the prime minister has just been on PMQ's complaining about endless attacks on government when people want to see us all stand together at this time. he said it in a way that it was almost unpatriotic to point out his ineptitude.. what else are people supposed to do. blindly support him. i guess i would fall into the category of criticizing him. but am i to blame ? what about the research teams that have found that up to 60% of the deaths could have been averted had the PM acted sooner. THE TRAITORS . how about the doctors and nurses who complained about the lack of PPE. as Priti Patel said. ' I AM SORRY IF YOU FEEL YOU DO NOT HAVE THE PROTECTIVE EQUIPEMENT YOU NEED' how about the care homes complaining that they have been abandoned. patients sent back from hospitals into the care homes with the virus and decimating our OAP's. who can support that ? an end to the lockdown as London breaks free of the virus but Sunderland is deep in its grip. if he did not expect criticism he should have actually put the people of this country first.
stjohn

matt Hancock has been underfire from John Edmunds a member of the SAGE advisory committee who said that the late introduction of the lockdown cost lives. Hancock just kept repeating the government mantra ' we made the right decisions at the right time'. do you think they repeat it so many times they believe it ? they should not be in government they should be running an advertising agency. remember from brexit 'get brexit done' . no aims for a trade deal, no planning for a no deal nothing but a slogan. and then Rishi Sunak's ' whatever it takes' repeated again and again and again. (yeah whatever it takes as long as we keep the economy going never mind the elderly or the poor or the northerners ). we cannot have a government of slogans we need ideas, plans. you cannot protect NHS workers with slogans.
stjohn

regular readers will know that some weeks ago i asked why we did not have local 'R' numbers so we could 'STAY ALERT' with the info we needed. and indeed one of our press people, fighting for truth and justice asked one of the scientists if he had them. he said he did but not with him at the time, that was weeks ago, finally last week they were published. local 'R' numbers. surprise surprise the south is okay. so we have the lockdown eased as we are 'GUIDED BY THE SCIENCE' a bit tough on those living in the North though as their figures are 'DANGEROUSLY NEAR THE 1 MARK'. the North West and NOrth East ans Wales are particularly high. how so then we have the easing of the lockdown. does our PM consider that the lives of these people are not worth the same as the lives of the people of the South ?
remember when the Scots were having INDYREF and david cameron said he did not want to be prime minister of a government which broke up the union. well Boris Johnson seems determined not only to break up the Union but to force regions of England to leave too.
the north east should consider it a self-inflicted wound. as they betrayed generations of labour voters to fly to the never neverland of 'GET BREXIT DONE' for years tory govenments have left them, mass unemployment, poverty. have they never heard of the Jarrow marchers, and they wanted brexit . why do they think the car factories of Honda. Nissan. and Toyota are in england for ? they are here to get free trade access to the European market and you voted against it. you voted against free trade for your area. you voted for mass unemployment in the north east, can you see why the Prime Minister does not put any value on you.
stjohn

so we have seen that there are moves in Brazil, Italy and France to sue their respective governments with regard to slow and inaction regarding the corona virus. but not here. although we have seen violent protests against the death of 1 individual at the hands of the authorities, not actually our authorities but the authorities in the United States. a different country. a different continent. i am sure that George Floyd was a lovely guy, why that justifies attacks on British police with officers left bloodied and bruised i do not understand. especially when we have 10's of thousand over here dead unnecessarily and this is just accepted with ambivalence. these are OUR people. family, friends people who work in the health service. many lived through ww2 and worked to pick the country back up afterwards. where is our anger. how does that fool remain in Downing street ?
stjohn

