The brewing scandal that could bring the government down

[vera99]

The British public are being lied to by the Boris Johnson government over its handling of COVID-19, the scale of related fatalities and subsequent fallout. As the death rate escalates and Britain rapidly rises in the chart of deaths-per-million, currently 7th in the world and fifth in numbers, the government is now looking to deny, cover-up or spin its trail of failure.

truepublica.org.uk/united-kingdom/the-brewing-scandal-that-could-bring-the-government-down/

The waste of beer is something that they have not acted well upon, I agree, although in the circumstances I would probably have agreed with them to focus on health first.

🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺

This rounds on me!

🥂 🍷🍷🍷🥂🥂

And some fruit based drinks for the more sensitive ladies 😉

The only reason that Britain is "rapidly rising up the charts of deaths per million" is because other countries are telling complete bullshit about their death rates.

Some of the Tory thought police

You can think what you like. But if you say it, don't expect hushed agreement then uproarious applause.

Robust arguments withstand robust debate.

vera99 Not a single new piece of information in this article.

Sedona123, most other countries are reporting deaths outside of hospitals, which the UK doesn't.

@vera99

I notice that the article you link is very concerned with the lack of ventilators. It lists that alongside the lack in PPE that has been widely demonstrated.

What is the latest data on lack of ventilators?

@PicsInRed I’ll drink to that (seems like the next rounds on me too!)

vera99

You couldn’t bring down a tower of soggy loo roll with this smear job!

"The country that is doing better- Germany- is a privately run health service."

No, it isn't.
It's a properly funded health service.

www.expatica.com/de/healthcare/healthcare-basics/german-healthcare-system-103359/

You must realise @vera99 what a terribly trashing website that is and so is the article you linked to?

For starters, they can't even write a good headline/ standfirst.

For every point they make, there is another side or explanation to it.

They have produced a biased and rather untruthful account of so many aspects of this that I don't know where to start.

Just one for example. They accuse Matt Hancock of lying about the number of health workers' deaths.

You don't have to be a genius to work out that by the time he went on air the numbers may have changed (Publica did say they changed in a matter of hours) so unless he was wearing an earpiece, he would use figures the civil servants had provided him with shortly before his speech was written.

Likewise for the use of ventilators for the elderly or those in care homes.
Drs make decisions with families all the time on things like this. When my elderly father was dying, he was still offered invasive treatment which as a family we denied him as it would have not given him quality of life, simply a longer more distressing death.
You and we simply don't know what medical and family decisions are being made by people who in theory may need a ventilator, but who would die anyway.

Don't take everything you read at face value.

@Tanith well , a professor of medicine in London told us last week it was run very differently and on private lines. He ought to know.

@Tanith you did read this part didn't you?

If you are an employee and you earn less than €57,600 a year (€4,800 a month in 2017), you have to take part in the government health scheme – Gesetzliche Krankenversicherun or GKV – taking out health insurance as soon as you have signed your work contract

Insurance.

Is your point that the German system is privately run? Or that it is an insurance based system?

OP you say you are bored at home.

If you're such a big socialist, why haven't you volunteered in your local community? Isn't it strange that keyboard warriors never do so?

"We are particularly focused on challenging current neoliberal ideology and a toxic political environment that is causing a wave of disruption as western countries move from one social and economic crisis to another." That's a real unbiased, credible source you've got there. And they can't write a decent sentence either.

yet another conspiracy theory

Seems a pretty credible source. Have you done the research?

Sure governments will make mistakes during such a crisis, but there are many indicators that our UK govt have made more than their fair share. Also the communication from govt has not been transparent in my view.

For weeks Hancock and others in govt claimed there was sufficient PPE but there were distribution problems. Finally after weeks of complaints from front line workers Hancock admitted yesterday that there are problems of supply. From the Guardian today, “Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, says gaps remain and calls for the government to publicly acknowledge the problem and the reason for it. Dominic Raab, deputising for the prime minister, admits to supply problems, saying there is “a competitive market out there”, but declines to apologise.”

