The virus. PPE. Part 1

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We would have seen complaints about the governments handling with any make, conservative to communist, although under communism each complainer would only have got on chance ;)
 
arclight said:
What did their Prime Minister tell them .......... “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.” Did they start whimpering and whinging ? No they did not. They stuck together , displayed courage and resilience.
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Yes but unlike this Prime Minister who has retreated to Chequers, Churchill continued to lead the country by example despite his illnesses and continued to direct the affairs of State from his bed and on the second occasion, Churchill’s illness was not even made public.
 
tarric said:
Yes but unlike this Prime Minister who has retreated to Chequers, Churchill continued to lead the country by example despite his illnesses and continued to direct the affairs of State from his bed and on the second occasion, Churchill’s illness was not even made public.
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I doubt if it a matters a whit who the current PM is, the whingers would still whinge. When the current problem has been resolved they will find something else to whinge about.
 
arclight said:
I doubt if it a matters a whit who the current PM is, the whingers would still whinge. When the current problem has been resolved they will find something else to whinge about.
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Calling criticism "whinging" doesn't make it less valid; nor is gratuitous insult productive. It's sad that the current government have made so many mistakes and then attempted to hide them. Behaviour of that nature just reinforces the perception that they are incompetent and uncaring, which is precisely the opposite of what is currently required.
 
boyfalldown said:
Its been three months since this thread started. I (and others) took the mickey out of @LongLensPhotography for being seemingly paranoid about things.How the world has changed
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Yes, it’s interesting to read the early posts in today’s context.
 
KitsuneAndy said:
Maybe partly due to their leadership being strong and leading by example, and not telling them they'd just have to put up with Hitler and take it on the chin.
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More like they had discipline, determination and made true sacrifices. I went shopping last night and it was total chaos. Kids on mobile phones wandering about, couples struggling to decide on what beer to buy blocking the aisle, with the majority unable to go around the store and respect the social distancing.

That's the mentality of people these days who do what they want and blame others when things don't go to plan.
 
South Wales police in Bridgend attended a call lastnight to a 'house party' , 5 of the 6 people they questioned were not part of the household and 3 of them came from Berkshire!! It's not as if the distancing advice is a bit of a secret ..........
 
dcash29 said:
More like they had discipline, determination and made true sacrifices. I went shopping last night and it was total chaos. Kids on mobile phones wandering about, couples struggling to decide on what beer to buy blocking the aisle, with the majority unable to go around the store and respect the social distancing.

That's the mentality of people these days who do what they want and blame others when things don't go to plan.
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Well who can blame them really when our leadership spent months telling us it was just a flu and ignored social distancing measures themselves? Hardly leading by example.

Doesn't excuse people being idiots, but when people are easily led and their leaders actions don't match the seriousness of the situation, I can see how it happens.
 
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Fuji Dave said:
She did not, but she STILL missed some that`s all I`m saying (y)
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I think that TW4T policy is ripe for expansion.

I'm awarding a daily TW4T badge, starting today with Marr for his moronic NHS question this morning.
Although, I gotta say apart from that he wasn't too bad for a change.
He gets it anyway for the previous 4 years of unending t***ness...:D
 
joxby said:
I think that TW4T policy is ripe for expansion.

I'm awarding a daily TW4T badge, starting today with Marr for his moronic NHS question this morning.
Although, I gotta say apart from that he wasn't too bad for a change.
He gets it anyway for the previous 4 years of unending t***ness...:D
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That seems an oddly familar attitude.

View: https://BANNED/realDonaldTrump/status/1254168730898173953
 
Thanks, but its sadly a very familiar observation rather than an attitude.
 
arclight said:
I doubt if it a matters a whit who the current PM is, the whingers would still whinge. When the current problem has been resolved they will find something else to whinge about.
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Sadly, you are a classic candidate for Communist* Party membership — the Party right or wrong :(. Criticism is not “whingeing”, it’s the way things progress, admit errors and do better :).

* Other extreme Parties/Movements are available on left and right, not much to choose between them :(.
 
I think we also need to critisise those who critisise :D

It's easy to have a pop at "The Govt." as they're the ones who have to do things but we should also look at the poppers and if they have nothing better to say then they shouldn't get a free and easy ride either.
 
woof woof said:
I think we also need to critisise those who critisise :D

It's easy to have a pop at "The Govt." as they're the ones who have to do things but we should also look at the poppers and if they have nothing better to say then they shouldn't get a free and easy ride either.
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Constructive criticism is the thing :)
 
sphexx said:
Constructive criticism is the thing :)
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In America, constructive criticism appears currently to be seen as "treason" against the anointed leader. In Britain, on the other hand, it just passes over the heads of its targets. :thinking:
 
sphexx said:
Constructive criticism is the thing :)
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It is but history tells us instances will be few and far between and lost in a torrent of political game playing and social media screaming.
 
Scrutiny by journalists is one of the features of a functioning democracy. Trump (and some others we might mention) prefers to use and appeal to 'social media screaming' directly, where the facts can be whatever he chooses and any criticism dismissed as a partisan attack.
 
