For once, I actually agree with Boris

[Racoonworld]

We cannot persist indefinitely with restrictions that have separated families and loved ones for too long, and threatened the livelihoods of millions, and kept pupils out of school.

Finally some sense. So glad this is the message from the government now.

I hope he has the guts to slow it down when the rates go up, as they surely will. He really should have listened to the science but he's too scared of his donors and back benchers to do the right thing.

@travellinglighter

Before we get too excited about Boris actually looking like he might have got something right, let’s look at what he got wrong.

Missed first cobra meeting
Missed second cobra meeting
Missed third, fourth and fifth cobra meeting.
Allowed Cheltenham festival to go ahead.
Allowed Liverpool Madrid game to go ahead.
Twickenham game, ditto
Shaking hands at.twickenham game and catching COVID, possibly still has long COVID.
Late into lockdown against scientific advice
Not enough PPE
Face mask dithering
Corruption in PPE scheme(giving contracts to mates)
Downgrading of virus status to cover lack of PPE.
Insufficient cover for all self employed.
Not extending SSP to those forced to self isolate.
U-turn on SSP.
Removal of elderly infected patients from hospitals to care homes.
Failure to join Eu ventilator scheme
Lying about missing an e-Mail regarding ventilator scheme.
Barnard Castle and Cummings
Failure to sack for Barnard castle.
Allowing Cummings to go on telly and lie about Barnard castle.
Attempted herd immunity policy.
U-turn on herd immunity
Denial of herd immunity policy despite cabinet notes confirming it.
Early release of lockdown (7 weeks instead of 10 weeks).
World class track and trace that neither tracks or traces.
Eat out to help out. More like eat out to infect.
Refusal to consider firebreak.
Ridiculing firebreak
U-turn on firebreak( A month instead of two weeks)
Exams fiasco. DfE refusing to accept teacher gradings.
U-turn on exams fiasco
School meals fiasco
U-turn on school meals fiasco courtesy of Marcus Rashford.
Insisting on uni’s opening
Students retuning for freshers week and holding mass super spreader events.
Locking uni students in halls.
Identifying new strain in September
Not telling anyone about new strain
Not doing anything about new strain
5 Day Christmas holiday.
Refusal to accept scientific evidence against 5 day Christmas holiday.
Late u-turn on 5 day Christmas holiday.
Monumentally late in opening covid isolation hotels.
Tory donors, peers and family members cramming their pockets full of government cash for PPE, PR contracts and anything they can get away with.
General communications policy that looks like it was made up on the spot and sometimes actually was.
Failure to brush hair on almost every occasion.

Combine that with the highest death rate per head of population and the deepest recession (which might be due to an awful Brexit deal which he negotiated) then one decent press conference is hardly enough to change my opinion.

This ^^

This needs repeating over and over.

Also to be added this years exams cancelled and making students and teachers wait for 2 months whilst they only now work out plan b.

I love how young people are still being blamed. 'Covid parties among the young' yeah we're not complete morons. I can't speak for America and there will be some stupid people in every age group but this is not a thing 'young people' have been or are doing. Everyone I 'know' who doesn't wear a mask or believe it's not real or isn't going to have the vaccine or ignored track and trace is much older. Most of us just want to actually get a decent grade in the degree we've been working on for 3 years so we can get a job in the ridiculously competitive (even before covid!) market, or be able to actually take our driving test without waiting another year and shelling out hundreds more for no reason, or to not be fired from our first graduate job with no access to help from the gov, or be able to afford to take proper time off if we are sick or, shock horror, see our own family when all we have are strangers in a house share and not any real support when others have been afforded support bubbles. Suicides may not have necessarily gone up (I have read that data hasn't been released yet) but I know a few people within my wider friend group and people I knew in high school that have died and this has definitely been a tipping point.

It is very easy to look back with the benefit of hindsight

It wasn't fucking hindsight when he was being told what he needed to do in March 2020, or June 2020, or October 2020, or December 2020 .

