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Monro
4 years ago

The hopeless muddle and confusion, lack of leadership and plain lying at the head of government described by Mr Cummings makes plain that the state is poorly equipped to run anything; public sector root and branch reform is urgently required. Even the much vaunted success of the vaccination program, a success, let it be said, against a backdrop of infections falling off a cliff, was masterminded by the private sector, bypassing normal NHS process. The British Army? Well, yes, but they have all voluntarily subjected themselves to the Manual of Military Law. Conscripted Armies work nothing like as well. The public sector health service management has been hopeless at even producing a coherent definition of what constitutes a ‘covid case’ ‘We deduce that a reported “case” is most probably simply the result of a positive PCR test. The new guidance is meaningless unless it provides a clear threshold for the limits of detection. For many whose test turns up positive, there may be nothing recorded about any clinical symptoms.’  ‘The PCR test positivity counts should include a standardized threshold level of detection, and at a minimum, the recording of the presence or absence of symptoms. As a disease, the COVID-19… Read more »

eastender53
4 years ago
Reply to  Monro

Great idea. We can get Philip Green and Fred Goodwin to run the lot!
It is possible to run an organisation under ‘public’ ownership efficiently and to the benefit of the region or country owning it. Swiss Railways would be an example. It’s a special company owned by the Swiss Federation and the Cantons. Singapore also has a number of GLCs where the public purse invests in, oversees, and benefits from the businesses.

Monro
4 years ago
Reply to  eastender53

Terrific example: ‘It is worth noting that Swiss Rail receives a large sum from taxpayers every year. In 2018, the company received CHF 3.5 Billion of public funding, CHF 2.7 billion of it booked as income. Without this large lump of taxpayer help Swiss Rail would have made a loss of CHF 2.2 billion in 2018.’ Le News March 2019 I have been to Singapore and talked to Singaporeans. It is not a happy country. GLCs were such a success that: ‘In the 1980s, government divestment was pursued in order to withdraw from commercial activities that no longer needed to be undertaken by the public sector, and to avoid competing with the private sector. The government commissioned a committee to review its ownership of businesses and to recommend businesses for divestment. This led to the Michael Fam report of 1987, which identified 41 GLCs to be divested over the next 10 years, another 6 to be further reviewed, and 43 others to retain government ownership. Within 15 years, the government divested about 60 GLCs…..’ ‘The Role of Competition in Singapore’s Economic Growth and Public Policies’ 2016 Goodwin and Green? Goodwin resigned (was removed) and Green was forced to pay £363m into the… Read more »

RickH
4 years ago
Reply to  Monro

Yawn – again! (and again … and again …)

Have you really not grasped the fact that the wealth of the monopolistic private sector – in the form of Big Pharma, the Gates Foundation etc. etc. has been a major driver in all this?

Which is not to state an equally brainless alternative thesis – just the f.ing obvious.

Do give up on this irrelevant and incontinent political tub-thiumping. There’s enough Covid shit out there, without you creating another pile.

Monro
4 years ago
Reply to  RickH

Private sector wrong doing can be punished, while the public sector, responsible for thousands of deaths through sheer incompetence, get off scot free.

Milo
Milo
4 years ago
Reply to  Monro

Public sector MOST DEFINITELY SHOULD NOT GET OFF SCOT FREE. Unfortunately the normal run of things has been subverted by the emergency powers and sheer nobbling of normal checks and balances this government [which runs the public sector] has granted to itself. In what other times would people like PM and Hancock get away scott free with the conflicts of interest and in Hancock’s case lying and profiteering that they have completely got away with over the course of the last 14 months????

TheFascistCoronaFraud
TheFascistCoronaFraud
4 years ago
Reply to  Monro

I find this idea that people going about their normal business are responsible for thousands of deaths very worrying. Did these people not die of old age? The average age of Covid death is 82 in the UK – higher than average life expectancy. Is it not the case that every year, flu season comes and finishes a load of people off who are on death’s door already? Pretending we can suddenly implement policies to avoid all such deaths is nonsense. It results in what we have – the whole nation of mainly healthy people being forced to live a dystopian nightmare in some doomed to fail attempt to prolong the lives of those who are already close to death. Stupid people who think they can play God are dangerous

AnnabelleG
AnnabelleG
4 years ago

I have to agree with this — and I am in the older age group –
What they heck are they doing – and what is wrong with the people who are sitting back letting them do it……To the young I say Just say NO

Monro
4 years ago

In the care homes many died of a common cold coronavirus introduced as a consequence of the hospital clearances. The common cold is lethal to the elderly and infirm, well known for years, evidenced: ‘Unexpectedly Higher Morbidity and Mortality of Hospitalized Elderly Patients Associated with Rhinovirus (common cold) Compared with Influenza Virus Respiratory Tract Infection’ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5343795/ It may very well be that these deaths were only brought forward by a matter of weeks or months, but, equally, it may not and, in any case, unnecessary loss of life rightly incurs stiff sanctions for the perpetrators elsewhere in public life, corporate manslaughter and so on. ‘The UK government was clearly aware that the 400,000 residents of care homes in the UK, many of whom live with multiple health conditions, physical dependency, dementia and frailty, were at exceptional risk to coronavirus.9 Yet at the height of the pandemic, despite this knowledge, it failed to take measures to promptly and adequately protect care homes. Contrary to the claim by the secretary of state for Health and Social Care that a “protective ring” was put around care homes “right from the start,” a number of decisions and policies adopted by authorities at the national… Read more »

