Forgive me if his virtues have been extolled already, I did just dive in here. I suppose we're now only to discuss how awful the things are that he is doing at the moment.
Forgive me if his virtues have been extolled already, I did just dive in here. I suppose we're now only to discuss how awful the things are that he is doing at the moment.
Well, this is hell, for fuck's sake.
Surely Hell is a place where the virtues of your political opponents are brought up repeatedly by ignorant newbies, rather than somewhere you can delight in their ongoing failures with like-minded people.
Forgive me if his virtues have been extolled already, I did just dive in here. I suppose we're now only to discuss how awful the things are that he is doing at the moment.
Well, this is hell, for fuck's sake.
Surely Hell is a place where the virtues of your political opponents are brought up repeatedly by ignorant newbies, rather than somewhere you can delight in their ongoing failures with like-minded people.
This current shower have overseen 60,000 excess deaths in three months. If @yohan300 wants to defend that total (at the current rate, the 2nd worst death toll on the planet, 1st worst by capita), then they can do so without resorting to "it would have been worse under Corbyn".
It might well have been, but there's zero evidence for that. What we do have evidence for is just how bad the Tories are handling it. Speculative fiction might be my specialist subject, but I come here for a bit of light relief.
Forgive me if his virtues have been extolled already, I did just dive in here. I suppose we're now only to discuss how awful the things are that he is doing at the moment.
Well, this is hell, for fuck's sake.
Surely Hell is a place where the virtues of your political opponents are brought up repeatedly by ignorant newbies, rather than somewhere you can delight in their ongoing failures with like-minded people.
Oh dear.
This thread exists to rant at the multitudinous and manifest failings of our Prime Minister. Thus it's not really about Mr Corbyn.
Given that literally tens of thousands of people died unnecessarily due to the failures of Mr Johnson and his colleagues, it really is a brave approach to argue that a hypothetical Corbyn led government would have been worse.
But even if you were to provide a persuasive argument as to why that is the case, that does not excuse Johnson's abject failure, nor remove the emotional benefits of a rant.
But seeing as you have provided no evidence nor argument, it is not surprising that your posts have been treated with contempt. The only thing that is slightly unfair is that the contempt being shown to your posts is of the slightly-bored variety because you are just rehashing 'arguments' we've been 'entertained' by at least twice all ready on this thread.
It seems to me that, in the event of a Labour-SNP coalition, we would at least be spared the daily reminders that the Westminster regime hasn't a scoobie about how to talk about measures that apply specifically to England.
Ten of thousands of people have died from a virus, not from the government's actions.
You could argue that their failure to take specific actions has led to deaths, but that only holds water if some other government might have reasonably been expected to act differently.
I can't see any evidence that a Corbyn-led minority government would have done so. They didn't have a special pandemic plan up their sleeve, and would have been relying on the same planning, the same Public Health England and the same NHS as the current government have.
They might well have handled it worse though, as they would have had no experience in government or with getting results from defective public bodies. For example would Corbyn really have leveraged the MOD to ramp up testing, because that was what was required.
Ten of thousands of people have died from a virus, not from the government's actions.
You could argue that their failure to take specific actions has led to deaths, but that only holds water if some other government might have reasonably been expected to act differently.
I can't see any evidence that a Corbyn-led minority government would have done so. They didn't have a special pandemic plan up their sleeve, and would have been relying on the same planning, the same Public Health England and the same NHS as the current government have.
They might well have handled it worse though, as they would have had no experience in government or with getting results from defective public bodies. For example would Corbyn really have leveraged the MOD to ramp up testing, because that was what was required.
I think we can be reasonably certain that Corbyn would not have fallen for Cumming's herd immunity wankery and we would have had a lockdown sooner, and mass gatherings banned earlier. The idea that those ideologically committed to a small state would have handled things better than those who recognise the value of public services is bonkers.
Forgive me if his virtues have been extolled already, I did just dive in here. I suppose we're now only to discuss how awful the things are that he is doing at the moment.
Well, this is hell, for fuck's sake.
Surely Hell is a place where the virtues of your political opponents are brought up repeatedly by ignorant newbies, rather than somewhere you can delight in their ongoing failures with like-minded people.
Oh dear.
This thread exists to rant at the multitudinous and manifest failings of our Prime Minister. Thus it's not really about Mr Corbyn.
Given that literally tens of thousands of people died unnecessarily due to the failures of Mr Johnson and his colleagues, it really is a brave approach to argue that a hypothetical Corbyn led government would have been worse.
But even if you were to provide a persuasive argument as to why that is the case, that does not excuse Johnson's abject failure, nor remove the emotional benefits of a rant.
But seeing as you have provided no evidence nor argument, it is not surprising that your posts have been treated with contempt. The only thing that is slightly unfair is that the contempt being shown to your posts is of the slightly-bored variety because you are just rehashing 'arguments' we've been 'entertained' by at least twice all ready on this thread.
But hey, this is Hell.
AFZ
My bold.
I have a sneaking feeling that we may be thinking along the same lines...
Ten of thousands of people have died from a virus, not from the government's actions.
You could argue that their failure to take specific actions has led to deaths, but that only holds water if some other government might have reasonably been expected to act differently.
