ASTRAZENECA & UK TO BLAME FOR VACCINE MESS, NOT THE EU ! ?

Once again, the European Union is trying to divert attention from its own shocking failings by throwing mud around and making a series of ludicrous and contradictory statements.

Rather ridiculously, it's first target is AstraZeneca, the company whose COVID-19 vaccine is currently suspended from use by France, Germany and several other EU member countries, the complaint being that it has failed to deliver on its contractual commitments. How can anyone take this seriously when there are reported to be stockpiles of this vaccine lying around in various EU cities, untrusted and unused ? Either the EU wants, trusts and will use this vaccine or it will not; it cannot claim that supplies are inadequate while also refusing to use them. 

Inevitably, alongside AstraZeneca, the United Kingdom is also in the EU's wonky sights. According to the EU, part of the reason for the limited supplies from AstraZeneca is a ban on vaccine exports to the EU implemented by the UK government, something which the UK government vehemently denies. Pushing on regardless, the EU is now threatening to impose its own ban on the export of vaccines to the UK in revenge. Part of its argument appears to be that its own incompetence in all matters to do with COVID vaccines should be ignored and, instead, the supply of vaccines should be regulated so as to ensure that countries which have managed matters well and are well advance in their vaccination programmes - that is, the UK - should now have their supplies restricted to allow the slow, bureaucratic and incompetent rest - that is, the EU - to catch up. What poppycock !

That all of this is nothing but political 'smoke and mirrors' intended to create an entirely false picture should be obvious; that it is the European Union taking aim at a country which dared to leave its orbit, equally so. The turmoil at the heart of the European Union is palpable and the sooner this ugly, overbearing and moribund organisation collapses, the better for all of us.

EU CLOTS PLAY DANGEROUS POLITICAL GAME.

The actions of various European Union member countries in suspending use of the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine appear to have caused consternation everywhere. Claims that the vaccine is potentially dangerous, causing recipients to suffer life threatening blood clots, have been made although the evidence is scant if not non-existent.

The medicines' regulator in the UK, a country in which many millions have now received this particular vaccine without ill-effect, can find no evidence of danger. The World Health Organisation has discovered no cause for alarm and it's reported that even Europe's own regulator doesn't believe there is any issue to resolve. Experts on the use of vaccines have said that there is always a risk of blood clots arising in any population but that the claimed incidence amongst those in Europe who've had this particular 'jab' is actually lower than amongst the general population. 

So what is going on ?

Firstly, the EU has an ongoing dispute with AstraZeneca over vaccine supply and is unhappy about the speed of delivery; in typical EU style, its leaders refuse to accept that its own late ordering has contributed to its problems and, instead, want to lay the blame at the door of AstraZeneca. They have even gone so far as to propose banning the export of vaccines from the EU in order to safeguard their own supplies, a move roundly condemned by the rest of the world.

Secondly, a direct consequence of the EU's own failure to act quickly last year and a corollary of the first point, they have found themselves short of supplies and slow to get their own vaccination programmes up to speed. Politically, this has been disastrous for them, with people rightly angry that they cannot get the protection they need. Additionally, Germany and France are both approaching important elections, those for the Bundestag in September of this year and for the French Presidency early next. Angela Merkel's CDU party is in trouble in the former and Emmanuel Macron is not everyone's choice for the latter - both have reasons to try to divert attention from their own, and the EU's, failings. Italy is always in both political and financial crisis and the EU as a whole is in an almighty mess, financially and otherwise.

And so we have the latest row over vaccines. What better way to avoid blame and to save the people from further harm than to find some problem with the AstraZeneca vaccine. As well as demonstrating that they are protecting their populations from a dangerous vaccine, they can also cover up supply shortages by simply stopping vaccination programmes for apparently good medical reasons. Even further, they get to cast doubt on the efficacy of the vaccine produced by their current bête-noire, and to damage them. It just adds to the EU's joy that the this vaccine is produced by a part-British company and is linked to a major British university.

