I guess they are comparing his decisions to those of Captain Hindsight, especially regarding COVID.
They were not proactive in the slightest ,this cost lives as for “the other big calls” vaccine roll out ,coping through huge inflows to hospitals whilst still managing to provide health cover at all… thank the NHS ,scientists and volunteers that saved his ass!
I guess the biggest call was whether or not 150k people died and it seems that he wanted that and is happy with the outcome.
He delayed enacting vital measures by over 2 weeks at the start
Even if they got bits right later I won’t forget being forced to go to work for that 2 weeks while they allowed flights full of carriers in from Italy
[removed]
Yet the insane amount of deaths will be glossed over and the majority of the media will ignore these as they are all owned by 4-5 right wing billionaires
Highest covid death rate in Europe would suggest otherwise.
There are 155,613 now silent voices who may have questioned this assertion were they still with us and able to do so.
We’ve avoided economic collapse, and I suppose its possible that more people could have died had this been managed less effectively. But no one is holding the UK up as a paradigm of success here.
Frankly, if the decision to break the rules that they themselves have set, just to have a party to enjoy themselves isn’t a big, bold call then I don’t what they consider a big call to be.
Short answer: no.
Long answer: how is increasing tax, skyrocketing national debt, a God awful coronavirus response, huge waste of budget, and countless parliamentary scandals “getting the big calls right”? Boris has made so many bad calls these past few years, from his response to COVID, to his choice of cabinet members, to his approach on tax collection and budget changes, it’s honestly baffling that he could even think he’s doing a good job! Saying that Boris Johnson has made good calls during his time as PM is like saying the French Monarchy made the right calls during the revolution. It’s demonstrably false on so many counts that it’s honestly a joke
Nursing/Care homes?
That wasn’t a big call I guess.
The big calls:
Cabernet over Chardonnay
Victoria sponge over Red Velvet
The strategy has always been to wait until there is only one option left and then taking it. You can’t easily be blamed for taking the only option available so I suspect that has a lot to do with it.
I’d say they got the furlough scheme pretty right. It had a lot of issues and failings, but I think it was the head of the IMF commented that it helped stabilise markets around the world that the UK did it (can’t remember the exact reason).
Don’t get me wrong, I fucking hate the lot of them and hope they spend the rest of their lives with electric plugs wedged in their shoes forcing them to stand on the 3 pins. It’s worse than Lego.
Cunts.
He totally fucked it. Corona was ravaging Italy and he was making speeches about “defending the right to free exchange” and going on about shaking covid patients by the hand.
Then he dragged his feet until it was entirely too late. Fucking nob.
Fuck me no they didn’t. Locked down too late and opened up too earlier every single time. Eat out to help out the virus. The only thing they got right was buying up a shit load of vaccines.
In no way. Brexit: total failure. Covid: total failure. Economy: total failure.
HAs everyone forgotten that the only thing that saved Johnson last year was the vaccines? Tories were really gunning for him, had the vaccines arrived a couple of months later it would be a different PM taking the credit.
We have the worlds biggest health service. I think the Chinese Peoples liberation army is the only organization that employs more people than the NHS. The NHS is the world leading expert in public health. Imagine how many lives could have been saved with such a powerful advantage. If only we had effective leadership. And if they hadn’t faced 12 years of underfunding by conservative government. Fuck sake track and trace was an excel spreadsheet worth £36bn we still dont have a working track and trace system. Thousands are dead unnecessarily because of Boris and the conservatives. But Boris tells the flag shaggers he got the big calls right and they go right back to noshing him off.
Things the gov got right re Covid:
– Pushing our own vaccine R+D programme and having our own medical regulator, so we got vaccines certified and delivered very early. This is a clear success and a good policy
– Opening up as far as possible in summer and autumn 2020, including regional restrictions so safer areas could stay more open. Living under severe restrictions for a full year would have been unbearable.
