Boris in ICU

[PicsInRed]

Oh Boris no 🙁

I don't remember hourly news during the war. It was 8am, 1pm, 6pm and 9pm.

I am talking about the post war years, but where the attitude of those who lived through the War remained. You listened each time in case there was some important news.

By the 1960s, like now, most times there wasn't much to report, but this didn't stop my parents wanting Silence while the news was on.

Hmmm, it’s starting to piss me off too. He either will (or won’t) recover. All this handwringing for the man who boasted of shaking hands with COVID19 patients is ridiculous in light of everything else happening.

If only, the government had learned something from that 2016 NHS crisis practice run”. If only they’d entered into the EU procurement of PPE/ventilators group, if only they’d listened to Joe Public’s calls for world Uk held events closures (Crufts/Footy/Cheltenham). If only...

@Peregrina, good grief, my heart goes out to you. All of you contemplating “viral load” with shite/no PPE.

starlightgazers
I wish your post could go viral on social media.
I wish Boris Johnson well as a fellow human and think it is bad news for the country that our PM is out of action and that Raab is 'in charge'!

But certainly this Govt should be held accountable in due course for the lack of PPE for NHS staff which is truely shameful. Yes, your first loyalty shoudl be to your children, yet your vocation is to save lives - how dare the Govt ask you to choose, but that is what is happening.

My children's Father drives a bus in the capital. He is currently furloughed. As he is a 55 yr old man with a large gut, minor heart issues and asthma I am very grateful for that.

Thank you for doing what you are doing. God bless you.

What's worse, is the way they are trying to blame everyone else, as in Boris's letter where we are told they are doing everything they can.
No you weren't.

But you wrote that before you got sick when you were making jokes about Last Gasp. It's not very funny now, is it?

No doubt the thread police will be on telling me, how dare I say that. Of course we wish him well, but we don't need to hear every five minutes.

Boris was telling us to carry on as normal just a month ago

I don't think anyone's heart needs to go out to me yet. I am sure the wishes should be for starlightgazers.

Peregrina
Yes, the every 5 mins deification is a bit much I agree.
The media etc should leave the man alone, hope he gets better and concentrate on who is running the country as he is clearly not well enough to be doing so right now.
But, 'Clap for Boris' - er - No! I'll clap for the NHS but not him.

It's not all about him personally, though is it?

Which one of us here would want to go through a leadership shuffle in the government right now? Especially if more of them fall sick? It would be incredibly disruptive and bad for the country's morale. Dominic Raab can manage for a week or two but not for the term of the government or for the length of the pandemic. Someone else would challenge him. We do not want this during a national crisis! That's why many or us who didn't vote for Boris are feeling so anxious.

I can't say Abraid that this is causing me any anxiety. I am quite sure that there are people who could step up to the job on a caretaker basis and be perfectly competent and they could then save the leadership challenge until this is all over. A crisis calls for crisis measures.

I would prefer to have someone who isn't merely 'competent'!

I dont really care about Boris, other than he is a human being and it's a horrible disease which I wouldnt wish on anyone.

Having said that, I dont believe he is either a good or nice person, and this 'deification' as a PP mentioned sits very uneasily with me given his contribution (or lack of) to the situation.

I am pretty sure there is nothing special enough about Johnson to make him the only competent person to make the necessary decisions.

I am quite sure that there are people who could step up to the job on a caretaker basis and be perfectly competent

^ this

And not only that - far more competent than Boris. He and his government are the ones who responded really late to the pandemic, and who are now operating chaos mitigation. This has undoubtedly lead to more deaths than there would have been.

It is amazing how much better the countries with proper scientists senior in government did to those without. Look at Germany and Taiwan, to name two of them.

A person with a scientific background extrapolates , a PPE graduate just looks at the current number of cases and thinks that there is no problem.

Now that Boris appears on the mend, I sssume the hagiography will end. I am always surprised how people’s judgment of others’ character changes if they die or are seriously ill. I do wish Boris a speedy recovery but neither think him particularly nice or particularly clever.

This business about Boris being very clever, so that justifies what he says and does really irritates me. He can't be dim; he went to Eton and Oxford, but I do wonder how much money plays a part in getting a place. Do you need to sit an entrance test to get into Eton?

You know the E in PPE stands for economics and requires a pretty high level of maths?

Chipotle who are you referring to?

And why is a recommendation that someone studies Maths to at least AS level for admission to a PPE course, relevant for someone who is a Classics graduate?

PPE is the well trodden path to downing street, do we know what class of degree he got ? As a recruiter i generally say less than a 2.1 say you were in jail for three years instead it's less embarrassing.

Boris read classics didn’t he? Not sure what people are talking about

www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/boris-johnsons-tutor-oxford-did-teach-right-lessons/

Boris didn’t get a First, he only got a Two-One, but given that he spent a lot of his time involved in the Union and student journalism it’s not massively surprising. The people I know who took Firsts were very, very bright people who either spent almost all their time exclusively on their studies or who had one specific extra-curricular activity that gave them a release valve and also enforced time management by having regular time commitments (a guy I know played hockey, for example); Union hacking sucks up your time but is hard to timetable in a regular and organised way.

I think he got a 2:2, which was probably what a good number of his contemporaries got at the time. He certainly didn't get a First, which he should have done if he was Oh so clever and maybe could have done if he hadn't been lazy.

You have to be fairly clever to be a Scholar at Eton.

I thought he was on an academic scholarship at Eton? Less people went to university when he did. Second class degrees meant more then.