So now we know...

[MadAmster]

Not to mention that billions of pounds went to friends, family, sponsors etc in over priced contracts for PPE etc.

Who pays? The tax payer.

Ireland built a Covid App for £850K, that worked. Offered it to Boris who politely refused and, instead, gave a contract for about £30M to the company Cummings' sister was involved with. Dubious.

Germany ran a successful Covid track and trace system. They have a population 20M greater than that of the UK. Running that system cost 1 billion. The UK's was inefficient and cost north of £40 Billion.

Is this type of recurring and expensive failure pure bad luck, incompetence or feathering their own nests?

[ramAnag]

I just don’t get the ‘crying wolf’ analogy, Swale.
GP has accused me of ‘crying wolf’ so often I’ve lost count, but the whole point of that fable was that if you joke around pretending something bad is happening all the time then no one will believe you when something really does go wrong.
That couldn’t be further from the truth. Yes...I’ve repeatedly called Johnson out for lying and wrongdoing...but never unfairly or incorrectly. We were told to wait until the result of the police enquiry...we’ve waited and now, guess what...GP says it’s ‘boring’ and AF says wait and see again.
Maybe they’ll have the same attitude to *****philic teachers, corrupt police officers, bent accountants, crooked lawyers and Shipmanesque doctors because, in GP’s world at least, it now appears that...anything goes.

[Ramshank72]

I don't mean any offence personally, as I've heard RA's "wolf crying" from people outside of footymad (just spend 5 minutes on Twitter and you'll get your fill of anti tory rhetoric in abundance). The thing is though, it is really boring, and I totally get GP's comments.
MA has raised some really important points for criticism above, which are well founded questions and something we may consider the next time we mark an "X" at ballot, and it's something that politicians (and as Swale points out, their associated civil servants and support who'll be there regardless of PM) will have to learn from, for future crisis management. I'm not interested in the "blame game" (especially in such unprecedented circumstances), but more interested that things are properly addressed and learned from to prevent future failures.
But the constant blood lust is really boring, particularly when it comes to cheese and pickle on a biscuit, and sadly, if everyone is focused on picking holes in any minor side issue they can and making mountains out of molehills, then the issues that really impact us and require accountability (such as MA's crisis management points) all become insignificant, and will happen again.

[Geoff Parkstone]

Thank you Ramshank, I just hope you are not now to become the new target of rA's tedious anti everything governmental bile. As I said earlier, the message may be valid, the messenger ruins it by making it "same old, same old".

And in response to an earlier Swale suggestion that I will continue to vote Tory, I've never voted Tory i my life not do I plan to. Equally I've never voted Labour - the two major parties are as bad as each other. Riddled with self interest and hypocrisy, so it matters not who is in power. My vote has generally been Green or on one drunken occasion when a lot younger, Libdem. No hopers both and a protest vote perhaps but I could never vote for either entrenched major party

[ramAnag]

I don't mean any offence personally, as I've heard RA's "wolf crying" from people outside of footymad (just spend 5 minutes on Twitter and you'll get your fill of anti tory rhetoric in abundance). The thing is though, it is really boring, and I totally get GP's comments.
MA has raised some really important points for criticism above, which are well founded questions and something we may consider the next time we mark an "X" at ballot, and it's something that politicians (and as Swale points out, their associated civil servants and support who'll be there regardless of PM) will have to learn from, for future crisis management. I'm not interested in the "blame game" (especially in such unprecedented circumstances), but more interested that things are properly addressed and learned from to prevent future failures.
But the constant blood lust is really boring, particularly when it comes to cheese and pickle on a biscuit, and sadly, if everyone is focused on picking holes in any minor side issue they can and making mountains out of molehills, then the issues that really impact us and require accountability (such as MA's crisis management points) all become insignificant, and will happen again.

I wouldn’t know about Twitter, Ramshank...never been on it in my life...and it’s not ‘anti Tory rhetoric’...well not in my case anyway.
My argument isn’t ‘anti Tory’...it’s anti having a lying duplicitous b@stard as the leader of our country.
I don’t see this as an opportunity for Labour to take power although, if there were to be an election now, they’d be a damned site closer than they were last time around.
I’m obviously not a Tory but I don’t tar them all with the same brush...I would though ask you the following questions...how have I ‘cried wolf’?
How is exposing the PM’s repeated dishonesty ‘making mountains out of molehills’?
Why do we have to wait for the ballot box when it is clear that the man is a ‘wrong ‘un’?

