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Boris - The Prime Minister

First thoughts on PMBoris, will he make a difference?


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The problem with UC was Osborne. In the Major government, IDS became increasingly concerned about sink estates. When the Tories went into opposition, he spent a lot of his own time and money setting up the Centre for Social Justice - a think tank concerned with how the plight of those on sink estate could be improved.


IDS thus had a deep understanding of the problems - he'd spent a lot of his own time actually talking to people on the worst estates. And UC was designed to simply the hugely complex, bureaucratic and inefficient system of multiple benefits that was then in place.

Step forward George Osborne, who saw himself as the Tory party's master strategist and next Tory PM after Call Me Dave. He set out to clip IDS's wings by reducing funding for the implementation of UC and by interfering as much as he could. As a result, the implementation of UC became a fuster cluck and IDS resigned.

A good idea ruined by a pr1ck who could not bear to see another minister succeed and become more influential in the party.

Wordsmith

The current system's causing a lot of misery especially for new claimants (I mean "Benefit Units" as per the new dept. docs, at least calling them claimants still vaguely retained some aspect of their humanity). Many, many people who would never have claimed any benefits are stunned at how lttle they get and at the petty and parsimonious ways the system is designed to claw money back.
 
Yeah - I know. My father, who had severe senile dementia, ended his days in a care home. But people in care homes can be protected. Access is tightly controlled - you have to be buzzed in by a member of staff. Providing staff are tested daily and not allowed to work in multiple care homes and visitors are restricted , the death rate in care and nursing homes could be kept low.

You would think it would be very easy to protect residents in care homes but apart from the obvious risks of staff infecting residents, a significant problem is just as likely to be the families of residents.

My wife is a nurse but her current job is working as a deputy manager of a residential home for elderly people. They have a significant number of residents with clinical needs hence my wife working there where she provides clinical advice in a managerial capacity and leads in practical terms on the floor where required.

The initial problems with residents being infected with coronavirus were through staff bringing it into the home and through residents being infected during hospital visits or short stays in hospital and bring it back with them to the home.

Proper precautions and a more widely available and rigorous testing process have largely overcome those problems.

The real challenge these days is the families of residents trying to visit and taking opportunities to visit without the permission or sometimes even the knowledge of the staff.

There have been instances where because of circumstances, a family member will be given permission to visit a resident. The resident might be ill, possibly terminally ill and after advice from PHE etc, a family member may be given permission to enter the building.

The family will be advised that one person may attend. At the agreed time, unknown to the home management, four or five family members will attend for the visit and staff on the floor will not be aware they are all there until it’s too late.

Some residents will ask if they can visit an outside location for a reason. A funeral or a visit to a grave on the anniversary of the death of the deceased seem to be popular reasons. Again, advice is sought from PHE and if the resident and the family agree to the conditions, the visit is allowed to go ahead. Again, often a few days later, it will transpire that the resident has after the graveside visit been taken to someones house where they have mixed with a large group of people before returning to the home.

It can be as simple as a resident saying they wish to go outside to smoke a cigarette. They are taken outside and left to smoke their cigarettes and unknown to the staff, they have phoned the family on their mobile phone and four or five family members turn up to sit with them outside without any social distancing.

There is a continuous battle between the staff of the home and residents families to try and prevent coronavirus getting into the building where it would undoubtedly cause at least some deaths if it did get in there.

Families are spoken to respectfully and the facts and the risks to residents are explained to them and promises are received that there won’t be any repeated instances but the promises are always broken at every opportunity.

And it gets worse because staff then need to start taking further action to prevent infections coming into the building and that means families finding it more difficult to find ways to dodge the rules so they start ringing the company up and complaining that they are finding it difficult to meet their relatives in the home but they conveniently leave out parts of the story about what they had actually agreed to and when pressed on those issues actually deny those parts of the story and allege that staff are lying about what was said and agreed.

This is a real problem and the staff are caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.

Everybody wants to facilitate the best that can be achieved for residents in terms of contact with their families but those families will promise to follow whatever they are asked to do and they are fully informed of the reasons why these terms must be adhered to but on virtually every single occasion, when it comes down to the visit, the agreed arrangements just go straight out of the window as far as the families are concerned.

Once their foot is in the door, all bets are off about any agreed procedures to protect the health of residents in the home.
 
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You’ll probably remember that EdwardIii economic planning resulted in the Peasants revolt As well but that came later, just in time for Labour. Perhaps Starmer could be Richard II.

That also resulted in the bloody little poor people learning to not get uppity with their masters.
 
