Kryten's troubles and Parliament's holiday are giving Boris's ministers an easy ride. And some of them are not doing so well. I suspect many are unable to manage their civil servants, and those unmanageable civil servants are seeking as much to cover-up and rationalise their past blunders as to solve current problems. It may be uncomfortable for ministers to face a grilling either in the House or in select committee, but it produces a better result for us all. The minister is really just the medium through which our scrutiny of the civil service passes, and the opposition are acting as our scrutators. So yes, Parliament resuming its effectiveness in a week's time is in all our interests.
Boris's dilemma is his gross personal popularity, behind which both his ministers and their civil servants will seek to hide. He must now manage the trickiest manoeuvre - leading a collective cabinet whilst leaving individual ministers sufficient distance to answer for their own performance. One or two may have to be swapped-out pour encourager les autres. A couple of weeks convalescence leaving Dominic Raab at the despatch box (he's sound and secure in his job and can take the knocks - and is loyal to Boris) is not a bad thing.
We can only hope that the comrades manage to focus. The party is not exactly short of lawyers, and signs over the weekend are that they are getting ready to sue the arse off eachother over either (a) their anti-Corbyn comments having been leaked or (b) their having sabotaged Corbyn's leadership. sadly, their antics may prove more diverting than the real business in Parliament. However, we have the BBC and MSM to help ensure that coverage of Labour's infighting is minimised whilst fighting their own partisan media war of attrition against the government.
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| Labour's leaked report will give some chortles over the breakfast table |
17 comments:
You could argue that the full report of disloyalty is devastating for the Party... but you could also argue that it is one factional group (who are the authors?) getting their retaliation in first.
Perhaps the Party workers found Corbynism too extreme - will they produce a counter report exposing all the Dear Leaders' failings?
It's a very typical Labour way of analysing reasons for failure. Write a report.
I can see why the lawyers didn't want this to go to the EHRC because it provides evidence of antisemitism - which factionalism or poor oversight cannot excuse.
"So yes, Parliament resuming its effectiveness in a week's time is in all our interests."
What effectiveness? It's a Chamber full of preening attention-seekers - as they regularly remind us.
If this ridiculous, economy-wrecking lock-down continues for much longer, don't expect that 20% lead to last.
We were told that it was needed so the NHS could increase capacity to deal with the numbers of patients with CV. Well they've had 3 months to prepare and 3 weeks to -weeks to increase capacity. They now need to deliver "a message" that the Government can't deliver immortality - the country must get back to work.
Greece has had no more than ten CV deaths in a day - just one yesterday.
Venezuela is doing OK too.
When the global league table becomes well known, with the US and UK taking the Reaper's gold and silver medals, I think that those polls might change rather.
The Government passed over the European Union's bulk buy offer for PPE no fewer than three times, and meanwhile NHS staff are dying.
So many people saying the lockdown should end (often in shouty capital letters)...
Pretty much all of the world is locked down right now, so the hit on our economy doesn't matter, since the whole world is in the same boat.
Even with the lockdown, there will be about 20000 C19 deaths in the UK by the time the numbers stabilize. It's arguable that that number would have been much lower if the lockdown had started earlier. But that's water under the bridge, and the timing of the lockdown was broadly supported at the time.
Where the government could usefully be held to account is in its plans for the post-lockdown world. When it actually ends is a sideshow compared to what plans will be in place to prevent another outbreak, with a second lockdown and a further 20000 deaths. And here we could usefully learn from those other countries --- and some of them are in Asia --- where something close to normal life is proceeding with C19 daily deaths in single figures, rather than four figures.
DJK 08:44 South Korea, Taiwan etc, even China, are very well used to this sort of problem as it happens every few years plus wearing of masks is totally normal at any time of year (against air contamination mainly). They're the only ones you ever saw wearing masks in public in the UK previous to this. Our procurement need ssorting out definitely plus a severe polling of NHS managers/buy-list makers/climate change pushers etc, see this threa dfor the previous 'priorities' even when COVID was on the march.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2020/04/13/nhs-fighting-imaginary-bogeymen-in-208o/
JPM 08:38, Venezuela? FFS I was suprised they had a single case! The effing country has been in virtual lock-down for ages and getting there has been increasingly difficult and expensive for years.
JPM - I I understand the EU's twisted offer, it invited nations to aggregate their PPE demand but allow the EU to allocate whatever they managed to buy, rather than give each participating nation the same %age share, e.g.
UK gloves bid 10m
EU27 gloves bid 50m
Total gloves bought 20m
Potentially
Allocated to UK by EU 1m
Allocated to EU27 19m
I.e they wanted our requirements to boost their purchasing power, but to their advantage not ours.
People should quit citing Covid death numbers until we establish proper definitions and not simply - as is apparent - blame EVERY hospital death on it.
The simple fact of the matter is that the virus has been no more 'deadly' than many other diseases that have washed over us but it seems to be THE excuse to dismantle our economy to the advantage of the 1%ers and banks.
The whole issue needs full exposure and the truth brought to everyone's attention.
Who gives a flying one for what Labour are/aren't up to?
JPM @08:39 :
“Greece has had no more than ten CV deaths in a day - just one yesterday.
Venezuela is doing OK too.”
Our high death rate could perhaps in part be because our NHS has been keeping alive many elderly people with severe health issues who would not be surviving in countries with poorer healthcare systems.
Venezuela's low death numbers might also be an indication of how unpopular a destination for international travel it has been in recent times - not to mention that many of their more vulnerable citizens have already been killed off by economic collapse.
Well if one wants to be infantile then one really must include the official stats coming out of N Korea.
Zero cases and zero fatalities.
And if one wishes to get as low as a fly's kneecap, then why not join with the conspiracy lot and say it must have been them who engineered the virus so successfully that it attacks anyone, except N Korean's.
Boris' exit from St. Thomas was designed to cover up mounting deaths. Pity you can't see that you are being stage-managed by Dom.
Boris' trickiest challenge is to stay out of the limelight while his colleagues royally s**ew things up and then come back to write a nice Telegraph article about how he would have done better.
He'll stay out of the limelight until folks have forgotten about those Dyson ventilators (scheduled for delivery around 2020).
It turns out that the ventilators that Boris and gang tasked the Best of British to design and manufacture are 'of no use' to Covid patients. See today's Financial Times.
Perhaps the 'A' Team is too busy on those high-tech customs booths for the Irish Sea border.
Anonymous 20:37 "Boris' exit from St. Thomas was designed to cover up mounting deaths. Pity you can't see that you are being stage-managed by Dom"....
..."Boris' trickiest challenge is to stay out of the limelight while his colleagues royally"
Do you see your own contradiction Anon?
Its ventilators full stop, which are not efficacious in treating Covid 19 suffererers.
Forced mechanical ventilation has a very poor recovery rate for all respiratory illnesses.
Supplemental oxygen works but the best way is to dose with HAZ as as per the US doctors regime
https://www.sermo.com/press-releases/largest-statistically-significant-study-by-6200-multi-country-physicians-on-covid-19-uncovers-treatment-patterns-and-puts-pandemic-in-context/
Kryten... more like Max Headroom!
@Span Owls
Boris' exit -> an event (like a magician pulling a rabbit out of her hat)
Boris staying out of the limelight -> his reputation
No contradiction
Not so easy getting through PMQs. Simple questions today (13 May 2020), so much waffle.
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