to think Matt Hancock looks knackered

[chomalungma]

Just watched Marr show
Tetchy, knackered
Obvious why - he must have an enormous workload and responsibility

But being knackered and tetchy can't be good for decision making.

He's not good enough for this crisis. He's petulant & duplicitous & weak. Not his fault. But 'trying his best' is the minimum we should expect. This isn't a Junior school football match.

@Orf1abc

We all would be if we were in a job that we were completely unqualified for. There's only so long you can wing it, and his time was up months ago.

Completely agree with this. He looks knackered because he and Boris have no idea what they are doing

I don't agree with the premise that someone's personal appearance is up for grabs- that's usually the sexist slant reserved for female politicians. However, he and this government are at best incompetent charlatans and at worst actively using the pandemic for their own ends.
However, Johnson mussing up his hair deliberately should be pulled up for the distraction technique it is.

Whilst I think they have all generally done quite a bad job handling this, I do not envy them. Everything they touch is turning to dust at the moment, I even feel sorry for Boris Johnson, Brexit's gone to shit, pandemic is completely out of control, recipe for an absolute breakdown. He might be a prize idiot but I still wouldn't want to wish ill on him.

@PizzaForOne

He needs a few days off of nothing but sleep followed by a good shag

So who is going to take one for the team then?

@ineedaholidaynow

What qualifications do you need to be a politician? Bearing in mind when they have a cabinet reshuffle they put people in very different roles, so they can’t have qualifications that suit all the roles they can end up having.

Doesn't matter because behind every cabinet minister is a small army of civil servants who are the ones who (should) know their department like the back of their hands - it's they who have the qualifications and experience, and they tend to stay in position whoever is their cabinet minister and whichever party is in power. They are the ones who provide the stability. The ministers themselves are basically just figureheads whose job is mostly public-facing, so their only qualification for the job is looking good on camera, talking to people, and putting options on the cabinet table for cabinet approval, i.e. soft skills rather than hard/technical skills.

I don't agree with the premise that someone's personal appearance is up for grabs

This is not about his appearance - but more about his ability to make sensible decisions when he is tired.

@Kazzyhoward I assume they are also the scapegoat as well as the figurehead if it all goes wrong

Yeah I agree he's out of his depth. People who know what they are doing should be in the roles, not little Eton toads. I certainly don't enjoy his toady perfect prefect school boy telling off the faggs (archaic use, not discrimination fyi!) Certainly a face that could be improved by a good slap. (Whoops, I made it about appearance too!)

@Kazzyhoward you are right but the problem is they are not giving the civil servants the chance to make reasoned and sensible suggestions, because everything is being viewed through the lens of the media and what makes good soundbites. They are making decisions then informing the civil servants after the fact rather than allowing the influence of policy. Take the situation with mass testing for example - DfE staff had that dropped with no notice.

[quote VienneseWhirligig]@Kazzyhoward you are right but the problem is they are not giving the civil servants the chance to make reasoned and sensible suggestions, because everything is being viewed through the lens of the media and what makes good soundbites. They are making decisions then informing the civil servants after the fact rather than allowing the influence of policy. Take the situation with mass testing for example - DfE staff had that dropped with no notice.[/quote]
I agree, but that's been the case for 20+ years, nothing new at all. I remember some of Gordon Brown's howlers when he was Chancellor where we needed U-turns almost immediately after he'd made changes on the hoof. Same happened with the coalition and the Libdems announcing the child benefit "tax" at their annual conference that had received no Treasury scrutiny/approval beforehand.

Whatever anyone thinks of the government, they have been working non stop through all of this and I can’t even begin to imagine the stress levels.
So I’m not bloody surprised he’s knackered !

They are an absolute disgrace, they look exhausted as they have been promoted way beyond their individual capabilities. They are poor quality politicians. No sympathy from me. In fact if I met them in person I’d be raging at them. If they aren’t capable they should step down and let someone take over who knows what they are doing.

@Dee1975

Whatever anyone thinks of the government, they have been working non stop through all of this and I can’t even begin to imagine the stress levels. So I’m not bloody surprised he’s knackered !

Except Johnson hasn’t has he? Except there was summer recess wasn’t there? Johnson has enjoyed Mustique, he had two weeks at Chevening, then a recovery period at Chequers. He went off to Scotland and had time on a private Russian owned Yacht in the Solent. Parliament had recess from 22 July to 1 September. Christmas has started and undoubtedly Johnson has left tier 4 Downing Street for Chequers. Probably with quite a few others.

I was wondering if Johnson has left Downing St. I hope not, it sends a poor message.

He's staying in Downing St for Christmas, I should bloody well hope so.

And a COBR called tomorrow which he will deign to attend. Why tomorrow... the situation is far too urgent to wait - country after country banning any travel to and from UK. We are cut off and in quarantine.

It makes me fucking sick. They tested for this new strain in September and knew about it in september or october, and what did they do? Nothing.

This is why we are in this mess. A useless PM and government. Lockdown is going to go on months.

So do I care Matt Hancock is tired? No.

Freight being banned from Dover now too

In the words of the orange baby himself Boris is Britain's Trump this is how a trump like person behaves

@emilyfrost

Of course he is, because people are dicks and find it easy to blame him for having to deal with an unprecedented pandemic rather than seeing he’s just trying his best and you can’t please everyone.

The population are like children: nobody realises and understands that their parents have to do what’s best for them and make the hard decisions, especially when they can’t be trusted to be responsible themselves.

We have the highest death rate in Europe, a track and trace system which is run on excel and barely functioning and we just paid over the odds for the vaccine because we didn’t want to be part of the European buying scheme. I can see why people think the government is not doing a good job.

Boris is trying his best? Bollocks. If this is his best, he is not up to the job.

Yes, he wanted to do the job. But not with the hard bits. He's great at buffoonery, banging the table with his fist and endless soundbites. But not much else.
He'll be gone by Spring.
Hope so anyway. What the alternative is, I don't know, but Boris is beyond useless, anyone would be better.

We have the highest death rate in Europe, a track and trace system which is run on excel and barely functioning and we just paid over the odds for the vaccine because we didn’t want to be part of the European buying scheme

Who cares what the price is, we are rolling it out and have protected 350,00 people in vulnerable groups so far, remind me how many vaccines the EU have rolled out to date? If only we had joined the EU scheme we would be so much better off, says no-one now.

The whole of the EU, all member countries, are rolling out vaccinations on 27th December. Our 350,000 that we've done so far is tiddly squat in the big scheme of things but we do like a photo op showing us to be the first.

As far as pricing, I care. £10 more per vaccine is a helluva lot of money when the country is on its knees.

Have the UK published unit prices?

UK bought 40m @ £28 = £1.12bn
EU paid $18 = £13.31 x 40m = £532M

Government decision not to join the EU scheme based cost the tax payer £587M

Thank you, I'd seen the EU tweet but not ours.