I wrote this tweet last night, having watched some of the PM's press conference:
I am struggling to get my head around this. The NHS is on a war footing. The military is being called in. But pubs are open, mask-wearing is not being enforced and NHS staff are still not getting decent PPE. You literally cannot make sense of incoherence of this sort.
— Richard Murphy (@RichardJMurphy) January 4, 2022
So far the tweet has been liked 11,700 times. The message clearly resonated with some other people.
What is clear is that the government has decided to treat Covid as if it is simply like flu, or rather like the cold that most people call flu, as there is a difference.
Flu kills maybe 1,500 people a year in the UK. The rest of the deaths described as such by the ONS are pneumonia and 0ther bronchial diseases, almost all caused by fuel poverty and older people suffering from over-exposure to cold conditions. There is then almost no similarity between flu and Covid as to repercussions. One causes almost no stress to the NHS. Covid causes excess deaths, and not just from those with the condition, but to many others as well. That is what is forecast or known by hospitals when they declare critical incidents. They are saying that they do not have the resources to prevent these deaths.
And we have a government that is accepting that.
It is saying it has no duty of care.
It is saying that it will not support people, health care workers, the NHS, other public services, businesses or anyone else.
What is more, it will not put in place or require compliance with the most basic of public health measures.
And it does all this because one-third of the MPs who support that government, and a fair number of members of the Cabinet including both Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss, who lead the charge to replace Johnson, think that these deaths are a price worth paying to declare freedom.
In the last week former Cabinet minister Edwina Currie declared that Brexit was worthwhile for the benefit of freedom and the ability to stick two fingers up to Brussels. She could provide no other justifications. Now the same logic is effectively being used for this approach Covid. The desire is freedom from wearing face masks and the apparent ability to stick two fingers up to a virus, which really does not care what we do.
This is not just stupid; it is close to being deranged in its logic. This supposed freedom kills, and offers no gains. And people are going to die for this.
In my opinion this is culpable. Those pursuing this policy should one day be held to account for it. Reckless irresponsibility in pubic life that might lead to death has to have accountability attached to it. We are witnessing that irresponsibility now, in my opinion. I hope that one day we have a government willing to prosecute those who caused those deaths that need never have happened but will very soon.
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there are 1000s of fatalities and casualties each year on the road in Britain for the “freedom” of motorised transport. Is allowing this also “reckless irresponsibility” by those in Govt?
Please get the scales right
They are tiny in comparison and no one is asking for a risk free world
The order of magnitude (100 to 1) makes this an absurd analogy…. but there is another issue here.
When mechanical road transport came into being over 150 years ago vehicles were preceded by a man with a red flag. In 1930 all speed limits were abolished… but then reintroduced over the following 35 years. My father never had to take a driving test….. but I did, and my son will have to face a far more stringent examination (if he ever bothers to learn)..
My point is that our current set of rules has been established over time by consensus with tightening/easing of regulations hotly debated, legislated and then accepted. The community has arrived at a number of deaths on the road that is acceptable for the benefits gained.
You could argue that we have done the same with many diseases…… but with COVID the scale is greater we have not.
“Bryant” has a view – which is fine; Richard has another view – which is fine, too. The problem is that our government is operating a policy that is out of step with most other countries WITHOUT any consent from us, the people. I accept that it is tough to determine what IS acceptable to most people but for the government to make policy on the demands of Tory Party factional manoeuvres and pretend it “follows the science” is criminal.
If we are going to throw merde at Tory politicians – that’s fine.
But what about the real culprits – the people that fund them?
The puppeteers , the back seat drivers , the self interested?
They too need to be unmasked if we are going to have a crusade – and I mean total war with no quarter – on these idiots.
Every Tory donor is therefore also culpable.
To really sort this out, this darker side of politics needs unpicking too in my view. Because to me its nothing but sedition.
At the risk of being cynical, is the military being called in part of a larger plan, including chronic underfunding, to “prove” to the public that the NHS has failed, and that the only viable solution is privatisation?
I’m aware of Hanlon’s razor, but still, one wonders.
They are straight out of “Don’t look up” as a leadership group. They do nothing on covid, nothing on Brexit and nothing on climate change. They are only about themselves and their own career progression through politics and then on to a well paid job in industry. However, they fail to compute the economic chaos that will result from climate change. They can only comprehend the here and now. We have bad leaders through out the world – they say what we want to hear and meanwhile behave in an utterly corrupt way. I don’t think they have that in their computations of their future prosperity – just what others have managed to have up to now.
Do we need to wait for a ‘government willing to prosecute’? Surely there is something that can be done now in the courts – under some kind of human rights act or some act covering a government’s duty of care?
Just the fact of bringing such proceedings might at least encourage a pause for thought?
Who could advise on bringing such proceedings? Who could institute them?
I am sure the Good Law Project has looked at this
@Andrew Broadbent.
Maybe this answers your question
https://www.thebernician.net/london-met-police-set-to-investigate-the-midazolam-murders/
Misconduct in Public Office appears to have superseded the old Misfeasance in Public Office (a civil matter), and Malfeasance in Public Office (a criminal matter)
(See https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/misconduct-public-office)
Further to my response to Andrew Broadbent’s question about options for suing Johnson’s administration, I have to say, after fully reading the “thebernician” piece that I posted, I would only wish it to be taken as evidence that there are legal remedies available that can be used in pursuit of justice in the face of governmental negligence. The post itself seems somewhat off the wall.
