Boris - the Saviour

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Hail the conquering hero comes - he who has fought the foe and won through!

For weeks we have had the minion Secretaries of state for this and that telling us that we must Stay at Home and dictating what we can and can't do but enough of this!

Enter Boris - the good guy! We are now being released from these shackles and can resume normal life - nay even we are obliged to go to work if we can't work from home.

What shallowness will this 'leader?' resort to next to court his populist addiction?

I will see you in the next wave of exponential growth, which will of course be reported by the bad guys.

14
 allarms 10 May 2020
In reply to keith-ratcliffe:

Is this about brexit or covid? 

 Andy Hardy 10 May 2020

In reply to TheClimbingWallCritic:

Do you know what % of the population voted conservative at the general election?

TheClimbingWallCritic 10 May 2020
In reply to Andy Hardy:

Clearly more than the people voting for anyone else I’d of said. Pretty obvious actually.

13
 JLS 10 May 2020
In reply to TheClimbingWallCritic:

According to a recent Express article....

According to polling experts with YouGov, Boris Johnson currently has an approval rating of 34 percent.

Public perception of the Prime Minister is mostly negative, as the market research firm reports 47 percent of people have a negative opinion of him.

They said a further 17 percent have a "neutral" opinion of him.

1
TheClimbingWallCritic 10 May 2020
In reply to JLS:

And your point is......?

5
In reply to keith-ratcliffe:

"It's coming down the mountain that is often more dangerous" (Boris)

Laura Kuenssberg has just been wittering on about maps and contours too.

I do like a romantic outdoorsy metaphor in difficult times but it comes at the expense of clarity which is not so good.

1
 JLS 10 May 2020
In reply to TheClimbingWallCritic:

No point, just information so you can remain factual with your posting and save you from the effort of having to delete and reword your posts.

1
 Andy Hardy 10 May 2020
In reply to TheClimbingWallCritic:

Have a look at the electoral reform society website

TheClimbingWallCritic 10 May 2020
In reply to JLS:

I haven’t deleted anything actually. Was probably deleted because I referred to the first minister of Scotland in a less than favourable way.

12
cp123 10 May 2020
In reply to keith-ratcliffe:

Boris is trying to channel his inner Churchill, except of course, his hand was at the tiller right from the start when 'herd immunity' and no testing in the community was the plan of action.
 

To continue with the WWII analogy, that was more like a policy of appeasement, we saw how well that worked for Chamberlain.

2
TheClimbingWallCritic 10 May 2020
In reply to Andy Hardy:

Why? Does it show the Conservative party won the election because I know that? Seems every time a general election has been held in the last few years the conservatives win......

Not sure what point you’re trying to make Andy?? Maybe we need a Labour Party back in so they can take us to war??

17
 JLS 10 May 2020
In reply to TheClimbingWallCritic:

In which case I apologise for inferring you did.

 Andy Hardy 10 May 2020
In reply to TheClimbingWallCritic:

From https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/latest-news-and-research/publications/t...

Due to the oddities of First Past the Post (FPTP) – or one-party-takes-all results – the Conservative Party was rewarded with a majority of seats (56.2%) on a plurality of the vote (43.6%) – with a 1.3 percentage point increase on its 2017 vote share giving the party a 7.4 percentage point increase in seats. 

So 56.4% of the population didn't vote Tory i.e. most people do not want a Tory govt.

HTH 

7
 Hat Dude 10 May 2020
In reply to Phantom Disliker:

> "It's coming down the mountain that is often more dangerous" (Boris)

> I do like a romantic outdoorsy metaphor in difficult times but it comes at the expense of clarity which is not so good.

He obviously read my post on UKC last week and has pinched the metaphor

The difference is that I'm just some punter posting on a forum, he's supposed to be running the country!!!

 im off 10 May 2020
In reply to Andy Hardy:

What % didn't want labour? What % didn't want liberal? 

TheClimbingWallCritic 10 May 2020
In reply to Andy Hardy:

And YET!!!!!! They still won!! A system we have been using in the country did it’s job and a government was elected. Just so happens it’s a government you don’t want but the majority did. If, god forbid, Corbyn had won how would he be handling this?? Less experience of running anything than BJ? A fractured Labour Party because of their leader?? He’d still be offering feee uni tuition. I wouldn’t say the conservatives are amazing and Boris definitely isn’t but he’s the best of the worst.

