UK Politics - BoJo and chums

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The best line from Marina Hyde's article about the prospective successors to Johnson:

upload_2022-7-8_14-32-35.png
 
I mean, they're probably not wrong. Starmer seems pretty keen to get elected nomatter what promise or pledge previously-made he has to discard along the way. The problem with trying to be like Blair is we've already had one of them. Record's kinda on the table there.

Don't get me wrong: pretty much any party would be an improvement (for a literal definition of improvement, despite for many it maybe not translating into a material improvement). But the bar is just so shockingly low already.
 
Gorbles said:
I did! That's why I said I fundamentally disagree :)
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Sherbz said:
I dont think it would have made any difference whatsoever who was in charge. Liberal, Labour or Conservative. None of them would have prepared for a pandemic to the lengths identified in that report.
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By all means disagree with my view on lockdowns and whether Boris got some things on Covid right. But i never claimed either Labour or liberals being in power would have made no difference. All i was saying is that im 95% sure neither of them would have done any more than what the tories did in terms of implementing that report. Mostly because much of it would have been implemented by the civil service and not politicians. And preparedness for a pandemic has been nowhere on the political agenda since practically forever. It was also a very slow burn. The kind of things that government do all the time and eventually they get made into some sort of policy.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-pandemic-preparedness/annex-a-about-exercise-cygnus

Actually theres a wiki on it. Interesting read actually. Id only really heard about it by people referencing it on the radio.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercise_Cygnus
 
The 22 further recommendations, listed as per the report, include:[5]

  1. Corporations are required to update their "Emergency Preparedness Resilience and Response training and exercising" for optimum performance
  2. Expert advice from all stakeholders should be readily presented to SCGs for corresponding response. This should occur efficiently so multiple LRFs can benefit from this support.
  3. Planning should occur on a national level, and take into account how local pandemic flu strategies can be operationalised in implementation.
  4. The health tripartite (DH, NHS England and PHE) and Chief Medical Officers (CMOs) should have Cobra Meetings incorporated into flu response
  5. More research needs to be done to investigate if population-based triage is viable during a critical, widespread influenza pandemic
  6. More work is required to understand surge arrangements when the pandemic becomes overwhelming. NHS England should direct the operational side while DH should give management, guidance and policy direction with advice from the Four Nations CMO meeting.
  7. DH should collaborate with partners to understand how antivirals may be used in a pandemic.
  8. PHE and NHS England must cooperate to improve current community guidelines and deliver antivirals within restrictions stipulated by NHS Emergency Preparedness staff.
  9. All corporations must be prepared for increased staff absence in the midst of a pandemic and make appropriate plans.
  10. Pandemic plans need to be effectively communicated to public for reassurance, and the right amount of detail of disclosed information should be ascertained.
  11. Steps to release information to public should be coordinated by DH, NHS England and PHE national teams together with Devolved Administrations
  12. A variety of stakeholders needs to be involved during communication of the pandemic to public. Special care is needed in the realm of social media.
  13. Cross-government efforts need to be conducted to avoid repetition and redundancy across departments.
  14. Department of Education should investigate the impact of school closures on the wider community.
  15. British Nationals residing overseas should be taken into account during an influenza.
  16. Ministry of Defence should be required to assist in the worst-case scenario.
  17. The process and timeline of front line responders need to be made more precise.
  18. A framework for analysing social care and surge capacity needs to be established.
  19. The potential for increasing social care real-estate and staff numbers need to be examined.
  20. Strategies to allocate voluntary resources during a pandemic need to be developed with advice from non-health departments.
  21. Excess death management needs review.
  22. Pandemic contingency plans and procedures as a whole require more development
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I have no idea how far "the tories" got down this list. But i doubt whether Labour or Liberals would have got any further.
 
sherbz said:
All i was saying is that im 95% sure neither of them would have done any more than what the tories did in terms of implementing that report.
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You're right, sorry, I got the order of posts mixed up. Completely my bad.

However, I don't think it's disingenuous at all wrt. potential action items coming out of the report. You're the one claiming that "it would have been no better under anyone elses watch" (post reference mainly to save me time haha). Maybe other parties wouldn't have gotten as far, but the Tories literally pretty much nothing *. Arguably, they took us backwards by continuing to segment up and private parts of the NHS.

You're free to doubt, but the reality is you don't know. Nobody does. So why is it disingenuous that other peoples' expectations of different political parties don't match yours? Because that's what this comes down to, right? You don't have faith (for whatever reason) that other major parties would've been able to make any headway into these described shortcomings. It's not disingenuous if people just honestly have a different opinion, and your framing of it as such is probably what lead me so far down this tangent, hah.