Let’s hope he’s wrong:

”Christian Drosten, ... head of the German public health institute’s reference lab on coronaviruses, he has become the government’s go-to expert on the related virus causing the current pandemic.”:

”I don’t see any reason to assume that the virus passed through pangolins on its way to humans. There is an interesting piece of information from the old Sars literature. That virus was found in civet cats, but also in raccoon dogs – something the media overlooked. Raccoon dogs are a massive industry in China, where they are bred on farms and caught in the wild for their fur. If somebody gave me a few hundred thousand bucks and free access to China to find the source of the virus, I would look in places where raccoon dogs are bred.” (my emphasis)

Raccoon dogs (more like foxes really) are widespread in Europe both wild & farmed :(.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...-drosten-germany-coronavirus-expert-interview
 
Retune said:
Scrutiny by journalists is one of the features of a functioning democracy. Trump (and some others we might mention) prefers to use and appeal to 'social media screaming' directly, where the facts can be whatever he chooses and any criticism dismissed as a partisan attack.
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Unfortunately some journalists seem more interested in asking barbed questions designed to illicit a soundbite they can jump on than asking probing questions designed to help a functioning democracy. We see evidence of this during the daily briefings in the UK. I haven't followed what's going on in the US but I expect the same.

Trump is an idiot but he's also a product of the society and times we, or rather them lot in the US live in and of course some of those who attack him were silent during the Clinton and Obama years and possibly would have been happy to see Hillary in the white house.

If they're/we're going to attack those unfit for positions of power and influence lets at least be consistent and have a pop at them all no matter what party they belong to.
 
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woof woof said:
If they're/we're going to attack those unfit for positions of power and influence lets at least be consistent and have a pop at them all no matter what party they belong to.
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I have quite clear memories of the Washington Post going after Bill Clinton at least as hard as they'd gone after Bush Senior before him and Bush Junior after him. Obama seemed to get an easier ride but I felt that was because he was both quieter and more competent than any other president since Franklin Roosevelt.
 
It's been a long while since we had a Labour government, but older readers may recall that the media seldom took prisoners in the Blair and Brown years. Given the gravity of the current situation, and the serious missteps in the UK's response, I think they have been remarkably restrained. In the US, where the early response was badly botched and Trump's major contribution has been to peddle dangerous misinformation about treatments, the journalists at his press conferences still treat the President with the respect due to his position, rather than the contempt many must feel for an infantile bully. But this courtesy is not enough for Trump, who attacks all criticism from independent journalists as 'fake news'.

Many governments whinge about their treatment by the media, of course, but today's populist politicians are taking their attacks on journalists to a new level. Social media platforms have changed the rules - politicians are no longer so dependent on traditional media to talk to their supporters, and in an increasingly polarised world aren't especially interested in reaching anyone else. And it doesn't really matter if these supporters believe everything the politicians say (many must surely realise that Trump contradicts himself from day to day). It's enough that they don't believe the 'fake news media' either. Then at the next election they can vote with their guts.

Even in the UK, there was before the current crisis a disturbing tendency to evade scrutiny in ways we hadn't seen before - refusing to engage with flagship news programmes like Radio 4's Today, Newsnight and Channel 4 News, while facing cherry-picked questions in the 'People's PMQs' social media stunt, were very Trumpian tactics (fortunately Trump has no power to prorogue Congress to evade political scrutiny).
 
Retune said:
It's been a long while since we had a Labour government, but older readers may recall that the media seldom took prisoners in the Blair and Brown years. Given the gravity of the current situation, and the serious missteps in the UK's response, I think they have been remarkably restrained. In the US, where the early response was badly botched and Trump's major contribution has been to peddle dangerous misinformation about treatments, the journalists at his press conferences still treat the President with the respect due to his position, rather than the contempt many must feel for an infantile bully. But this courtesy is not enough for Trump, who attacks all criticism from independent journalists as 'fake news'.

Many governments whinge about their treatment by the media, of course, but today's populist politicians are taking their attacks on journalists to a new level. Social media platforms have changed the rules - politicians are no longer so dependent on traditional media to talk to their supporters, and in an increasingly polarised world aren't especially interested in reaching anyone else. And it doesn't really matter if these supporters believe everything the politicians say (many must surely realise that Trump contradicts himself from day to day). It's enough that they don't believe the 'fake news media' either. Then at the next election they can vote with their guts.

Even in the UK, there was before the current crisis a disturbing tendency to evade scrutiny in ways we hadn't seen before - refusing to engage with flagship news programmes like Radio 4's Today, Newsnight and Channel 4 News, while facing cherry-picked questions in the 'People's PMQs' social media stunt, were very Trumpian tactics (fortunately Trump has no power to prorogue Congress to evade political scrutiny).
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And Harold Wilson was relentlessly criticised and parodied, to such an extent that I have tended to forget there were real achievements during his time in office :(.
 
sphexx said:
And Harold Wilson was relentlessly criticised and parodied, to such an extent that I have tended to forget there were real achievements during his time in office :(.
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Unfortunately, in my opinion there were also really important missed opportunities, The worst mistake he made was throwing Barbara Castle's "In Place of Strife" out of the sleigh at the first bark from the trade unions. If he'd backed it we almost certainly wouldn't have had the miners' strike and in all probability we wouldn't have had Margaret Thatcher's monetarist obsession. The NHS would most likely not have suffered the death by a thousand cuts inflicted by way of the "internal market" and we would be in a far stronger position to deal with the current situation.

You might guess from the above that I'm not a Wilson fan. :coat:
 
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