Specifically we can look at the other countries in Europe which locked down sooner, and invested more heavily in their health services and have a lower per capita death rate.
Ten of thousands of people have died from a virus, not from the government's actions.
You could argue that their failure to take specific actions has led to deaths, but that only holds water if some other government might have reasonably been expected to act differently.
Specifically we can look at the other countries in Europe which locked down sooner, and invested more heavily in their health services and have a lower per capita death rate.
Just so. Our 'government' and its shortcomings are being shown up for the utter disaster they are.
Sadly, at the cost of 1000s of lives.
Of course, Corbyn and his 'Stalinists' would have had the death toll in millions by now.
Ten of thousands of people have died from a virus, not from the government's actions.
You could argue that their failure to take specific actions has led to deaths, but that only holds water if some other government might have reasonably been expected to act differently.
Specifically we can look at the other countries in Europe which locked down sooner, and invested more heavily in their health services and have a lower per capita death rate.
There is no evidence Corbyn would have ignored advice and locked down sooner. Remember the reason for not locking down sooner was that scientists reckoned people wouldn't tolerate lockdown for too long, so wanted to bring it in as late as possible while ensuring the health service wasn't overwhelmed as happened in Italy.
Investment in the NHS is not relevant to the excess deaths as the NHS performed just fine.
Deaths arose in care homes due to a lack of testing capacity meaning care home residents were discharged from hospitals without being tested. This was a problem with testing capacity and NHS policy, neither of which Corbyn would have had the opportunity or rationale to change by that point in March.
Ten of thousands of people have died from a virus, not from the government's actions.
You could argue that their failure to take specific actions has led to deaths, but that only holds water if some other government might have reasonably been expected to act differently.
I can't see any evidence that a Corbyn-led minority government would have done so. They didn't have a special pandemic plan up their sleeve, and would have been relying on the same planning, the same Public Health England and the same NHS as the current government have.
They might well have handled it worse though, as they would have had no experience in government or with getting results from defective public bodies. For example would Corbyn really have leveraged the MOD to ramp up testing, because that was what was required.
Well, of course, we'll never know if a Corbyn government would've done better. Possibly not. But if one may be optimistic about Johnson building a better Britain out of Brexit, it seems totally reasonable to be optimistic about the possibility that any other government, than a Tory-led one, could've done better. Fluid commodity, this optimism!
And it's quite true that after nearly ten years of atrocious disastrous Tory policy a brand new Labour government would've been on a hiding to nothing even if it did have the eventual wherewithal to begin to reverse the damage. So effectively pointing out that Johnson, in some respects merely inherited the maladministration of his own party's previous cabinets is a fair point. Of course, as a Tory MP he did play his own part in that maladministration, so arguably it's only fair, even inevitable, that that should be part of his inheritance.
I think it has been fairly conclusively evidenced that the massive stuff-up over PPE was a Government stuff-up. I think it's reasonable to assume people have died unnecessarily as a result. Those for whom PPE makes the difference between life and death in medical situations certainly seem to think so. And the Government's vacillation over 'testing' 'not testing' really can't have helped, can it? Rather the reverse. It can't be a coincidence that the countries who tested frequently and early have done shedloads better than the UK, for whom testing seemed to be a bit of an optional extra even for keyworkers.
I think, further, it's clear that Johnson's personal response to the pandemic, in the earlier days, was negligent. If having found out that the captain of the ship they were sailing in had managed in the space of a month and a half to miss five out of six emergency meetings to discuss the ice-berg just struck, any reasonable person would feel justified in wondering what the hell was wrong with the man. That his subsequent performances at the briefings he's honoured with his presence have been piss-poor is, I admit, just my personal opinion. As an optimist, I did hope for better. Honest! But sadly, Johnson has completely lived down to my expectations of him, despite my best hopes.
I saw Nicola Sturgeon speaking in the Scottish Parliament today. I thought ‘I believe her’. I’m never sure if I believe the prime minister - often I don’t at all.
You could argue that their failure to take specific actions has led to deaths, but that only holds water if some other government might have reasonably been expected to act differently.
Literally, every other government on the planet (except the USA, and possibly Brazil).
So it does hold water. What's your next argument, if you have one.
I can't help thinking that any other English* government, whether led by Comrade Corbyn, Mickey Mouse, or whoever (apart from Nigel Garbage), would have made a better job of the present situation.
Even granted the fact that they would not have had much time to repair the almost irreparable damage done over the past years by the Selfservative Party.
*I make this distinction, because Scotland, Wales, and NI, have better governance.
And it's quite true that after nearly ten years of atrocious disastrous Tory policy a brand new Labour government would've been on a hiding to nothing even if it did have the eventual wherewithal to begin to reverse the damage.
Unfortunately, I think it's incontrovertible that if we had got a Labour lead government in December that most of what would have been needed to be ready for this pandemic wouldn't have happened. The incoming government would have had a list of priorities that would have started off with defining a form of Brexit that made some moderate level of sense and organising a referendum on whether the people of the UK want that Brexit or to Remain (and, of course, negotiating with the EU for us to have the time to do that), reversing the disaster that is Universal Credit that is killing people along with all the other benefits sanctions etc, end the "hostile environment" for anyone not pure-blood English to stop the haemorrhaging of essential workers from the UK, start to invest in our public services ... reviewing the recommendations of exercises testing pandemic readiness that had been collecting dust for five years when the government should have been acting on them (and, what were the "government" doing those five years - oh yes, running roughshod over democracy and ruining the British economy and society by pursuing a fucking stupid idea called "Brexit") probably wouldn't have been high on the list of what was needed.
