To wonder how anyone can think Boris Johnson is doing a good job

[Katekarate]

Can't believe the mess of opening everything up Monday when the cases are going up so quickly. And when he gives speeches they're almost incoherent most of the time. I'm wondering who can look at how it's all going and not despair, I think he's rubbish at the job.

Well can you do a better job? Of running a country during a pandemic no one in the world knew how to deal with?

How would you of dealt with it? Lol

@HOkieCOkie

Well can you do a better job? Of running a country during a pandemic no one in the world knew how to deal with?

How would you of dealt with it? Lol

I am 100% sure I could do a better job.

Not fucking just giving up whilst cases are increasing at a rate faster than we have seen and cultivating an ideal practice field for vaccine evading mutations would be a good start.

But let's see, what else could have the PM and the tories have done differently?

Locking down sooner at the start.
Bothering to turn up to crisis meetings at the start.
Shaking hands.
Not jizzing £37 billion on a t&t system built on a spreadsheet and taking a fucking age to get testing up to decent levels - all the time lying about how many tests were being done.
Send covid off to care homes.
"Eat out to help out"
"oh noes, we need to lock down again. Let's wait 3 weeks first though".
"Bernard Castle"
Not Giving billions of pound worth of ppe contracts to your mates.

It's a really long list of shit we could have done better.

But sure, nobody could have done better than that, could they?

When there is one horse in a race..
Oh that's nonsense Mega. Don't try and make yourself feel better for having made a stupid decision at the last GE

No-one is answering the question...... what should the government now do? Bearing in mind that the obstacle we have is that people are refusing the vaccine, which is our only get out of jail card in all this. Nothing else will work. We need to all have the vaccine, or just get on with life and live alongside the virus as best we can. Further lockdowns are not an option, because we will just come out of it when infections come down, just to go back into lockdown when the infections go up. And repeat. If we still have people unvaccinated, then covid will always be with us.

And for those saying Corbyn was useless and an embarrassment and they blame him for Johnson's cock ups - please give your heads a huge wobble. I utterly fail to see how a politician who actually gives a shit about funding our public services is to blame for the egomaniac sack of shit you put into power. Own it.

@Livelovebehappy

No-one is answering the question...... what should the government now do? Bearing in mind that the obstacle we have is that people are refusing the vaccine, which is our only get out of jail card in all this. Nothing else will work. We need to all have the vaccine, or just get on with life and live alongside the virus as best we can. Further lockdowns are not an option, because we will just come out of it when infections come down, just to go back into lockdown when the infections go up. And repeat. If we still have people unvaccinated, then covid will always be with us.

We could hold back on dropping masks & social distancing. Kids in most of England break up for the summer soon, that should help cut the spread a bit but not if we go back to packed pubs, restaurants & sporting events. Why they didn’t wait until all ages had been offered 2 jabs is beyond me - we’ve managed with restrictions for over a year, a few more weeks of masks & not ordering at the bar wouldn’t kill us & would have seen millions more second jabs.

He's been handed a shit sandwich and couldn't possibly 'win', whatever he did, right from the beginning.

For every ten people who are clamouring for 'freedom day' there are ten more who want lock down. For every ten who wanted schools open, there were ten screaming for them to be shut.

Every single decision made, every change, he's slated for.

I feel quite sorry for him, he's in a totally unenviable situation. It's easy to throw stones but I doubt there would be any human alive who would have handled everything 'well'.

I absolutely blame Corbyn/McDonnel and their inner circle for handing the last election on a plate to the Tories the loss is astounding who else is to blame for them being so out of touch with so many loyal voters

It doesn’t not mean I am a Tory voter. Labour are lost for some time I was hoping a leader that is opposite to the PM would be good for the party but we need a leader with charisma like it or not people vote for a personality too as we witnessed with the cult like following of Corbyn not that it did the country why food and has ruined labour for some time yet

But he hasn’t handled anything very well. The messages, from the stat have been garbled. Right at the beginning - pubs can stay open but don’t go to the pub, don’t go to work unless you have to go to work, then go to work. I mean, come on!

Boris Johnson has a history of fucking things up

It’s nothing new nothing sticks to him he just keeps going full steam ahead I think that part of the admiration some have for him

If things were not chaotic around him I wonder how he would look then

Any prior Tory leader would have done a better job inc thatcher.

Plenty of non Tory politicians would be doing a better job too - even though none of them are especially great.

Plenty of non Uk politicians have shown how much better it COULD have been handled! We're a Fucking island that should have provided us a ton of protection IF we had competent governance.

He's an incompetent, foolhardy, racist, sexist, elitist, corrupt, lying, sexually incontinent gas bag!

I truly don't understand why anyone who isn't independently wealthy EVER votes Tory! They have always been and always will be the party that prioritises the 1%ers.

They have never served the common man though at times have fooled the electorate into thinking they do.

Credit where credit's due

Spot on! If it had gone tits up he wouldn't have taken responsibility either! He'd have blamed everyone else

Nothing should be surprising anybody

Totally agree.

This govt knew way back in feb of last year about COVID as did many other countries admittedly but certainly by March it was obvious what was needed was to close the borders, lockdown properly and limit the spread as much as possible - every move has been too little too late.

If we'd closed the borders faster/properly the population size wouldn't be relevant would it.

It might still have been a little relevant but it would have been a much better way of handling the situation

Money/business was prioritised above people's health/lives

He won't be hanging around to accept accountability - he will be off to 'spend more time with his family' and take up his seat in the Lords.