17
 mondite 10 May 2020
In reply to cp123:

> To continue with the WWII analogy, that was more like a policy of appeasement, we saw how well that worked for Chamberlain.

With the subtle difference being Chamberlain wasnt convinced by his public announcements. As proven by just how much he invested into the military build up. Its as if Johnson had babbled on about shaking hands whilst buying up all the PPE in sight.

In reply to the thread:

Mat Lucas has edited out all the erroneous bits of the speech leaving this concise and factual vid

youtube.com/watch?v=ZA3F3B7uFtM&

 Andy Hardy 10 May 2020
In reply to im off:

So the lucky 46% get to call all the shots?

That's not democracy is it?

12
 girlymonkey 10 May 2020
In reply to TheClimbingWallCritic:

I think the point he's making is that the majority DIDN'T! A larger minority did.

1
TheClimbingWallCritic 10 May 2020
In reply to Andy Hardy:

Well it is democracy it just happens that democracy, like life, isnt fair.

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 Andy Hardy 10 May 2020
In reply to TheClimbingWallCritic:

Do you actually think that Britain is being governed in the optimal way? That the views of most voters are acknowledged in govt policy?

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TheClimbingWallCritic 10 May 2020
In reply to girlymonkey:

I get the way the voting works but if you only look at Conservative vs Labour the conservative party was still 11% clear of Labour! And seeing as those 2 parties are the only 2 with a realistic chance of attaining power in the UK right now that means the majority of people voted for them.

I know if you break down the figures they where still under 50% of the votes bit where it counts (against Labour) they where clear victors.

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 Andy Hardy 10 May 2020
In reply to TheClimbingWallCritic:

> Well it is democracy it just happens that, in the UK, democracy, isnt.

Fixed.

3
TheClimbingWallCritic 10 May 2020
In reply to Andy Hardy:

I think Andy, and I'll be honest, it depends which social circles you talk with (and I dont mean that in a rude way at all just a statement)

Personally I think Boris has done a relatively good job through coronavirus. I can imagine any of the potential pms from the last general election are thanking all the gods they can name that they havent had to deal with this.

Do I think Boris runs the country in a capable fashion. No not really but he's doing it. 

As I said before I think out of all the people who could have been PM hes the best for the job simply because he won't pander to the people and give everyone what they want (free uni, broadband etc etc) I believe it's a classic case of the grass is always greener. 

The reason I always bite back is because the majority of people are very happy to slag of the current government because they've either forgotten the last one, grumpy their favourite didnt win or are just on a bandwagon.

Post edited at 23:09
18
 girlymonkey 10 May 2020
In reply to TheClimbingWallCritic:

No, the point being made is a minority of people voted tory. I don't really care about your views on which parties count. If we are using your method, neither Tory nor Labour are relevant in my country, but we still get stuck with them!

2
 mondite 10 May 2020
In reply to TheClimbingWallCritic:

> Personally I think Boris has done a relatively good job through coronavirus.

In what way? Even if you think the tories have done a good job he has been missing for a major part of it. At best I would have thought people would score him a "cant comment".

2
TheClimbingWallCritic 10 May 2020
In reply to girlymonkey:

Yes but you can clearly see a minority didnt vote for them! Because they're in power!! And won a convincing victory over all the parties.

I don't know what else you expect me to agree with? The figures on the BBC website show that the conservatives won, over all the other parties, and won well. Regardless of minority voting a larger bulk of people wanted Tory against a smaller bulk of people wanting labour and a smaller group again wanting LD.... you get my point. You can say 56% didnt want Tory, fine, but the 56% weren't all in agreement either. Making the 44% that voted Tory a larger Majority of people that wanted a tory government!!

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TheClimbingWallCritic 10 May 2020
In reply to mondite:

When you constantly look for his flaws and the things he hasnt done well you'll never see the bits he has done well.

