Westminstenders: Put Your Faith In The Home Office

[pointythings]

Because there doesn't seem to be a new thread yet. I'm no RTB or any of you other experts, but these threads need to keep going.

Give me a couple weeks and I'll be able to post cat placemarks!

I just did a spot check in and saw Red’s post so was very pleased I did check in to see that.

I would like to add my deeply felt gratitude for Red’s time, insights, intelligence and reliability in posting from the run up to the referendum and beyond. In those (never forgotten) days when our government suspended parliament illegally etc, Red’s support and others on here who understood the constitutional and other enormities were, and are, invaluable.

Thank you.

A part of me will be forever incredulous - still astonished at the misunderstandings behind the Brexit vote, incredulous at the lies, incredulous at the proven dark money behind it and at the Tory domination.

But I think my high point in the Westminsterenders threads occurred in a discussion of hubris. I googled it and pointed out that in Greek mythology came hubris/ the nemesis/ catharsis.
I saw this as British empire xenophobic exceptionalism ( hubris) , followed by nemeses ( the economic fallout from leaving the bloc now exacerbated by the pandemic).
The philosophical part of me thinks that ok the people got the ‘ control’ they wanted (which we always had anyway) and everywhere there are now signs the nemesis is happening, combined with Covid too. Unfortunately some will be affected more than others. But maybe, just maybe after all this -decades down the road -will come catharsis.

So eternal thanks to Red also to Pretty, Rossetti, Pointy, Math, BigChoc, LeClerc, Peregrina, Songs, Born and others who I have forgotten to mention.

Got to love Johnson, having told us the priority is to vaccinate our population, inc children, we now have 100m spare doses to give to Covax, following Bidens plan to vaccinate the world.

For once BJ charging out, shouting "following me" is fantastic but thank XXXX the US woke up and voted out Trump.

Gordon Brown weighs in.

What a pity his slogan "Leading not Leaving" wasn't taken up.

Thanks Red, and everything else lonelyplanetmum said.

@jasjas1973

Got to love Johnson, having told us the priority is to vaccinate our population, inc children, we now have 100m spare doses to give to Covax, following Bidens plan to vaccinate the world.

For once BJ charging out, shouting "following me" is fantastic but thank XXXX the US woke up and voted out Trump.

The UK is being v secretive about what doses they have - but someone - sorry I can't remember who (but someone I remember thinking could have access to that information) was asked about vaccinating the entire population of the uk - her answer implied that we had enough vaccines in stock - not just on order. That lead me to believe - that any delay (and I am not being critical - the NHS has done an amazing job of the vaccination program) was due to logistics rather than vaccine supply.

Which just to note - had my second vaccine today - and my husband commented on the way in, the huge amount of staff involved in the organisation. Also they had it set up slightly differently this time - so they were operating even more efficiently to get as many people vaccinated as poss.

@Peregrina

Gordon Brown weighs in.

What a pity his slogan "Leading not Leaving" wasn't taken up.

He is fast becoming the "official" opposition.

GB called for BJ to support the england team taking the knee yesterday.

A good PM let down by one remark that the media seized on, in contrast to the many BJ has made which they ignore.

Its a real problem for Labour.

Why is HMG donating 100m doses to Covax a bad thing? I suspect any delay in rollout in the UK now is about logistics yes, if we are sure we have enough vaccine for everyone. Vaccinating nearly 50 million people as I beleive we've now done is going to take a long time.

If there's enough vaccine for the UK rollout and a sensible order programme in place then donating vaccine makes sense. Helping get vaccine coverage globally is in everyone's best interest.

@LouiseCollins28

Why is HMG donating 100m doses to Covax a bad thing? I suspect any delay in rollout in the UK now is about logistics yes, if we are sure we have enough vaccine for everyone. Vaccinating nearly 50 million people as I beleive we've now done is going to take a long time.

I would think it more likely that Brexiteers think donating the vaccines is a bad thing. Nobody's safe until we're all safe.

