Russell Brand discusses Covid and Boris Johnson’s ‘Partygate’ crisis

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Two presentations by UK’s Russell Brand discussing COVID and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s ‘Partygate’ crisis. Presented in reverse date order so watch the second one first if you want correct date order. Swearing in the second one.

As leaders PANIC Covid Narrative FALLS APART!!!!!

“What A F*cking Liar” – Boris’s BOMBSHELL Leaked Email

Continue ReadingRussell Brand discusses Covid and Boris Johnson’s ‘Partygate’ crisis

UK politics assessment

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An update to an earlier post from March 2019 to reflect changes since then. This is a work in progress and needs to be finished.

Since then Boris Johnson was apponted leader of the Conservative party in July 2019 and we’ve had the general election of December 2019. To my surprise the UK Labour party led by Jeremy Corbyn fared poorly in the general election and Boris Johnson’s Conservatives won comfortably. Jeremy Corbyn was replaced by Keir Starmer as leader of the Labour Party and the UK has experienced the Coronavirus pandemic during 2020 with a lockdown starting in late March.

Boris Johnson & Co are rabid Eurosceptics and succeeded at the general election using the simplistic mantra “Get Brexit Done”. Johnson & Co are indicating that they are intending to pursue a no-deal Brexit whereby UK will leave the EU in a chaotic manner. Their strategy appears to be to align closely with US instead of EU so that another simplistic mantra for the simple “we want our country back” is exposed as bolox.

Boris Johnson is widely regarded as an elitist, racist and sexist incompetent idiot. What is beyond doubt is that he is negligent and often poorly prepared. The UK has suffered severely from Coronavirus / Covid-19 under Johnson’s chaotic and inadequate response. Johnson failed to attent 5 early Cobra meetings addressing Coronavirus https://www.businessinsider.com/boris-johnson-skipped-five-emergency-meetings-on-the-coronavirus-2020-4

I wrote in my previous post that “Socialists are a diverse bunch often fighting injustice e.g. anti-racism, and campaign for human rights, universal healthcare, democracy, equality, workers’ rights, etc. There are more radical Socialists outside of parliamentary politics fragmented according to adherence to the different historical origins and aspects of Socialist Ideology. The Labour party catchphrase “For the many, not the few” catches the Socialist ethos perfectly.”

Current UK Labour party leader Keir Starmer does not meet this definition and we have instead returned to the normal situation whereby UK voters are denied the opportunity to vote for a Socialist party.

During Keir Starmer’s previous role as UK’s Director of Public Prosecutions, he … < to be continued >

The climate crisis receives very little attention from UK politicians and we currently have allegations of Russian hacking which appear to be a moral panic totally without substance.

Continue ReadingUK politics assessment

UK Coronavirus: UK’s reponse to Coronavirus an absolute chaotic disaster

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George Monbiot The UK government was ready for this pandemic. Until it sabotaged its own system

We have been told repeatedly that the UK was unprepared for this pandemic. This is untrue. The UK was prepared, but then it de-prepared. Last year, the Global Health Security Index ranked this nation second in the world for pandemic readiness, while the US was first. Broadly speaking, in both nations the necessary systems were in place. Our governments chose not to use them.

Had the government acted in February, we can hazard a guess about what the result would have been, as the world has conducted a clear controlled experiment: weighing South Korea, Taiwan and New Zealand against the UK, the US and Brazil. South Korea did everything the UK government could have done, but refused to implement. Its death toll so far: 263. It still has an occasional cluster of infection, which it promptly contains. By contrast, the entire UK is now a cluster of infection.

Continue ReadingUK Coronavirus: UK’s reponse to Coronavirus an absolute chaotic disaster

Revealed: PPE stockpile was out-of-date when coronavirus hit UK

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By Channel 4 News Investigations Team

Almost 80% of respirators in the national pandemic stockpile were out of date when coronavirus hit the UK.

Channel 4 News has obtained detailed stock lists that reveal exactly what was held, on the day coronavirus was declared an international emergency.

Around 200 million vital pieces of kit – including respirators, masks, syringes and needles – had all expired in the eight months before 30 January.

This included 20.9 million out-of-date respirators, from a total of 26.3 million. The tightly-fitting mouth masks are vital for filtering the air that NHS workers breathe.

The documents also reveal that more than half of the national stockpile of surgical facemasks had also expired.

In total, 45% of the 19,909 boxes holding PPE supplies had exceeded their use-by dates.

The documents suggest a failure by Public Health England and NHS Supply Chain’s management company, Supply Chain Coordination Limited, to maintain the stockpile in a state of readiness.

Expired stock is excluded from distribution, meaning millions of boxes of kit could have been delayed from being sent to hospitals and care homes – just as the virus began to spread.