– The unlocking programme in 2021 – backed by modelling and data observation and opening up at the safest time of year
– Furlough, and business support loans – kept the economy warm so jobs weren’t lost and business could resume when the immediate threat receded.
– Testing – the UK’s testing programme is one of the best in the world and that means we’ve consistently had a good picture of how much of a problem Covid is here, since about April 2020. High availability of free testing allowed us to open up more than we could have done otherwise.
Things they got wrong but were understandable:
– Not closing down international travel in Feb/Mar 2020. Covid was a very small threat to us at that time, but lots of cases were being brought back from European ski resorts especially. It is an understandable mistake because they were being told it would be racist to close off to certain countries at the time
– Not locking down earlier in March 2020. I’m not even sure this is wrong in retrospect, it’s a grey area. But it was certainly understandable not to want to impose unprecedented authoritarian measures, and nobody expected the population to be so happy to comply.
– Releasing untested outpatients back to care homes. This was a judgement call – testing capacity was low so the alternative was for healthy people to stay in hospital blocking up spaces for new patients who needed it. Probably the wrong call was made, but it’s much less clear than the media would have you believe
– Not having guidance for face coverings in early-mid 2020 – but this is because the WHO was saying they weren’t useful at the time.
Things that were obviously wrong at the time:
– Not putting London in T3 in December 2020
– Outsourcing the contact tracing rather than giving it to local authorities who already had some of these capabilities and were trusted locally
– Not suspending international travel or requiring strict quarantine throughout most of 2020
– Not working out some kind of fair way to apply furlough to self-employed people
Nope, you either lock down hard and fast, or let it burn through quickly. They managed to do neither, and end up with the worst of both.
150,000 have died. If they got the big calls right, it would have been far fewer. You would never expect the government to be perfect but the excess deaths, the PPE fiasco, Test & Trace failure, the hit to kids’ education etc. all add up. They got the big calls wrong far too many times, to the point where you have to ask what the government did right.
22 comments
I guess they are comparing his decisions to those of Captain Hindsight, especially regarding COVID.
They were not proactive in the slightest ,this cost lives as for “the other big calls” vaccine roll out ,coping through huge inflows to hospitals whilst still managing to provide health cover at all… thank the NHS ,scientists and volunteers that saved his ass!
I guess the biggest call was whether or not 150k people died and it seems that he wanted that and is happy with the outcome.
He delayed enacting vital measures by over 2 weeks at the start
Even if they got bits right later I won’t forget being forced to go to work for that 2 weeks while they allowed flights full of carriers in from Italy
[removed]
Yet the insane amount of deaths will be glossed over and the majority of the media will ignore these as they are all owned by 4-5 right wing billionaires
Highest covid death rate in Europe would suggest otherwise.
There are 155,613 now silent voices who may have questioned this assertion were they still with us and able to do so.
We’ve avoided economic collapse, and I suppose its possible that more people could have died had this been managed less effectively. But no one is holding the UK up as a paradigm of success here.
Frankly, if the decision to break the rules that they themselves have set, just to have a party to enjoy themselves isn’t a big, bold call then I don’t what they consider a big call to be.
Short answer: no.
Long answer: how is increasing tax, skyrocketing national debt, a God awful coronavirus response, huge waste of budget, and countless parliamentary scandals “getting the big calls right”? Boris has made so many bad calls these past few years, from his response to COVID, to his choice of cabinet members, to his approach on tax collection and budget changes, it’s honestly baffling that he could even think he’s doing a good job! Saying that Boris Johnson has made good calls during his time as PM is like saying the French Monarchy made the right calls during the revolution. It’s demonstrably false on so many counts that it’s honestly a joke
Nursing/Care homes?
That wasn’t a big call I guess.
The big calls:
Cabernet over Chardonnay
Victoria sponge over Red Velvet
The strategy has always been to wait until there is only one option left and then taking it. You can’t easily be blamed for taking the only option available so I suspect that has a lot to do with it.