After all, while the nasty EU and the USA have donated millions of vaccines already, de Piffle's Brexshit government has yet to donate a single dose.

I think it's great, even though we also have to make sure we can vaccinate our own population a quickly as we can.

Oh FFS! Julia Heartless-Fucker has just said, on the radio;

"Many worried that Northern Ireland had effectively been thrown under a bus to deliver Brexit for the rest of the UK. I, as a Brexiteer, hold my hands up to that, as a price worth paying."

It's not her that's paying the fucking price...

@LouiseCollins28

Why is HMG donating 100m doses to Covax a bad thing? I suspect any delay in rollout in the UK now is about logistics yes, if we are sure we have enough vaccine for everyone. Vaccinating nearly 50 million people as I beleive we've now done is going to take a long time.

Its not, i wanted it done weeks ago and got slated on MNs for suggesting it. My point was that the UK said it wouldn't do this until all were vaccinated and boosters given.... but now Biden is doing it, BJ suddenly thinks its a great idea and one that shows UK world leadership.

I wonder if he'll announce that joining EFTA is an amazing opportunity for the UK and one that he believes will fix the GB / NI issue?

He can also claim UK can still do FTA's and it solves Wetherspoons staffing issues too :)

I wouldn't put it past him at all.

@HannibalHayeski

Oh FFS! Julia Heartless-Fucker has just said, on the radio;

"Many worried that Northern Ireland had effectively been thrown under a bus to deliver Brexit for the rest of the UK. I, as a Brexiteer, hold my hands up to that, as a price worth paying."

It's not her that's paying the fucking price...

She isn't alone at all, i asked a couple of brexitiers i know about this a while back, their attitude was its not them that would start the violence and democratic decisions can't be overturned by threats.

I was lost for words tbh... a rarity!

Donating millions of doses before completing the UK vaccine rollout to the most vulnerable would be undesirable IMO. Doing so after our vaccine rollout has substantially delivered protection to our citizens is sensible, fair and even in some sense in our self-interest. As Hanibal says above, noone is safe until we're all safe.

Not sure where the UK "not donating a single dose" has come from? The UK has backed Covax with huge amounts of £ since early in the pandemic.

@LouiseCollins28

Donating millions of doses before completing the UK vaccine rollout to the most vulnerable would be undesirable IMO. Doing so after our vaccine rollout has substantially delivered protection to our citizens is sensible, fair and even in some sense in our self-interest. As Hanibal says above, noone is safe until we're all safe.

Not sure where the UK "not donating a single dose" has come from? The UK has backed Covax with huge amounts of £ since early in the pandemic.

I didn't say that but once the 9 groups were done, no reason to not help vaccinate healthcare workers in dev countries is there?

We have said that we want to vaccinate the over 12s now....

the west has pre ordered vaccine for the next few years production, covax needs vaccines not money and as welcome as the US and others giving a billion doses, Covax needs many billions more.

While the rollout has been a big success overall, I'd be very surprised if the 9 groups were "done" in reality. The best you could say IMO would be something like 'everyone in the priority groups who is registered with a GP has been offered a vaccine, along with many people aged over 50 who are not.'

In any case priority groups 1-9 cover the over 50s, which is way short of vaccinating the entire adult population of the UK. Currently the offer is for the over 25s.

Er, what do you suppose Covax are doing with the £500m plus we've already donated to them? I'm guessing they're buying vaccines.

Not sure where the UK "not donating a single dose" has come from? The UK has backed Covax with huge amounts of £ since early in the pandemic.

As you yourself demonstrate with your sophistry - we have donated money. The money is no use if they have no vaccines to use.

And no, our government has not donated a single dose so far.

Louise, you say "Why is HMG donating 100m doses to Covax a bad thing?" To which we answer, "it's not".

You, however, then go on to say that you do think it's a bad thing, confirming my suspicions about Bresxhitters.

Stop tying yourself up in knots...

No Hanibal I haven't said that.