@ Bryant
“There are 1000s of fatalities and casualties each year on the road in Britain for the “freedom” of motorised transport. Is allowing this also “reckless irresponsibility” by those in Govt?”
It certainly would be “reckless irresponsibility” if ‘the govt’ suddenly decided to scrap the Highway Code, the need for driving tests/driving licences, MOT’s, seat belts, zebra crossings, etc, etc, etc. And also in the name of “freedom” to allow people to drive when drunk plus to merrily text away/make phone calls whilst driving if they so wish.
Driving is hardly ‘free’, both in terms of ‘freedom’ from laws/rules/regs or the financial cost in either learning how to drive/pass the test or running a car.
That’s why there are 1000’s of fatalities and casualties each year on the road instead of 100,000’s.
Your analogy between deaths on the road (a constant, which most countries constantly strive to improve upon) and the pandemic (a once in a century event… so far, I hope!) has got to be one of the daftest I’ve yet come across.
To stick to your analogy, I wonder if those ERG nutters in govt who object to ‘face nappys’ and a bit of social distancing also object to using seat belts and keeping their distance from other cars whilst driving? I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they did.
We also require compulsory insurance to protect third parties
The 1861 Offences Against The Person Act covers this for infectious diseases.
I don’t think this is just about tolerating deaths as such. It is more deliberate than that and has to do with specific concepts of freedom and the role of government. Johnson is using Covid as a cover to further the destruction of the NHS so that when private healthcare companies take over, and the health service becomes one which we have to pay for individually, the government will be able to say that privatisation was essential because a publicly funded service showed itself to be unable to cope with both the pandemic and other healthcare needs. The assumption the government is making is that omicron will be sufficiently “mild” that the number of deaths will be reasonably “proportionate”. As the deaths from Covid so far have not had an impact on Johnson or his government’s standing, there’s no reason to suppose that any further increase will cut through.
The way that the messaging has gone with the pandemic is that it is our individual responsibility to ensure that we don’t fall ill from Covid, that it is not the role of government, or the state, to care for our health but up to us to make our own personal choices. Once the pandemic is over, once we have returned to normal, then it will make even more sense for us to take personal responsibility as individuals for our own health, to make our own choices, and it is only a private health service that will be able to deliver on those choices.
In this, Johnson’s regime is following the concept of “possessive individualism”, conjoined with the abdication of government responsibility for the well-being of the people, as set out by Thatcher in her famous quote about the non-existence of society, given here in its longer version: “We’ve been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it’s the government’s job to cope with it. ‘I have a problem; I’ll get a grant.’ ‘I’m homeless, the government must house me.’ They’re casting their problem on society. And there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It’s our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations.”
The concept of “possessive individualism” comes from CB Macpherson. In this concept the individual is defined as “essentially the proprietor of his own person or capacities, owing nothing to society for them…The human essence is freedom from dependence on the wills of others, and freedom is a function of possession. Society becomes a lot of free equal individuals related to each other as proprietors of their own capacities and of what they have acquired by their exercise. Society consists of exchange between proprietors”. This is the freedom of the Covid Recovery Group, the freedom of the anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers, a freedom that refuses to recognise others or deal with the consequences for those others of the exercise of that freedom.
Implicit within Thatcher’s quote is that any public good that is done arises out of individual charitable acts, not from government action, because the government cannot act. After all, Thatcher also said that government has no money of its own; whatever it wants to spend has to come from borrowing or from taxation, effectively saying that the public good, including public health, is parasitic on the rich.
We should stop thinking of Johnson’s regime as being irresponsible and incoherent because its incoherence and irresponsibility arise out of deliberate and deliberated policy. It’s using this crisis to engineer a position where the NHS is no longer tenable and where its privatisation will be accepted by the public as inevitable and justifiable.
Thanks – that adds vakue
And here is a useful reminder of what USA style private healthcare can mean.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/04/insulin-copay-biden-build-back-better
Back in the time when cholera and dysentery were rife, the likes of Steve Baker would have been arguing that we needed to learn to live with them, rather than invest in the water and sewage systems that saved so many lives.
And I’d agree that we now have a Tory party and leadership that wants the public to see the NHS as ‘failing’, as a basis for arguing for its further privatisation. An ageing and unhealthy population represents a profit opportunity. The Randian cult of Javid et al believes that helping others is explicitly wrong. Unless there is something in it for them.
“We should stop thinking of Johnson’s regime as being irresponsible and incoherent because its incoherence and irresponsibility arise out of deliberate and deliberated policy. It’s using this crisis to engineer a position where the NHS is no longer tenable and where its privatisation will be accepted by the public as inevitable and justifiable.”
Yes. And this has been the case since at least 2010. Hence what can only be called state terrorism inflicted on the vulnerable, the disabled, the unemployed, the working poor, the Windrush children, refugees. They have taken Covid as their opportunity to apply this policy even more generally.
Thanks – and welcome