No doubt the EU's medicines' regulator will eventually state that their are no dangers, other than in NOT having the vaccine, and the vaccination programmes will restart but, by then, there will have been a degree of stock piling. Everything will look much better as the numbers vaccinated climb rapidly. What this tells us is that politicians will do absolutely anything in order to gain favour with their voters, regardless of truth, benefit, or disbenefit, to those same voters.

This is political truth laid bare.

BMA AND RCN GREED IS SHOCKING.

The appalling greed and selfishness of some is almost unbelievable.

At a time when hundreds of thousands have lost their jobs, many thousands more may yet do so and more than 120,000 have lost their lives, health service unions have decided to whinge about their pay. Notwithstanding that there will be no pay rise this year for the police, fire service, local council workers and many others, the representatives of some of the highest paid in our society are demanding yet more. 

The doctors' union, the British Medical Association, none of whose members can be considered poor while many are simply very wealthy, wants more. The Royal College of Nursing, another trade union despite its fancy name, wants more and yet its members already have average pay in the region of £34,000, well in excess of the national average for all employees. If anyone has a genuine gripe it may be the members of Unison, the union which represents the lower paid echelons of NHS staff, though even here can they really demand money with menaces in the face of the death and mayhem wrought by the COVID-19 epidemic ?

Doctors, nurses and the rest have chosen their careers for an assortment of reasons, pay no doubt being one of them though very unlikely to have been the driving force. That workers in these professions have been put under pressure by recent events is undeniable, but so has the rest of society. When those who work in the health care sector sign on, do they expect to have it easy ? Do they expect it to be a simple 9 to 5 job with no problems ? If they do, they are deluded.

People who need hospital care are sick or injured; some will be very sick or very badly injured, some will need very intensive care and many will die. While COVID-19 has brought about a high level of illness in a short period of time, hospitals have actually had many fewer other patients to deal with due to the various protective measures put in place. Overall, the volume of patients being cared for, and the pressure on staff, has surely been no greater, and maybe even less, than is usual.

Doctors nurses and the other health sector workers chose their careers and are rewarded for their work, some very greatly so.  They are not some special breed, indeed most are average contributors while some are very good and an equal number are pretty poor. It is time that the national obsession with the NHS was ended and for people to realise that those who work in it are simply doing jobs that they chose to do for whatever reasons they may have had at the time of joining. They are not Gods, they are workers like the rest of us. 

It is also time for the unions that represent these workers to wind their necks in at a time of national crisis, not to be threatening strike action over unsustainable demands for yet more money from an already grossly over-stretched public purse. After all, who will ultimately be picking up the bill but the rest of us who have no pay rise, no job and yet are faced with higher and higher taxes at every turn.

EU VACCINE DEBACLE PROVES BREXIT WAS RIGHT !

Thank God we left the dysfunctional European Union !!!!

Having left the EU at the end of January 2020, the United Kingdom was then free to make its own plans and arrangements for dealing with the worldwide Coronavirus epidemic. The UK government agreed contracts with several companies for the supply of millions of doses of vaccines and 2 of those vaccines are now being injected into the arms of UK citizens at the rate of more than 2 million a week. 

But what has happened in the European Union ?

Being a group of 27 countries which are almost forbidden to act independently on matters of any importance, they're in a right old mess. The 27 had to agree on a way forward and so were slow to negotiate for supplies of the vaccines. Now, of course, they deny this and claim to have obtained a better price than other nations - such as the UK and USA - but are also at the back of the queue when it comes to supply. This they do not like.

One of the main producers of vaccines, the UK based pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, agreed a deal with the EU but has now found itself unable to supply the number of doses initially agreed due to production problems. Quite simply, it doesn't have the current capacity to satisfy demand and is having to create new facilities, which will take time. The EU doesn't like this one bit and is accusing the company of prioritising supplies to other countries, notably the UK, over supplies to its 27 member states. The EU is threatening various reprisals against the company and is also threatening to introduce curbs on exports of vaccines produced within its borders, seemingly regardless of contractual arrangements that may exist.

