18 February 2021
Diary of a Corbynista
An Irreversible Plague
by Don Urquhart
11 February
Andy Cowper is the Editor of Health Policy Insight. He was asked by Debs Cohen for his thoughts on the Health Reforms White Paper.
The big surprise in the White Paper was the extent to which Matt Hancock has looked at all the NHS problems in its current situation and said aha I think the answer to this is more me.
Mr Cowper speaks for the nation.
12 February
Conservative MPs and the press are screaming for the lockdown to be eased. Some are saying that we will have to accommodate in future the expectation that people will die of Coronavirus. There is much talk of balancing the need to save lives against the imperative of economic activity.
But when they speak of deaths they mean that poor people in deprived areas will die and in particular in those areas where workers cannot afford to self-isolate. The government is giving them little help, whatever numbers they bandy around.
I am all for opening up the economy when the poor and vulnerable are adequately protected but we are a long way from that situation.
13 February
I was shocked to see so many cricket fans huddled together in Chennai for the 2nd Test. Apparently there are 9,000 of them, not many wearing masks, and most of them shouting support for their team. Admittedly India is doing better than the UK in combating the virus but this looks like a recipe for increasing transmission.
Was there a reason why they were not allowed to sit in the ten tiers closest to the playing surface?
14 February
SafeEdforAll is a potent repository of evidence pointing to the direct causality between the reopening of schools and increasing numbers of Coronavirus cases. You will not see it quoted in the mainstream media, least of all the BBC.
15 February
The Conservatives are doing better than Labour in the opinion polls. More shockingly though there are still 500,000 members of a corrupt Labour Party. However much you criticise politicians or the media, the elephant in the room is always the British people. I know quite a few of them and they are generally speaking intelligent and, astonishingly, regard me as the one who is off the wall. Many’s the time I have had to resort to putting people down with “They laughed at Beethoven”, but it is wearing thin.
I am reassured that most people in this country had Nelson Mandela as a terrorist. It can’t just have been that they bought the line being sold by the media and politicians. But they were wrong about Nelson then and about Corbyn now.
16 February
At yesterday’s Downing Street Briefing Johnson told us that any loosening up of the lockdown would be irreversible.
What is he seeking to convey by using this word?
He is the Prime Minister and it is in his gift to reverse any measures he initiates.
Were I paranoid I might see this as a sop to his backbenchers along the lines:
We have to make it look careful and considered but soon we will be letting it rip all the way to herd immunity.
17 February
Covid-Linked Syndrome in Children Is Growing, and Cases Are More Severe
is the headline in the New York Times .
In the UK, newspapers and the media will buy whatever Johnson tells them. The careers and bank balances of powerful people mandate this.
So it will be down to social media to expose the truth.
The Prime Minister will tell us that the best thing for us is reopening schools on March 8th.
I will not be able to accept that this is a good idea without a statement from SAGE of how many additional deaths it will cause between March 8th and 30th June.
Of course they don’t know but they can model it and give us their best estimate. Let’s say their answer is 1,000.
Given the moribund state of the House of Commons there is no chance that they will debate whether opening the schools is worth 1,000 deaths but the general public should know what is being decided when the PM speaks on Monday 22nd February.
