Thanks to Brenda Steele for spotting this:
Iain MacWhirter yesterday:
Now, I don’t subscribe to the view that Boris Johnson has allowed thousands to die in order to save his billionaire Brexit chums. The UK government behaved reasonably, according to its lights, muddling through as always.
Is he just naive or ill-informed? We know for several facts that the UK’s uniquely late and fatal lock-down was ideologically informed. The Tories are wedded to free-market thinking which put business interests first unless something really extreme change things in a way they cannot resist but they will always tend to resist as long as they can.
To give one simple example, the Cheltenham horse racing four-day-event in March went ahead, despite the warnings of a professor of public health. The local Tory MP had received donations from several horse-racing business groups. The infection and death rates in the area spiked. Details:
Even the business-friendly FT had little doubt that the Government’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, was behind the delay.
https://www.ft.com/content/623a86ec-6c4c-11ea-9bca-bf503995cd6f
As for Johnson, the FT claimed:
Mr Johnson remained suspicious of draconian crackdowns. He once claimed the real hero of the 1970s film Jaws was the mayor who kept his beaches open while a shark was eating holidaymakers.
MacWhirter is just one of those self-styled ‘reasonable moderates’, comfortable in his circumstances among the horrors of the turbo-capitalism we now inhabit. I’m comfortable too, physically, but at least I haven’t convinced myself it’s alright out there and that people like Johnson are ‘reasonable’, just ‘muddling through’ when quite a few of us have seen through that to cruelty they embody.
Talking-up Scotland / Scottish media fact checking is like shooting fish in a barrel 
I suspect Iain is now tailoring his journalism to suit his publishers view of the world. A job is a job is a job. A sad truth.
Freedom of the press doesn’t really exist in the UK.
“His Masters Voice” in times of mass redundancy in the media is what counts, not the truth, facts or personal inclination.
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This fine gentlemen does have admirable qualities indeed
Therefore we must appoint as a Brigadier General immediately
All for the mostful useful function as rampant capitalism in its death throes
Launches its Trump led assault upon China to settle this irksome little virus and rid humanity of it by the only method available
His main duty shall be to scream for more and more cannon fodder
Once more a most apt extract from Pink Floyd is brought mind from Dark Side of the Moon
Their is a lunatic in my hall
Their is a lunatic in my hall
And he is lying face down upon the floor
And everyday the paper boy brings more
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It’s funny how all these commentators tow their paymasters line , even if fundamentally they don’t really agree with it , got to put bread on the table I suppose , but you would have thought at least some of them would have some ethics ! .
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Ian Bell, the last?
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Most definitely. There has been a steady but marked decline in Mr McWhirter’s output since Mr Bell died. I think the standard of Mr Bell’s output meant Mr McWhirter wrote to a higher standard rather than suffer by comparison.
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Probably , can’t see Ian writing the drivel the so called independence supporting journos do today! .
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Whatever the reason for the lockdown delay it is simply impossible to accept MacWhirter’s conclusion that the government behaved reasonably according to its lights. We know that flawed planning, going back as far as 2005,anticipated a flu pandemic rather than a SARS type pandemic and that successive governments across the UK thought that such a pandemic could not be controlled but that a vaccine would quickly emerge to limit casualties . That accounts for the PPE shortages initially and the lack of testing reagents available.
The UK government also failed to follow any WHO advice. The effects of test, trace and isolate was not included in the modelling done. The Chinese experience was that the virus affected mainly families, suggesting that, although infectivity may be high, death rates may depend on their being either repeated doses of infection or sustained contact with a source. Speed of reaction and effective test, trace and isolate is necessary in such an event. Yet the belief in the UK was that the NHS (England) could not cope with the epidemic.
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The by far the most effective method to assess any government response to covid -19
Is by calculating the death rate/ no.of cases to yield a %
Such is a very strong indicator of
1. A nations preparedness
2.Following of WHO guidance
.3.Abilty to test trace & isolate
4.The training, equipping and quality of Health staff along with premises and resources of the hospitals
And
5.proper command and control,along with
Proper monitoring,reporting and timely adjustments for continual performance improvement
6.last but not least good leadership
So from the following death ratios it is more than fair to say who are the most competent and least effective in dealing with this virus
And it should be noted that the most competent WILL be far earlier in ending lock down thereby greatly reducing not only the human cost but also the fiscal consequences
IMPORTANT the lower the % figure the better the Nation concerned is
Such gives you a instant read out and rapidly conveys the actual performance of each Nation in a easy understandable way
Remember Norway is Independent but very similar to Scotland in population size,demographics & geography
But Scotland Not independent
So off we go
1.Norway 0.5%
2.Scotland 13.1 %
3.England. 20.8 %
So if Mr.Macwhirter thinks he is a good reporting unbiased journalist then if not driven by his masters desires then surely he would have at least realised some of what i have laid out
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The media in Scotland is a sick joke. Cringe-worthy at all times.
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Some more of UK muddling through.
“Adam Price
@Adamprice
· 3h
So Public Health Wales have finally confirmed at @seneddhealth committee to @RhunapIorwerth this morning that the UK Government stole the 5,000 tests a day deal it had been negotiating with Roche. We’re getting just 900 of those tests now.
Show this thread”
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“The UK government behaved reasonably, according to its lights …”
How long did it take the writer to find this form of words – ‘according to its light’? Or is he well practiced in the ‘art’ of writing down a series of words whose meaning may just imply ‘something’ (if you, dear reader, wish it to) but he doesn’t wish to be straightforward in – does not wish to take responsibility for – writing with clarity so that his readers can know what meaning he is actually trying to communicate.
My take? Relative to its common, and anticipated, practices, the Tory government has ‘behaved’ better than one might have feared. Even if true (and that’s a big if), it’s small comfort: regardless, it doesn’t wipe out the legacy impact or the memory of what has gone before under Tory governments!
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Is it Macwhirter being satirical?
Now here are the effects of some “muddling through as always” in 1847 and its impact on the present.
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More muddling through.
“Tuesday’s headline in the Financial Times – “Northern Ireland tensions threaten to derail Brexit long-term EU-UK deal” – was greeted as a blast from the past.
This new rehearsal of the old theme relates to the EU’s request to set up an office in the North to work with local officials as they implement the complex new arrangements agreed in the withdrawal deal last year to avoid a hard border on the island.
London recently started briefing that such an office would be divisive, and dropping dark warnings about the Belfast Agreement, despite its diplomatic service having agreed to the idea last year.
Until the talk of sovereignty from Westminster, it was a non-issue in the North itself. This is a carbon copy of events that led to the ditching of the so-called backstop, which only became a topic of contention after Conservative Party politicians began talking about it as “annexation”, giving unionists little choice but to oppose it.
“I’m not aware that anyone in Northern Ireland of any persuasion was getting exercised about the EU office,” SDLP Assembly member Matthew O’Toole told The Irish Times. “It was not a battleground in NI before the UK government started publicly suggesting it was unacceptable.””
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/brussels-becomes-increasingly-jaded-with-uk-s-brexit-drama-1.4246777
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I see Boris Johnson is being quoted as saying “maximum caution” is needed as part of lockdown easing – Guardian : https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2020/may/07/uk-coronavirus-live-boris-johnson-cabinet-meeting-review-lift-lockdown-measures-latest-updates
So that will mean a complete US style opening up then, given Boris’s inability to tell hte truth at any time…
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Ch4 Victoria MacDonald’s report on the Tories management of England’s pandemic store of PPE is a much watch.
Think MaChatterer will be squirming in his chair.
For the Yoons it’s every journalist to the pumps.
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