Among the various lessons taught to the world by  COVID-19, one is surely that a conglomeration of disparate countries relying on a central government to manage their affairs is a bad idea. When vital decisions are delayed due to a need to satisfy convoluted and time consuming ratification processes it's surely time to quit. The EU itself, with its Commission, Parliament, European Council and Council of the EU, is bad enough, but when individual countries (and in some cases regions) also have to have their say, it's utterly unmanageable in a time of crisis, if not always.

Of course, those who sit at the top of this vast edifice will never admit that there's a problem; if things go wrong, it must be the other party that's at fault, in this case AstraZeneca, the UK, perhaps the Boogeyman, for all I know. The knee jerk reaction is to cry "FOUL !", threaten legal action and assorted penalties for the perceived wrongdoers, and of course, use it as an excuse for demanding "MORE EUROPE, NOT LESS !".

If the UK was still a member of this dreadful organisation we would have been unable to take our own path in tackling COVID-19; we would not already have vaccinated well over 6 million people and be on course to vaccinate all of our most vulnerable citizens by mid-February. In fact we would barely have started vaccinating anyone.

If ever there was a clear proof that leaving the European Union was the right thing, indeed the only sensible thing, to do, it's this current debacle. How long will it be before other countries, hard hit by the virus and now struggling to cope under the dead hand of the EU's all-encompassing central bureaucracy, come to the same conclusion ? 

WILL TONY BLAIR NEVER GO AWAY ?

Will Tony Blair never realise that no one cares what he thinks and bugger off ?

In the midst of the COVID-19 epidemic, Blair has had nothing helpful or useful to say but, nonetheless, insisted on sharing his egotistical wisdom with the rest of we poor mortals. Today, he's emerged from his political grave to tell us that the UK government must up its game and deliver 5 million vaccinations a week in order to avoid another national lockdown; apparently the current plan for 1 million, rising to 2 million isn't adequate and "if he was Prime Minister" today, he'd be doing things very differently.

How easy it is to sit on the sidelines, criticise and suggest alternative strategies when he has no power and no responsibility, when he has no control over the actual production of the vaccine doses. In like manner, I could no doubt claim that if I was Prime Minister, we'd be vaccinating the whole population of the UK by the end of January, indeed, why stop there ? Let's make it the total population of the world - easy if I was Prime Minister. Not so easy in a real world in which vaccine production is limited, and will remain limited, by factors such as the availability of suitable laboratories, appropriate staff, relevant testing facilities, sterile media and packaging, adequate distribution, appropriate vaccination facilities and staff, to mention but a few. Then, of course, we have to remember that the laboratories currently engaged on vaccine production have orders from much of the world and not just the UK. Blair happily ignores all such matters when he shares his wisdom with us today, as he did in the past.

The fact is that Blair is NOT prime Minister and hasn't been for 12 years. When he was Prime Minister he supported Gordon Brown's creation of a client state, with millions dependant on ever more generous government hand-outs and with banks encouraged to offer loans with little evidence that the security offered was adequate; the result from such a world-wide and utterly misguided approach was the financial crisis of 2008 from which the world had barely recovered before COVID struck. Despite this monumental failure of his own policy, Blair now expects us to believe that he has it right on this occasion.

Well, for this member of the general public, Blair always was a man far stronger in style than substance. He's a man who climbed over all comers in his pursuit of the top job, while actually having none of the necessary attributes other than a winning smile. His behaviour over the Iraq war and his laughable strutting beside then US President George W Bush, showed him up for what he was. His ambition to continue to influence British, European and even World affairs continues unabated - thankfully, no one really seems to be listening to this jumped up little twerp any more.

Let's hope it stays that way.

Postscript :

And now Blair's latest wild eyed successor, SIR Keir Starmer, is demanding that we suffer a National Lockdown, to be imposed within the next 24 hours.

Starmer can't lose on this one. If the government ignores him, as it should, and COVID numbers continue to rise, he can claim that he was right and that victims of the virus have the government to blame, regardless of any carefree and selfish actions of their own. If numbers don't rise any further and even begin to fall, he can claim that he was simply taking the cautious and sensible approach. Given that the chances are that excessive mixing over Christmas and the New Year has yet to be picked up by the latest statistics, Starmer will probably be shown to be on the right side of the numbers in the next 3 or 4 weeks, though for purely political reasons. The latest restrictions will almost certainly mean that numbers are falling rapidly by the beginning of February, National Lockdown or not.

