Government response to the covid emergency
Melanie Phillips is so far off my radar that I don't think I've ever agreed with a word she's written, but today's column in the Times is a brilliant demolition of Johnson and the corrupt chumocracy.It's behind the paywall, so a couple of examples should give the sense of what she's written:The government has been battered by criticism from all sides for failing to deal adequately with the Covid-19 crisis. Now it seems that its failure earlier this year to obtain sufficient PPE, as well as its systematic inadequacies in “test and trace”, were due not just to panic and incompetence. Normal procurement processes were sidestepped. In many cases, contracts were handed out without competition or advertising to cronies who channelled billions of taxpayers’ money to private companies. In a situation of unprecedented complexity requiring the maximum competence, many of the key players had no relevant experience. Kate Bingham, who heads the vaccine task force, is a venture capitalist with no public health experience but is married to a Tory minister. Baroness Harding, head of test and trace, had no public health experience and is the wife of a Conservative MP.And: Yet when challenged about all this, Boris Johnson said he was “very proud” of what the government had achieved when it “shifted heaven and earth to get 32 billion items of PPE to this country”. There was no acknowledgement of the slowness in getting PPE supplies. No acknowledgement of the errors of judgment involved in the Florida incident. No contrition for the massive waste of public money and the use of patently unqualified people when the country needed the most experienced individuals to handle such a complex emergency. It was an astonishing reply, showing contempt for the process of government and for the public that it serves.https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/b2369340-2dce-11eb-ad99-2498151d5fd1
Richard Carter ● 1981d10 Comments