Number one would be the furlough scheme. Yes we'll be paying for it for years but it saves thousands going on the doll or UC.

All the government backed support for businesses to stop the economy going into total shit.

Etc etc. What more do you want him to do or do you think he could've done better and name one other person that could do a better job??

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TheClimbingWallCritic 10 May 2020
In reply to girlymonkey:

And I'm sorry, until Scotland wins its independence, which I'll note the MAJORITY of Scottish people don't want, you are part of the United Kingdom so sorry to be dull but that is governed by a democratically elected government formed under QE 2s name, which at present is the Conservative party.

9
 mondite 10 May 2020
In reply to TheClimbingWallCritic:

> When you constantly look for his flaws and the things he hasnt done well you'll never see the bits he has done well.

That is the government not Johnson unless you have some evidence it was him personally driving it?

1
TheClimbingWallCritic 10 May 2020
In reply to mondite:

Of course it wasn't him driving it. That's why he has hordes of advisers and Government all with their particular skill set. Just so happens he's in charge of all of them and lives at number 10.

I notice you've dodged my question to you?

4
In reply to TheClimbingWallCritic:

> Etc etc. What more do you want him to do or do you think he could've done better and name one other person that could do a better job??

The leader of every other country in the EU has done a better job.  The leaders of all the devolved nations even the DUP in Northern Ireland have done a better job.   The leaders of China, South Korea, Japan, New Zealend, Canada and Australia have done a better job.

At least Boris hasn't advised people to drink bleach so he's still doing better than Trump.

The next step now they can allegedly do 100k tests per day should have been using a lot of those tests for random sampling of the population to get an accurate estimate of the level of infection and R region by region.  Then they'd have an idea how safe it was to go back to work.

6
Rigid Raider 11 May 2020
In reply to keith-ratcliffe:

So the OP would have preferred to have Jeremy handling this crisis?

2
 SFM 11 May 2020
In reply to keith-ratcliffe:

What has bothered me about WM’s handling of this whole crisis has been the consistent focus on political points over public health. 
Who ever is in power has the mandate from the voting population to govern and do the best for the general population. This a Government has so far failed in that and are now are scrambling to make up for their mistakes/hubris. 
Bit like cramponing your own leg in the car park whilst showing off before even setting off for the day...

1
 mondite 11 May 2020
In reply to TheClimbingWallCritic:

>  Just so happens he's in charge of all of them

Aside from all the time he was ill/just in hiding. Which, displaying the normal disorganisation, was left as a vague mess.

> I notice you've dodged my question to you?

I wasnt aware I was required to answer you? I suspect most politicians could have managed an equally missing in action performance though.

2
 wintertree 11 May 2020
In reply to TheClimbingWallCritic:

> What more do you want him to do

  1. Publicly admit the factual truth that the UK is one of the hardest hit countries in the world, despite our relatively late start
  2. Publicly admit that he led the government through a series of decisions that were - in retrospect - very bad choices 
  3. Apologise
  4. STAY ALERT!

>  and name one other person that could do a better job??

Almost any other world leader except?  A dozen UKC posters who called this accurately in early February?  

5
 Michael Hood 11 May 2020
In reply to many:

There seems to be a fair bit of debate on this thread about our FPTP voting system and Conservatives having <50% etc.

I think a lot of people forget that democracy does not mean proportional representation. That is just one form of democratic voting. Here's a (quick google) definition of democracy "a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives".

The fact that our voting system has flaws (as do all voting systems - including PR) does not make it undemocratic (but as a counter, the fact that our voting system is democratic doesn't mean we shouldn't try to make it better).

Post edited at 08:20
In reply to Rigid Raider:

No - my point wasn't party political it was about the poor leadership offered by BJ.

I live in Scotland and although I am not a Nationalist I have been very impressed by the First Minister's handling of the crisis, it seems to me a much better example of good leadership.

2
 Michael Hood 11 May 2020
In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

> The next step now they can allegedly do 100k tests per day should have been using a lot of those tests for random sampling of the population to get an accurate estimate of the level of infection and R region by region.  Then they'd have an idea how safe it was to go back to work.