Millions of expired respirators weren’t cleared for release until they were tested, between 10 March and 19 March. By this time, the UK was already suffering a desperate shortage of PPE.

Continue ReadingRevealed: PPE stockpile was out-of-date when coronavirus hit UK

Draft, subject to revision: If I was in charge in UK

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This post is definitely subject to revision.

  1. I would not be concerned with repatriating people. States are not responsible for such reckless people. ed: The prime purpose is to prevent spread of the virus. Such reckless people can be detained in appropriate emergency conditions – put them in a cell and feed them. ed: Human Rights is my main concern. Very high on that is the right to life. These people who are far from home have disregarded that, they have been travelling without considering their potential threat to others. The few people who need repatriation now – it’s reasonable to assume that they have not been concerned with restricting infection.
  2. Self-isolation to be maintained. People however must have the opportunity to exercise providing distancing is respected.
  3. UK Government under Boris Johnson simply been lying. While Boris & Co just lied – they just lied, that’s what they did, they don’t know how to tell the truth, it’s that their class believes that what they say is the truth – they’re used to people sucking up to them soooo much. The point is that they believed whatever they said was the truth. Now of course – we have reality. I don’t have time now to work out posh cnut posh cnutness and I don’t have any time for it and of course their posh cnutness is theirs and nothing to do with me
  4. The reality is that we have an extremely serious situation. I suggest that you accept point 1 and that unnecessary movement has ended. I propose that these individuals have brought it on themselves. Since they are so reckless to not care for themselves and others, then they should be detained for their own and others welfare. I propose this only as a suggestion. A cell and food would appear appropriate.
  5. If I was in charge: I recognise that UK government has been BSitting terribly. They have lied about everything. We need ventilators and PPE urgently. UK govt has failed to provide and lied relentlessly. It appears that dead Boris’s UK government refused EU assistance.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson may already be dead. ed: evading scrutiny even in death ;)

00.30 Hear it hear [ed: here} first. BJ is dead. 1.30 You’re still hearing it here first. BJ is dead.

7/4/20 The trouble with a list like this is that it’s the very official and accepted as though people accept it, willing to accept the way things have been.

24/4/20 6. It should be accepted that since Covid-19 is new novel virus very little is known about it. It transpires that UK’s tests for active virus are unreliable, that there is are no reliable tests for antibodies and that the WHO warns that there should not be the assumption that prior infection protects against subsequent infection i.e. antibody tests may be totally irrelevant.

7. Considering point 6, demanding a timetable or schedule for the easing of restrictions is not appropriate. A more sensible approach would be to observe what happens elsewhere.

8. People flouting restrictions and being reckless e.g. surfers, should be given the opportunity, [ed: of} some time to reflect. I am a leisure sailor and fully appreciate that I can’t go sailing currently due to the small risk of making demands on emergency assistance.

9. Restrictions apply to all, rich people driving symbols of status too.

Not 10 but cyclists please take cake. Ignorant motorists are driving very inconsiderately and dangerously, putting your lives at risk.

29/4/20 I am concerned by reports of children developing atypical Kawasaki syndrome related to CV. There will be a medical term for this but the fear is that that their first infection disabled them so that the second infection is far more serious. Worst case scenario (EE) should be considered.

11/5/20 Undead, zombie PM Boris yesterday made some pronouncements on UK Coronavirus. The problem is that very little has changed since the lockdown was imposed – if anything, people are at greater risk of catching CV now since it is more widespread. The “Be alert” message is wrong. At least the promises of imminent vaccines and antibody tests have stopped.

22/5/20 Just changed passwords and restored this blog so some has been lost. Re: my “The problem is that very little has changed since the lockdown was imposed – if anything, people are at greater risk of catching CV now since it is more widespread.” above. Europe should brace for second wave, says EU coronavirus chief

The prospect of a second wave of coronavirus infection across Europe is no longer a distant theory, according to the director of the EU agency responsible for advising governments – including the UK – on disease control.

“The question is when and how big, that is the question in my view,” said Dr Andrea Ammon, director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).

And Ammon, a former adviser to the German government, speaks frankly in her first interview with a UK newspaper since the crisis began.

“Looking at the characteristics of the virus, looking at what now emerges from the different countries in terms of population immunity – which isn’t all that exciting, between 2% and 14%, that leaves still 85% to 90% of the population susceptible – the virus is around us, circulating much more than January and February … I don’t want to draw a doomsday picture but I think we have to be realistic. That it’s not the time now to completely relax.”

26/5/20 Draft, subject to revision

Coronavirus / Covid-19 is a global threatening issue. It is minor in comparison to the global threat of climate destruction.

