England the only country that dissects and criticises everything the government say or do?

[Whatsthis1515]

So many other countries have schools back, various shops etc etc open.
Do you think people living in those countries also were up in arms when told they could return, dissecting and slagging off everything said?
Everyone here seems to think lockdown should either last forever or until September. I'm not quite sure what September will bring that June can't

So just wondering, is this criticism unique to England or do other countries do the same? I can't help but feel the people of England are so negative

Agreed, @Bedroomdilemma. I left the UK after almost 25 years shortly before Coronavirus and DH and I still watch UK news, read the papers online regularly, and we’re both struck by the lack of public anger and dismay about the appallingly high death rate from Covid-19.

Maybe people are so critical because they massively fucked up and we don’t trust a word they’re saying

Look at the timeline on this article

appeasement.org/

@WoeIsMee
Absolutely

Its not left leaning to question the government right now.

Boris johnson spoke to us like we were 5, it was patronising and a lot of vague waffle. On top of that theyve made a bit of a mess of things thus far. Ergo the british population have no trust in our government.

I imagine there are many countries questioning their government. Either privately or publicly, have you ever been abroad? Do you have no foreign friends?Theres not many countries you go to where the population sing the governments praises

@CloudsCoveredTheSky
No I haven't ever lived in another country, that's why I asked

I think the OP really spend some time needs to reading some foreign press...to think that the English are the only people that criticise and dissect what their government says smacks, frankly, of exceptionalism

As has been mentioned some in the States have been less than impressed by Federal/State handling, and closer to home the French sure as heck dissect and criticise - did the OP and others forget about the "gilet jaunes", s

Bovary so are the MPs going back?

Its their job, isnt it?

@BInterested there are broadcasters in the UK criticising the government but they aren't the BBC, ITN and Sky.

@PheasantPlucker1 MPs are back already. Most of them remotely.

I think many people are not looking at the death toll and moaning here because

1. They realise some countries are lying about their death toll and others are counting in a completely different way. The WHO hasn’t come up with any standardised way of counting. There will be many many more who died of this in everybody’s numbers that are being missed.

1. We are not taking geography or demographics into account in any way.

1. They realise that we are in a pandemic and people are going to die. In fact many many more people are going to die in the U.K. before a vaccine is given to the entire population. It’s a pandemic. Deaths will happen.

1. That we are very very early days - only 2-3 months in. A vaccine will be at the very earliest another 12 months away. There is a loooooong way to go. Countries who are patting themselves on the back saying didn’t we do well - are not out of the woods yet and they won’t be until a vaccine is found. There are now spikes again in China and Germany.

French news more likely to talk to doctors or scientists than to run pointless stories about ministers saying the wrong thing by accident or not having all the answers. BBC is very guilty of this.

I suspect this is due to the two cultures in England where the political and journalistic elite have no science education post 16. The number of articles I've read where it is obvious the writer doesn't really understand what they are writing about (due to simple mistakes in the narrative) is scary.

Here in England we have a PM who has put his own health on the line for us, going out every evening to give a statement to the nation .We seem to want to say "why didnt we do this or that" well after the event!Even if we wait until September ,the virus will still be here unless a vaccine is found PDQ! and Autumn is coming in ,flu like illnesses are worse through the winter months .Our economy will take a hell of a nosedive if we are not careful.We wont have an NHS left to protect without taxes from salaries being paid to the Govt!

@ThanosSavedMe
That's fantastic - thank you. Terrifying but a fantastic resource.

Jeez, imagine NOT constantly questioning and keeping an eye on your Government?

No thank you, it is both my right and my duty to argue and disagree and criticize the Government. Helps to keep the bastards honest.

I am Australian.

"Here in England we have a PM who has put his own health on the line for us, going out every evening to give a statement to the nation"

What a lovely and nice man he is.