I saw Nicola Sturgeon speaking in the Scottish Parliament today. I thought ‘I believe her’. I’m never sure if I believe the prime minister - often I don’t at all.
I don't trust any of them. Sturgeon is just as much of a populist pandering to her base as Johnson is, it's just that you agree with her base so you either don't notice it or don't have a problem with it.
I saw Nicola Sturgeon speaking in the Scottish Parliament today. I thought ‘I believe her’. I’m never sure if I believe the prime minister - often I don’t at all.
I don't trust any of them. Sturgeon is just as much of a populist pandering to her base as Johnson is, it's just that you agree with her base so you either don't notice it or don't have a problem with it.
I can see why his first (selfish) instinct might be to go somewhere where there is family support and vast amounts of fields for a child to run about in.
Sure.
What I fail to to understand why his second (unselfish) instinct didn't kick in so he stayed put so no one else was put at risk / followed his own advice.
Because he thinks he's special. He doesn't think that the rules that govern other people also govern him. It should be obvious, even to him, that millions of people copying him would be a big problem. He just doesn't make the connection "therefore I shouldn't do it".
Dom wanted to go to his parents estate so he did. Dim doesn't want to sack Dom so he won't. What anyone else thinks is irrelevant. Dim and Dom in the No 10 house.
Just think, if the Tories had put the same energy into Covid-19 related issues like lack of PPE as they have in protecting Dom, covid-19 might not have killed more people in the UK than the Blitz.
I have a sneaking feeling that we may be thinking along the same lines...
I'm heartily tired of anybody who dares to express anything but a resolutely 100% proof anti-Boris Johnson line being accused of sockpuppetry, which is an accusation that has been taken extremely seriously here in the past.
If you're sealed into your bubble to the extent of thinking that all dissenting opinions must be the work of a single individual merely because they're dissenting, there's not much hope for you, and voicing that accusation says as much about you as it does about them.
It can have nothing to do with the fact that our Prime is both a self-serving arsehole and a lazy moron. And more to the point the posts defending him consist of lazy assertions, proven inaccuracies, whataboutery or self-contradictions.
It's not a bubble, it's being fed up with the same lame defences of the indefensible.
Are you accusing @yohan300 of being a sockpuppet? Because that is what @Bishops Finger apparently took you to mean, and that is what I was explicitly referring to.
Ten of thousands of people have died from a virus, not from the government's actions.
You could argue that their failure to take specific actions has led to deaths, but that only holds water if some other government might have reasonably been expected to act differently.
Specifically we can look at the other countries in Europe which locked down sooner, and invested more heavily in their health services and have a lower per capita death rate.
There is no evidence Corbyn would have ignored advice and locked down sooner. Remember the reason for not locking down sooner was that scientists reckoned people wouldn't tolerate lockdown for too long, so wanted to bring it in as late as possible while ensuring the health service wasn't overwhelmed as happened in Italy.
This was evidence from behavioural "scientists" beloved of Cummings, and it is reasonable to assume it would not have been given such weight by a Labour-SNP coalition. Recall that Scotland shut down large gatherings before England, with Johnson giving some waffle claiming the Scottish NHS wasn't as robust. As for testing, it seems likely that a Corbyn government would have been far more willing to use the full power of the state to increase capacity, imposing demands on private industry where necessary. Likewise they'd have been more willing to ramp up domestic production of PPE.
Alas, we shall never know, but yes, a Labour-SNP coalition would, I think, have been rather more focussed, and robust.
Meanwhile, of course, Johnson is still defending his pal, despite what appears to be growing anger England-wide. It seems that police trying to enforce lockdown in some places are being told 'If it's all right for Cummings, it's all right for us' - so much for the rule of law so beloved by the tories.
Ten of thousands of people have died from a virus, not from the government's actions.
You could argue that their failure to take specific actions has led to deaths, but that only holds water if some other government might have reasonably been expected to act differently.
Specifically we can look at the other countries in Europe which locked down sooner, and invested more heavily in their health services and have a lower per capita death rate.
There is no evidence Corbyn would have ignored advice and locked down sooner. Remember the reason for not locking down sooner was that scientists reckoned people wouldn't tolerate lockdown for too long, so wanted to bring it in as late as possible while ensuring the health service wasn't overwhelmed as happened in Italy.
This was evidence from behavioural "scientists" beloved of Cummings, and it is reasonable to assume it would not have been given such weight by a Labour-SNP coalition. Recall that Scotland shut down large gatherings before England, with Johnson giving some waffle claiming the Scottish NHS wasn't as robust. As for testing, it seems likely that a Corbyn government would have been far more willing to use the full power of the state to increase capacity, imposing demands on private industry where necessary. Likewise they'd have been more willing to ramp up domestic production of PPE.
