Taken this from a friend on Facebook but it’s a great read

It all comes down to them 10 days between countries like Germany going into lockdown & our Government going into lockdown.

I’ve never known anything like it. People up & down the country could see what was going off in Italy & Spain. Kids were been pulled out of school’s, companies were telling staff to work from home yet it took until that Monday night for our government to do anything.

Let’s not forget the Government would’ve allowed hundreds of thousands of people attend a full round of football matches that weekend had it not been for Mikel Arteta been diagnosed with the virus on the Thursday night. That was a league decision to stop the games. The Government did nothing. Gigs were still going off around the country, thousands attended Stereophonics gigs night after night all while our media were making it out to be a complete shambles that Italy were having it so bad only for us to end up having it worse.

They’re the most useless Government I’ve ever known. Boris should’ve never been leader of the Tories & should’ve never been voted in as prime minister but with the exception of the Mirror, Guardian & Channel 4 he had the entire media behind him. They could’ve put a chimp in charge & people would’ve been brainwashed into voting it in. This whole narrative around ‘following the science’ & ‘any Government would’ve done the same’ just doesn’t add up. Who else would’ve had Cummings on the board?

This isn’t a Tory / Labour, left / right, leave / remain issue. It’s a human life issue. I don’t even believe Theresa May would’ve allowed us to carry on as normal for so long. I don’t think any competent MP in charge of the country would’ve waited so long to go into lockdown.

The problem is a lot of people are letting them get away with it because they’re treating this as if it’s some kind of issue related to Brexit & because they voted for Boris they’re still passionately defending the indefensible.

Twitter may only be a small sample of the population but it feels like your traditional Tory voter is realising the mess the Government has made of this & is criticising them but that it’s your recent Tory voter who only did so to ‘get Brexit done’ that is standing by them.

 

Fantastic post. The best,most sensible post this year. What a pity no journalist or politician has said the same. Well said.

 

Another brilliant post,don't lose faith, friends,that's just what they want.

 

For my part I'm not a tory supporter and I never have been. My comments were more to do with the content of the OP and the outlandish Thought Police. And the fact it's a global pandemic and that reducing it to Johnson with a side serving of Trump, Russia and James Dyson misses the mark. I also didn't vote for Brexit, but the OP content's mentioning of it in the first sentence speaks volumes; they are localising it to divide and spread hate, and then saying at the end, 'but agree with me and get angry and that's proof that you're a human being'. I need some fool on facey to validate my humanity! Just staggering. Anyhow I've said my piece. To clarify: of course there have been political failings, local and global, but you can't politicise the whole lot, otherwise you have to apply it to the whole world, because that's what it is, a global health issue. And my reaction was more to do with the megalomaniac pigeonholing the planet on facey. So many contradictions. I'm out.

 

I know Corbyn would have listened to scientific advice. I know he would have listened to other European leaders who were ahead of us in the timelite and learned from their mistakes. I've a feeling that he would have given a payment to all rather than the furlough so that people like John Peachy wouldn't fall between the cracks and so it was simpler to roll out. Just for starters .

 

What a load of drivel. The UK government are trying to kill me? Lost any sort of credibility at that point.

So many other inaccuracies that I can’t be bothered to point out.

Holding the government to account is important, but this sort of rubbish is just scaremongering.

 

For what it's worth i don't think there's a link to brexit or some Machiavellian plot. It boils down to one thing pure and simple. The government were willing to go with any course of action to prevent a lockdown and the economic damage that goes with it, hence the herd immunity rubbish. When they realised that was politically unsustainable they switched but had already lost vital time and that Tory love of all things business and their capitalist cronyism cost people their lives.
After that i find it hard to imagine they're not doing their best but we're talking about Johnson et al and they've proved to be pretty incompetent in the past and that they will say anything and lie about anything to make themselves look blameless.

 

This is what I can't believe most of all. I saw firsthand the fear of parents withdrawing their children from school, we dropped down from over 1600 in school on the Monday down to a few hundred on the Friday. I'd already made up my mind not to attend football but it took the EFL to cancel the matches, not the government. Cheltenham... f*ing Cheltenham! Criminal in my eyes. Vast majority of businesses that shut did so because they thought it was the best thing to do, not because they were ever forced to (as evidenced by some of them opening back up). Husband's work trialled and then decided on working from home before the government announced a lockdown (and even then, he could go into work if his work decided they wanted them to but they're not that daft). It's like people have short term memories.

 

Spot on, "lockdown" as directed by the government happened after most of the country had already started closing down.

 

This^

If you’re looking for some sort of conspiracy- you’ll not find one. This is purely incompetence from people we know to be incompetent.

And BTW that’s not ‘political’. I don’t believe for a second that the sainted JC and would have done a better job.

 

Agreed, we could see what was coming and should have acted sooner, never get my head around why we haven't closed the borders and why we didn't have a properly managed lockdown two weeks earlier. The tragedy is that loved ones are being lost because our government hasn't the strength to act quickly and decisively. As for the debate on Corbyn it’s pointless speculating, I don’t like the man and I’ve no confidence he would have managed this any better, Kier needs to get his act together over the next 5 years and deliver a labour party that people will want to vote for next time and that will hold the torys to account this time.