What is needed is consistency, not political point scoring. Where Boris Johnson's government have so far failed is in consistency; their messages have often been less than clear and, while trying to adopt a positive bent, they have often been overly optimistic. Consequently, they have found themselves under pressure to change tack on numerous occasions, pressure to which they have ultimately had no alternative but to yield.

The latest issue, prior to Starmer's demands of today, have involved the opening, or otherwise, of schools after the Christmas break. Gavin Williamson, surely a dead man walking in his role as Secretary of State for Education, has been a disaster in his presentation of government policy on all matters to do with schools and is now under attack from councils and unions. For Johnson to resolve the current crisis and regain some control, he has no choice but to replace Williamson; if he does not, he will find himself under yet more pressure that may prove terminal.

Johnson must regain control and be seen to have done so. Williamson must go and the question of an immediate National Lockdown be dealt with. Otherwise, we are more than likely to have a new Prime Minister by the autumn, and quite possibly not a Conservative one.

UNINSPRIING LEADERSHIP IS ALARMING.

 Has there ever been a less inspiring bunch of MPs in our parliament ?

While Prime Minister Boris Johnson is a 'larger than life' personality and clearly has a degree of charisma, there are increasing question marks over his leadership of the country at this most difficult of times. A successor to Winston Churchill he most certainly is not. However, in a parliament full of mostly grey non-entities, he still stands out.

Indeed, I find myself having trouble trying to name many of our other representatives on either side of the house. Apart from the few who've been seen on our screens in recent news conferences, who on earth is in the Cabinet ? Rishi Sunak has undoubtedly none himself no harm and has stood out as a confident chancellor of the exchequer, even if his actual competence has yet to be proven; Matt Hancock, Robert Jenrick and Oliver Dowden have appeared on occasion and none has exactly set the world alight with their charisma; in fact they could all 'bore for Britain' given the chance. I've just recalled that Dominic Raab is Foreign Secretary but who are the 15 or so who make up the most powerful body in the country ?

Worse is the situation on the other side of the parliamentary divide. Keir Starmer as leader of the Opposition is as grey as grey can be, a man utterly lacking any charisma or inspiration. As a lawyer, he seems to believe that presenting every argument as a court room speech, resulting in the dullest of dull deliveries. It's notable that even the new incarnation of "Spitting Image" has found him so dull as to be almost impossible to lampoon.

Astonishingly, Starmer's front bench colleagues are even more dull than he is, and are mostly anonymous. Who can name the shadow chancellor of the exchequer, foreign secretary or home secretary ? The only opposition figure I've seen much of in recent times is the egregious John Ashworth, shadow secretary of state for health, whose capacity for saying nothing of note at great length is amazing.

In these most difficult of times, only one politician seems to have enhanced their status and that is Nicola Sturgeon, who doesn't even have a seat at Westminster. However, as leader of the Scottish Nationalists, and someone whose political views I am wholly opposed to, she has been a stand-out performer. She has kept her people informed, has not been afraid to be be controversial when needed and, above all, has given a clear impression of being in control. In comparison, neither Johnson nor Starmer has seemed to be doing anything but thrashing around in the dark or looking for political advantage.

Of course, we are in unprecedented times and government has different factors to consider when making decisions. To some extent, Nicola Sturgeon has an easier task in that she does not have total economic control over her region and so can concentrate more on the health issues, while looking to Westminster for financial support. Keir Starmer also has an easier task in that it is always far easier to criticise than it is to lead; while attempting to locate holes in the government's strategy or even suggesting alternatives, he knows that his words will never be tested in reality. Boris Johnson, as the man in the hot seat, not only has to weigh the options but also has to make decisions that have real effect.

What is most worrying is that there seem to be so few people of note or standing involved in any of the decision making and it all seems very haphazard. One can only hope that out of this quagmire will eventually emerge a solution that works, has the support of all parties and does not attract the usual volley of pointless and mindless political rhetoric.

