No.148- A Week to Forget? The UK and US become the Bad Boys of the World Pandemic.

Dear James,

What a week! From the confusion of Boris’s sorry attempt on Sunday evening to do a presidential address to the nation, to the ridiculous follow-up attempts by various ministers to explain ‘Stay alert’ - and to the gradual revelation of your appalling neglect of our care homes -  this has been a week to forget for your government. Except that it will not be forgotten. Your mishandling of the worst peacetime crisis to hit our nation for a hundred years will be your legacy. And no matter what you attempt to do to control the narrative, you will not succeed with your ever more ridiculous claims and strategies. You only have to look across the Atlantic at the unhinged utterances of President Trump for proof. For Boris and Hancock, the only way to handle criticism of their boosterism is to boost more or to ‘double down’ in the populists’ jargon. We all know where that leads. Over promising and under delivering have already blown holes in anything that your government promises. Fewer and fewer trust you and for good reason. 

Meanwhile, the Scots, the Welsh and the Northern Irish are standing out like beacons of sobriety and common sense by sticking to the ‘Stay at Home’ slogan for a few more weeks. Unlike them, Boris is willing to put people’s lives at risk to save the economy. However, the chances are that his confused and mishandled strategy will create a second wave. Already the R value has crept up. We’ll get the results of that in a couple of weeks! Taken together with Boris’s acceptance this week that there will be a bureaucratic border in the Irish Sea after months of denial of that fact, these are the first real, concrete splits in our United Kingdom. Break up the UK and set England adrift into the Atlantic?  Well done, team Boris! 

Let’s face the facts – or the stats, James.  They are already lining up against you and the UK and US governments are running scared of being labelled the bad boys of the world pandemic. So far up to 40,000 dead in the UK and 80,000 in the US. Already whistleblowers everywhere are making their voices heard and our governments do not like the damage it is doing to their ‘positive’ narratives. In the UK, up to one hundred NHS doctors and consultants this week reported being warned of severe consequences by their managers if they persist in complaining about absences of PPE and testing equipment. In the USA whistle blowers are sacked for rejecting Mr Trump’s many false statements and red herrings. Last week, Dr Rick Bright, recently ousted by Trump as head of vaccine development, told Congress that the US could face ‘the darkest winter in modern history because of the mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic. “Lives were lost" because of government "inaction" in the early stages of the outbreak. Backed by the right wing press in the UK and the Fox Channel in the USA, both governments are continuing to defend their flimsy falsehoods to protect their damaging ideologies. Fortunately we have a strong and independent, free press in both countries that can fight back against this existentialist threat to our pursuit of truth and our democratic way of life. 

But for the moment, the false narratives continue, lie upon lie - or at the very least, ‘misadvice’ upon ’misadvice'. In March Public Health England (PHE) advised that care home residents were “very unlikely” to become infected by Covid-19. This week, up to 8,300 care home deaths by May 1st  were admitted. However, in his forensic dismemberment of Boris in parliament on Wednesday, Kier Starmer identified an additional 10,000 unexplained deaths in our care homes i.e. 18,000 more deaths in April than normal, but only 8,000 recorded as coronavirus-related. This week also, a survey of more than 100 care homes found – seven weeks after the lockdown began on March 23rd – that 43% of homes are still not confident of their PPE supply, 58% of homes are unable to isolate residents, and one-third, admit they had taken in Covid-positive patients discharged from hospital. And all Boris could say was, ‘we are making progress" and announce a further £600m to fight infections in the homes! 

James, the populist mantras of denial and counter-boosting of negative reports has become endemic in over half of our political system. Truth or, at least the search for truth, disappeared long ago. This is Brexit revisited on a larger scale. You are becoming the most distrusted government for many years James and until you rediscover the British people’s need for honesty, frankness and transparency in its politicians, your statements will be met only with contempt. Some legacy!

Kind regards, 

BH - Your Concerned Constituent