While the country is being told to ‘social Distance’ and hundreds of people are dying each day around the world, my wife and her fellow Mammographers are still being made to screen hundreds of women each, every week.
While Tesco protects its staff by making shoppers stand behind taped lines, Each Mammographer is working inches from the face of 25 women, every day with NO PPE!
It’s a disgrace and surely a breach of ‘duty of care’ to NHS staff and their families AND the women being screened? In a weekend where Italy lost 700 in a day, how can it be right that screening is still not cancelled or if it must continue because of its diagnotic value, then at the very least it should be halted until PPE is available.
The government today announced that the country is suffering from a major shortage. The chief scientific officer has confirmed that after careful analysis, he can announce that it is getting increasingly difficult to find any common sense. This shortage is leading to unnecessary panic buying, leaving the elderly unable to buy basic food and supplies because large numbers of ill informed and ignorant people have decided that they need 40 toilet rolls, 8 bags of pasta and a freezer full of meat in order to survive a possible 14 days of isolation.
Many people say that they read on Facebook that most toilet paper comes from China so it will run out and that is why they bought so much. If you rely on Facebook for your news and information you are of course an utter idiot!
There is No shortage of food and supplies except for the one caused by selfish imbeciles. Even in China at the peak of its crisis, you could get food and toilet paper. In Italy, the shops are open. Not bloody TopShop, but food and supplies are readily available, so stop being so selfish.
It is a sign of our collective ignorance that until forced to close, many pubs were still full of stupid people who just do not grasp that being jolly old Brit’s will not mean that we will not suffer the catastrophic devastation that Italy is suffering.
The saddest example of suffering caused by the utter selfishness of panic buyers was the story of a little old man in our village. He cannot travel far, so relies on our local supermarket. On one of his daily trips he arrived to find that all the toilet paper had gone and he had only one roll left at home. The staff could see how upset and stressed he was. He had no one to shop for him and no means to travel around shop after shop to find loo paper. The staff gave him one from their supplies to help him.
These same kind people are having to put up with idiots accusing them of stock piling toilet paper for themselves and the delivery driver found himself surrounded by a intimidating crowd as he tried to offload a cage of toilet paper.
Is this all it takes to reduce us to a selfish, angry mob? No sign of that Blitz spirit as far as I can see.
The comfort that I take is in those little acts of kindness like the supermarket story and the people offering help to those old people trapped in their house. They show that not everyone is the same as the mobs that have swept through the shops like locusts.
It’s fair to say that I have been avoiding the news a little more than normal since the election. Watching the opposition unnecessarily hand victory to a lame duck prime minister, transforming him into an unstoppably powerful twerp has been almost too much to bear.
Now Brexit day is almost upon us and we are being dragged out of the EU by a decision of only 38% of the voting population and by a government handed an unassailable majority by our outdated voting system, with only 28% of the vote in the election, yes, that’s democracy at work!
As if this indignity were not enough, we had to watch the gormless oddities of the Brexit party, embarrass us further by making a rather childish ‘victory’ speech whilst waving tiny plastic Union Jack (which were upside down by the way) as they left the EU parliament chamber. The EU parliament by contrast were dignified and wished us well, telling us that they would keep a place for us if we wanted to come back (I assume that didn’t include the ridiculous Brexit Party Ltd employees).
I have seen several interviews with Boris recently, where he keeps trying to push a kind of ‘happy clappy’ message of “let’s all get together, and get on with Brexit, and heal the divisions in our country and our families”. In fact he plans to make one of these speeches on the evening that we leave. Admirable sentiment but as unrealistic as all of his pre-brexit promises.
The simple fact is that Remainers will never forgive him and his Brexit loving buddies for the misinformation that was peddled either by them or by the right wing press. They will never forget that family members and friends went along with the nonsense that was easily discredited with only the slightest effort, and in doing so, voted to make Britain an isolated and inward-looking little island nation.
They will also not forget the abuse suffered by many at the hands of ‘victorious’ leavers which accused remainers of being ‘traitors’. They will not forgive the abuse of friends born in mainland European at the hand of racists, using them as an excuse for their own failings in life.
Boris has the problem that he was part of the whole Brexit mess, so he has no credibility when it comes to healing the country. Those that wanted to remain see no sunny uplands, and other than the same staid old platitudes, we are yet to hear any specific benefit that individual British citizens will get from Brexit, whereas remainers can give a large list of benefits that we will lose on Brexit day which of course is not the 31st of January, that is transition day, the beginning of negotiations to try and get back a small portion of the many benefits that we already had.
The future of the UK will without doubt be back in the EU, the young generation in survey after survey say that they wanted to remain and as they gain more power and influence (as my generation and the baby boomers with all their rose tinted memories of what they think Britain was, die off), they will take us back in. The country cannot be healed, those that wanted Brexit will just die off and the younger generations will have to repair the damage caused over the next few years.
Merry Christmas everyone. I suspect its going to be a busy blogging year ahead but for now I just want to wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Back to the battle in 2020 as the country comes togther to celebrate shooting itself in the foot at the end of January.
It surely cannot have escaped the notice of even the most ardent Brexit fan, that in the short time since Boris Johnsons election, major changes have started both within government, and the civil service. Under the guidance of Dominic Cummings, Boris is all set to make changes that most definitely take back control, not for you and me, but for the Tory ‘elite’ which he claimed not to belong to.
The first sign of this was the fulfilment on one of Dominic’s long-term ambitions, the ability to fill government posts with un-elected people (is the irony starting to hit you yet?) simply by exploiting a little know rule (little known outside of Westminster) that allows life piers to hold ministerial posts. Take for example Zac Goldsmith. Defeated in the election and therefore rejected by the electorate, after a quick appointment of a life peerage, hey presto, he is now a minister.