I’d say they got the furlough scheme pretty right. It had a lot of issues and failings, but I think it was the head of the IMF commented that it helped stabilise markets around the world that the UK did it (can’t remember the exact reason).
Don’t get me wrong, I fucking hate the lot of them and hope they spend the rest of their lives with electric plugs wedged in their shoes forcing them to stand on the 3 pins. It’s worse than Lego.
Cunts.
He totally fucked it. Corona was ravaging Italy and he was making speeches about “defending the right to free exchange” and going on about shaking covid patients by the hand.
Then he dragged his feet until it was entirely too late. Fucking nob.
Fuck me no they didn’t. Locked down too late and opened up too earlier every single time. Eat out to help out the virus. The only thing they got right was buying up a shit load of vaccines.
In no way. Brexit: total failure. Covid: total failure. Economy: total failure.
HAs everyone forgotten that the only thing that saved Johnson last year was the vaccines? Tories were really gunning for him, had the vaccines arrived a couple of months later it would be a different PM taking the credit.
We have the worlds biggest health service. I think the Chinese Peoples liberation army is the only organization that employs more people than the NHS. The NHS is the world leading expert in public health. Imagine how many lives could have been saved with such a powerful advantage. If only we had effective leadership. And if they hadn’t faced 12 years of underfunding by conservative government. Fuck sake track and trace was an excel spreadsheet worth £36bn we still dont have a working track and trace system. Thousands are dead unnecessarily because of Boris and the conservatives. But Boris tells the flag shaggers he got the big calls right and they go right back to noshing him off.
Things the gov got right re Covid:
– Pushing our own vaccine R+D programme and having our own medical regulator, so we got vaccines certified and delivered very early. This is a clear success and a good policy
– Opening up as far as possible in summer and autumn 2020, including regional restrictions so safer areas could stay more open. Living under severe restrictions for a full year would have been unbearable.
– The unlocking programme in 2021 – backed by modelling and data observation and opening up at the safest time of year
– Furlough, and business support loans – kept the economy warm so jobs weren’t lost and business could resume when the immediate threat receded.
– Testing – the UK’s testing programme is one of the best in the world and that means we’ve consistently had a good picture of how much of a problem Covid is here, since about April 2020. High availability of free testing allowed us to open up more than we could have done otherwise.
Things they got wrong but were understandable:
– Not closing down international travel in Feb/Mar 2020. Covid was a very small threat to us at that time, but lots of cases were being brought back from European ski resorts especially. It is an understandable mistake because they were being told it would be racist to close off to certain countries at the time
– Not locking down earlier in March 2020. I’m not even sure this is wrong in retrospect, it’s a grey area. But it was certainly understandable not to want to impose unprecedented authoritarian measures, and nobody expected the population to be so happy to comply.
– Releasing untested outpatients back to care homes. This was a judgement call – testing capacity was low so the alternative was for healthy people to stay in hospital blocking up spaces for new patients who needed it. Probably the wrong call was made, but it’s much less clear than the media would have you believe
– Not having guidance for face coverings in early-mid 2020 – but this is because the WHO was saying they weren’t useful at the time.
Things that were obviously wrong at the time:
– Not putting London in T3 in December 2020
– Outsourcing the contact tracing rather than giving it to local authorities who already had some of these capabilities and were trusted locally
– Not suspending international travel or requiring strict quarantine throughout most of 2020
– Not working out some kind of fair way to apply furlough to self-employed people
Nope, you either lock down hard and fast, or let it burn through quickly. They managed to do neither, and end up with the worst of both.
150,000 have died. If they got the big calls right, it would have been far fewer. You would never expect the government to be perfect but the excess deaths, the PPE fiasco, Test & Trace failure, the hit to kids’ education etc. all add up. They got the big calls wrong far too many times, to the point where you have to ask what the government did right.