… to be continued

Please pay attention to point 9 above.

28/5/20 UK suffers highest death rate from coronavirus

The UK has suffered the highest rate of deaths from the coronavirus pandemic among countries that produce comparable data, according to excess mortality figures.

The UK has registered 59,537 more deaths than usual since the week ending March 20, indicating that the virus has directly or indirectly killed 891 people per million.

At this stage of the pandemic, that is a higher rate of death than in any country for which high-quality data exist. The absolute number of excess deaths in the UK is also the highest in Europe, and second only to the US in global terms, according to data collected by the Financial Times.

The country fares no better on another measure: the percentage increase in deaths compared with normal levels, where the UK once again is the worst hit in Europe and behind only Peru internationally.

30/5/20 Thanks to George Monbiot’s Culpable Negligence for bringing this report to my attention. Privatised and Unprepared: The NHS Supply Chain investigates the UK’s absolute chaotic disaster of providing PPE. It’s because NHS’s supply chain has been privatised in a labyrinthine complex manner with the privateers providing an abysmally poor service. The solution is to nationalise the NHS.

Months after the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic, huge numbers of UK health and care workers still lack adequate personal protective equipment (PPE). This is affecting many professions: doctors, nurses, hospital support staff, administrators, mental health workers in the community and primary care, and social care workers in a variety of roles. Nursing Notes reports that Covid-19 has killed 219 health and care workers in the UK as of the 14th of May 2020, and as Alex Bailin QC – an expert in corporate manslaughter law – says, many of these deaths were “avoidable with proper PPE”. This failure to protect health and care workers is a disaster in its own right, and it is contributing to Covid-19’s catastrophic death toll in this country.

The aim of this report is to expose the role that the privatisation of health and social care has played in this preventable catastrophe. Privatisation has created a system which is both chaotic and bureaucratic – both fragmented and sclerotic. There has been an outcry over PPE shortages in media coverage of the pandemic, but little has been said about privatisation. This is a serious oversight, which this report will address.

NHS Supply Chain – the organisation at the centre of this problem – was created in 2018, after years of outsourcing of NHS Logistics. NHS Supply Chain is technically a part of the NHS, headed by the Secretary of State. But this status is merely a fig-leaf for a needlessly complex web of contracts with private companies which answer to shareholders first. Immediately upon its formation NHS Supply Chain outsourced two major contracts for IT and logistics, and then broke up and outsourced the whole procurement system, by delegating eleven supply areas to various contractors. The parcel-delivery company DHL was put in charge of finding wholesalers to supply ward based consumables, including PPE kits. Unipart was given control over supply chain logistics, including the delivery of PPE. The stated rationale for this approach – an almost obsessive drive towards greater outsourcing and greater fragmentation – was “efficiency savings”.

In what follows we examine this heavily privatised, convoluted, and fundamentally dysfunctional system that NHS Supply Chain has created – one which puts layers of corporate red tape between doctors and nurses who need PPE in order to work safely, and the companies making these supplies. The government’s failure to react to Covid-19 shouldn’t be downplayed, nor should the inherent complications of procuring PPE during a pandemic. But in order to make sense of these factors we need to understand how NHS Supply Chain itself was supposed to work, why it hasn’t worked, and what must be done differently in future.

There are plenty of “bad apples” in this story – companies whose track record, philosophy, and priorities mean that they shouldn’t have been entrusted with the responsibilities they were given. But this isn’t just a story about bad apples. It is a story of a flawed system that has helped turn the pandemic into an utter disaster. This system offers few advantages over in-house NHS provision, and it creates a range of risks. It undermines coordination and accountability. It is a system in which a “just in time” ethos – devised by logistics companies in order to win contracts and enrich shareholders – takes priority over public health.

The Independent SAGE group has called for reform to this system. “There must be reform of the process of procurement of goods and services to ensure responsive and timely supply for primary and secondary care, and community infection control.” This is especially important, they argue, “in anticipation of a second wave of infection.” Our report echoes this call, and strengthens the case for it. We call on the government to simplify the NHS Supply Chain and bring it back into NHS control, as well as increasing overall NHS capacity, particularly locally, to deal with the virus. As soon as possible, the whole NHS should be reinstated as a fully public service and outsourced contracts across the board should be brought in house. That’s what NHS staff and health workers deserve after all they’ve done for us.

13/6/20 A better podcast. I recommend from 0.51.20 – stop when you’re bored? although Chumbawumba is worth hearing. [2.18am that ‘official’ Brexit podcast used to bore me senseless, at least you won’t fall asleep to this one )

(later: Ignore the shouty bloke? ;) later still: Even the shouty bloke talks some sense.

Continue ReadingDraft, subject to revision: If I was in charge in UK