To wonder where Boris Johnson is?

[littleblackdress04]

He’s never at the daily briefings and given that we are living through the greatest crisis in living memory, he should be there. The list of people at these briefings gets more bizarre every day.

He’s the prime minister and he’s pretty absent at the moment meanwhile the death count grows. 35,000 people - it’s truly devastating especially when you think that if there is a terrorist incident and even one person dies, it makes the headlines for days.

And before anyone says he’s on paternity leave, he’s a notoriously absent father who has many other kids and if that was anyone else on here, would get slated for not fulfilling his parental duties.

Aibu to think he’s shirking his responsibilities as PM- he should be there every day being accountable but he’s not- he’s sending in his minions. It’s truly appalling.

This is yet another Labour thread..

The initial debate about whether Boris should - or should not - be at the daily press conferences was mildly interesting. But I agree, this has just degenerated into sweeping Boris/Tory bashing - boring!

I think he's unwell. He hasn't taken time to recover properly from Covid, he's had massive stress to deal with personally and professionally since becoming Tory leader and he's a human being. Nobody could sail through that lot with equanimity even if their physical health was unimpaired. To be honest, I think he's unfit to be PM in every sense of the word.

KuckFnows its obviously really hard for you to grasp that with tens of thousands of people dead there might be some legitimate questions to be asked of the government.
Don't worry though, there are others on here who can grasp the concept of a debate being important in a democratic nation at a time of crisis. And that doesn't make us all Labour supporters just people who believe in scrutiny of those in public office.
Why don't you push off to a nice gentle thread where all is roses and sunshine and everything has a happy ending, there there.

im sure boris is working very hard and not;
lying
hiding in fridges
screwing over brit citizens imprisoned
lying
spending gazziluojs on garden bridges
buying illegal water tanks
refusing to vote on his big issue- heathrow
laughing at single mothers, gays, muslims
lying

hes a guy who has achieved so much for the country while parenting countless children- how many people do you know who've done that?

now we probably will have a hard brexit in the middle of a recession- smash the economy and take away our rights- could i love boris more?

He’s on the toilet shitting himself because he’s going to have to face Starmer again today.

I have to say, he’s been a very disappointing PM.

Yep bashing poor old BJ 🙄
Best catch up on some stats Medieval one.

he’s been a very disappointing PM

he hasnt!!
he's behaved exactly as he has all his priveleged life! what did you expect?

I have been asking the same question OP
It's indefensible for Boris Johnson to disappear at such an important time.
No mention of where he is by his delegates or what he is doing
Why haven't any of the journalists asked the question?
And I agree with the poster who mentioned the similarities with BJ and DT
Twins parted at birth?
Would be comical if not so deadly serious
I personally think BJ is in hiding
If you can't stand the heat stay out of the kitchen...
He just hasn't a clue.

Given the comments by those who’ve had COVID-19 ‘mildly’, & that BoJo was in ITU care close to death, I assume that he’s experiencing some hefty Post-Viral Debility, & on medical advice will be resting & pacing himself as best as any PM can.

He's a poor speaker, and maybe even he realises that; so he's been getting someone to do it.

Alternatively (awaits deletion), he kept saying "it could have gone either way". Perhaps it didn't go the way everyone thought, and since then, there have been a few token appearances by somebody in a Boris wig, in the usual style of government pretending things are true when they're not.

@fallsballs

FYI - I vote Labour and am no fan of Boris. Just enjoy a decent debate not wading through meaningless Boris bashing and inane comments about fridges.

Kuck maybe you should stick to the demented threads?

its not inane to mention that boris would rather hide in a fridge rather than face the press during his campaign to be leader.

its very relevant- boris has a history of hiding when things get tough. thats who he is.

Because he is a funking idiot that's why. He was somewhat comia as the buffoon mayor of London but not he has real power he has proven to be completely inept. Not a tory voter but I would rather have Cameron or May back to deal with this crisis.

I agree re Boris being in absentia and think he is an exceptionally poor leader.

The care home deaths, sad as they are, need to be considered in context.

Is South Asia, they don't have care homes as we do. The elderly are mainly cared for at home by family and their "care homes" are more like hospitals. Residents don't even wear their own clothes for example (although some of the newer care centres are being more progressive). Confused/wandering patients are more likely to be put on sedating medications or confined to bed/a room unlike in the UK where these practices are felt to be poor care.

Also - we need to also remember that Thatcher essentially privatised the care of older people by closing NHS wards/hospitals for older adults thus pushing the care to the private sector. She let people buy their council houses for buttons thus gave them an asset they could sell to pay for their care when unable to remain at home.