On the other hand we could have been drowning in thousands of non-functional and unneeded ventilators made by a consortium of Network Rail and the Royal Mint at £50k a pop, with Corbyn determined to maintain production indefinitely by exporting them to developing countries.
Ten of thousands of people have died from a virus, not from the government's actions.
You could argue that their failure to take specific actions has led to deaths, but that only holds water if some other government might have reasonably been expected to act differently.
Specifically we can look at the other countries in Europe which locked down sooner, and invested more heavily in their health services and have a lower per capita death rate.
There is no evidence Corbyn would have ignored advice and locked down sooner. Remember the reason for not locking down sooner was that scientists reckoned people wouldn't tolerate lockdown for too long, so wanted to bring it in as late as possible while ensuring the health service wasn't overwhelmed as happened in Italy.
This was evidence from behavioural "scientists" beloved of Cummings, and it is reasonable to assume it would not have been given such weight by a Labour-SNP coalition. Recall that Scotland shut down large gatherings before England, with Johnson giving some waffle claiming the Scottish NHS wasn't as robust. As for testing, it seems likely that a Corbyn government would have been far more willing to use the full power of the state to increase capacity, imposing demands on private industry where necessary. Likewise they'd have been more willing to ramp up domestic production of PPE.
On the other hand we could have been drowning in thousands of non-functional and unneeded ventilators made by a consortium of Network Rail and the Royal Mint at £50k a pop, with Corbyn determined to maintain production indefinitely by exporting them to developing countries.
There is, of course, no reason to believe that this would have occurred.
We can, of course, indulge in Alternative History scenarios until the cows come home (and AH is a fascinating field for inventive authors!), but the problem is NOW, and what to do with the Two-Headed Monster we have unwittingly, or unwillingly, created.
Are you accusing @yohan300 of being a sockpuppet? Because that is what @Bishops Finger apparently took you to mean, and that is what I was explicitly referring to.
No. I'd be lying if I said the thought hadn't occurred to me but my point was an entirely different one. I don't expect someone who is new to such a long thread to have read back and appreciated that 4 of 5 pages back we had a very similar argument. I was suggesting that some of the responses to @yohan300's argument were because it wasn't as original an argument as he/she seemed to think it was and that they may not know that we have already had much of this discussion. However, it doesn't change the fact that it's a piss poor argument in the first place.
Having no actual evidence of sockpuppetry, knowing how hot the hosts are on this, and not wishing to incur the righteous wrath of the Hell-hosts for junior hosting, I was proceeding on the assumption that @yohan300 was simply not aware of some of the contents of this thread. If you look at precisely what I wrote, I was working on this assumption and arguing that @yohan300's posts should be taken on their own merits and not assumed to be a rehashing ground already gone over.
What I was getting at is that in your post you implied that people on this thread are closed-minded or that we are becoming an anti-Boris echo-chamber. I am aware that this sort of thing has been discussed quite a lot on the ship recently. The problem here is that you seem to be ignoring that none of us are starting from nowhere. Many of us have thought about and debating these issues for years. Literally years. You may well get an undertone that people all agree about Mr Johnson because many of us do and it's already been discussed. Subconsciously or consciously there is a lot that people bring to the discussions because they have thought about it, debated it and moved on to the next point.
If you want to argue that Johnson has redeeming qualities, feel free, but I suspect you'd be met with significant scepticism and be expected to justify your points. It's a bit like arguing that Richard III didn't have a 'hunchback' seeing as since finding his skeleton, it's been confirmed that he did indeed have a spinal abnormality.
It is true that I am somewhat convinced that Mr Johnson is a lazy, narcissistic moron but there's a lot of reasons I could point to as to why I hold that view. A very current example is that Cummings made a statement in which he said one thing that was demonstrably false, several other things that may yet turn out not to be true and confessed to at least two offences. All in the context, that this undermines a vital public health message. The response of our Prime Minister? 'Mr Cummings has explained everything and it's time to move on.' This is not a case of differing perspectives; our Prime Minister is a demonstrable prat.
What I was getting at is that in your post you implied that people on this thread are closed-minded or that we are becoming an anti-Boris echo-chamber.
That's not what I said, and I took care in what I did say. I'm not sure you took care to read it, though.
In this respect, as far as I'm concerned the issue under discussion is totally irrelevant. I don't care if you or anyone else (and yes, I'm looking at you, @Bishops Finger), is talking about the Johnson government or the Syrius Cybernetics Corporation Complaints Division, if the implication of sockpuppetry is made, and repeated enlisting others in support of that accusation on no grounds other than that the arguments sound familiar, the likely result is a dogpile on wholly specious and (for Shipmates) unverifiable grounds. It is a baseless accusation and baseless accusations make my blood boil. This attitude stifles any opposing views, and pisses me off about three thousand percent.
And if the accusation is in good faith in the sense that one genuinely suspects similar views are a likely indicator of sockpuppetry, to the extent that it's apparently one of the initial assumptions, then I submit that yes, it is evidence that the accuser is convinced of the rightness of their own position to the point that they apparently prefer to believe, or at least assume, that just one other especially obtuse person disagrees with them than to entertain the idea that there might be a few more dissenters out there. Still less the unthinkable idea that those dissenters might possibly not voice their dissent, not because they're obtuse, but because they see the result when somebody does. You might want to live in an intellectual world like that, but I don't.
