The government continues to sink under its incompetence and lies

By TruePublica: You would have thought by now that they would have given up completely, stopped lying and just told the truth so we could all get on doing what we are supposed to be doing under the COVID-19 lockdown. But it’s because we’re all sitting at home not doing much, that about 90 per cent of adults have transformed their in-depth knowledge of Brexit and become overnight epidemiologists or scientific advisors. These new-found skills mean we keep unearthing the scale of lies by people who thought 90 per cent of the population were all morons. Having conned the nation once and got Brexit under their belt, what could a little virus do?

On April 2nd, when the COVID-19 death toll was 2,921 – most of the population thought the Boris johnson government was doing the right thing and making the right decisions. Just six days later on April 8th – 821 people died that day of the virus and today (at the time of writing) the total number has now escalated to well over 20,000. On April 22nd the Financial Times reported that according to its analysis (a free to read article) of the latest data from the Office for National Statistics – deaths had reached 41,000. Unlike the government statistics provided, the FT included the number of C19 related deaths from outside of hospitals, including care homes and at home deaths.

There is a point at which the government, no matter how much it lies, spins or attempts to dodge the questions are simply unable to deny their incompetent performance. The court of public opinion is turning. On April 14th, according to YouGov, 68 per cent of the population thought the government were handling the crisis well.  Three days later, with deaths reaching new highs every 24 hours, approval was still riding high at 66 per cent. But then it started to crater.

Today, 51 per cent of the public approve of the government handling of this crisis. However, 63 per cent say the government did not act fast enough and 57 per cent disapprove of the testing regime. It’s telling that just 7% of people think the level of testing for Covid-19 has been sufficient, while 71% think it has been insufficient.

The problem is that the stories keep coming forward that this government does not really care about the nation, only the state and more importantly – itself.

Leaving aside the fact that the government were warned about this pandemic in 2016 and 2018 and suppressed the clear warnings in its own reports and the fact that US intelligence agencies warned both the US and UK last November that this pandemic was on its way, there have been other failings that has cost a lot of lives. And the government appear to be unmoved by it all and continues with its disastrous ‘herd-immunity’ strategy.

 

SAGE

The story of the secretive nature of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) meetings has spiralled out of control, with Dominic Cummings, yet again, at the heart of the story. And wherever he turns up, there’s always trouble one way or another. The question here is this – is SAGE really independent from the government? The more we get to find out, the less confidence there is that this is the case.

Paul Lewis – Head of Investigations at The Guardian said – “We understand that while the chief scientific advisers from Scotland, Wales and N Ireland have been allowed to listen in on Sage meetings, they have been doing so as observers. Unlike Cummings and Warner, they were not allowed to ask questions, unless submitted in writing. Multiple attendees of Sage told the Guardian that both Cummings and Warner had been ‘participating’ in meetings of the group as far back as February. That’s the story No10 spinners want you to tell. It is a story about whether the secretive scientific group advising the Cabinet Office is independent from politics – and open with the public.”

The list of attendees looks and sounds impressive but it means nothing if fully independent views, reports, statistics, experience and so on – is simply politicised for its own gain.

Alex Wickham, political editor at Buzzfeed News reports that – “On the record from No10 spokesperson: “Public confidence in the media has collapsed during this emergency partly because of ludicrous stories such as this.” Because the story turned out not to be nonsense – public confidence has collapsed, not just in the media, but in the government itself.

 

Ventilators

We’ve all heard the early stories about the lack of life-saving ventilators – another critical issue the government messed up. It turns out that after all the nonsensical noises by government officials who took the crisis to promote British industry like Dyson and Rolls Royce in the midst of a pandemic – ventilator standards set out for UK makers were ‘of no use’ to COVID patients. So Dyson, who allegedly spent £25million developing the CoVent, ended up burning the cash for no reason. Given that nearly two-thirds of hospital admitted COVID patients who end up on a ventilator die – the government were remarkably cavalier about their intentions.

 

15,000 NHS patients turfed out of hospital beds

Other knee-jerk decisions were made in a mad panic. 15,000 NHS patients were literally turfed out of their beds by way of changing the criteria of their presence. Within one hour, people were making arrangements to go home. How many of these patients ended up or will end up in coffins is, as yet, unknown. Presumably, they were there for good reason. The 45-page document made clear its intentions. The first paragraph read – “Based on these criteria, acute and community hospitals must discharge all patients as soon as they are clinically safe to do so. Transfer from the ward should happen within one hour of that decision being made to a designated discharge area. Discharge from hospital should happen as soon after that as possible, normally within 2 hours.” It goes on to say that -“This applies for people being discharged from hospital or who would otherwise be admitted into it, for a limited time, to enable quick and safe discharge and more generally reduce pressure on acute services.”

 

PPE flown to tax havens

As if things couldn’t possibly get worse when it comes to mishandling the entire protective equipment story for frontline medics – this little gem pops up to grab you by the throat. The fact that PPE was being diverted away from Scotland was one scandal – the fact that the UK Government is supplying personal protective equipment to some of the richest countries in the world, including the notorious tax haven of the Cayman Islands is another.

Prem Sikka is an Emirtus Professor of Accounting – he makes the observation that – “The UK Government is supplying personal protective equipment to the richest tax havens in the world, including the ones that enable UK companies to dodge taxes. Someone must have direct access to senior govt officials. Meanwhile, UK frontline staff wait.”

And that’s a fair point isn’t it and it brings us right back to – is SAGE independent – or is everyone taking this entire grisly episode in Britain’s history as little more than a business opportunity.

 

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