TheFascistCoronaFraud
TheFascistCoronaFraud
4 years ago
Reply to  Monro

People in the public sector (ie in Westminster) who have encouraged people to be injected with bio-reactive experimental agents for a virus which is already extinguished, that’s criminal. They deserve to be punished because their unscientific, reckless and indefensible actions have caused death where none would otherwise have occurred ie vaccine deaths and Covid vax experiment injuries like blindness and paralysis and many more, plus all the issues to come from priming the immune system to attack itself when they encounter similar coronaviruses, which is near enough set into stone as a likelihood from this misguided, Satanic inversion of true health practice called a vax rollout. Those who smeared and blocked progreess involving already licenced drug treatments, they are criminals. People who have functioning immune systems are not murderers of people who do not have functioning immune systems. When you reach old age, the chance that you will die increases exponentially. It is not the fault of the young that elderly peoples’ immune systems start to malfunction, it is part of God’s plan

Monro
4 years ago

I don’t believe there can be any question but that lives were lost unnecessarily through incompetence/negligence. How many actual life years have been lost is beside the point.

‘Via its Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), the government in mid-March adopted a policy, executed by NHS England and NHS Improvement, that led to 25,000 patients, including those infected or possibly infected with COVID-19 who had not been tested, being discharged from hospital into care homes between 17 March and 15 April—exponentially increasing the risk of transmission to the very population most at risk of severe illness and death from the disease. With no access to testing, severe shortages of PPE, insufficient staff, and limited guidance, care homes were overwhelmed. Although care home deaths were not even being counted in daily official figures of COVID-19 deaths until 29 April, some 4,300 care home deaths were reported in a single fortnight during this period.’

https://www.amnesty.org.uk/files/2020-10/Care%20Homes%20Report.pdf

Prester John
Prester John
4 years ago
Reply to  Monro

Scot free? Not so, ‘lessons will have been learnt’ and gongs are handed out.

LMS2
4 years ago
Reply to  RickH

“the wealth of the monopolistic private sector ” which should have been forcibly broken up into competing companies rather than allowed to become monopolies. The U.S. did this years ago with oil companies, I believe.
These huge monopolies completely distort the market, and have far, far too much power. Unfortunately, politicians are being bought by them, willingly, and will not do anything about them.

eastender53
4 years ago
Reply to  Monro

Swiss Rail. Thanks for reinforcing my point. Public transport is an essential service. As such it should not be placed in the hands of those for whom greed is the prime motivator. The balance of efficient management with social subsidy is the ideal model.

Been to Singapore? Was that for a pint in the Long Bar? I lived and worked there (for arguably the highest profile brand in Singapore) for 15 years. There is no question it has a questionable record in some areas, such as the ISA and electoral bondary manipulation, but most Singaporeans are rightfully proud of it’s position of strength amongst it’s neighbours. Most of the divested GLCs were initial government startups that were always scheduled to be sold off when self sustaining. If you look at essential services such as the MRT and SBS these operate under a ‘hybrid’ model. SIA, which I know well, was ‘divested’ to fend off competition complaints from other airlines. It’s great strength is very low debt, brought about by judicial initial State investment. Temasek Holdings and GIC are still there in the background.

eastender53
4 years ago
Reply to  eastender53

Forgot to add. Guess who benefitted from a lot of the ‘selling off’? That would be a Lee-ding question!

Monro
4 years ago
Reply to  eastender53

Out of 136 countries considered, Singapore currently ranks the 26th most income disparate. This makes them the second most income unequal country in Asia. According to the Singapore government, over 105,000 families live in poverty. This translates to about one in 10 family homes, or 378,000 people.’

https://borgenproject.org/tag/poverty-in-singapore/

Catee
4 years ago

So our illustrious leader has hitched himself to Nut Nuts, I can’t work out whether that would be….
1. She gave him an ultimatum, ‘marry me or I spill the beans’.
Or
2. So he can prevent her spilling the beans in the future due to ‘marital privilege’.

Catee
4 years ago
Reply to  Catee

Either way there’s a new vacancy at No 10/11……..Mistress wanted

Milo
Milo
4 years ago
Reply to  Catee

prob both!!

Prester John
Prester John
4 years ago
Reply to  Catee

Please, it is ‘Princess Nut Nut’, drop the ‘s’: to commemorate the marriage, and the end of their child’s bastardy, and to democratise the monarchy, and make up for recent emigration, we should petition HM The Queen to gazette her in the style ‘HRH The Princess Nut Nut’, and her husband “HRH The Prince Nut Job”.

SilentP
SilentP
4 years ago

The Amanda Platell attack on Henry Slade is the most disgusting article I have read throughout this entire episode.

It does unintentionally contain one true statement when the vile woman says that the benefits of the jab are incalculable.