And again, my convictions on this have nothing to do with politics.
Boris is saying that breaking the rules is OK, if it's your instinct to do so. That's pretty horrific, isn't it, in a public health emergency?
It's the way that the majority of the British public treat, for example, the speed limits when they're driving. It's not too hard to extrapolate from there to other rules.
I would genuinely like to know, from anyone who voted to elect Mr Johnson as leader, how they feel about the would-be Churchill de jour turning out to be the puppet of someone no one elected?
I can see how the impression was created that you were getting this amusing, bouncy, can-do, gung-ho Chap (what we'd call in Ireland a cute hoor), but instead you have an evasive, timorous, hand-waving ducker-out clearly unable to cope without his Svengali.
What I was getting at is that in your post you implied that people on this thread are closed-minded or that we are becoming an anti-Boris echo-chamber.
That's not what I said, and I took care in what I did say. I'm not sure you took care to read it, though.
In this respect, as far as I'm concerned the issue under discussion is totally irrelevant. I don't care if you or anyone else (and yes, I'm looking at you, @Bishops Finger), is talking about the Johnson government or the Syrius Cybernetics Corporation Complaints Division, if the implication of sockpuppetry is made, and repeated enlisting others in support of that accusation on no grounds other than that the arguments sound familiar, the likely result is a dogpile on wholly specious and (for Shipmates) unverifiable grounds. It is a baseless accusation and baseless accusations make my blood boil. This attitude stifles any opposing views, and pisses me off about three thousand percent.
And if the accusation is in good faith in the sense that one genuinely suspects similar views are a likely indicator of sockpuppetry, to the extent that it's apparently one of the initial assumptions, then I submit that yes, it is evidence that the accuser is convinced of the rightness of their own position to the point that they apparently prefer to believe, or at least assume, that just one other especially obtuse person disagrees with them than to entertain the idea that there might be a few more dissenters out there. Still less the unthinkable idea that those dissenters might possibly not voice their dissent, not because they're obtuse, but because they see the result when somebody does. You might want to live in an intellectual world like that, but I don't.
And again, my convictions on this have nothing to do with politics.
Well argued. My point remains that I stated that I thought some of the responses were a little bored which I felt was unfair as a new poster should not be expected to be familiar with the arguments from a few pages back. I doubt this was deliberate but we're all human and it's important to repeatedly test my own assumptions.
I was arguing that @yohan300's posts deserved to be tackled on their merits. I.e. I was encouraging engagement with 'dissenters' or rather those with whom we disagree.
I did read your post and I see what you mean but there's still an unspoken assumption in your post that BF was in a bubble. I appreciate you meant specifically with respect to the sockpuppetry accusation and I may have misread you but I took that to mean regardless of that specific you felt he was generally closed minded in thinking anti-Boris is the only position.
I think G K Chesterton put it well;
Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.
I always want to discuss issues and be challenged on what I think but there's very few things on which I have an opinion without having thought about it for a while first. I was arguing both for a certain position but also that a newcomer should be given the benefit of the doubt that they have not had the opportunity to work through the previous steps that many of us have. I was arguing against an echo chamber mentality but also for intellectual rigour.
My point remains that I stated that I thought some of the responses were a little bored which I felt was unfair as a new poster should not be expected to be familiar with the arguments from a few pages back.
A significant flaw in your argument was assuming @yohan300 is a new poster. You may have noticed the recent Styx thread announcing that we've made which mean that the number of posts someone has made will be displayed by their name, until they have made more than 50 posts.
My point remains that I stated that I thought some of the responses were a little bored which I felt was unfair as a new poster should not be expected to be familiar with the arguments from a few pages back.
A significant flaw in your argument was assuming @yohan300 is a new poster. You may have noticed the recent Styx thread announcing that we've made which mean that the number of posts someone has made will be displayed by their name, until they have made more than 50 posts.
New to this thread no? I believe he even said so here.
My point remains that I stated that I thought some of the responses were a little bored which I felt was unfair as a new poster should not be expected to be familiar with the arguments from a few pages back. I doubt this was deliberate but we're all human and it's important to repeatedly test my own assumptions.
And my point remains that this is not how @Bishops Finger appeared to read, or exploit, your post.
I see what you mean but there's still an unspoken assumption in your post that BF was in a bubble. I appreciate you meant specifically with respect to the sockpuppetry accusation
I meant specifically with respect to the sockpuppet accusation, and said so, and I stand by my claim that it's evidence of being in a bubble.
At least that's the more charitable explanation.
The charitable explanation is that this accusation is made in misguided good faith, in which case it's conclusive evidence to my mind of a conviction that only one, single, dishonest individual could possibly disagree with the accuser's viewpoint, which is beyond closed-minded.
The less charitable explanation is that the accusation of sockpuppetry is wholly gratuitous, and that explanation is worse.
There is no evidence Corbyn would have ignored advice and locked down sooner. Remember the reason for not locking down sooner was that scientists reckoned people wouldn't tolerate lockdown for too long, so wanted to bring it in as late as possible while ensuring the health service wasn't overwhelmed as happened in Italy.