[Ramshank72]

Sure

how have I ‘cried wolf’?... I'm just quoting the "wolf" thing, I think that's been explained already.
How is exposing the PM’s repeated dishonesty ‘making mountains out of molehills’?... Unless you're planning on marrying the chap, I don't get the obsession with personality over governance (eg, is it more important to you that he had a few crackers, than it is that he hasn't ordered the launch of multi-warheads towards Russia... they're both equally extreme points of their respective scales, though only 1 is on your mind?).
Why do we have to wait for the ballot box when it is clear that the man is a ‘wrong ‘un’?... That's the democracy we live in. Let me turn that question around, which "lying duplicitous b@stard" tory do you want as PM whilst you await your next vote?

NB for avoidance of doubt, I'm not defending any one or any thing.

[ramAnag]

Sure

how have I ‘cried wolf’?... I'm just quoting the "wolf" thing, I think that's been explained already.
How is exposing the PM’s repeated dishonesty ‘making mountains out of molehills’?... Unless you're planning on marrying the chap, I don't get the obsession with personality over governance (eg, is it more important to you that he had a few crackers, than it is that he hasn't ordered the launch of multi-warheads towards Russia... they're both equally extreme points of their respective scales, though only 1 is on your mind?).
Why do we have to wait for the ballot box when it is clear that the man is a ‘wrong ‘un’?... That's the democracy we live in. Let me turn that question around, which "lying duplicitous b@stard" tory do you want as PM whilst you await your next vote?

NB for avoidance of doubt, I'm not defending any one or any thing.

Clearly it hasn’t. It’s an analogy that just doesn’t work because I haven’t said anything untrue...just referred to the list of failings made earlier by Swale and MA amongst others.

Likewise...how can you trust a ‘chap’ to assume control of ‘multi warheads’ who has misled the country and Parliament? That surely is the point. His credibility as a leader is in tatters.

I don’t know who should be the next Tory to be PM...that’s for them to decide, but as I’ve said, I’m not being ‘anti Tory’ and at no time have I suggested that this should lead to a General Election.
What I am saying is, just as Hancock was declared as unfit to continue in his role after breaking the rules, so Sunak and, more especially, Johnson - because he is the leader - no longer have any credibility.
They made the rules that most people abided by throughout the pandemic, but they then broke them and lied about it. I simply don’t understand how they can be defended and that’s exactly what you are doing by adopting a stance which allows him/them to stay in position...imo.

[ramAnag]

Thank you Ramshank, I just hope you are not now to become the new target of rA's tedious anti everything governmental bile. As I said earlier, the message may be valid, the messenger ruins it by making it "same old, same old".

And in response to an earlier Swale suggestion that I will continue to vote Tory, I've never voted Tory i my life not do I plan to. Equally I've never voted Labour - the two major parties are as bad as each other. Riddled with self interest and hypocrisy, so it matters not who is in power. My vote has generally been Green or on one drunken occasion when a lot younger, Libdem. No hopers both and a protest vote perhaps but I could never vote for either entrenched major party

I do wish, just once, you’d make sense over this.

Firstly, there wasn’t a ‘Green Party’ until about 1990 so are we to assume that you’d only voted once before you were approaching forty? Seems unlikely.
Secondly...I have ‘targeted’ no one. This thread began with me asking a question only for you to immediately ‘target’ me with your infantile, repetitive and rather rude ‘boring’, ‘yawn’ accusations.
If our PM’s dishonesty and lack of integrity mean nothing to you then so be it...but they do to some of us and there is something very rotten in the UK today, as personified by the current ‘leader’, which shouldn’t be ignored.

[Geoff Parkstone]

Interesting story breaking on BBC (so must be true) about teachers (and NHS staff) having jollies and drinkies after work in the workplace during the first lockdown. Denied by T'Unions but applying your "guilty until proved otherwise, and then guilty" logic, will you be calling for those teachers to be sacked too, rA, or do you apply a one rule for us, one for them approach the same way the government seems to?

[Andy_Faber]

I understand it, I'm not sure you do. You've being crying wolf so often that when there really is a wolf here, you cry again and I don't care as I've heard it all so many times before it's boring. In this case, don't blame the message, blame the messenger

RA that’s exactly the point I’m making, ‘you’ (the Johnson out brigade, no just personally obviously) have been using ‘he’s got to go’ as your weapon so many times it’s lost it’s impact at the very moment it’s most valid