Another article today compared Ireland and UK’s governments response. Ireland began their delay phase 2 weeks earlier than the UK even though technically UK started full lockdown a few days earlier. The article rightly pointsout it is probably too early to know for sure whether the UK government’s delays, set against the Irish government’s action, made a decisive difference, different factors will come into play, but for now figures show Ireland’s population death rates from CV are half that of the UK and two thirds less if UK’s CV deaths in care homes are used in the calculation.

I don’t think there is any chance the government’s response will bring down the govt, though. Many wish to give the govt a wide leeway for mistakes in such a situation, some would say understandably, and with much of our print media, Murdoch papers, Daily Mail etc, favouring right wing govts I think any unfavourable scrutiny will be low key by them.

@opticaldelusion

They haven't done the research, that's for sure.

You don't need a shred of research to write THE TORIES DONE IT.

@vera99vera99: I try to keep to a 6 pm yard arm gin deadline
@Hirsutefirs

6pm is the time for a brightener

Parliament's not sitting because we're in a slightly extended Easter recess - happens every Easter btw so no conspiracy there. Besides which there isn't exactly much to debate is there - new legislation is hardly anyone's priority.

However on this OP alone, he/she is correct. The government has dealt shambolically with this and of course are trying to spin otherwise. That's not swivel eyed or conspiracy theorist - just plain fact. ALL Governments spin.

Will this bring about their downfall? Highly unlikely. At least not in the short term. Longer than that will depend on how effective Keir actually is. And I'm fairly hopeful on that front atm.

For someone who said they were a long-time lurker only a few weeks ago, you have started some very contentious threads, OP.

Around 85 percent of Germans are insured through the public, statutory insurance program, the remaining 15% is provided by for profit private companies. Germany’s healthcare provides a universal, comprehensive care service and almost nobody (less than 0.1 percent of the population as of 2015) lacks health insurance.

I found this article helpful in describing the German health system. Some quotes from it:

“Though mostly public, the German health insurance system is not a state-run system like the National Health Service in the United Kingdom. In fact, more than 100 different health insurers, known as sickness funds, compete for members in Germany’s comparatively decentralized system. These sickness funds are non-profit, non-governmental organizations that operate autonomously.

The government does play a key role in setting standards. For example, all sickness funds are required by law to offer the same comprehensive benefits package, which covers virtually all health care needs. But it is a non-governmental body, the Federal Joint Commission, which decides what benefits are covered. The commission has 13 voting members, including 5 from the sickness funds, 5 from doctors and hospitals and 3 neutral members. The German system is thus not state-run. Nor, however, is it a private, for-profit system like America's. The sickness funds are non-profit organizations, and generally speaking, no money is exchanged at the point of service when Germans go to the doctor.

Most Germans' health insurance contributions are deducted from their paychecks by their employers. The amount, however, is capped at 14.6 percent of a person’s salary, split fifty-fifty between the employer and the employee, so 7.3 percent each way. But coverage is not dependent on the employer, so when Germans change or lose their jobs, nothing changes in their health insurance. Premium contributions, moreover, cover the full range of benefits. Co-payments do exist in Germany, but they are limited. For example, Germans have to pay €10 per quarter for outpatient care, between €5 and €10 for prescription drugs and €10 a day for hospital stays.”

www.handelsblatt.com/today/politics/handelsblatt-explains-why-germans-love-their-health-insurance/23569646.html?ticket=ST-4246418-kyz0kXJ5LGXsyC6IAcDA-ap6

Yeah, it is shocking and it is a scandal.

But it won't bring the government down.

Because most of their voters don't really care unless it directly impacts them.

^and also, if I had £5 for every time I have read someone on here say "Yes, it is bad - but imagine how terrible it would be if Corbyn was PM" I would have... more money than I do right now...