The stupid prat made the wrong decisions over and over again. It was obvious he was making the wrong decisions whilst he was making them.

@billysboy

It is very easy to look back with the benefit of hindsight People need to be responsible for their own actions as well , could all the people who have not bent the rules in any way please sit down

Imagine what a shot show this would have been if Corbin and Abbot had been running it all

People keep banging on about hindsight but we saw what was happening in Italy and Spain. We had an example of what would happen if we did nothing and that’s exactly what we did. Boris did sod all because he can’t make a decision to save his life. As for Corbin and Abbott, Clowns the pair of them but I seriously doubt they could have done worse. At least they wouldn’t have been handing out billions in contracts to labour donors.

@MummytoCSJH

I love how young people are still being blamed. 'Covid parties among the young' yeah we're not complete morons. I can't speak for America and there will be some stupid people in every age group but this is not a thing 'young people' have been or are doing. Everyone I 'know' who doesn't wear a mask or believe it's not real or isn't going to have the vaccine or ignored track and trace is much older. Most of us just want to actually get a decent grade in the degree we've been working on for 3 years so we can get a job in the ridiculously competitive (even before covid!) market, or be able to actually take our driving test without waiting another year and shelling out hundreds more for no reason, or to not be fired from our first graduate job with no access to help from the gov, or be able to afford to take proper time off if we are sick or, shock horror, see our own family when all we have are strangers in a house share and not any real support when others have been afforded support bubbles. Suicides may not have necessarily gone up (I have read that data hasn't been released yet) but I know a few people within my wider friend group and people I knew in high school that have died and this has definitely been a tipping point.

I am curious to know... if the suicide rate has not increased overall, has the demographic shifted? I'm hearing off a lot of suicides in universities but it might just be that people are highlighting these now, whereas they have always happened.

I agree though, young people have had the blame deflected on to them,cwhikst also massively bearing a disproportionate amount of disruption and distress to their lives .

Porcupineintherough

"Finally some sense"? Where have you been for the past few months? hmm

I haven’t seen this from Boris until now.

Yes you HAVE OP - the reason we’ve been in lockdown is because the NHS was in danger of overwhelm. Obviously we now have the vaccine programme we will be moving out of it ASAP 🙄

However good the vaccine roll-out has been and however much I agree with the quote, Boris is digging himself out of a massive hole that he created for himself. Like pissing on the floor and then expecting praise for mopping it up.

Familes are still going to be separated if they live more than a few miles from each other?

@lightand

Familes are still going to be separated if they live more than a few miles from each other?

Not from mid-May though!

^alltravellinglighter Tue 23-Feb-21 08:00:45
billysboy

It is very easy to look back with the benefit of hindsight
People need to be responsible for their own actions as well , could all the people who have not bent the rules in any way please sit down

Imagine what a shot show this would have been if Corbin and Abbot had been running it all

People keep banging on about hindsight but we saw what was happening in Italy and Spain. We had an example of what would happen if we did nothing and that’s exactly what we did. Boris did sod all because he can’t make a decision to save his life. As for Corbin and Abbott, Clowns the pair of them but I seriously doubt they could have done worse. At least they wouldn’t have been handing out billions in contracts to labour donors^

I hate the hindsight bit too.

I fully expect leaders to have foresight.

@partyatthepalace

Porcupineintherough

"Finally some sense"? Where have you been for the past few months? hmm

I haven’t seen this from Boris until now.

Yes you HAVE OP - the reason we’ve been in lockdown is because the NHS was in danger of overwhelm. Obviously we now have the vaccine programme we will be moving out of it ASAP 🙄

No we haven’t seen any sense off Bozo. We are in lockdown because the government has handled it very badly. It’s why we have the highest death rate per head because of a flat refusal to follow scientific advice because it would damage the economy. Well guess what we have the highest death rate and the biggest recession because not dealing with the virus properly (and negotiating an awful Brexit deal) is really bad fir the economy.

3 months and might not happen @Racoonworld
All it needs is a new variant.
I am a wait and see type person.