No idea why you're quote marking "the Tories", either. They're the Tories, also known as the Conservative Party. It's common shorthand (with etymological roots), much like you're using Liberals for the Lib Dems (or Liberal Democrats, to type out the full name nobody uses).

* it should be noted that the results of Cygnus were somewhat fed into ** what became the controversial Coronavirus Act 2020, which also gave the government broad powers to do a bunch of other, arguably excessive, things.

** we both got to Exercise Cygnus on Wiki at the same time, haha
 
sherbz said:
I have no idea how far "the tories" got down this list. But i doubt whether Labour or Liberals would have got any further.
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I am inclined to agree with you.

I have very quickly scanned through the PDF:

https://assets.publishing.service.g...t_data/file/927770/exercise-cygnus-report.pdf

and I have the following instant observations:


Contains:

Recommendations to do more research and planning. All very well, but that provides an excuse for corporates,
educational organisations, local government etc. to do exactly nothing pending that further research and planning.

No prioritisation of the different actions recommended; according to the 4 (or if you like 9, 16, 25) square table:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Benefits Low~~~~~~~~~Benefits High

Affordability: High~~~~Action No ???~~~~~~~~Action No ???
Affordability: Low~~~~Action No ???~~~~~~~~ Action No ???


Does Not Contain:

Any coherent plan for external border closures
Any provision for subdividing the UK into regions with border checkpoints
Any discussion of prioritising activities: Food, Water, Health and Transport to support such


Likely Impact of Plan on Organisations:

Imagine the conversation with the executive who being told of the plan, asks

"Is there a current problem?" "No, but there might be"
"Is there a legal duty with penalties?" "No"
"Is there any money to pay for this?" "No"

"In that case I can hardly justify doing much, to my board".

Now I went through it fast, and so I may have missed something.
 
EnglishEdward said:
I am inclined to agree with you.
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I look at it as a long term shopping list. If it were a list of "do this or else", there would be time sensitive goals. And there arent any. It is a sort of "this is what we are working towards" list. And im sure thousands of such plans exist in the pantheon of government (health, social care, education, police, armed forces etc). And they are all at various stages of non completion. This is just brought into more relief because of the value of hindsight and the fact that there actually was a pandemic. Im sure there are various contingency plans for what happens if Russia launches a nuke; what if the water supply gets poisoned; what if we were economically blockaded etc. And very few of any of those objectives would be currently realised. And that isnt because the current government is useless. Its just how things work. It is more, i would say, a convenient vehicle for those on the left of the spectrum to try and beat the government with a stick.
 
AmazonQueen said:
Nobody prepared to knowingly make a total fool of themselves can be all bad, not even Ed Balls.
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Hmmmmm, maybe Boris' caretaker spell should be prolonged, then.

I mean, one of today's many headlines is ‘MP who gave protesters the middle finger promoted to education minister’ and another ‘Nadine Dorries considers leadership bid to “keep Johnson's flame alive”’.
sherbz said:
I dont think it would have made any difference whatsoever who was in charge. Liberal, Labour or Conservative. None of them would have prepared for a pandemic to the lengths identified in that report.
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They ‘prepared’ for it by intentionally defunding the NHS and related organisations.

So, yes, there's nothing anybody could have done, because the conservative-led governments have long intentionally destroyed Britain's health and education infrastructure.
 
I think Dorries has already categorically denied standing for party leader. The comedy candidate in this case is Suella Braverman, one of the dimmest lawyers ever to grace this country.
 
Takhisis said:
They ‘prepared’ for it by intentionally defunding the NHS and related organisations.

So, yes, there's nothing anybody could have done, because the conservative-led governments have long intentionally destroyed Britain's health and education infrastructure.
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That it is a load of piffle. The cons, whatever else they maybe, did not start out to destroy the NHS. Indeed, funding under them has increased dramatically. One does wonder whether you are merely one of the sheep who seems OBLIGED to oppose rather than have anything useful to say.
 
sherbz said:
That it is a load of piffle. The cons, whatever else they maybe, did not start out to destroy the NHS. Indeed, funding under them has increased dramatically. One does wonder whether you are merely one of the sheep who seems OBLIGED to oppose rather than have anything useful to say.
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I feel like stuff like this needs some kind of citations. So let me start:

How generous have the Conservatives been with the NHS? (Channel 4, dated June 2018).
 
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