Oh and Mumsnet is not left wing

I remember the multiple threads in December calling people evil murderers for voting Conservative. Not one thread. Multiple threads per day. It is very interesting to compare the protests in the US with the UK situation. In the US, people are protesting against the federal government demanding they stay under house arrest. The freedom of the individual is woven into the US Constitution. On Mumsnet, there are people seriously suggesting that any attempt to lift lockdown is a Darwinian plot by evil Tories to kill millions. There are multiple reasons to criticize the government. But the claim that they are actually hoping millions die? That's paranoid, delusional BS. And the people peddling it are left wing tribalists.

Why on earth would you think people in other countries don't criticise everything their government does and says? It's actually a pretty healthy and important thing to do. Governments should constantly be questioned and held to account. People should be critical of them, rather than just assuming they are doing the right thing.
By all means criticise the way the UK media handles stories about the government, but that doesn't mean ordinary people shouldn't be critical.

I agree op.

Threads about being ashamed of being British.

A thread about how fantastically Nicola Sturgeon is handling it, when her behaviour is without doubt completely appalling.

A big outcry that we weren’t locked down at the start - then a big outcry about lockdown after a couple of weeks and when will it be lifted ... finished with outrage that lockdown has been lifted to early

Inability to critically evaluate the stats coming in and throwing out wild statements of doom and gloom as if they’re stating facts.

The constant and apparently deliberate misquoting of people in order to create more hysterics.

The clapping, who is and isn’t. VE Day, who’s murdering our children? I could go on all afternoon tbh

It would seem that some people just love the drama and can be quite nasty with it as well.

"It’s a pandemic. Deaths will happen."

Oh that's fine then, isn't it

@CountFosco hadn’t thought about that but yes is so true. As a degree educated scientist I have been wondering why people don’t understand basic concepts of virology. The herd immunity thing is one case in point. In the Netherlands when they called it group immunity people there nodded their heads and said yep that makes sense. People here screamed and whinged because they don’t know what it is. (It is the only way to stop the spread of viruses either through being vaccinated (as we are with, say, measles) or by catching it and recovering (as happened with Spanish flu). And it is scary that this populist opinion seems to affect policy (actually I don’t think it does! I just think they learn not to push that button and guide people through it simplistically)

Yes the french are more clued up.

@CloudsCoveredTheSky no it’s not fine. Nobody is saying it is fine. Stop being so reactionary. It just IS

There's plenty of people here in mn arguing against lockdown.

@hepburnmed
I'm really not pro-government. I agree, there have been massive failings . I just wonder if every other country nitpicks everything said because the way it feels is that no one in this country will ever agree to schools or work returning. I wonder if the populations in other countries feel the same.

I do worry about this stance because if that's the case, the NHS will have no money to fund it, homes and more jobs will be lost and education will be fucked.

It is all a massive shit show

@Reginabambina Liberal-authoritarian is a different political axis than Left-Right. It’s possible to be left-wing and authoritarian or right-wing and liberal.

And I don’t think that the UK does tend to be politically left of centre in an absolutist sense either.

It was pretty centrist/mixed economy during the post war Butskill years and since the late seventies has taken an increasingly free market, monetarist, libertarian approach.

It’s veered from being so liberal as to be libertarian to a more authoritarian position in the last few years, largely around Brexit. But even so, it’s remained pretty solidly centre-right, even as what is considered centre-right has moved further to the right.

The bottom line? No country on the planet can continue bankrolling this:

More than half of Britain's adult population is now being bankrolled by the state amid warnings from the Chancellor that the furlough scheme could soon cost as much as the NHS.Analysis of official figures shows that 27 million people are being funded by the Government amid growing concern over the devastating impact inflicted on the economy by the coronavirus pandemic.The figure includes people being paid through the furlough scheme and those claiming benefits after being made unemployed because of the virus. The remainder are public sector workers and pensioners.On Monday night, Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, said the cost was "clearly not a sustainable situation" and warned that Britain must get back to work