I wrote "donating millions of doses before completing the UK vaccine rollout to the most vulnerable would be undesirable IMO."

i.e. doing it "weeks ago", when the rollout had not progressed as far as it now has, would have been a bad thing. Agreeing to do it now is absolutely fine.

I disagree. Doing it many weeks ago would have been a good thing, given that we have enough doses for ourselves, and the main problem slowing things down is the logistics, and the required period between doses.

Given that we have never bothered to "control are boarders" as the Brexshitters we so hot on, and there are literally thousands of people flying in to Heathrow every day from all over the world and then jumping on the tube with little to no checks being done, I think the sooner the rest of the world is vaccinated the better for our health, given then de Spaffle doesn't seem to think we're worth protecting.

Note that you don't argue that we haven't donated a single does as yet...

*dose

I was going to reply to one message at once but OK.

I agree totally on overseas travel btw, the lack of control on this is appalling!

On vaccine donation, UK Government support to COVAX topped £500m months ago. Not sure if the link will work but this is the site of global vaccine inititive, GAVI

www.gavi.org/covax-facility?gclid=Cj0KCQjwk4yGBhDQARIsACGfAesrVIouUF7vqp7HpLPOGV0lD3sNhKl9c9abKsynQWtCMd6xaegmXOcaAjQGEALw_wcB

According to them COVAX have shipped 83m doses to 131 countries. If we've given COVAX >£500m then it seems reasonable to think that they have used some of that money to buy and ship said doses, no?

Interestingly the second headline on the Gavi site I saw reads "Ukraine receives 705,600" Astra Zeneca doses. Every one of those also represents a donation of part of its total "price" from the UK since AZ are producing their vaccine at cost, having been supported by UK taxpayers.

What we haven't done yet is give doses the UK government has bought to give to our own citizens to COVAX. Given that our own vaccine rollout is ongoing I find that unsurprsing. Now that our own roll out is progressing well, we are donating 100m doses in addition to all support given to date which I wrote about above.

there are literally thousands of people flying in to Heathrow every day from all over the world and then jumping on the tube with little to no checks being done,

Yes, this is the absolute joke. We came back from an amber country. There weren't any queues at Heathrow at the time we came back, and we jumped straight in the car and were home about two hours after the plane landed. We kept being phoned by the track and trace people who rattled through an unhelpful script. On day 8 we were phoned by another outfit, telling us that we had been in contact with someone who tested positive. Since we hadn't been out of the house for 8 and a half days, the known contact could only have been from someone on the plane. But this person could easily have crossed London, and picked up an infection then, when we were long out of contact with them, and with precious little way of finding out who their real contacts had been. Our tests came back negative so we ended our quarantine.

I do think that quarantine is a good thing, but it has to be done properly. This IMO is not spending time checking up on people who are unlikely to have caught covid, who had to have a negative test before boarding the plane, when the country was letting in thousands from countries with Covid rampant and few checks, and then letting them disperse via crowded public transport.

But that is a de Pfeffle standard.

Quarantine is a good thing. Not travelling is better. Thousands of people flying into Heathrow daily as Hanibal observes, is absurd. Fortunately I've yet to be contacted by T&T for anything so I don't honestly know how it does work but I can imagine the system is riddled with holes and inconsistency as Peregrina suggests.

"Interestingly the second headline on the Gavi site I saw reads "Ukraine receives 705,600" Astra Zeneca doses. Every one of those also represents a donation of part of its total "price" from the UK since AZ are producing their vaccine at cost, having been supported by UK taxpayers."

I think you're getting confused here. Selling something at cost price is rather different to giving something away.

I don't deny the money will be useful, as they have to get the vaccines to where they're needed, store them safely and get people to perform the vaccinating. The money our government has given has probably all been spent on this gargantuan logistical exercise.

But if they've not got enough vaccines to use, it's a bit like playing golf with no clubs.

If de Spaffle had been clever, he could have used it to make up our Aid contributions and head off the commons revolt...