In June this year an epidemiologist told me that unless the government was very incompetent there should be no second wave of coronavirus. It is now very apparent that the second wave of coronavirus is happening. There are two options for me to choose between. One is that the epidemiologist was wrong. The other is that we really do have an incompetent government.
I am not an epidemiologist. What I do know is that the work of the person I spoke to is, in general, highly regarded. So, whilst I always thought he was a bit of an optimist, not least with regard to his hope that we might have a competent government, I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and presume that he was right.
That does, then, lead to the inevitable conclusion that we have an incompetent government. All the evidence suggests this to be the case.
Leaving aside observation of those involved in government decision-making processes, and ignoring the cronyism that is all too apparent in the awarding of contracts meant to assist the management of this crisis, whilst also dismissing the very obviously unqualified nature of some of those appointed to assist that process, there is ample evidence to support the suggestion of incompetence.
I am not arguing the lock down should have persisted beyond June. It is obvious that we cannot run an economy forever with large numbers of people locked out of work. That cannot be done. But there were substantial errors made.
Does it really need to be said that track and trace was essential if, given the fear in the population, coronavirus was to be managed? And yet, from March onwards the government has got almost everything about its approach to coronavirus testing wrong, and still is.
As a result the policy for reopening business was undermined.
As it was by the simple failure to demand masks earlier, and the inappropriate emphasis on hand washing instead.
So too was the government's policy for education completely misdirected. Without a policy for rapid testing nothing was going to work in this sector, where close proximity was always going to be inevitable. And yet, that investment in testing was simply not made. And even now, testing is not being funded, crippling the sector.
Simultaneously, the desire to reopen leisure activities and to permit holidays whilst the core activities of work, education and health care were treated as peripheral, at least with regard to testing, was profoundly mistaken.
And behind all this it is apparent that these mistakes really did not arise by chance: they were the consequence of policy decisions. We have a government that remains obsessed with what it calls ‘sound government finance', But which everyone else calls ‘balancing the books'. And as is now clear, this idea drove everything.
The decision to lock down too late in March was the result of a desire to protect the economy.
So called ‘herd immunity' was thought to be cheaper than testing, and so what if some people died?
Reopening business was given priority over schools.
Measures to protect people from the virus were delayed to encourage that return to work.
And the message that you had to get back to work on commuter trains or buses, which are inherently high risk areas, was given more focus than the need to maintain social distancing - which has had far too little attention since May, and seems to have been very largely forgotten.
All of this - and the refusal to continue support for those impacted by the coronavirus - and to support essential public services to stay open by providing more funding and proper test facilities - has all been motivated by money, and a paranoia with debt.
And yet, there is money. QE has paid for all the measures that have happened. The roof has not fallen in. There is no chance that there will be a tax recovery to clear that QE debt. And nor will the books balance for years to come, of ever again, come to that. But still the priorities are nit-picking, small minded, incompetent, corrupt and never focussed on keeping essential activities - that is healthcare, public services and education, plus essential service supplies, including food - going.
I'm not for one moment denying that I have appreciated going out again. I have. But, I know all too well that all the track and trace data I give is meaningless because there is no test at the end of it. And so we have a second wave.
It's incompetent that this is happening.
It is absurd that the government got so much wrong when it was so apparent what their priority should have been this summer.
And their economics is literally going to kill some people, wholly unnecessarily.
Surely, this time they will not be forgiven?
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Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings may find it extremely difficult to find any self-respecting lawyer prepared to take up the role of Advocate General, unless there is another major U-turn on the Internal Market Bill, or Johnson is swiftly propelled out of office. In normal circumstances such a crisis would be a valuable sign to Unionists that the game is almost up in Scotland, if Unionism (both in the form of Scottish Conservative Unionism and Scottish Labour Unionism) was not already demonstrably bereft of the lowest orders of wit, wisdom or talent, and was doggedly, witlessly committed to the fateful self-destruction that became the hallmark of the Jacobitism with which Unionism shares so many similar, sentimentalised but on closer inspection bizarre and repellent eccentricities.