STARMER et al SHOULD BE SUPPORTIVE, NOT CARPING.

 As the government grapples with one of the most challenging situations to hit the world, let alone, this country, in decades, its political opponents continue to carp, whinge and complain. Whatever the government does, it isn't enough, it's too late or it's just plain wrong.

Do the likes of Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner, John Ashworth, Sadiq Khan and the rest not have anything in mind but gaining political advantage ? Would they really have done things so differently, or is it just about having the benefit of hindsight ? 

Despite the rising numbers of cases in the United Kingdom, we are still a long way behind the situation in France, for instance, where newly diagnosed cases are running at THREE times the level we are currently experiencing, and France has a similar size of population; the UK is also carrying out at least as many, if not more, tests than in most other countries. In truth, the approach adopted by our government is proving more successful than that in many other countries. Why do Starmer and his merry band not recognize this  and support the government ?

Of course, it's because that would not be to their benefit. Thankfully, despite the media being full of bad luck stories and tales of woe, most people seem to understand and back the government's strategy. If that leads to stricter rules and harsher penalties, they will understand and back that too. Most people see an advantage in getting this virus beaten and are far less concerned about who might win the next election.

A-LEVEL RESULTS HIGHLIGHT GOVERNMENTAL SHAMBLES.

The COVID-19 epidemic has revealed much about our country, its government and its people, little of it good.

While there have been stories about phenomenal fund raising and the dedication of health car workers, the real stories involve the utter shambles at the heart of the nation's administration and the appalling "couldn't care less" attitude of far too many of our people, especially some of the younger ones.  While the government has issued guidance which has often been less than crystal clear, many younger people have carried on as if the epidemic simply did not exist, gathering in huge parties, on the beach and, more recently, in public houses and showing utter contempt for the rules and the rest of us.

Things were not helped by Prime Minister Boris Johnson himself catching the virus and spending time on the seriously ill list, but that is now history. What is now most worrying is that there appears to be little central control of the government's approach to managing the epidemic; diktats are issued at little or no notice and withdrawn in the same manner. The latest unbelievable mess over 'A-Level' results must surely mark a new low in this catastrophic saga, and yet ............. .

Over the last few months, our National Health Service, heralded by every government since 1948 as the "envy of the world", has been virtually closed for all but COVID victims and the most seriously ill; it has been shown to be very good at dealing with one problem at a time, but has failed spectacularly in its principal job of providing healthcare to all whenever needed. Its sister organisation, the named Public Health England, has proved itself to be utterly incompetent on almost every level, from sourcing protective equipment to producing statistics. Indeed, the numbers that have been spewed out by PHE and the Office for National Statistics, yet another pompously named and utterly incompetent body, have been withdrawn, revised, rebased and reissued with such obtuse associated guidance and little or no audit trail as to make them almost meaningless. 

Now we have the farce of the 'A-Level' results. State school pupils in their hundreds of thousands have seen their predicted results downgraded, often quite dramatically, while public (=private) school pupils have seen the predictions of their grades virtually untouched. The government has, with crass stupidity, announced that the process for the determination of grades was robust and correct, followed by rapid backtracking from the Department of Education and the officiating body, yet another QUANGO which glories in the name of the 'Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation', or OFQUAL for short. This last named joke of an organisation has, for years, presided over steadily rising pass rates and awards of the highest grades, with no apparent regard for the ultimate unsustainability of its position, but has now come horribly unstuck when confronted by a genuine need for its services. 

Pupils have had their grades determined not on the basis of their own performance but by reference to the past performance of their schools and groups of fellow pupils. Thus, pupils from a top-performing school may well have seen their predicted results stand while those from schools with a history of poor performance will most probably have seen their predicted results downgraded, regardless of the actual merits of individual cases. For OFQUAL to say that those who are unhappy can appeal is nothing but a 'cop-out' while their issuing of various guidance which has been withdrawn for further consideration within a matter of hours would be laughable if it wasn't so shocking.