I think this is what Pillar 4 of the testing strategy is meant to do although details are scarce. I had a look yesterday and the gov website shows it's done about 30,000 tests, but try as I might, I could find NOTHING about any results from this testing.

 wintertree 11 May 2020
In reply to Michael Hood:

Re: Pillar 4; I’ve seen no public details on what porton down is specifically testing, just that it’s antibody testing.  No published results.  Presumably it is producing useful information that’s going in to policy...??

TheClimbingWallCritic 11 May 2020
In reply to wintertree:

Very easy to put those 4 points together from the safety of your armchair.

Much more difficult when you're responsible for an entire country.

So you'd rather Trump? Or Kim?? Maybe Sadam if he was still with us??

12
 wintertree 11 May 2020
In reply to TheClimbingWallCritic:

> Very easy to put those 4 points together from the safety of your armchair.

I certainly kept myself safer by not shaking hands with anyone well before SAGE issues guidance on that, and even longer before Boris stopped shaking hands.  And you know what? It was very easy.  Apologising is also quite easy when you realise you’ve made a real pigs eat of something.  

> So you'd rather Trump? Or Kim?? Maybe Sadam if he was still with us?? 

Did you read what I wrote?  Here it is with emphasis... “Almost any other world leader except?” - I think perhaps Sadam and Kim can be excluded under my use of “almost”.   Re: Trump - if this doesn’t drive it home, nothing will.  Per-capita deaths in the UK are twice as high as in the states.  Boris has presided over a government that have failed twice as badly to date as a nation led by Trump.  Still it says a lot when *you* reach for despotic dictators to make Boris look good in a comparison...

There are dozens of countries that have managed massively less transmission and death than the UK.  So I’m not sure why you’re jumping past them and ignoring my “almost” to pretend my argument is totally unreasonable.  

Post edited at 09:27
2
TheClimbingWallCritic 11 May 2020
In reply to wintertree:

And in reply your desperate hatred of Boris clouds your judgement. 

There are people that could do a better job and there are people that could do a worse job. You're not one of those people and therefore in no position to judge I'd of said. All you've done is focus on the negatives and there are positives. 

As a country we are more densely populated than a lot of the other countries in Europe so it does make sense we where hit worse. 

I'm not pretending your arguement is unreasonable just, as I've said in many previous posts, in an unprecedented pandemic what more do you want him to have done??

12
 elsewhere 11 May 2020
In reply to TheClimbingWallCritic:

> I'm not pretending your arguement is unreasonable just, as I've said in many previous posts, in an unprecedented pandemic what more do you want him to have done??

Shutdown one week earlier so the death toll is several times smaller and the lockdown is several weeks shorter.

3
TheClimbingWallCritic 11 May 2020
In reply to elsewhere:

But if you look back the week before we shut down was only when things started getting really bad. Yes he could've shut down but they needed time to say what lockdown actually entailed. Its not like closing up a summer house for a few months it's a country!!

7
 wintertree 11 May 2020
In reply to TheClimbingWallCritic:

> And in reply your desperate hatred of Boris clouds your judgement.

My “desperate hatred”?  I’m sorry but you’re way off the mark there.  I don’t hate him.   I think you’re bringing a bit of baggage to your reading of this thread.

> There are people that could do a better job and there are people that could do a worse job.

Sometimes it’s sunny and sometimes it’s night.  Stating it doesn’t really advance our understanding of anything does it?

> You're not one of those people

I’d be interested in why you think that.  You don’t know me, you presumably don’t know Boris and you have no basis for comparison.  

> and therefore in no position to judge I'd of said.

Are you “one of those people” who could do a better job than Boris? If not how are you in any position to judge?  

> All you've done is focus on the negatives and there are positives. 

I have on a previous thread stated that I was impressed with how quickly the government pivoted when they realised how badly they’d messed up, and with how quickly they moved to protect the economy with furlough etc.  None of which gives them a free pass to continue projecting a positive image instead of apologising for presiding over one of the worst viral impacts in the whole world.

> As a country we are more densely populated than a lot of the other countries in Europe so it does make sense we where hit worse. 

An argument demolished trivially in many different ways.  It’s been done to death on here.

