I agree with most of that. Labour should win the next election easily. They will still have to prove themselves as a competent government though. I don't think its unreasonable to suggest that the calibre of politicians, across the board, has been pretty low recently. And that though a change in ruling party is welcome at this time, the people in power, no matter which party they come from, all really need to show us much more.
If Labour hadn't voted in the political equivalent of Boaty McBoatface in 2016 they'd likely have been in government by now. All the damage done means they're starting from zero in 2020. It takes time for defeated parties to learn to win again and they wasted the best part of ten years to end up with less seats and the resurgence of the lunatic fringe that Blair managed to finally shut up. They'll win the next election by default rather than by being any better, and the internal war will kick off almost immediately. Will the Tories go away and learn to win again? If they don't we're in the terminal spiral for politics, where the least awful wins rather than anyone with any chance of improving things.
After thirteen years, and zero progress, a change is inevitable. And since Sunak pledged to stop the boats the numbers have increased, since he promised to halve inflation it's stayed the same ... ... not that a government can control inflation itself, the BoE does that. So, another PM, who seems a bit cowardly, and no real progress. I think we deserve better than hearing it's all just global issues and we need to eccomise better. The government don't seem to be doing too well with their economy tbh.
Tremendous post mate. We have plenty in common. The PFI approach still rankles with me. It was a Lawson scheme but my word did Blair and Brown use it heavily. I recently was talking to my local labour councillors about a local problem. PFI was a problem we couldnt unravel. The older of the councillors said to me there has to be lessons learnt from PFI. As to our schools and pre University education. It is a crisis in my opinion. My wife is a teacher and the things I see and hear are hard to accept. In particular I think this is an area of terrible under investment. Education is always number 1 priority for me. I have been a critic of Starmer on here. I still think he changes his mind with the weather. If he is a hard working PM with some solid hard working people around him maybe they will be a better govt than I expect. It is going to be a difficult time to run the country though I suspect.
She does seem very on it... She and some poor Con were being interviewed... the Con said something silly about the economy. Reeves, (reminded me of one of the best female teachers at my school, when I said something stupid) just looked at him with a pitying look, you silly boy type of face, laughed with that deep laugh of hers (put on or natural?) and explained his error. The con just visibly shrunk.
Although I agree with your sentiments about Corbyn and agree we can’t guarantee the next lot, it’s blatantly obvious now, pretty much factual that many people were bluffed and hoodwinked by a lying narcissist and it’s high time they admitted they were wrong, stupid even. I think there would have been many many things wrong with a Corbyn government but definitely not industrial scale corruption and a large scale redistribution of wealth to those most comfortable and that’s been bad for democracy not just the country.
I've liked what I have seen of Reeves, Nandy on the other hand seems a bit flighty, seems to easily loose her cool when challenged iirc.
Sorry, but l don't see it as Black and White. As a floating voter over my life time, l look to who will be my best option for my family and my country and they will get my vote. I agree this lot have fxxked up and the pivotal reason was a Cameron/ Clegg referendum, which was the downfall to the shambles we now have. Just my opinion. I have consistently posted that l cannot see any real potential in either of the main parties at the next election at the present time, although we have a year to go. Neither party inspire me and l may not vote at all for the first time ever.
Not sure on the maths, but brexit vote was 2016 and that for me was the beginning of the shambles. If only David Lord Sutch was alive today, he would of been proud of this lot.
I don't think we should underestimate things that truly are global issues and therefore out of the government's hands. Equally, like inflation and the boats, there are plenty of things that government can't control but they like to pretend that they can. I'd like to see the government, any government, be a bit more honest about what they can and can't control. Equally though, the public have to be a bit more savvy about what the government can actually do. There are lots of things that people complain about or expect the government to deal with that are actually societal issues that go beyond what the government can do and will only really change if people's attitudes and opinions change.
Brilliant post and as near as possible to my political leanings. In our three score years and ten there has never been anything other than a government led by either Conservative or Labour and I would bet my house that there never will be during my lifetime. We don't have PR, we have first past the post so in reality our choice is binary, and that won't change in the foreseeable future. I don't vote for individuals in a GE, I vote for the manifesto and what I believe are the principles of the party and because I have a social conscience I generally vote Labour. For all of their faults, and I appreciate there are many, their principles are directed towards improving the NHS, the welfare state, Social Care, Equality and generally improving the standard of living of those in most need. The beauty of a democracy is that we vote for who we want to and as an electorate get the government we deserve. I despise all of the tribalism creeping into politics, whichever government we have we are all effected by their decisions and have the opportunity to hold them to account at the next GE. There are many things that I don't agree with Labour, such as the Armed Forces, Trident and Law and Order, but I agree with more of their principles than I do with the Conservatives and that is the reason I vote the way I do.
I think Johnson's attitude to governing and to the truth have been bad for democracy. I'm not sure it's accurate to say that people were hoodwinked by him or were stupid. At the time of the 2019 GE, in what was effectively a straight choice of a government led by him or one led by Corbyn, I think people were left with a very difficult choice. Personally, I remain convinced that we would have been in a similarly bad, if not worse, situation now if we'd have had PM Corbyn. It wouldn't necessarily have been for the same reasons or of the same nature, but I think we would inevitably have seen enquiries and and parliamentary wrangling of a similar magnitude.