Big Dom and BoJo now plan to do this as an on-going policy and have stated that they will ‘fill’ government with this kind of person. Unelected and unaccountable to you and me for whatever they inflict on us…..are you feeling in control yet?
The big new plan doesn’t stop at Downing Street, the same is about to happen to the Civil Service. Now to be fair, the civil service is already an unelected organisation but one that has operated independently from any single political party, carrying out the wishes of whichever party is the government of the day, and yet Cummings now wants his choice of people running Whitehall, people more inclined to support the Tory governments policies. This plan will remove any checks and balances that we have had to date, and removes the inherent protection for the less fortunate within society, who it has traditionally tried to protect, from government short termism.
I keep getting told to let it go, Brexit is done. Well, as people like me keep saying and despite Boris’s bold statements, Brexit is a long way from being done, but that aside, being defeated in the fight to stay in the E.U, in no way removes our right and responsibility to highlight what this Tory government is doing.
Too many people are happy to bury their heads in the sand and just trust to hope that people who have been shown to be deceitful will suddenly decide to keep their promises, and do what’s best for the country.
Even with a small majority, the Conservatives have wreaked havoc on the U.K and especially its most vulnerable people, with an unassailable majority, things are unlikely to change for the better.
So, Boris is back at work and has had a few days to get his thoughts together, lets take a look at how it’s going. Boris is to set in law, legislation that will prevent him asking for an extension to the Brexit negotiations. This means that there are three possible reasons for Boris to do this;
Boris has such an overinflated opinion of himself (he is a politician after all) and despite everyone in the E.U saying that there will not be enough time to complete a deal, believes that he can “Get Brexit Done”.
Boris has been playing a long game and now he has a massive majority, he is going to throw the ERG and other extreme Brexiteers under the bus (as he did to the DUP) and actually go for Brexit light, meaning that he could negotiate a few sweeteners for Remainers (freedom to work and travel in Europe) whilst still being able to claim that he “Got Brexit Done”.
He’s f***ing nuts and plans on a ‘No Deal’ Brexit which of course we spent £bns preparing for, and then scrapped the preparations for, so that we are not at all prepared for ‘No Deal’. The last time parliament discussed this, Chris Grayling, Minister for being a useless Pratt, announced that there would not be checks on trucks coming in from Europe in order to avoid queues. If you think illegal immigration has been bad so far, how bad will it be when the migrants near Calais discover that the trucks will go unchecked!
If it has to happen (and it does) option 2 please Bozza.
As much as it is a story of victory for falsehood, yesterdays election is a story of how good old fashioned partisan thinking and arrogance snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
Many of us are in shock that a man like Boris Johnson could win a landslide victory in this election. Boris is a man who was too cowardly to face Andrew Neil, too scared to allow the MI6 report on Russian support of the Conservative party be published. A man so shameless that even in his victory speech, he repeated the nonesense about 50,000 extra nurses and 40 new Hospitals.
But what is important to remember is that this was an election that we didn’t need to have. Under the fixed term parliament act, Boris could not call the election without the support of Labour and the Liberal Democrats. Those parties could have won a vote of no confidence again and if they had united under Corbyn, asked the queen to allow them to form a unity government. We could then have dealt with the issue of getting a second referendum so that young voters could finally have their say and not conflated the issue of Brexit with the issue of not having a government with a majority as we saw yesterday.
Instead in their arrogance, Jo Swinson and Jeremy Corbyn, pulled the trigger on an election that would be fought over Brexit and that cost them, and potentially the country, dearly. Even having called the election they could have united to get around our biased electoral system and rid the country, maybe not of the Tory party totally, but certainly some of its more unpleasant MPs such as Ian Duncan Smith.
But no, off they went, with Jo making daft statements about become Prime Minister, which even I as a Lib Dem member knew was impossible under first past the post. Meanwhile the awful Brexit party realised that what they needed to do was exactly what Labour and the Lib Dems refused to do and avoid splitting the vote by withdrawing candidates. I watched in horror as a clearly relieved IDS realised that the Liberal and Labour candidates had inevitably split the vote and handed the Tory party another seat and I saw this again and again throughout the night.
So thanks largely to Jo Swinson, soon to be ex leader of the Lib Dems, the possibility of a second referendum is dead.
Is there anything that can be seen as an upside to our inevitable journey to becoming ‘Little Britain’? Well, now he has a majority there is no hiding place for BoJo, he either delivers or is seen as a charleton. He is also no longer beholden to the extremes of the ERG Brexstreemists such as Jacob Reece Mogg, and when you remember that he wrote a pro remain and pro leave speech before the referendum, its possible that he is not inclined towards a hard Brexit.
In any case, large parts of the country, abandoned by successive Tory Prime Ministers and who are already seeing job losses because of Brexit decided that these same Torys where the only ones they could trust to deliver the Brexit that will finally crush any hope for the future of their young people. Based on a dream of empire lost and the lies about E.U rules and immigration, I genuinely worry for them for, with the massive majority BoJo now commands, the storm is coming.
The government today announced that the country is suffering from a major shortage. The chief scientific officer has confirmed that after careful analysis, he can announce that it is getting increasingly difficult to find any common sense. This shortage is leading to unnecessary panic buying, leaving the elderly unable to buy basic food and supplies because large numbers of ill informed and ignorant people have decided that they need 40 toilet rolls, 8 bags of pasta and a freezer full of meat in order to survive a possible 14 days of isolation.
So, Boris is back at work and has had a few days to get his thoughts together, lets take a look at how it’s going. Boris is to set in law, legislation that will prevent him asking for an extension to the Brexit negotiations. This means that there are three possible reasons for Boris to do this;
