Archive for January, 2022

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Sunday, January 23rd, 2022

Political Spectacle: The Collapse of our Government

Sunday, January 23rd, 2022

Mid way through last week I was telling friends that I reckoned  Boris could ride out partygate and reach the local elections. He would then run a personal campaign  to pull out Tory votes in May by travelling all over England to barnstorm and bribe with his usual false promises. If the outcome was losses but not as many as predicted, it would become Boris’s victory and he would be safe.

But now things look much worse. Organised government, at least in the traditional sense of what we mean by that, has ground to a halt. There are new parties to investigate, accusations of improper threats from Tory whips, accusations of Islamophoebia, cracks in cabinet unity, multiple accusations of lying and referrals to the police. And this is not an assault by opposition parties. It is all from within Tory ranks. Discipline as a coherent party of government has completely broken down.

This certainly cannot go on. Soon it must end. But it will not end until the author of all this misfortune, Boris the Clown, is removed from office. Whether this is with dignity and nice words, or kicking and screaming, is the only real question now outstanding.

Is It Over for Boris’s Government?

Tuesday, January 11th, 2022

The answer is firmly yes.  It is a  slap in the face to the notion, proclaimed by many Tories in 2019,  that like Thatcher, Boris would go on and on. Because it is now clear that his days are numbered. Too many lies, too much bluster, too little attention to detail. Chaos in the chain of command in Downing Street and widespread double standards.

Boris will cling on by his fingernails for as long as he can. When he falters his wife will urge him fight on. So getting rid of him may take time and it will be messy. But it will happen. It is now a national priority to restore integrity to politics.

The truth has dawned that he is fundamentally dishonest. A not to be trusted liar. Polls show he is no longer a winner. That is what will bring Boris’s premiership to a end. Not the lies themselves which the Tories may accept, but the fact that they make him a loser. He will be remebered by history more favourably than by his own generation. He bet the house on the vaccine and won. Important though the vaccine is, it is not the whole political story of the hour.

There is a country in trouble to be led, with a toxic mix of crises piling up. Inflation, energy prices, cost of living, interest rate hikes, failed Brexit causing trade mayhem, not to mention structural flaws in the NHS and education.  There is climate change and 5G. Within all that there is both disaster and opportunity, depending who decides what to do when.

Clearly Boris cannot provide the standard of leadership a long suffering country has a right to demand. Either the Tory party measures up or we do what we did in 1916, 1930 and 1940 and have a national government of all the mainstream parties.

A Decade Of Cuts Cripples The NHS

Tuesday, January 4th, 2022

Omicron is a super-spreader. It is sweeping the country. Anyone not fully jabbed or immune through recent infection, is likely to get it. Some  will need medical help and will require hospitalisation. A few will sadly die. Even those fully vaccinated can get this latest variant,  but although they can transmit it, they are unlikely to get other than a mild illness. We have to remind ourselves that this is a pandemic, not a plague.

We have, or claim to have, in the NHS the finest health service in the world. Yet it is on the brink because of Covid, not because the staff are not working well beyond the extra mile  making each and every one a hero of modern times, but because the organisation is under funded. It has suffered more than a decade of cuts in real terms. Both its funding models and organisational structures are deeply flawed.

The consequences are unacceptable waiting lists for non-Covid diagnosis, treatments and procedures, to the point where the system has in effect broken down. Even a GP appointment is nearly impossible in many areas. If Covid vanished tomorrow the crisis would still run on for years. Unless something radical is done. What that should be is for another time.

But meanwhile praise the people who struggle to maintain our health service. They are not to blame. The current political class, perhaps the most incompetent in our history, is. The first thing we have to to is make them own responsibility for a long building mess very much of their making.