You've got really low standards if you think Boris is doing well/okay

[flashbac]

Day by Day it just gets worse. Bodies piling up, lies being denied or covered up, blatant and shameless cronyism and corruption yet Bojo fangirls and fanboys keep lapping it up. What does he have to do to blow it huh? How can your standards be so flipping low?

Corbyn would have done a better job.

I'm no tory or boris fan. Cant stand him due to his past. Cannot understand why the public voted in someone who had arranged to have anither person beaten up. That makes him a thug in my opinion.

But when the pandemic hit ii thought well hes what weve got and we need to get through this. I felt he was in a no win situation because of the illness and was impressed with the furlough scheme etc. I did think was a bit late to lock down and even a week earlier would have made a difference.

However the events that unfolded last weekend and the subsequent "fuck you, well do what we want"attitude and the ridiculously contrived story made me think is this the best our government can come up with?

Watching him yesterday floundering with the questions and being completely out of his depth, I understand completely why he cannot manage without DC. And I understand why DC gavehim 3-word slogans to repeat to the country
It was clear yesterday that's all he can cope with. A man pathetically out of his depth. Sad I thought. And momentarily felt sorry for him. He knows it's all screwed up but he is powerless to get rid of DC because he will never cope without him. The only thing hes got going for him is that we cant get rid of him for 4 and a half years and boy is he playing that catd

You could do better, could you?
FYI bodies are 'piling up' in all countries not just ours. He's doing the best he can do in difficult circumstances and I'm sick of the hate towards him.
Change the bloody record.

Why are people so bloody stupid? He is clearly and obviously out of his depth. Thousands have died needlessly. The whole things is a disgrace and embarrassment. Yes I think the OP could probably have done better and I know fuck all about them.

I actually think that he's done a pretty decent job in totally unprecendented times.

Wtf

- but I'm in the minority of people who had the same interpretation of the rules as DC
Including testing your eyesight by driving your son for 30 miles?

@mathdoc - Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Germany, israel all have high population density too and travel hubs. Baltic countries have lower gdp and have land borders. A lot of people say that UK has so many challenges, but I don’t think it’s really exceptional in the challenges it faced compared to other places.

Odd that all of a sudden they think managing their borders is important... especially from brexiteers.

They may have missed the boat initially but even then don’t think they have been very effective in mitigating the situation.

YANBU OP, Johnson is an utterly dreadful PM and people have paid for it with their lives.

Due to his handling of the Cummings affair there are now likely to be more avoidable deaths.

He needs to go. Hopefully he will be replaced before long. And there will be an enquiry.

Our death rate per million is acknowledged to be one of the worst in the world.

However, I think the initial mistake of not realising the pandemic was going to be serious is one anyone could make. We've had threatened pandemics before, it's easy to see why they didn't think it was different. There was a point at which I was prepared to 'lend' him my support.

But the Sunday night announcement which sent people back to work without putting the supporting infrastructure in place when waiting a few days or putting more detailed guidance out first would have made a huge difference. Not to mention allowing people to travel unlimited distances which seems to have the maximum risk of spreading infection for minimal economic benefit. Weston Super Mare seem to be directly suffering as a result.

The schools reopening, where it is very very clear that June 1st was an arbitrary date. They haven't met their tests but it doesn't matter. The scientists didn't model the scenario they are using but it doesn't matter. Where other countries come up with creative ideas to get schools running, England's solution to needing double the number of classrooms and teachers? Use your lunchroom and borrow staff from other schools who presumably have been running with three times as many staff as they need so now have spares.

This isn't political point scoring. This is about being scared the Government are messing up in a way that will lead to further restrictions and a unforgivable death toll.

I keep thinking, surely nobody can possibly defend him/our government response NOW but some of the replies show that, well, yes they can.

The 'do you think YOU would have done a better job?' argument comes up time and time again and the answer is obviously, no - it's not my job to lead the country. 'Corbyn would have been worse' - well, perhaps. I don't love him but it's totally irrelevant anyway, because it's not his job either.

I am very anti-Tory. I'm extremely anti-Johnson. But I would not have been disappointed if they'd done a good job on this. I would have been really, really pleased and hopeful that maybe our future is not as bleak as I thought it might be. No sensible person secretly wants the government to fuck up the handling of a pandemic, for thousands to die, to score a political point. It's a tragedy and a shock to see how this has been handled.

It's a tragedy and a shock to see how this has been handled.