DanClarke
DanClarke
4 years ago
Reply to  SilentP

Yes she’s gone a bit OTT on all of that, maybe she’s desperate to get back to OZ

NeilofWatford
4 years ago

And the BBCs report is where, exactly?

DanClarke
DanClarke
4 years ago

That march, they are magnificent, unlike the muzzled sheep who are wet.

AnnabelleG
AnnabelleG
4 years ago
Reply to  DanClarke

Just so – They are magnificent –

JayBee
4 years ago

https://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2021/05/24/to_protect_your_liberty_smash_the_total_virus-elimination_narrative_778309.html

Jeffrey Tucker seems to have left AIER? Squashing the Lancet’s Zero Covid study here. Why is the Lancet still being taken serious?!

Paul B
4 years ago

“Boris Johnson and Carrie Symonds wed in secret ceremony: how the UK reacted to their marriage” DT. Well DT we shall never know because not a single article has comments allowed, odd.
I saw a bit of what the UK thought about them yesterday on the RT stream, thousands of people shouting abuse at Downing St.

chris c
chris c
4 years ago
Reply to  Paul B

Beauty and the beast

(for very small values of beauty)

Milos
4 years ago

How long it takes to make and test a typical vaccine. About ~10 years.
(slide 4; IFPMA, Switzerland). Presentation dated 2019, just one year before it became acceptable to make, test, and start vaccinating people in 6-12 months. So, the consensus on vaccines was that it takes about ~10 years to put them on the market.

Even if you spend huge recourses on vaccine development (which could have been better spent in public health and ended up saving more lives, and especially more years-of-life) for covid19 which is bit more worse than seasonal flu – there are still bottlenecks in research and testing that cannot be hurried up.
We already know that most of the vaccines are not safe in the short term with brain bleeding and hart inflammation with a large rate, even among younger and healthier people (which is how they were spotted). Who knows how many short term effects were missed.
Also, no one will know on mid-term and long term affects for many years.

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Moist Von Lipwig
4 years ago

Amanda Platell is both scum and a moron.

Henry Slade has a history of adverse reactions to vaccines so he has a rational justification for not being vaccinated.

Milo
Milo
4 years ago

He does not need to justify himself to anybody. His body, his right to choose. End of.

AnnabelleG
AnnabelleG
4 years ago

How dare this woman comment on someone else’s medical decisions – but there again looking at her it looks as if she is not adverse to having injections of various substances injected into her face…. Also he does not need to justify why he does not want to be jabbed with an experimental drug that has not even finished its trials.

RickH
4 years ago

Infectious disease experts in Australia are calling for supermarket workers and others to be prioritised for vaccination in a bid to slow the spread of COVID-19, the Sydney Morning Herald reports”

Now – we do know that supermarkets are not vectors for infection.

If anyone hasn’t picked that up, then they are, too be polite ‘a bit thick’. Now democracy has its normal downsides – but people as thick as that shouldn’t be able to make these sort of decisions.

The old definition of insanity applies in spades.

AnnabelleG
AnnabelleG
4 years ago
Reply to  RickH

Poor Australia – it has lost the plot.

RickH
4 years ago

COVID19 – the end of scientific discussion?” 

Kendrick’s article raises important questions about the corruption of science.

eastender53
4 years ago

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57294438

What does this actually mean? Very few? There are only 870 people in hospital ‘with’ Covid in England, so the definitive small sample size. How many with no jab, one jab, two jabs? What ages?

Without this qualifying data how can this ‘show’ that vaccines are effective?

Milo
Milo
4 years ago

If it hadn’t been for James Melville’s twitter post reproduced above, a body could have been forgiven for thinking that the march in London yesterday didn’t take place. If this was a march about ANY OTHER ISSUE MSM would have been all over it like a rash with extensive coverage. Proof, if proof were needed that media dancing to government’s tune. As for Henry Slade – I take my hat off to him for refusing the jab. Let’s see who is still capable of playing rugby at the top of their game in 2-3 years time. So Duchess of Cambridge has had a jab of something at the Science Museum – wonder if they have a crate of vials filled with saline in a fridge in there somewhere for all those VIPs rocking up to get their jabs there as opposed to in a walk in clinic with the rest of the plebs. I’m not anti-royal ordinarily, although I bitterly object to the role they have played in the jab rollout, and find it very hard to believe that they are being jabbed with the same stuff as the rest of the population. After all, you cannot have future king… Read more »

Noumenon
4 years ago
Reply to  Milo

Princess Michael of Kent?

AnnabelleG
AnnabelleG
4 years ago
Reply to  Noumenon

Yes…….

huxleypiggles
4 years ago
Reply to  Milo

I think the Ekaterinburg solution would be the best for this lot given that Charlie is up to his neck in the Reset.

AnnabelleG
AnnabelleG
4 years ago
Reply to  Milo

I agree – I am bitterly disappointed The Royal Family have decided to get so involved in politics and especially in promoting a drug that has not finished its trials . It is wrong and totally unethical of them.

AnnabelleG
AnnabelleG
4 years ago

Thank you James Melville –
MSM are a disgrace