idea about scientific advice being totally neutral and value-free, completely disparate from the politics of the MP's that they're giving their information to. However, the wider scientific community was advising nations on locking down far, far, far sooner than we did, although it might be true that the government wasn't getting the same advice from their own people.

WHY MIGHT THAT BE?

Well, the World Health Organisation (experts in infectious diseases) was ignored by a crack team called Sage that did not have or appear to even consult any prominent viral or molecular epidemiologists the world over. And while I'm copying this from a Guardian article, it tells you a little bit about the 'scientists' advising Boris:

"The group (Sage) includes no molecular virologists who could explain detailed pathogenic differences between Covid-19 and influenza, not one intensive care expert or nursing leader, and no immunologist to examine whether this virus produces lasting and protective immunity. There are no social scientists who could work on community engagement, nor a logistician, who would have expertise in planning for the delivery of supplies and resources during a pandemic."

So while there's a nonsense argument that the government followed it's own closest advisers, that does not in any way abdicate their responsibility to listen to, you know, actual experts who aren't specifically employed by Sage and who know a lot, lot more about it.

Perhaps if the government had adequately prepared in terms of maintaining (not creating) PPE stockpiles, had a team in place that could give effective and accurate advice, were actually EXPERTS and not just scientists, we wouldn't be in this mess.

But the only defence of this colossal mess is 'it's hard' and 'at least it's not Corbyn' - both nonsense responses.