Agreed
People will either forgive or forget. Such is the dominance of our mass media and much of on line propaganda, explicit or implicit, masquerading as our so called public discourse. Whether Question Time, Andrew Marr, the Times, Sun, you name it.
“Reopening business was given priority over schools.”
Are you saying schools should have been opened earlier? I don’t remember you calling for that at the time.
That is not what I said
We’ve got 5 red lights flashing in the world at the moment:
1. The Environment – due to human activity and an inability to tackle this – is now turning from something that supports human life to something that will increasingly terminate it.
2. The Financial System – demonstrated that it was out of control in 2008 and still nothing has been done to stop that System from absorbing what could be useful money for ‘high yield for a few but low human value for the many’ activity.
3. Social Media – like the financial system – is also out of control and literally helping to prevent answers to the other three red lights here from progressing (such as MMT, Green New Deal etc/.). In fact social media could very well support those who fail to deal with these red lights.
4. An over zealous belief that markets are better allocators of resources than sovereign nations. The Covid-19 pandemic has reified that the run down and privatisation of state apparatus to cope with remarkable, disruptive events like those above. We are ill-equipped to deal with them, because the profit motive will come first. Only activities that make money will have an credibility. Therefore everything will have to be monetised. And I mean everything.
5. The Top 1% – are now at their richest and most decoupled from the rest of society – the world even – and they want more. This group will continue to use its wealth in a hegemonic way to consolidate their position even to the point of challenging democracy in ways only science fiction writers have considered up to now. And I’m talking about private armies etc.
Things don’t have to be this way but I think every citizen needs to reflect on what it might have to cost them to put an end to it.
Incompetence, or very deliberate plans?
Will be interesting to see what negative interest rates does to the picture. I’m certainly moving my cash into other assets
I’m afraid I tend towards disagreement with you on this one Richard. I ascribe their policy decisions in relation to the Corona virus, and in general, to malign intent – towards the 99%. To ascribe it to incompetence let’s them off the hook. They are supported by a knowledgeable and competent Civil Service (though that is being transformed as we converse), which has in some notable cases made its objections known.
When one considers how the ‘austerity’ agenda over the last ten years has rendered the resilience of the UK low to non-existent, operating as ever on the goodwill of public and charitable/voluntary sector workers whilst the welfare net has been shredded, those in Govt must be blind (given the staggering amount of evidence that shows real harm), or wilfully negligent, to ‘consider’ as does Rishi Sunak, that there might be benefit freezes and further austerity measures. I would err on the side of wilfully negligent.
I have, never in my lifetime (and that is now entering its 7th decade) known such a callous and wilfully negligent Tory party that has the ‘privilege’ to be governing the country. I am sad to say I do not think they see it as a privilege, more an entitlement based on their ‘superior’ ideology that the free market must reign supreme.
The government has no economic policy that I can see, unless it seriously does intend to spend trillions on a technical revolution. The tracing app foretells where this would end up. It has backed itself into a corner over Brexit and has lost control of the pandemic. There is no coherent policy on anything. One hand issues food tickets while the other preaches against obesity. When incompetence descends to these levels, it becomes something else, a methodology almost. We are fast approaching Trump’s America where incompetence is built into the brand. Under such circumstances the accusation of incompetence becomes meaningless. The government can do anything it likes.
The only saving grace might be five years living in a lunatic asylum could act as an emetic!
5 years, you say, however, if the Human Rights Act goes, will we still have the right to vote?
For whom, Helen?
A large majority of voters now want Test And Trace taken off private firms evidence they are fed up living in a lunatic asylum:-
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/exclusive-public-want-track-and-trace-taken-off-serco_uk_5f6785ecc5b6480e8970b968
Is that good enough for you Larry?
This govt is incompetent, but still at an election winning 40+% in the polls.