finally the press' obsession with Cummings seems to be over. on Sunday on Andrew Marr's show epidemiologist prof John Edmunds stated clearly that the UK went into lockdown too late costing lives. Matt Hancock was asked if he agreed and he plainly said 'no'. Prof Neil Ferguson. in evidence to the commons science committee said that if the lockdown had been brought in as little as a week earlier the number of deaths could have been halved. Johnson was asked about this today and even he could not dismiss it outright but said it was 'premature to ask these questions' . i remember during the gulf war, when it was actually taking place there were calls for an inquiry into this country's enty into it. that was not seen as 'premature' when british troops were on the frontline, and we had 45 dead. a drop in the ocean compared to the 60,000 dead from this virus.
we are easing lockdown yet still they stick to the mantra that we are guided by the science. when the 'r' number in North West England is said to be close to, or even above 1. and we all know that if the rate goes above '1' then infection grows 'exponentially' and that is the worry . for the North West anyway. Boris is unconcerned.
stjohn

we now have a 'preliminary' ( the PM would call it premature ) report from researchers in the covid 19 genomics UK consortium. they have mapped the way it mutates and in research have identified which areas the virus that is affecting the UK came from. apparently the virus was brought here in March by 1356. over a third from Spain. remember that football match. the spanish fans who could not attend a match in their own country because of the risk of spreading the disease , well guess what. 29% from France and 14% from Italy. nearly 80% came from countries we already knew were suffering from infections. this whole thing could have been stopped before it was started. nipped in the bud. a stitch in time, e.t.c. is anybody going to take the blame ?
stjohn

just to be clear that last post 1356. that is 1356 people . this whole epidemic in the UK was stared by allowing 1356 people with the virus in. they are out patient zero (s).we have 300,000 infected ( minimum ) and 60,000 dead and the economy bleeding. but at least we have a charming PM. Ineffectual and does not care about the people here but he is charming.
stjohn

remember the mantra from Boris and the rest of the puppets who stand up to give the spin. 'we are guided by the science' ' we will continue to be guided by the science' and they have a report on social distancing that says 1.8 metres is a safe distance. so we are at 2M but the government did not like that report so they have commissioned a new one. an economic report that says that if the distance comes down to 1M it will help the economy. lets see what dance they do when they come on that tv and reduce the social distance to 1M. still guided by the science ?
stjohn

we have not reduced the social distance to half what it was. isn't that great. i mean we must be doing so well that we can start to relax. 'MANY PEOPLE WILL LOOK AT OUT SUCCESS' especially in Germany. did you see them ? walking around in those white suits from E.T. re-introducing the lockdown. ha. fools. they have had a breakout at a factory with over 1000 cases over the last few weeks. ha ! but wait. shall we look at the figures a bit more, Germany re-introduce lockdown because it is not safe there. but we have twice their daily number of infections. we have 10 times their daily number of deaths . the minister said it does not matter what distance you have if the virus is no longer here. but it is here. maybe it is not in London like it was. number 1 city for infection. Sheffield. no 2 Leeds, No 3 Bradford. anyone get the idea that the government care more about the economy than they do Northerners.
stjohn

so we have yet another failing by this shambolic government.
we had the failure to stop infected people come into the country which we are told by the scientists cost us as many as 20,000 lives.
we had the disgraceful failure to provide PPE to NHS staff which put the very people who were there to heal us at risk from the virus. many ( too many ) died but of course we cannot know for sure how they contracted the virus.
and now we have the 'track and trace' failure. it does not work. not only that there is some confusion about how it would work if it did work. they had their own tracking app. then they said they would us an app by google and apple although they were unaware of this. ( remember Turkey were unaware of an order for PPE even though it had been included in the government figures for PPE.
what really annoys me though is the face of that Matt Hancock when he announced they were rolling it out early. A journalist accused him of rushing it out to detract attention from the Cummings saga. he laughed and laughed and said he was usually accused of bringing things out to late and now people were complaining he was bringing things out 'too' early.
BUT IT DID NOT WORK YOU FOOL OF COURSE YOU BROUGHT IT OUT TOO EARLY. what it the point of bringing things out that do not work ? how does that help anyone or anything. and yet, they are still our government. no resignations for incompetence, actually i do not want resignations for incompetence i just want them to resign because they just do not care. how can we have a government to take care of the people when they do not connect or care about the people they supposedly serve.
who can save us from these mountebanks ??? we need to send for Marcus Rashford.
stjohn