Yeah, agree on health tourism stopping to! I!m obviously not as citizen smith on here as some would like to believe, everyone needs an enemy to shoot at and the bigger the enemy the bigger the scalp! I mean, do we really hate Brighton? A bit of rivalry, sure, but hate?All a bit juvenile, ok if you are 14, but with age comes wisdom, and it"s a bit like that on here, criticise anything the gov do, and put tin hat on!

Look out for Sterling, he is very reasoned on here, probably hates the left with a vengence but calls out the right when he sees fit, gone awol lately, anyone know where he is?

Spot on. Government bashing at this time is pathetic and childish imo. Ffs let us see this through and then let the enquiries begin.

Are you sure that's how democracy works? Do you not constantly question and hold power to account? What if the government are heading in completely the wrong direction? Is the opposition dolng its job by staying silent where it sees error?

Political point scoring is wrong. As is seeking to silence opposition.

'twas ever thus with politicians.

After being slow out of the blocks in testing the government set an ambitious target personally I don't think we should get too hung up about the numbers. I am still not convinced what good this will do.

For instance if someone self isolates by the time they have an appointment and get the test results back they will probably be free of the virus anyway. What we really need is an instant test.

As to the numbers what should really matter is from now on we are doing mass testing on a daily basis and to try and ramp up the number continuously.

As to the lies well each government has their on way of recording these numbers. Belgium has a high death rate because they include "suspected" deaths which we don't. Others do or don't include deaths outside of hospitals.

As others have said we shall have to wait for the inquiry before we know how well or badly we have done.

One final point it has been suggested if Corbyn was in power they would have done better than the Tories I don't believe that.

If we can agree for one moment that the government has followed the expert advice then Corbyn would have done the same thing and probably made the same mistakes. The argument that Labour would have put more resources into the NHS and so be better prepared only works if Labour had been in power for at least 5 years.

I accept that the Tories have underfunded the NHS but a 3 month old Corbyn government would not have time to turn the NHS around.

Anyway whatever mistakes have been made in the past I prefer to focus on the here and now rather than the wishful thinking if only the voters had ...

Edited by Badger11 (02 May 2020 12.28pm)

It just irks me that it’s seems more about optics than the actual results in this instance, generally largely agree with all of what you have written though.

Regarding funding for the NHS it’s a fair point and 3 months wouldn’t have made a difference. I think though where Labour were on the record calling for a lockdown much earlier this would have likely gone a long way to bringing down the initial death spike and given longer lead in time for our peak to prepare.

Ultimately despite my ideological differences with the current government I do want them to succeed, it ultimately means my life returning to normal as quickly as possible and less overall casualties. This is where my frustration with some sections of the press to properly scrutinise and a faux outrage about people ‘playing politics’ stems from.