Priti Patel said yesterday:
"I'm sorry if people feel that there have been failings. I will be very, very clear about that."
It would be better to have said:
"I'm sorry that there have been failings.
That is being very, very clear about that."
"But at the same time, we are in an unprecedented global health pandemic right now. It is inevitable that the demand and the pressures on PPE and demand for PPE are going to be exponential."
All true.
Except these shortages were predicted beforehand by a government report whose advice the Tory government chose to ignore.
According to the BBC website, Matt Hancock "said on Friday
there was enough kit for everyone and unveiled a plan to address shortages. He said the
government was looking into how NHS staff who had died with the virus had been infected - adding that some may have caught it outside of work."
'Mealy-mouthed' is apparently a buzzword on this thread. I think it is mealy-mouthed of Hancock to try and deflect blame for deaths of NHS staff away from the government's failure to provide them with correct protective equipment, to the possibility that that wasn't the reason they died - they might very well have caught it outside of work. This is such a lily-livered, shameless failure to take responsibility. The viral load, we have learned, is critical in terms of the outcome of this virus. Is Hancock suggesting that the viral load of their lives "outside of work" was great enough to be responsible for their deaths? Or is this just for the benefit of the Daily Mail readers - "It probably wasn't our fault anyway..."?
"But that doesn't take away from the bravery of every single NHS worker," he said, adding that his "heart goes out" to those who have died and their families.
Mr Hancock said he was "particularly struck at the high proportion of people from minority ethnic backgrounds and people who have come to this country to work in the NHS who have died of coronavirus".
"We should recognise their enormous contribution," he added.
Should? Should??? Not time for a modal verb that is not qualified, Mr Hancock. Either:
"
We recognise their enormous contribution." or "We should,
and we do, recognise their enormous contribution,"
Mealy-mouthed, Matt?