Not saying the proposed time table is wrong, but neither do I count chickens before they have hatched.

Boris has done a brilliant job! If we was under labour we would be further behind in vaccines than we are now!

Saint Boris has timed this very carefully so that he can cover himself in glory from the vaccines, and easing lockdown, especially if he decides (on his whim) to ease something slightly early, perhaps for his own ends.

He knows that things won't be so glorious when we're facing the realities of recession, millions unemployed, suicide statistics deafeningly apparent, depressed children. He's already put the spin machine into operation to keep these things hushed up as much as possible while he's still PM. He's going to make his escape before those things come to light. There's no doubt that he's planned his own roadmap for this.

@Magnificentmug12

Boris has done a brilliant job! If we was under labour we would be further behind in vaccines than we are now!

To quote Abraham Lincoln

You can fool some of the people all of the time.

So if he’s done a brilliant job, can you explain the highest death rate per head of population? How do you know that labour would have done an awful job? Bear in mind I despise Corbin almost as much as I hate Boris and Gezza isn’t responsible for killing thousands of OAP’s by moving covid patients into care homes.

Boris has done a brilliant job! If we was under labour we would be further behind in vaccines than we are now!

I don't call 120k dead a "Brilliant job" per capita ahead of both Brazil and Trumps USA - 4th in the world - shocking for a country with a modern health service.
Would have also been locked down for well over a year by the time we get to May... what exactly has he achieved?

Unless you have a parallel universe, you nor i know how Labour would have done.

Alexander is an arse and a liar - 'a blustering shit-trumpet' is approximately how one poster on here described him the other day. 115,000 dead, but isn't he marvellous with his roadmap? Yeah, sure.

Yes you HAVE OP - the reason we’ve been in lockdown is because the NHS was in danger of overwhelm

The NHS has and is overwhelmed, AE hours before an ambulance turns up, patients waiting hours in Ambulances, little elective surgery and waiting lists to be 10m plus by May.

What on earth do you call that?

There’s so many people on here and on Twitter for example that hate Boris , the Tories so much they literally think everything he says or does is evil and has sinister reasons. It’s so bizarre to see and very out of touch.
They are likely the same people that were shocked by Brexit and shocked by the December 2019 landslide.
Truth is we will all move on and want to put this behind us and I think come 2024 the pandemic will not even feature in the election. I think Labour and Keir realise this too.

@felulageller

How anyone could use how the Tories have handled this as a reason to vote for them baffles me!

LIkewise.

Obviously, I'm glad there is now, finally, a plan to get out of this astonishingly crap situation.

However, my days of voting Conservative (my entire adult life, in fact, until the last election) are over. They lost my last vote because of Brexit. They have now lost my vote for any kind of foreseeable future as a result of the damage they have done with their bastarding lockdowns and school closures - to me personally in every possible way; to the economy; to mental health generally; and to my teenagers, who have missed massive and crucial chunks of education, and who will be paying for this whole shit show for decades to come.

The latter point, above all, is the one I will never forget when it comes to the ballot box.

He has finally realised that listening to the advice of actual scientists

Oh, yes, actual scientists.

@sashagabadon

There’s so many people on here and on Twitter for example that hate Boris , the Tories so much they literally think everything he says or does is evil and has sinister reasons. It’s so bizarre to see and very out of touch. They are likely the same people that were shocked by Brexit and shocked by the December 2019 landslide. Truth is we will all move on and want to put this behind us and I think come 2024 the pandemic will not even feature in the election. I think Labour and Keir realise this too.

You might be right but the corruption and incompetence should be a feature in 2024.

In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king.

@Racoonworld

We cannot persist indefinitely with restrictions that have separated families and loved ones for too long, and threatened the livelihoods of millions, and kept pupils out of school.

Finally some sense. So glad this is the message from the government now.

It’s his fault it’s been this bad.

Of course it’s coming to an end now, we’ve got the vaccine.

He’s just spouting this crap to try to make himself popular. His main concern is the economy and always has been.