 

This is true but at the same time there was and is a huge refusal for some grown adults to take any personal responsibility.

I know someone who went to Cheltenham. They said shortly after when it was in the papers 'well yeah I knew I could catch it but I wasn't told I couldn't go'. Take some personal responsibility!

I've seen people who have got symptoms of coronavirus actually saying "I've still got symptoms after three weeks but the government said to isolate for 2 so im going out". Take some personal responsibility!

Others have said that they flew back from another country and on the flight the crew said they were going into isolation because of the risk of bringing it back but because Boris hadn't told the passengers they had to isolate then they didn't because they didn't have to. Even though they knew at the time that they should have. Take some personal responsibility!

OAPs advised to isolate themselves but because it was advice not a law they went out. Take some personal responsibility!

People congregating at beaches and in parks the days before lockdown because it wasn't specifically banned. Take some personal responsibility!

And now we have people who try to find loopholes in the law to allow them to leave the house more often than the rules dictate. Take some ******* personal responsibility!


We can blame the government for a low of failings but are we all really so pathetic as a nation that we need to be forced to do things that protect ourselves?

I haven't heard or seen a single person in this country put their hand up and say 'you know what. I acted irresponsibly and helped spread this virus'. Not one

 

Whilst I agree and got really annoyed at people who were still going for haircuts and to the pub etc. and then coming into work, it's the government's job to keep people safe. There will always be people who are selfish or naive but that's why we need someone better than us to take charge of our decisions for us sometimes. There is no excuse for the government not starting lockdown earlier and better, whether other people could and should have done more or not.

 

Some good points and some bordering on tinfoil hat territory. Where has the "41,000 deaths" info come from? I would also dispute the fact that every death was preventable. It's a pandemic. To have prevented every death, in this country at least, you'd have had to close the borders completely around Christmas time - good luck trying to implement that. And even then I'm sure some would've slipped the net.

 

They are not trying to kill you, but their priority is not saving lives. Look at the messaging - even now its "Save the NHS". It isn't and has never been "Save Lives".

Vietnam, a country with a GDP per person of about 1/10 of the UK and a population of 90+m saw what was happening and has had a total of 270 confirmed cases and 0 deaths. Taiwan, an island nation off the coast of China that is not recognised by the WHO (thanks to China), saw what was happening and has had a total of 429 cases and 6 deaths from 24m. South Korea which was hit hard in January and February has only had a total of 244 deaths and under 11000 cases. Japan 14000 cases and 385 dead.

New Zealand prioritized lives and are opening again. Denmark prioritized lives and are opening again. Austria is the same.

These countries acted. Many of the larger Western countries didn't until it was too late and now it will take longer to get out of the shutdown and the economy will be hit harder. The economy of Taiwan dropped well over 20% year-on-year from February 2019 to February 2020, but recovered to 99% of the year-on-year mark in March - and is expected to *grow* in April to take up the slack from other countries. Our economy will be down that 20+% for March, April and at least May.

The Laissez-Faire attitude that killed over a million people in the UK in the 1840s due to the potato famine (Ireland was part of the UK *then*) ended the Whigs as a political party. The Laissez-Faire attitude of the Johnson government has currently left us with the second largest peacetime death toll in 180 years (only Spanish flu is higher currently) - and if you believe the FT about 43000 extra deaths over the average (21000 hospital + 22000 outside hospital), then it is now higher than the Blitz on London and could soon be approaching the total WW2 civilian death toll (67200).

Shutting the country down properly on the Friday would have saved around 20% of the lives that have been lost (~4000) and a week earlier nearer 8000. Three weeks earlier (Mid-late Feb) with a mandatory 14-day quarantine for incomers and we'd be back at Oakwell in the next couple of weeks looking aghast at America and the rest of Europe with death toll in the low hundreds. While we have Ian Duncan Smith, Toby Young and Allison Pearson (others are available) pushing the idea that we should all troop back to work because the economy is more important that people.

 

41000 is a figure from the FT where they took the ONS death toll for the UK and compared it to the average death toll for each week for the last 5 years. So if in the first week of April, the average was 4000 dead and this year there was 10000 that died, that is 6000 extra dead (made up numbers). From the official ONS figures for the UK, there has been an extra 41000 deaths over the average and London alone was nearer 4000 of them. They have been published and are being compared to a number of countries.

 

Stay at home. Protect the NHS. Save lives.

Have I dreamed up those last two words?

Personally I think the govt have been shambolic, but that's a whole different topic.

 

erm

 

Thing is also let’s also not forget it wasn’t compulsory to attend, there were loads of comments that this was probably going to be the last race meeting before lockdown, same with some football matches.Yet thousands of p1llocks still decided to attend , just because it was still technically legal didn’t make it right.

 

Oh, I know and I'm bloody angry at everyone who did too. I still believe it was the goverment's job to cancel it to protect those people (whether they wanted protecting or not) and to protect everyone else who was being sensible from them. I'm not surprised that people are idiotic and selfish, that's a given, so the choice should have been taken out of their hands.