Fresh warning of sewage discharges at Warkworth, Amble and Druridge Bay “Northumbrian Water have paid out hundreds of millions of pounds to shareholders and that really sticks in my throat – a lot like the pollution in the sea." https://www.northumberlandgazette.c...s-at-warkworth-amble-and-druridge-bay-4190481
Right on my doorstep Smug, my mates wife is a member of a cold water swimming group and regularly swims off Druridge, so I will show her this article
Sorry this is long, but i finally tracked down Exercise Cygnet by the NHS on how to handle a pandemic.. It comes from the Daily Telegraph! The six crucial pandemic lessons the government ignored Last week ministers were finally forced to publish the secret report on Exercise Cygnus. It's in the report’s detail that the danger lies ByPaul Nuki, GLOBAL HEALTH SECURITY EDITOR, LONDON25 October 2020 • 1:30pm It took seven months, the threat of legal action and the intervention of the Information Commissioner but on Tuesday Whitehall reluctantly published its secret report on Exercise Cygnus, the ill-fated simulation which exposed the weakness of Britain’s pandemic plans a full three years before the coronavirus hit. The existence of the cross-government exercise and its “terrifying” high-level findings were first detailed by the Telegraph on March 28. But the full report, marked “Official - Sensitive” (now redacted) on each of its 57 closely worded pages, was kept under wraps. Despite formal applications for its release by the Telegraph and others under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act and a copy being leaked to the Guardian in May, Whitehall refused to publish, arguing that to do so would undermine the formulation of government policy. The health minister Lord Bethell, a former journalist and nightclub manager, told the House of Lords in June that reports of Cygnus-style simulations should remain secret “so that the unthinkable can be thought”. But last week the Information Commissioner’s Office rejected the Government’s case and ordered that the report be released no later than October 23. The battle lost, officials at the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) quietly published the report last Tuesday amid the media storm over Manchester’s lockdown - a good day to bury bad news. And bad news it is. The Telegraph understands that there are several subsidiary reports relating to Cygnus that have yet to be released but the document published on Tuesday is enough to have officials and ministers squirming. It states bluntly that “the UK’s preparedness and response, in terms of its plans, policies and capability, is currently not sufficient to cope with the extreme demands of a severe pandemic”. And it exposes as false the claim relayed by the Health Secretary Matt Hancock from his officials that “everything that was recommended [in the report] was done”. Although wrapped in the verbose language of Whitehall, it is in the report’s detail that the danger for Government lies. Officials have published the document with the search and copy functions turned off (in breach of policy), but the further the Covid-19 pandemic progresses, the more salient its long-buried lessons become. Here are five highlights and one big unanswered question: 1/ Surge capacity, population triage and the NHS Problem: Cygnus modelled a respiratory pandemic very similar to what Covid-19 turned out to be. Left unmitigated (which it was in the simulation, for reasons not fully explained) between 200,000 and 400,000 excess deaths were expected and NHS capacity was quickly overwhelmed. The twin issues of “surge capacity” and “population-based triage” (who is treated and who is not) were therefore central to the Cygnus war game, just as they have been with Covid-19. On the issue of triage, the report cryptically notes: “On the first day of the exercise a decision was made to consider an alternative model of population based triage to manage capacity and respond to the excessive demand for hospital care as set out by the exercise scenario.” As the Telegraph reveals today, this is an oblique reference to a decision by the then Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt to “stop playing” when he was asked in a faux Cobra meeting to make the final call on who should be treated and who should not. Mr Hunt says he was within his rights to do so. He says he was asked to turn off 4,000 ventilators, believing that to be “morally repugnant” and so paused the exercise. But others involved say he undermined the simulation by refusing to play by the rules. The report says responsibility for the final decision on triage was then passed to the NHS during the exercise. It does not say exactly what then happened, but it is clear hospitals were emptied, care-homes were overwhelmed and bodies quickly piled up. “We’ve just had in the UK a three-day exercise on flu on a pandemic that killed a lot of people”, Dame Sally Davies the then Chief medical Officer said of Cygnus in December 2016. “It became clear that we could not cope with the excess bodies, for instance”. Recommendations: On triage, the report says the Chief Medical Officers of the four nations should be asked to come up with a plan. It should cover the “triggers” for such a policy and (not surprisingly given what had unfolded in the dry run) a “proposal for who would make the decision to move to population-based triage and in what circumstances”. On surge capacity, “further work” was also recommended. The NHS was charged with modelling the impact of hospital closures to “identify lives saved or lost”. It was also asked to devise a “rapid discharge protocol” so better decisions could be made on whether someone stays in hospital or is “discharged to residential care.” Results: It is not known if the recommendations were actioned or the protocols created ahead of Covid-19. Prof Neil Ferguson of Imperial said in March that one of the reasons it had been hard to model the impact of the virus on the UK in a timely fashion was because NHS capacity data was late in coming. The decision to close the NHS to non-emergency cases and empty its beds of non-Covid patients (mainly the old) was made in public at least by Simon Stevens, the Chief executive of the NHS. If a pre-pandemic tally exists of the estimated “lives saved or lost” through these actions, it has not been made public. The only known triage protocol related