WTF? Are the English voters blind and stupid?
I blame the Labour Party. 100%
Socialists within the party who warned us about borrowing in dollars from the IMF in 1976 were at first marginalised and then hounded out in the 1980s. Socialists were arguing for public control of the economy.
Blair’s premiership was Margaret Thatcher’s greatest achievement. Her words. Need I say more?
Labour has forgotten how to campaign alongside ordinary people for everyday issues, and have allowed the agenda to be set by the supra national corporations. Indeed many Labour MPs take bungs from these same corporations. Massive change required in Labour Party.
I’m in Scotland and desperately hope we get Indy, and a chance to reset our politics. The SNP is the vehicle to achieve Indy, upon which the real discussions about what kind of country we want to be. There are a few very informative blogs on this. Scotland can be what it wants to be, unconstrained by outdated dogma and ghosts of aristocratic half wits that dog Westminster.
I wish Labour, or it’s left wing successor, all the best in England. They’ll need it!
The SNP is not a socialist party
ThanKs for your , as ever, strictly unbiased POV……
Given the lack of information reaching us regarding both Wales & NI I would be interested to read your opinion on what effect, if any, the limited control in the devolved nations has had on those areas.
Whatever happens vis-a-vi indyRef2 in Scotland i think we’re ALL in a very uncomfortable position due , mainly, to the policies of the current Westminster govt.
Best wishes for the utter everyone..!
Oh dear another useless Labour Party in the making! Pass the emetic!
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-conference-rishi-sunak-coronavirus-public-money-b507664.html
Let’s see what she actually says
I can read that report in a number of ways…
But please don’t think I’m being optimistic
Well this is a part of the quote from Starmer’s tele-conference speech:-
“Never again will Labour go into an election not being trusted on national security, with your job, with your community and with your money.”
https://labour.org.uk/press/full-text-of-keir-starmers-speech-at-labour-connected/
Now why am I suddenly in flashback mode and reminded of that hackneyed theme about being “trusted” with “your money?”
Ah yes:-
http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/105454
“When our opponents start demanding more spending on hospitals, schools, roads or for the old folk, I do not hear them at the same time calling for more income tax, or an extra 5 per cent. on VAT or even more on local authority rates.”
and
“One of the great debates of our time is about how much of your money should be spent by the State and how much you should keep to spend on your family. Let us never forget this fundamental truth: the State has no source of money other than money which people earn themselves. If the State wishes to spend more it can do so only by borrowing your savings or by taxing you more. It is no good thinking that someone else will pay–that “someone else” is you. There is no such thing as public money; there is only taxpayers’ money.”
Here we are again 37 years on with many citizens being dependent upon state created money to keep them alive during a coronavirus pandemic and Starmer’s pretending it’s actually “their individual” money they’re “dependent” on!
Andrew Marr, interviewing Keir Starmer on Sunday, launched into a series of questions about the economy by stating ‘We have to get the debt down …’, thus immediately taking a political position. A more intelligent opening statement would surely have been ‘Do we have to get the debt down?’. As it is, Marr’s comment seems to indicate a right wing bias rather than an open mind, particularly as the national debt has been with us an awfully long time (since 1694 if Wikipedia is to be believed).
Agreed
I will have much more to say on debt soon, I hope
I’m just catching up with my blog reading, and this item arrived a day after another item, which seems to provide an interesting comparison.
You said “It is now very apparent that the second wave of coronavirus is happening.” But this does not appear to be the opinion of Norman Fenton, who is a leading statistician and risk expert. That is how I read this article:
http://probabilityandlaw.blogspot.com/2020/09/uk-plotting-new-covid-cases-per-1000.html
I note his comment on the second graph “Of course this graph conveniently shows ‘strong evidence’ of a ‘second wave’ – something which better fits the narrative of a lot of influential people. ”
I just throw that thought out there.
Some epidemiologists think this is still wave 1
They are fighting each other now, big time