No, they don’t merit “a break”. Especially Johnson, who is an empty vessel who has nothing to offer by way of leadership in this crisis. He is crumbling to dust before our eyes. He must be made to give way to those who have the intellect and the integrity to guide the nation to recovery.
I think that we are realising that the collective is more important than the individual, and that people are willing to subordinate their own wishes and ‘needs’ to a system that has the interests of all at heart, and will meet their essential requirements of shelter, food and drink, and fundamental protections from harm.
Trump and Johnson and their neoliberal non-policies are overdue for the dustbin of history. I think their demise is closer than anyone could have hoped. And good riddance.
Could you give your source for that, please?
The last figures I saw suggested that France is carrying outaround 10 000 tests per day against 6 000 in the UK.
But basically neither country is doing enough and they both admit it.
South Korea (and for that matter Singapore) are smaller islands and they adopted a different strategy; one of testing and tracing. Both countries are ahead of the game as far as technology is concerned and used tracking systems. Germany, as I’m sure you are aware, does not have the same funding structure as the UK health system. Its hospitals are funded by private insurance which you are obliged to have in Germany. This resulted in money being thrown into testing in the early stages thus slowing down the advance of the virus. Healthcare in Germany is run as a business unlike our NHS which is a free for all.
I agree there was certainly a different and more successful approach - the question is why didn’t the UK take the same approach which was already proven to have successful results.
Lack of foresight, lack of concern, lack of rigour, too complacent and too lazy, no idea how to plan or implement such an approach. Let’s face it, if they’d attempted it, it would probably have turned into a shambles.
You’re absolutely correct Veronique (I should know I’ve been there enough times in my 20+ years of living in Asia). In my head I was referring to Singapore and Taiwan as an example. The point remains the same, we are talking of much smaller land mass areas which makes tracking and tracing easier. Hope this clarifies it.
S. Korea is comparable to England though, isn’t it - not that much smaller and with a proportionately similar sized population.
Singapore is very different - it has a 10 x smaller population and a much more than 10 x smaller landmass than S. Korea.
If people think the PPE situation is bad in the UK they ought to check out what’s happening in the US where states are competing against each other with the orders going to the highest bidder.
South Korea’s land mass is 100,210 sq km with a population density of 503 per sq km and Singapore 721 sq km with a population density of 8,358 per sq km whereas the UK is 242,500 and a population density of 430 per sq km (259 per sq km England, 148 Wales, 67.2 Scotland, 233 Northern Ireland) UK over double the size of Korea with a similar population density but because of the greater landmass in UK tracking and tracing would be more difficult. This why it has been difficult in France with 65 million people and 2.5 times the land mass of UK at 643,801 sq km.
The figures above don’t add up - England had a population density of 430/km2 in 2018.
That’s why I was talking about England, not the UK, when making a comparison with S. Korea
However, today the UK’s daily death toll considerably passed that of France (which on the basis of the last two days may have begun to plateau). Furthermore, the UK’s population is lower than that of France and they were probably a week behind France in the virus’s development.
I believe that despite the French people’s ingrained cynicism toward Paris and central government, the fabric of French society and the notion of an individual’s social responsibility remains far stronger than in the UK. The French haven’t had forty years of privatisation, de-regulation and the dismantling of public bodies that were created to protect citizens.
Since when has the population of UK been less than France! france = 66.99 million and U.K. =67,798 million. Happy to accept they are more or less the same
You’re still comparing apples and pears. The Asian countries were far better prepared due to their handling of SARS and their high tech capabilities. They are also much more obedient than us Europeans.
(I should know I’ve been there enough times in my 20+ years of living in Asia). In my head I was referring to Singapore and Taiwan as an example. The point remains the same, we are talking of much smaller land mass areas which makes tracking and tracing easier. Hope this clarifies it.
- England had a population density of 430/km2 in 2018.