This was evidence from behavioural "scientists" beloved of Cummings, and it is reasonable to assume it would not have been given such weight by a Labour-SNP coalition. Recall that Scotland shut down large gatherings before England, with Johnson giving some waffle claiming the Scottish NHS wasn't as robust. As for testing, it seems likely that a Corbyn government would have been far more willing to use the full power of the state to increase capacity, imposing demands on private industry where necessary. Likewise they'd have been more willing to ramp up domestic production of PPE.
On the other hand we could have been drowning in thousands of non-functional and unneeded ventilators made by a consortium of Network Rail and the Royal Mint at £50k a pop, with Corbyn determined to maintain production indefinitely by exporting them to developing countries.
There is, of course, no reason to believe that this would have occurred.
While discussing alternative histories, I would have thought it likely that any Labour government would have engaged with the EU and the consortium to purchase ventilators and PPE link to Guardian story of 21 April which said:
The EU launched four rounds of procurement of personal protective equipment, ventilators and laboratory supplies in late February and March.
UK officials failed to take up an invitation to join the steering committee of participating countries that issues orders for medical equipment until 19 March – after the bulk purchases had been made.
On the other hand we could have been drowning in thousands of non-functional and unneeded ventilators made by a consortium of Network Rail and the Royal Mint at £50k a pop, with Corbyn determined to maintain production indefinitely by exporting them to developing countries.
Let us assume you're right, and a Corbyn government would have been even worse than the current Johnson one.
Now, having got that out of the way, how do you explain the absolutely-worst-nation-at-dealing-with-Covid19 status that we have achieved? The Tories have been in power for a decade. This is happening on their watch and they can't blame anyone else. No references to anyone else but past and current members of the government, please.
Comments
Well, this is hell, for fuck's sake.
Surely Hell is a place where the virtues of your political opponents are brought up repeatedly by ignorant newbies, rather than somewhere you can delight in their ongoing failures with like-minded people.
Very fucking clever.
It might well have been, but there's zero evidence for that. What we do have evidence for is just how bad the Tories are handling it. Speculative fiction might be my specialist subject, but I come here for a bit of light relief.
Oh dear.
This thread exists to rant at the multitudinous and manifest failings of our Prime Minister. Thus it's not really about Mr Corbyn.
Given that literally tens of thousands of people died unnecessarily due to the failures of Mr Johnson and his colleagues, it really is a brave approach to argue that a hypothetical Corbyn led government would have been worse.
But even if you were to provide a persuasive argument as to why that is the case, that does not excuse Johnson's abject failure, nor remove the emotional benefits of a rant.
But seeing as you have provided no evidence nor argument, it is not surprising that your posts have been treated with contempt. The only thing that is slightly unfair is that the contempt being shown to your posts is of the slightly-bored variety because you are just rehashing 'arguments' we've been 'entertained' by at least twice all ready on this thread.
But hey, this is Hell.
AFZ
You could argue that their failure to take specific actions has led to deaths, but that only holds water if some other government might have reasonably been expected to act differently.
I can't see any evidence that a Corbyn-led minority government would have done so. They didn't have a special pandemic plan up their sleeve, and would have been relying on the same planning, the same Public Health England and the same NHS as the current government have.
They might well have handled it worse though, as they would have had no experience in government or with getting results from defective public bodies. For example would Corbyn really have leveraged the MOD to ramp up testing, because that was what was required.
Thank you
I think we can be reasonably certain that Corbyn would not have fallen for Cumming's herd immunity wankery and we would have had a lockdown sooner, and mass gatherings banned earlier. The idea that those ideologically committed to a small state would have handled things better than those who recognise the value of public services is bonkers.
Can you imagine Sir Humphrey testing his eyesight by driving 60 miles there and back, with Lady Appleby present in the car?
No, I thought not...
(I know Sir H wasn't an 'adviser' - they hadn't been invented in those days.)
My bold.
I have a sneaking feeling that we may be thinking along the same lines...
Oh yes they had! Frank Weisel and Dorothy Wainwright, both of whom were Not Popular with Sir Humphrey.
Thanks for the correction - blame my ageing...er...memory! That's the word!
Didn't Sir H address Dorothy as 'Dear Lady' in the most unctuous tones possible to imagine...?
Specifically we can look at the other countries in Europe which locked down sooner, and invested more heavily in their health services and have a lower per capita death rate.
As I recall he addressed almost every woman in the series in that way. Behind her back, of course, it was "that Wainwright female".
Just so. Our 'government' and its shortcomings are being shown up for the utter disaster they are.
Sadly, at the cost of 1000s of lives.
Of course, Corbyn and his 'Stalinists' would have had the death toll in millions by now.
There is no evidence Corbyn would have ignored advice and locked down sooner. Remember the reason for not locking down sooner was that scientists reckoned people wouldn't tolerate lockdown for too long, so wanted to bring it in as late as possible while ensuring the health service wasn't overwhelmed as happened in Italy.
Investment in the NHS is not relevant to the excess deaths as the NHS performed just fine.
Deaths arose in care homes due to a lack of testing capacity meaning care home residents were discharged from hospitals without being tested. This was a problem with testing capacity and NHS policy, neither of which Corbyn would have had the opportunity or rationale to change by that point in March.