> I'm not pretending your arguement is unreasonable just, as I've said in many previous posts, in an unprecedented pandemic what more do you want him to have done??

Quite a lot, and I’ve been suggesting so from months ago on UKC, to my employer and to my MP.  My employer cancelled 200,000 face to face contact hours with customers 10 days before lockdown.   As did others.  If we hadn’t acted in advance of lockdown I think the weeks after would have been a lot grimmer.  
 

Post edited at 10:30
1
 wintertree 11 May 2020
In reply to TheClimbingWallCritic:

> But if you look back the week before we shut down was only when things started getting really bad. Yes he could've shut down but they needed time to say what lockdown actually entailed. Its not like closing up a summer house for a few months it's a country!!

A competent government would have been modelling and planning that scenario from mid January.  Ours essentially had to make it up on the spot it appears.  Your argument above pretty much hinges on their lack of preparation and in doing so damns them.

4
 TobyA 11 May 2020
In reply to TheClimbingWallCritic:

> Clearly more than the people voting for anyone else I’d of said. Pretty obvious actually.


You'd be wrong on that then - "obvious actually". It might be worthwhile spending a bit of time learning how the first past post system works and looking up the vote shares in the 2019 GE.

edit: I see reading on you've been trying to understand FPTP, although I think a bit more work is still needed. And maybe worth getting your head around that "majority" is not a synonym for "plurality".

Did you vote Conservative last election? I didn't, with a somewhat heavy heart considering the party leader at the time, I voted Labour.

Post edited at 10:40
4
 Michael Hood 11 May 2020
In reply to TheClimbingWallCritic:

Two fundamental mistakes,

1. (previous conservative gov) ignoring and even worse suppressing the 2016 NHS pandemic exercise even though pandemic was apparently at the top of the risk register.

2. When seeing Covid coming (in February and early march), deciding to do pretty much nothing rather than taking the prudent course of action (close borders, trace, get PPE sorted, lockdown if necessary) that would give more time to evaluate the best strategy and either continue (with whatever had been put in place), reinforce (tighter lockdown, etc) or relax (worst would have been, sorry guys, overreacted there).

If those two mistakes had been (easily) avoided then all the other mistakes would be forgivable.

1
 elsewhere 11 May 2020
In reply to TheClimbingWallCritic:

"we shut down was only when things started getting really bad" - that is just a bit too late for rapid exponential growth.

"they needed time" - this is a pathetic excuse when your timescale is set by a virus.

Jon Read, UKC, 19th Jan - the scientific sage of UKC
"One to watch very closely, I think...

The suspicion is that there are a lot more than the confirmed 62 cases in Wuhan, mostly supported by the numbers (though small) of confirmed cases in travellers (2 in Thailand, 1 in Japan, as of Friday last week). Colleagues at Imperial College have estimated somewhere between 427 and 4,471 infections. Clearly, if this is the case then it appears to be relatively mild compared to SARS, but suggests that human-to-human transmission is ongoing and sustained. Control is going to be very difficult if infection is largely sub-clinical (ie, people aren't sick enough to present to health-care services where they can be identified as a case). Even if the fatality rate is low (relative to SARS and MERS), if we see a big enough epidemic, it could still make a nasty impact.

I suspect we will see more cases in travellers to other countries, further investigations in Wuhan may reveal the true size of the outbreak, and we'll see outbreaks in other provinces in China."

Boris Johnson, 3rd Feb - the Clark Kent of Covid19 
"And in that context, we are starting to hear some bizarre autarkic rhetoric, when barriers are going up, and when there is a risk that new diseases such as coronavirus will trigger a panic and a desire for market segregation that go beyond what is medically rational to the point of doing real and unnecessary economic damage, then at that moment humanity needs some government somewhere that is willing at least to make the case powerfully for freedom of exchange, some country ready to take off its Clark Kent spectacles and leap into the phone booth and emerge with its cloak flowing as the supercharged champion, of the right of the populations of the earth to buy and sell freely among each other."

https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/off_belay/novel_coronavirus_--_wuhan_chin...

youtube.com/watch?v=tLRZdKGLpew&

https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-speech-in-greenwich-3-february-20...

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