26-01-2022, 18:16
Boris' main defence is that he came good on the big calls. The biggest is the claim that the vaccine rollout and our ability to allow quick license for Astra-Zeneca to rollout production wouldn't have happened if we were still subject to the European Medicines Agency thanks to Brexit. It's not true, however. The idea that Brexit enabled the UK to press ahead and authorise one is not right. It was actually permitted under EU law. Under European law a vaccine must be authorised by the EMA, but individual countries can use an emergency procedure that allows them to distribute a vaccine for temporary use in their domestic market.
What were his other 'big calls'? The initially delayed lockdown which has cost tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths, the disgraceful neglect of the care-home sector that had a supposed 'protective-ring' around it, scapegoated to ease pressure in NHS wards (all resulting from the delayed lockdown), lack of PPE (though that was more the blame of prior lack of preparedness, but still partly his fault), dodgy PPE contracts to VIP Tory chums, the track-and-trace debacle at massive financial cost (& again the beneficiaries of which are VIP chums), no circuit-break in school-half-term in Autumn 2020 against scientific advice resulting in an unnecessarily prolonged 2nd tier-system semi lockdown over Christmas into New Year (when before he locked down he scoffed at Starmer that Starmer wanted to cancel Christmas), and finally, delaying putting India on the red-list (because he went on a trade-visit there) leading to a surge of the delta variant, resulting in a 3rd lockdown last Spring.
I'd say that's a catalogue of failure. No enquiry still. More deaths per 1000 of population than any other country in the world.
And all throughout the lockdown of 2020 and the tier-system semi lockdown at the end of 2020/start of 2021, perfectly aware staff across Whitehall were regularly boozing it up in contravention of rules he signed off!
I'm sure Jonathan Pie's next YouTube diatribe will be well worth a listen. Re: the VIP PPE contracts, he said in a previous vlog: "They're on the take, and what they're taking is the fucking piss"
What were his other 'big calls'? The initially delayed lockdown which has cost tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths, the disgraceful neglect of the care-home sector that had a supposed 'protective-ring' around it, scapegoated to ease pressure in NHS wards (all resulting from the delayed lockdown), lack of PPE (though that was more the blame of prior lack of preparedness, but still partly his fault), dodgy PPE contracts to VIP Tory chums, the track-and-trace debacle at massive financial cost (& again the beneficiaries of which are VIP chums), no circuit-break in school-half-term in Autumn 2020 against scientific advice resulting in an unnecessarily prolonged 2nd tier-system semi lockdown over Christmas into New Year (when before he locked down he scoffed at Starmer that Starmer wanted to cancel Christmas), and finally, delaying putting India on the red-list (because he went on a trade-visit there) leading to a surge of the delta variant, resulting in a 3rd lockdown last Spring.
I'd say that's a catalogue of failure. No enquiry still. More deaths per 1000 of population than any other country in the world.
And all throughout the lockdown of 2020 and the tier-system semi lockdown at the end of 2020/start of 2021, perfectly aware staff across Whitehall were regularly boozing it up in contravention of rules he signed off!
I'm sure Jonathan Pie's next YouTube diatribe will be well worth a listen. Re: the VIP PPE contracts, he said in a previous vlog: "They're on the take, and what they're taking is the fucking piss"
talking historically over his lifetime, not just about now