Yes .

You don't even need hindsight to know we could (should) have fared better, we were 2/3/4 weeks behind italy/spain/France yet still fannied about over lock down, kept saying wash your hands but your loved ones will die. Went against WHO advice (test, test, test) and now were.coming out of lock down without childcare for those expected back at work, funding pulled from poor, deprived, hardest hit areas (mainly labour) to white, middle class (tory) areas. It's fucking disgraceful

He didn't even read the scientists' papers, he just let Cummings spoon feed him the bits he wanted Bojo to see.

@Eskarina1 - agree. If they think that all of a sudden it is good to have quarantine from abroad and talk about local lockdowns, why are they allowing unlimited land travel? Makes no sense. If they want to lift lockdown in a sensible way, better to pilot it in an area, establish track and trace while lifting restrictions and then monitor effect.

I know this was a page or so back but can I just point out to some posters that Japan has a higher population density and an older population than the UK and yet their death toll is fewer than 1000.

No we don't have to wait and see who has the highest death toll. The fact is if we'd locked down a week or two earlier, had proper testing and quarantining it would have been much more manageable and fewer people would have died. We would have been able to come out of lock down sooner and that would have been better for the economy that some posters like to bang on about whilst people are dying .

It’s also laughable that only now are flights into the U.K. being tested/quarantined, that should have been done two months ago or better yet stop ppl coming here!

metro.co.uk/2020/05/22/lockdown-week-earlier-have-stopped-three-quarters-deaths-uk-12743426/

this is only based on the official, reported deaths not the ONS excess deaths (currently c. 60,000)

It’s the lies. The treating the electorate like fools. The corruption.
Aside from that very weak wrap around of care homes that left thousands dying and many more at risk because the arms were invisible; aside from the healthcare workers they clapped having PPE guidance rewritten because we didn’t have enough; aside from building nightingale hospitals but not staffing or equipping them; aside from not reacting to Cygnus in 2016 or Wuhan in December....

Cummings owns the farmhouse.
We rejected already developed European tracing App that was already established and paid Cummings sister a small fortune to build our own.
We gave Dyson a small fortune to ‘develop’ ventilators from hoovers instead of commissioning other companies with devices already at standard to produce more.
We refused to join EU commissioning programme and said the ‘emails were lost’
Johnson broke the rules numerous times driving between his very nice flat at number 11 and Chequers. He let his girlfriend do likewise.
GSK is in Barnard Castle and they have vaccine production deal.
The government are now paying the tabloids to run propaganda stories to encourage love of the government.
The press are being silenced.

All very concerning curtailments of civil liberties.
They’ll blame the Brexit screwup on Covid19 too and the great unwashed will still say he can’t help it; it was the virus.

UK is second worst in world for excess mortality and people still think the tories are doing a good job.
www.ft.com/content/6b4c784e-c259-4ca4-9a82-648ffde71bf0?shareType=nongift

Cherry, we had companies offering PPE and ventilators for free who the government never bothered with. Money seems to go to friends and family.

Pandemic the likes of which have not been seen for 300 years in a small country with a massive population. Who exactly would do better? Corbyn?😱

Of course there have been mistakes, but we need to get out of the lockdown now taxpayers can’t keep funding people to be at home not working

@Kittenlicker

Hong king and Singapore have extremely high population densities but have managed CoVId 19 crisis much more successfully. One of the reasons for their successes (as in other countries that have managed it significantly better than us) is widespread testing, something that we are still not managing to do in the U.K., even now.

Testing is only relevant if people are then quarantined and so are their contacts. Have you seen the T&T thread? People here appear to be paranoid about being ‘tracked’ for this despite being glued to their phones 24/7 and don’t seem to mind that in getting all their information from social media they are being manipulated.

YouTheCat Indeed. It is all about the money.

@lecjford that’s incorrect actually however, the ‘who could do better’ remark has already been addressed and is really not helpful. The fact is we have the government we have and they are not doing a great job at present, in fact it’s appalling and that needs to be questioned and addressed.

Who exactly would do better? Corbyn?

The leaders of practically every other country in the Western world bar the US?

Fucksake I don't know how anyone can defend him. If he is doing his best he should be ashamed of himself because it is a pathetic excuse for leadership.

Of course someone else could do better. The only world leader doing worse is Trump. All Boris had to do was look at other countries and copy, he had a shit tonne of warning.