I haven't heard it, I don't consort with bloody little poor people unless I have to travel to Wales.
Oh you have, you just don't recognise it. You know the arguments that little people shouldn't be asked to vote on these issues is not very different to "Serfs ye are and serfs ye shall remain."
 
I grant you that he's been hit by unprecedented problems for a modem prime minister - the only parallel I can think of being the Spanish flue of 1918/19. And the medical advice he's been given is clerkly inconsistent. Yet some things are clear:
  • The disease is most lethal if you are over 70; below that the risk is much reduced and is minimal for younger people
  • The three "C's" apply; Crowds, Confined Spaces and Conversation - the risk increases the more "C's" apply to your current situation
  • The risk of transmission is highest in area of high population density - cities. It's significant reduced in loosely populated areas.
  • Different lockdown regimes are not having much impact on the death rate - well observed loose lockdown regimes are as effective as less policed, tighter lock down regimes.
  • We can learn from countries that are 2 months ahead of us on the Covid 19 curve. We get a preview of future events that will hit the UK two months later.
Given the above, it would not be difficult to a construct a course of action that should remain unchanged for a minimum of three months.

As to the La Sturgeons of this world - Boris neds to say loud and clear that at the end of the crisis, the Office of National Statistics will conduct an independent investigation at the end of this crisis, identifying the respective death rates per capita in England, Scotland, Wales and Norther Ireland. with the model published, along with the input data so it is available for independent scrutiny.

If Sturgeon wants to conduct her own policy, then she should be held accountable for its effects - as should BoJo for his.

BoJo's first problem is inconsistency - frequent changes of direction, giving the impression of indecision. His second problem is is failure to consult parliament before each change of course - the need to explain his decisions in debate might have removed the worst of the u-turns.

BoJo has got a lot of other things right, but Covid 19 has not been his finest hour
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Wordsmith
You keep repeating this, it doesn't make it true.
Boris is responding to a fluid situation fluidly.
The bbc is attacking him stupidly and has become a laughing stock now.
12 students starving because they are locked down in HoR.
Not one of them has a mobile phone or other device to order on line.
Really?
 
You keep repeating this, it doesn't make it true.
Boris is responding to a fluid situation fluidly.
The bbc is attacking him stupidly and has become a laughing stock now.
12 students starving because they are locked down in HoR.
Not one of them has a mobile phone or other device to order on line.
Really?
Go tell the 1922 Committee that they've got it wrong.
 
Go tell the 1922 Committee that they've got it wrong.
The 1922 Committee does have it wrong, imo. There's a balance to be struck between preventing the worsening of the pandemic, and not see destroying the economy. The '22 Ctte is too careless of the public health angle. Boris may be erring too greatly on the side of caution. I am glad not to be in his shoes as it is a very tough situation to manage.
 
You keep repeating this, it doesn't make it true.
Boris is responding to a fluid situation fluidly.
The bbc is attacking him stupidly and has become a laughing stock now.
12 students starving because they are locked down in HoR.
Not one of them has a mobile phone or other device to order on line.
Really?

Please indicate what was not true in my original post....

Wordsmith
 
The 1922 Committee does have it wrong, imo. There's a balance to be struck between preventing the worsening of the pandemic, and not see destroying the economy. The '22 Ctte is too careless of the public health angle. Boris may be erring too greatly on the side of caution. I am glad not to be in his shoes as it is a very tough situation to manage.
It is difficult to manage. It's even more difficult if anyone not toeing the No 10 line gets the bullet. See Javid.
The flip flopping hasn't helped and some of their decisions have been bizarre. Worst has been the totally bollocks rhetoric and three word slogans.

If he's attracting flack from the faithful you have to ask how that has come about.
 
It is difficult to manage. It's even more difficult if anyone not toeing the No 10 line gets the bullet. See Javid.
The flip flopping hasn't helped and some of their decisions have been bizarre. Worst has been the totally bollocks rhetoric and three word slogans.

If he's attracting flack from the faithful you have to ask how that has come about.
Some of the flak is due to concern about the economy. Some due to concern that the UK is on the verge of becoming a police state (this is, imo, hyped by Steve Baker types to leverage pressure re. the economy - I would be surprised if many of the '1984' types believe it is that bad). The last main type is the 'Covid isn't bad near me/I can't bear missing this year's gymkhana' set.
I'm a party member and, fwiw, a lot of my peers seem to have lost the plot.
The Telegraph is unreadable at present. It is full on anti-Boris stuff. He gets better coverage in the Guardian...
 
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