Yep!

I've not even had first vaccine yet, not for lack of trying! I'm housebound and this apparently completely flummoxes them!

When we had strict lockdown people totally went nuts and stripped the shelves. And then moaned about all the stuff they couldn’t do and mental health etc etc.

A properly organised and enforced lockdown would have limited such stupid behaviour

The supermarkets fucked up too by not putting limits per customer in place for too long

The constantly changing and confusing rules didn't help either, not to mention the shite communication

There's a whole list of things he did wrong that even at the time many people including experts like scientists were saying were wrong decisions

I wonder if the delay in locking down first of all was them working out the final bits of the financial model for furlough.

I can well imagine what people would have been saying if they locked down without any word of any help for businesses. Like a lot of other countries did.

But we got a full on pay-your-wages package. That stuff takes time to model.

@IvorHughJarrs - the European vaccine thing is simply untrue. More Tory spin. We could still have done exactly what we've done. And even if we hadn't, Germany has now overtaken us in %of population vaccinated. And it's not doing us that much good currently.

@TARDISLover - you don't think anyone could do better? Wow. Obviously this is unprecedented, obviously mistakes will be made. But the communication (currently don't wear a mask, but do wear a mask) and the level of cronyism is off the scale. He's a laughing stock.

Nobody could have predicted the pandemic.
Total bollocks.
I knew covid was in the UK in January 2020. It was in York at the university.
My friends and I started getting face masks then and began to worry that places would be out of bounds. By the way I don't work at the university.
My place of work immediately called emergency meetings and made us all aware of existing pandemic plans. These included me being trained up to take on a certain role. Nobody thought we would need to carry this out, but we did.
You say the actual government can't do this? Well if so they need replacing.
The problem we have is our press is right wing and has an ulterior motive. The Jeremy Paxmans have been replaced by insipid films who are too scared to ask the questions and be like a dog with a bone. We need more Yvette Coopers who interrogate the useless twat, aka Boris Johnson, and don't stop asking the same question. However that hardly gets reported as the press is biased. The BBC is held over a barrel with this government threatening to destroy them if they ask the wrong questions. The newspapers are owned by foreign oligarchs who have a vested interest in keeping this government in power.
People need to do their research and stop believing what they read in a biased newspaper.
If course the Tories should have acted sooner and closed down our borders.
Christ if I knew covid was in York in January then so did they.

Useless ball of rubber

@ilovesooty

I don't accept that he was the best the Tories had to offer. The Tory Party membership thought he was the most electable though.

It doesn't say much for their intelligence, honesty or decency.

And the Labour Party could only respond with Corbyn..

@WiseUpJanetWeiss

He’s appalling and makes me ashamed to be British tbh. He’s a lying, racist, imperialist, lazy, ignorant misogynist.

Absolutely spot on. X

@Pottedpalm - not 'but Corbyn' again please. It's boring and it doesn't excuse Johnson one bit.

Imagine the protest and fuss if restrictions were not removed; the outcry by those wanting their freedom.
Hindsight is a wonderful tool and I doubt a Labour government would have handled a global pandemic in a dramatically different way. It’s easy to watch from the sidelines and hedge your bets.

@IvorHughJarrs

I'm not a Boris fan or a Tory but I'm not sure that anyone could do a widely acknowledged good job at the moment as there are so many unknowns. It's easy to criticise with hindsight and easy to oppose things like opening up as there are arguments on all sides.

Look at the vaccines. The Guardian and many others were howling that it was a huge mistake to not join the EU scheme but the gamble paid off, this one may or may not. Only time will tell

He didn’t really cash in though did he?

France, Germany et al all catching up, and (so far) not being overrun with Delta.

By September, all will be even. And what exactly have we gained?

[quote luckylavender]@Pottedpalm - not 'but Corbyn' again please. It's boring and it doesn't excuse Johnson one bit. [/quote]
It’s not ‘but Corbyn’. Each party presumably put forward their most electable, and Corbyn proved less electable. No comment on the man himself.

Boris has always been lazy and useless. Long history of it hence why he got sacked repeatedly. However he doesn't have to as the public empathise with his flaws and there is just no effective opposition as Labour has been utterly destroyed by Corbyn and cronies such as McDonall and Abbot.

I watched Starmer with some ex Labour voters and felt for him as they kept citing corbyn and broken trust. Add in anti semitism on top and that's one hell of a legacy to get over.

Johnson has been appalling in so many different ways, but nothing seems to touch him with a certain type of voter. He could eat their grannies and they’d be ‘oh, that’s just good old Boris’.

I was talking to someone with the export industry last night. Covid has covered just what a total mess Brexit is, the conversation was utterly depressing and makes me wonder how economically we have any chance of competing globally. Anyone who was presiding over the Brexit deal as it stands is the worst PM in history, that’s ignoring his abysmal efforts over managing Covid.

@Katekarate

I'm surprised BJ is still around. I assumed that, when vaccine programme got going, and people felt a bit more positive, he would resign, citing long covid, and leave on a bit of a high / with public sympathy

Yes I thought he might have gone first half of this year. I wonder what he's hanging around for really - what's in it for him? He's already moaned that the money's not enough

You know the country is run by a government and not one single man, right?

There's a whole machine of working advisors who direct the narrative. Don't be so ignorant to think Boris works alone and is some sort of monster

You got paid, did you not? Got a vaccine? A roof over your head? Things could be so much worse.