Ts and Cs in care homes in the UK are much poorer than those in the NHS so care homes tend to attract a different staffing demographic - nurses who have been sacked from the NHS but have maintianed their NMC registration will easily get a senior position in a care home. Care homes are also experiencing vacancy rates of up to 50% owing to the closure of agencies in Europe who would normally recruit as a result of Brexit. This can lead to a reliance on agency / casual staff who are not emotionally committed to the residents and/or who have poor practices as "someone is better than no-one".

Private care homes also operate on a business model so staff are restricted in the non-mandatory training they get. So for example, they will get fire safety/equality and diversity training, but they won't get time off to do, for example, the Dementia Framework training. They also often do not take student nurses/allied health professionals, again because they won't give the staff the paid leave required to do the supervision and assessment training they need to support learners. It is well known that having students in care settings indirectly raises the quality of care as they are likely to report poor practice which will be escalated by the University and could lead to the care inspectorate (or equivalent) putting conditions on them.
There will be very limited access to IT/a computer so learning at the workplace is also challenging.

I appreciate that there are some excellent care homes in the UK which the above will not apply to - but it is a sad fact that older adults are not particularly valued in Western society and a person will get paid significantly more for doing night fill at Asda than they will for working in a 25 bedded acute dementia unit in a care home. I'm not saying that paying more money to staff is the answer and there are many, many excellent carers and nurses working for low pay compared with the NHS (and there are plenty of poor nurses in the NHS) but it is a fact that care homes will employ people that the NHS wont and many of these people will be poorly equipped to deal with the challenges of caring for older adults.

@wanderings 😆 that has really made me laugh thankyou!

the thing that should give you the rage is that 35,000 people have died at the hands of an incompetent prime minister mismanaging a crisis

I think whoever was in charge we would still have had lots of deaths. Appalling though the government's response has been, I don't think you can hold Boris responsible for each death.

He’s an exceptionally poor leader, a morally abject human being and just plain awful at public speaking.

I don’t think it’s a surprise he’s delegating to people better at the latter.

The press conferences are hardly a good use of anyone's time. Even if he spent the time napping/recovering his strength, or with his family, that would be a better use of his time.

He tried to hide behind Cummings slogans initially as usual, much like the get Brexit done bullshit. That didn’t work and he realised he was totally in over his head so delegated the job to others. Standard Boris really, no idea why anyone thought he was a good idea.

PMQs today😁....my kids (2xprimary 1x early senior) are now really invested in watching it (lord knows how that happened with me as a parent - the evils of you tube I guess😱😆!) as they think it’s amazing how Kier totally wipes the floor With Bojo ....today I’m looking on the bright side that this may just inspire the younger generation to do better...gotta have some hope!!

I think he is experiencing post viral syndrome which isn't well publicised because it undermines the idea of recovery for most and we haven't got our chronic fatigue services ready for referrals.

Also, he wouldn't know the answers so it couldn't be live.

I value the briefings as I want to hear from PHE, NHS England and the CMOs.

Fair point Medieval. I think it’s important not to see him as an idiot, he knows what he’s doing and is taking us for fools. Him and his pocket lucifer, Cummings.

@littleblackdress04 He's in No 10 working.

Sorry but you are trying to whip up some kind of argument when there is none.

You would never have any PM turning up for daily briefings. Not that we have ever been in this situation before, other than a world war.

He speaks when there are major announcements, but in between those, his ministers do the day to day talking.

I am sick and tired of people criticising the government.
It's incredibly easy to play politics with all of this but NO other party could have done better. Labour don't even have any ministers with experience. It's so easy for Starmer to appear as the blue eyed boy at PMQs but he's simply asking questions- any of us could do that!

And a lot of it is with hindsight!

Imagine putting yourself in the PM's shoes - would you or anyone else know exactly what was the right thing to do?

It's not been great, but you cannot lay the blame solely on 'the government'. There are criticisms of PHE, the scientists who provided data (which may have been wrong), the NHS who were slow to procure from the private sector.....

It's not all down to one man when the civil service is the driving force behind a lot of the decisions.

And Boris did nearly die- give the bloke a chance! He's been out of hospital for around 3 weeks. Chances are he's still knackered but is doing what he can.

So please put a sock in it.

yeah i know people genuinely dont think the timing of the lockdown, closing borders or at least quarantining 100000's arrivals, listening to the results of the epidemic excercises, testing and tracking, ppe, has anything to do with the pm/boris at all.

maybe they think boris is just a figurehead rather than a leader and should just go around shaking hands in hospital... oop no mustnt mention that.