Corona Virus

Do you actually look at the numbers, Norm? There are about 1.4m people in the UK with Covid symptoms and a total of about 140,000 hospital beds, of which over 90% are typically occupied in winter. So if only 1% of those people require hospital treatment, the entire system will be full. (Data from Zoe and the King’s Fund.) Once that happens, don’t have a heart attack or a road accident as there’ll be nowhere to go.

That’s before you account for staff absent with illness or positive tests. The UK has drastically reduced the number of hospital beds — some for sound clinical reasons about spending less time in hospital but mostly to save money and keep taxes low — and has fewer per head than anywhere in the developed world except Sweden, and barely half the EU average (data from World Bank) so there’s really very little room for error.

Oh right.  If you think "gravitas" is the deciding factor then, where is Alex Johnson's and where was it in December 2019, and who amongst the favourites to replace him posesses it, such that you would be again convinced to continue voting for the party?

Struggling to see how Sadiq Khan is in any way responsible for any deficiencies in the national vaccination campaign?

Interesting comment about Truss. I look forward to her imminent announcement as the new Minister on point regarding our re-entry to both the single market and the customs union. Which is of course the only available option under the heading "best thing for the UK" at the moment. It was not on the ballot paper to leave those arrangements 5 and a half years ago, so shouldn't be a problem.  After all, nobody was talking about threatening our place in the single market.  I remember that promise distinctly.

EIII, the issue I've got with your approach to voting which you are outlining here, I think (and it has just occurred to me), is that you're far to focussed on leaders of the "other" parties. If you look at Starmer's wider front bench, which would you rather have in the Cabinet - those people or Johnson's team? We are supposed to be a country in which we elect a Parliament, which then chooses an Executive in the form of a Cabinet. We are not electing a head of government directly. The Head emerges as the leader of a government by Cabinet. Or at least should. And I trust Starmer to return us to a model closer to that. All of which would be a good reason to vote for his party, and is far more important than any notion of "gravitas" in a party leader - which I note you don't seem to have answered with regard to Johnson and his team, other than to claim that abstention would be the best approach?

Corbyn is now irrelevant. The choice is Starmer's front bench or Johnson's. Your choice is evidently to abstain on that one, my view is clear that the former is infinitely preferable to the latter.

We've had a recent example of an experiment in electing a business leader to government, in the USA. It did not go well. Government has to provide and run public servies, and the principles of business aren't necessarily best at delivering those.

I thought that the elipsis after MOL was a bit of a give away.

But unlike I suspect a few of you I have many friends who are very senior NHS employees at the sharp end, other friends who are multi-millionaire business people, and yet others like me who are professionals. We all believe the same thing. In principle, you can run a country like a business, if you understand that you do have to ensure that everyone is cared for.

The NHS is run for the benefit of its managers and unionised staff, not the patients nor the doctors or other clinical staff. It does not work efficiently and its outcomes are worse than the rest of western Europe. It needs reform; not necessarily to save money but to make it do the job it was set up to do. One of my friends is on her third Trust employer in five years, yet her role and job has not changed and for five weeks this year she had no boss and was not getting paid.

We pay out fortunes in social care and yet still do not get good value for money. Everything seems to be done on the cheap. There is no holistic thinking in UK government and there is no money tree to spend our way into a better society. The left-wing seem to be taking us into a society when anything is acceptable and if you don't agree with us, not only will we not listen to you, you're not allowed to say it... (JK Rowling, Prof. Kathleen Stock etc).

If you look at Biden now, you will see that he is keeping many of the Trump policies because he can see that they worked. If he had kept his mouth shut a little more, Trump would be in power now and benefitting the US. So just because you didn't like him doesn't mean he was all bad. Just like I didn't like Tony Blair or Gordon Brown but they did have some good points and it is thanks to Blair that we had the 12 weeek gap between Jab 1 and Jab 2 in the UK which made the immunisation process far more effeective than the US or Israel.

There is nothing wrong with being a Conservative; I would probably class myself as a liberal Conservative (or slightly to the right of New Labour). But there are times when there is a red line; Corbyn's legacy has not yet gone away. And until British Jews are treated in the same way that British Chinese are treated; i.e. not abused for the actions of a foreigh power over which they have no sway, then I will always be wary of the Left.