This 'moderation' process has been a disaster and will undoubtedly lead to the sacking of the Secretary of State, Gavin Williamson, and quite possibly of its own heads, chairman Roger Taylor, and Chief Regulator Sally Collier, neither of whom will ever have been heard of before. If it was up to me, I'd abolish OFQUAL and the Department for Education altogether, issue some basic guidance on educational standards and leave it to the universities to sort things out by reference to international standards.

If COVID-19 has taught us anything beyond its immediate effects, its that our government and its hundreds of QUANGOS are inept and incompetent. The NHS is nowhere near being the "envy of the world", PHE is a joke, our education system is a mess and the ONS is a farce. Sadly, we also now know that Prime Minister Boris Johnson is no Churchill, in fact, I'm not even sure he's up to the job at all. What we need is a revolution in the way that our country is run. We have taken one tentative step away from centrally managed services by leaving the European Union, now we need to dismantle the elephantine and labyrinthine echelons of our own central government, letting some light and new thinking into the unbelievably musty corridors of Whitehall.

COVID-19 has given us the opportunity to do this and it's up to the current mob in government to grasp the nettle with both hands and give it one hell of a shaking.

HOLIDAY MAKERS TRAVEL AT THEIR PERIL !

Oh My GOD !

How utterly unfair !

The goons who decided that the COVID-19 epidemic was no reason not to carry on with their usual holiday in Spain have come unstuck and they now find that they will have to spend 14 days in self-isolation on their return to these shores. 

Despite knowing that official guidance was, to say the very least, fluid, these prats were determined to enjoy their time in the sun but are now regretting it; typically, they are also looking for someone to blame for their predicament. Obviously, it's the Government, whose advice has changed, in their view, without warning.

Excuse me, but one thing that has been clear all along the COVID-trail has been that Government advice was subject to change at short notice. Indeed, it's highly notable that the latest advice and change of regulations affecting overseas travellers has emanated from the Department of Transport whose head, Grant Shapps, has been caught out, having journeyed to Spain with his family on Saturday morning.

While those who chose to act as normal regardless of the current epidemic will undoubtedly whinge, whine and blame everyone but themselves for the mess they now find themselves in, the simple truth is that they have behaved like self-serving morons. Presumably they have believed that the epidemic could not possibly interrupt the normal flow of their lives, which seems to include regular sojourns in Spain alongside hordes of similarly stupid English tourists.

My heart bleeds for them - not, not NOT !!

NOT A TIME FOR POLITICS.

Whatever they may say, there are some political figures who are desperate to turn COVID-19 into a tool for gaining future advantage. Protestations of support for the government are difficult to reconcile with a stream of claims that they aren't doing enough to support every disparate group, have got their strategy wrong, aren't doing enough testing, aren't accountable enough; basically that that they have got everything wrong.

There is no doubt that COVID-19 is dangerous, at least to some, but we have no idea how many may have been infected but shown no symptoms - results from one German village suggest that infection may be far wider than previously thought and serious consequences far less. Might this be the case world-wide or is it just an anomaly ? Are the world-wide panic measures really justified or are they not ?

There is a very important separation to be drawn between dying of COVID-19 and dying with COVID-19, although this distinction seems to be horribly lacking in any of the official reports. Dying of" the virus indicates that it was the primary cause of death; there were no other conditions which the virus did no more than mildly complicate or exacerbate. "Dying with" the virus means that the deceased had been diagnosed as having been infected with the virus but could well have died from other causes that had no connection at all with the virus. It has been suggested, according to a report in the Daily Telegraph a week or so ago, that most of the deaths so far attributed to the virus fall into this latter category. If so, how dangerous is the virus on its own to the rest of the population ?

To answer this question, and others, we can only rely on the knowledge and experience of the experts whose advice is being relied upon by our government. These experts may or may not be correct in their analyses of the situation but it is an unprecedented time and they have little in the way of passed history to use as a guide. Equally, our politicians will do what they think is for the best, guided by the best advice they can find. In the end, there will be no one to blame, only those to praise for helping us all to survive through an unprecedented time of national crisis. Doctors and nurses, carers, delivery drivers and shop workers, all of the other 'essential' workers and even those in government and advising government.

This is not a matter of politics, it's a matter of survival.