Well, of course, we'll never know if a Corbyn government would've done better. Possibly not. But if one may be optimistic about Johnson building a better Britain out of Brexit, it seems totally reasonable to be optimistic about the possibility that any other government, than a Tory-led one, could've done better. Fluid commodity, this optimism!
And it's quite true that after nearly ten years of atrocious disastrous Tory policy a brand new Labour government would've been on a hiding to nothing even if it did have the eventual wherewithal to begin to reverse the damage. So effectively pointing out that Johnson, in some respects merely inherited the maladministration of his own party's previous cabinets is a fair point. Of course, as a Tory MP he did play his own part in that maladministration, so arguably it's only fair, even inevitable, that that should be part of his inheritance.
I think it has been fairly conclusively evidenced that the massive stuff-up over PPE was a Government stuff-up. I think it's reasonable to assume people have died unnecessarily as a result. Those for whom PPE makes the difference between life and death in medical situations certainly seem to think so. And the Government's vacillation over 'testing' 'not testing' really can't have helped, can it? Rather the reverse. It can't be a coincidence that the countries who tested frequently and early have done shedloads better than the UK, for whom testing seemed to be a bit of an optional extra even for keyworkers.
I think, further, it's clear that Johnson's personal response to the pandemic, in the earlier days, was negligent. If having found out that the captain of the ship they were sailing in had managed in the space of a month and a half to miss five out of six emergency meetings to discuss the ice-berg just struck, any reasonable person would feel justified in wondering what the hell was wrong with the man. That his subsequent performances at the briefings he's honoured with his presence have been piss-poor is, I admit, just my personal opinion. As an optimist, I did hope for better. Honest! But sadly, Johnson has completely lived down to my expectations of him, despite my best hopes.
I saw Nicola Sturgeon speaking in the Scottish Parliament today. I thought ‘I believe her’. I’m never sure if I believe the prime minister - often I don’t at all.
Literally, every other government on the planet (except the USA, and possibly Brazil).
So it does hold water. What's your next argument, if you have one.
Even granted the fact that they would not have had much time to repair the almost irreparable damage done over the past years by the Selfservative Party.
*I make this distinction, because Scotland, Wales, and NI, have better governance.
I don't trust any of them. Sturgeon is just as much of a populist pandering to her base as Johnson is, it's just that you agree with her base so you either don't notice it or don't have a problem with it.
Could be.
Dom wanted to go to his parents estate so he did. Dim doesn't want to sack Dom so he won't. What anyone else thinks is irrelevant. Dim and Dom in the No 10 house.
Just think, if the Tories had put the same energy into Covid-19 related issues like lack of PPE as they have in protecting Dom, covid-19 might not have killed more people in the UK than the Blitz.
I'm heartily tired of anybody who dares to express anything but a resolutely 100% proof anti-Boris Johnson line being accused of sockpuppetry, which is an accusation that has been taken extremely seriously here in the past.
If you're sealed into your bubble to the extent of thinking that all dissenting opinions must be the work of a single individual merely because they're dissenting, there's not much hope for you, and voicing that accusation says as much about you as it does about them.
It can have nothing to do with the fact that our Prime is both a self-serving arsehole and a lazy moron. And more to the point the posts defending him consist of lazy assertions, proven inaccuracies, whataboutery or self-contradictions.
It's not a bubble, it's being fed up with the same lame defences of the indefensible.
AFZ
This was evidence from behavioural "scientists" beloved of Cummings, and it is reasonable to assume it would not have been given such weight by a Labour-SNP coalition. Recall that Scotland shut down large gatherings before England, with Johnson giving some waffle claiming the Scottish NHS wasn't as robust. As for testing, it seems likely that a Corbyn government would have been far more willing to use the full power of the state to increase capacity, imposing demands on private industry where necessary. Likewise they'd have been more willing to ramp up domestic production of PPE.
Meanwhile, of course, Johnson is still defending his pal, despite what appears to be growing anger England-wide. It seems that police trying to enforce lockdown in some places are being told 'If it's all right for Cummings, it's all right for us' - so much for the rule of law so beloved by the tories.
On the other hand we could have been drowning in thousands of non-functional and unneeded ventilators made by a consortium of Network Rail and the Royal Mint at £50k a pop, with Corbyn determined to maintain production indefinitely by exporting them to developing countries.
There is, of course, no reason to believe that this would have occurred.
No. I'd be lying if I said the thought hadn't occurred to me but my point was an entirely different one. I don't expect someone who is new to such a long thread to have read back and appreciated that 4 of 5 pages back we had a very similar argument. I was suggesting that some of the responses to @yohan300's argument were because it wasn't as original an argument as he/she seemed to think it was and that they may not know that we have already had much of this discussion. However, it doesn't change the fact that it's a piss poor argument in the first place.
Having no actual evidence of sockpuppetry, knowing how hot the hosts are on this, and not wishing to incur the righteous wrath of the Hell-hosts for junior hosting, I was proceeding on the assumption that @yohan300 was simply not aware of some of the contents of this thread. If you look at precisely what I wrote, I was working on this assumption and arguing that @yohan300's posts should be taken on their own merits and not assumed to be a rehashing ground already gone over.