to Covid was published on March 21 by NICE. 2/ The danger of “silos”, disparate plans and localism Problem: Cygnus, which involved 950 representatives from local and central government and many other bodies, exposed “silo planning between and within some organisations” and a good degree of confusion as a result. There was a “lack of understanding about the potential impacts of a pandemic”. Some had plans, others didn’t, and the devolved administrations had their own strategies. Some were up to date, others weren’t. Some relied on documents and protocols that no longer existed. “It became clear there is no overview of pandemic response plans and procedures”, says the report. “There are too many plans [and] there’s a question about how up to date all the plans are and whether there are contradictions between them”, it quotes one participant as saying. Recommendations: Cygnus recommended a single body be set up - a “Pandemic Concept of Operations” - to avoid similar chaos in a real pandemic. Result: No single body was set up to coordinate information and disparate, often conflicting actions within and between government departments and localities has been a hallmark of the UK’s response to Covid-19. 3/ Department of Education (DFE) to study the impact of school closures on society Problem: Schools were hit hard in Cygnus. The simulated pandemic forced the closure of many and it became clear that contingency planning was needed. Recommendations: DFE was asked to “examine the impact of school closures” on society and create backup plans. Result: Few if any contingency plans appear to have been put in place ahead of Covid-19, nor is it understood what long term impact school closures will have. Schools were forced to close by Covid and the lack of online teaching and the exams fiasco have left lasting scars. In a grid on page 47 of the Cygnus report, detailing which participants engaged with the exercise by providing feedback, the DFE’s entry is blank in all four columns. 4/ Care home capacity planning and “ring-fenced” funding Problem: Cygnus identified that care-homes would be a pinch point, predicting that hospitals would need to move patients into homes and that the sector could be overwhelmed. “Social care is currently under significant pressure…. [yet] there was little attention paid to this sector by ministers during the [Cygnus] Cobra meetings”, notes the report. “Any extra pressure on the Social Care sector could be very challenging”. Recommendations: The report makes a series of recommendations to avert disaster in the sector including an audit of care home capacity, “ring-fenced” funds, provision of PPE and active engagement with providers on the vital issue of “surge capacity”. Results: Social care budgets were cut and the sector was caught off guard by Covid-19. The policy of moving hundreds of patients from hospitals into homes is thought to have caused the virus to spread and many vulnerable residents to die. Providers say they were not engaged ahead of time on surge capacity or pandemic planning. 5/ Data and the efficient flow of information Problem: Cygnus identified that the flow of data in a pandemic could quickly become problematic. Participants were “overwhelmed” by what was being requested from them. Local bodies said data coming from the centre “impeded their ability to act”, while the central government struggled to make sense of what it was receiving from the regions. Recommendation: The report recommends a cross-government working group be established to “consider carefully the information needed to guide the response.” Result: The inefficient flow of data between central and local government has been widely criticised as hindering the UK Covid-19 response. 6/ Social distancing, the missing key Whitehall is under mounting pressure to explain why, unlike countries including Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore and even the US, it did not have plans in place to slow the spread of a pandemic virus through early social distancing or so-called non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs). In a preamble to the Cygnus report published last week on the DHSC website, officials frame the document in a way that deflects this criticism. “The aim was to test systems to the extreme, to identify strengths and weaknesses in the UK’s response plans, which would then inform improvements in our resilience”, it says. “Exercise Cygnus was not designed to consider other potential pandemics [beyond influenza], or to identify what action could be taken to prevent widespread transmission”. The same defence was run up the pole last week by Lord Sedwill, the recently departed head of the civil service, in his first media interview since leaving Downing Street. “If it had been a different pandemic by the way, the answer wouldn't have been a lockdown”, he said. This is not correct. The NPIs other countries had in place were explicitly designed to deal with influenza. Like the UK, they also saw flu as the most likely pandemic candidate - the whole world did. As experts involved in putting those social distancing protocols in place recently told the Telegraph, the notion that influenza is unstoppable through social distancing is “colossally stupid” and “palpably false”. It is also not the case that Exercise Cygnus only looked at the late stages of a pandemic. Although the bulk Cygnus was run in week seven - the “treatment and escalation” phases of the simulated pandemic - it included an element codenamed Exercise Cygnet which covered week four which sits firmly in the “detection and assessment” timeframe. The report reveals that Cygnet recommended a “whole system” approach to the distribution of PPE covering both NHS and social care staff. It also called on Public Health England to “define and communicate” who will receive PPE from the national stockpile in the event of a pandemic so others, including private businesses, could make their own arrangements to protect workers in advance. But what Cygnet, like Cygnus, did not do is consider how a pandemic virus might be stopped, as happened in so much of southeast Asia. Of all the mysteries surrounding Exercise Cygnus, this remains the biggest unanswered question. Why did the simulation not try to slow the spread of the virus in week four when the tools existed to do so? The same question will be asked of the government's response to Covid-19.
