you mean, apart from THAT.....?

By missing all the important words, you've changed the meaning of what I said.

"Maybe by not hollowing out the NHS, closing 10's of 000's of beds, and leaving us with a chronic staffing crisis of Dr's and nurses; the same MP's standing on their doorsteps dishonestly 'clapping' NHS workers, stood in parliament not too long ago, cheering because they won a vote to cap their pay.

Of course it's fu**ing political, and no amount of obfuscation by Boris Johnson and his weird cabal of advisers can change the fact that the Tories have been in power for 10 years; this is on them."

So - everything that goes BEFORE the words you quoted is ON THEM; COVID-19 itself is not, unless Dominic Cummings created it in his shed as a eugenics project with Toby Young, for lols.

backtrack much quicker and you'll invoke a fluxe capacitor...

You seem to be suggesting that the government should have planned for a once in generation epidemic - The US has the most advanced medical system in the world and it can't cope. You are angry but you need to be more realistic about what should have been in place. Why would you have thousands of respirators that in normal circumstances would not get used, or millions of items of PPE that again wouldn't get used - surely that would have been a criminal waste of money that could have been invested more effectively?

Where this country is truly great is in its innovation - so the work by the Mercedes F1 team is an example of why this country is so special - perhaps just once you will celebrate something truly remarkable that has happened here.

We have a low number of ICU beds but not massively out to what we normally use - why would we have thousands of unused ICU beds just in case - it madness - yes for three months out decades of use it might not be enough but you well know you design systems around the norm with an element of flex not around a doomsday scenario.

It seems to me this is a great opportunity to attack the Tories and by God you haven't wasted that opportunity.

The Conservative Party achieved a parliamentary majority but a majority of voters did not vote for a Conservative candidate. The last time they did was in 1931 - although it has been close a couple of times since.

I think that the electorate does bear responsibility for how it votes, for good or ill.

Obviously, we didn’t vote for a global pandemic but we did choose the people to lead us through it or anything similar.

and thank our good judgement we backed the right horse, I can only imagine what Corbyn would be doing, in fact it doesn't even bare thinking about.

Nobody who is calling out the Conservatives is saying what they could, [i]should[i] orwhat Labour [u]would] be doing differently.

The Government, in partnership with the private sector and the amazing British public are making a very good job of things in incredibly testing, difficultand unpredictable circumstances. Meanwhile The Unions are moaning about Furlough and 80% pay when people in the private sector are thankful they are even getting that.

Have Unison, Unite, TWC et al suspended membership fees?

(not comments directed specifically at you Mild Rover, you seem incredibly capable of discussing things without lowering things to bren2k's petty level.

I completely understand elite atheletes and others involved need a timescale, but isn't this announcement a bit too early ,before any 'exit strategy' is really apparent?

I completely understand elite atheletes and others involved need a timescale, but isn't this announcement a bit too early ,before any 'exit strategy' is really apparent?

Are you suggesting that the circa 100,000 vacancies that the Tories chose to ignore for 10 years were never required and that had the majority of those posts been filled, the the NHS would have been overstaffed ?
Of course we wouldn't have had staffing levels to cope with the current crisis but, the starting point would clearly have been better, even a fool could see that.

And yes, of course, it's great to see innovation but, should we applaud this or remember what SOME people had been saying for years, in that, the NHS was already at crisis point.
It's great having 1000's of volunteers and in the circumstances, you would expect nothing less but, to pretend that everything was great etc, is just not how it was.

The final point is that everyone is now expecting the country to value the NHS and it's staff and rightly so but, SOME were saying this BEFORE the pandemic but, the TORY government chose to freeze their wages, forcing many to look elsewhere for work - regardless of the number of volunteers, we could have done without them not having left the service in the first instance

The Troy mantra is feck you this week and rely on you the next and people think that they are great.

There is some great innovation going on. There is also stuff like this. A medical fetish group donating their stock of disposable scrubs to a hospital because the hospital was desperate for them. https://twitter.com/MedFet_UK/status/12 ... 8878848002

There is some great innovation going on. There is also stuff like this. A medical fetish group donating their stock of disposable scrubs to a hospital because the hospital was desperate for them. https://twitter.com/MedFet_UK/status/12 ... 8878848002

You are entirely missing the point - deliberately - and then moving on to a false premise about innovation; which is of course something to be admired.

Any moron can see that a health service starting from a position of being cruelly underfunded and understaffed by 90,000, was going to be hobbled in its response to a crisis like this; some people have been pointing that out for many years, and been ignored or ridiculed - remember Theresa May sneering at the nurse and telling her there was no magic money tree?

It would seem that for all the talk of not politicising this situation, what people really mean is don't politicise it against the party that I currently like; because this lickspittle attitude towards a Tory party - the same one that's been in power for 10 years - is not the way a democracy works. We do actually get to hold to account the Governing party, and it's not treasonous to criticise their handling of this crisis, which has in some aspects been completely woeful - first and foremost their handing it off to an NHS that they've been systematically dismantling for 10 years.