What I was getting at is that in your post you implied that people on this thread are closed-minded or that we are becoming an anti-Boris echo-chamber. I am aware that this sort of thing has been discussed quite a lot on the ship recently. The problem here is that you seem to be ignoring that none of us are starting from nowhere. Many of us have thought about and debating these issues for years. Literally years. You may well get an undertone that people all agree about Mr Johnson because many of us do and it's already been discussed. Subconsciously or consciously there is a lot that people bring to the discussions because they have thought about it, debated it and moved on to the next point.
If you want to argue that Johnson has redeeming qualities, feel free, but I suspect you'd be met with significant scepticism and be expected to justify your points. It's a bit like arguing that Richard III didn't have a 'hunchback' seeing as since finding his skeleton, it's been confirmed that he did indeed have a spinal abnormality.
It is true that I am somewhat convinced that Mr Johnson is a lazy, narcissistic moron but there's a lot of reasons I could point to as to why I hold that view. A very current example is that Cummings made a statement in which he said one thing that was demonstrably false, several other things that may yet turn out not to be true and confessed to at least two offences. All in the context, that this undermines a vital public health message. The response of our Prime Minister? 'Mr Cummings has explained everything and it's time to move on.' This is not a case of differing perspectives; our Prime Minister is a demonstrable prat.
AFZ
Plenty of nasty tentacles flailing around, Cthulhu-wise, ready to take charge...IYSWIM with this rather mixed image...
(The tentacles are called tory MPs, by the way, though I'm glad a few of them, at least, have the courage to stand up and oppose their Heads).
In this respect, as far as I'm concerned the issue under discussion is totally irrelevant. I don't care if you or anyone else (and yes, I'm looking at you, @Bishops Finger), is talking about the Johnson government or the Syrius Cybernetics Corporation Complaints Division, if the implication of sockpuppetry is made, and repeated enlisting others in support of that accusation on no grounds other than that the arguments sound familiar, the likely result is a dogpile on wholly specious and (for Shipmates) unverifiable grounds. It is a baseless accusation and baseless accusations make my blood boil. This attitude stifles any opposing views, and pisses me off about three thousand percent.
And if the accusation is in good faith in the sense that one genuinely suspects similar views are a likely indicator of sockpuppetry, to the extent that it's apparently one of the initial assumptions, then I submit that yes, it is evidence that the accuser is convinced of the rightness of their own position to the point that they apparently prefer to believe, or at least assume, that just one other especially obtuse person disagrees with them than to entertain the idea that there might be a few more dissenters out there. Still less the unthinkable idea that those dissenters might possibly not voice their dissent, not because they're obtuse, but because they see the result when somebody does. You might want to live in an intellectual world like that, but I don't.
And again, my convictions on this have nothing to do with politics.
Does that mean we get to shut Cummings up in a box?
It's the way that the majority of the British public treat, for example, the speed limits when they're driving. It's not too hard to extrapolate from there to other rules.
I can see how the impression was created that you were getting this amusing, bouncy, can-do, gung-ho Chap (what we'd call in Ireland a cute hoor), but instead you have an evasive, timorous, hand-waving ducker-out clearly unable to cope without his Svengali.
I would feel I'd been sold a pig in a poke.
Well argued. My point remains that I stated that I thought some of the responses were a little bored which I felt was unfair as a new poster should not be expected to be familiar with the arguments from a few pages back. I doubt this was deliberate but we're all human and it's important to repeatedly test my own assumptions.
I was arguing that @yohan300's posts deserved to be tackled on their merits. I.e. I was encouraging engagement with 'dissenters' or rather those with whom we disagree.
I did read your post and I see what you mean but there's still an unspoken assumption in your post that BF was in a bubble. I appreciate you meant specifically with respect to the sockpuppetry accusation and I may have misread you but I took that to mean regardless of that specific you felt he was generally closed minded in thinking anti-Boris is the only position.
I think G K Chesterton put it well;
I always want to discuss issues and be challenged on what I think but there's very few things on which I have an opinion without having thought about it for a while first. I was arguing both for a certain position but also that a newcomer should be given the benefit of the doubt that they have not had the opportunity to work through the previous steps that many of us have. I was arguing against an echo chamber mentality but also for intellectual rigour.
AFZ
New to this thread no? I believe he even said so here.
At least that's the more charitable explanation.
The charitable explanation is that this accusation is made in misguided good faith, in which case it's conclusive evidence to my mind of a conviction that only one, single, dishonest individual could possibly disagree with the accuser's viewpoint, which is beyond closed-minded.
The less charitable explanation is that the accusation of sockpuppetry is wholly gratuitous, and that explanation is worse.
While discussing alternative histories, I would have thought it likely that any Labour government would have engaged with the EU and the consortium to purchase ventilators and PPE link to Guardian story of 21 April which said:
Let us assume you're right, and a Corbyn government would have been even worse than the current Johnson one.
Now, having got that out of the way, how do you explain the absolutely-worst-nation-at-dealing-with-Covid19 status that we have achieved? The Tories have been in power for a decade. This is happening on their watch and they can't blame anyone else. No references to anyone else but past and current members of the government, please.