Welcome To Zelo Street!

This is a blog of liberal stance and independent mind

Sunday 1 November 2020

Lockdown Delay - Tories To Blame

At least he was consistent: alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson was a whole hour and 50 minutes late to his own press conference yesterday evening, meaning the BBC wisely cut away to Strictly before the questioning started. Another month, another lockdown, and the fault for the dither and delay lies squarely with Bozo.


That there should be a further lockdown, in order to suppress transmission of Covid-19, had been recommended to the Government late in September. When that advice was published in October, Labour leader Keir Starmer called for what was being termed a “circuit breaker” lockdown of two weeks to take place around Autumn half term holidays.

But Bozo, and more importantly chief Downing Street polecat Dominic Cummings and the rest of the wacko libertarian brigade that has infested Number 10 since Johnson became PM last year, knew better. They would not lock down; they would prevail; they could then proclaim to the world that they were WINNING. Thus the flawed mindset.

Sad to say for Polecat Dom and his pals, Covid-19 does not care about his frightfully clever machinations. And Covid-19 cannot be triangulated against. It cannot be taken out with a barrage of misinformation from useful idiot pundits and compliant client journalists. It cannot be embarrassed by revelations about its past. It cannot be bluffed.


So it was that the Tories performed a screeching and chaotic U-Turn: first, the acceptance that it would have to be made; second, the leaking to favoured press outlets; finally, Bozo’s equally chaotic presser. All was done without admitting Starmer had called it correctly, the Tories then played politics in line with the Polecat playbook, and more people had died.

As today’s Observer has reported, “With immediate warnings of the grave economic fallout and a mounting backlash among Tory MPs, the prime minister announced that a series of measures would come into force on Thursday to combat growing Covid infections. They will remain in place until 2 December”. They won’t: the lockdown will go on for longer.

A further U-Turn was made on furlough payments: “In another major reversal, the original furlough scheme under which the state paid 80% of workers’ wages will be extended for the duration of the new lockdown … The move angered regional leaders who had been pleading for extra support for weeks”. Mark Drakeford and Andy Burnham, for instance.


Starmer did not say he told them so. Not in so many words, at least: he “said that the government’s delay in imposing a lockdown will come ‘at an economic cost and a human cost’ and that the government had resisted scientific calls for it since September. He said it was unfair to pretend to the public that Christmas ‘will be normal’ … ‘I don’t think Christmas will be normal and I think we need to level with the public on that,’ he said”.

The Tories were concentrating on poll ratings, not on public safety: “There is also private anger among the government’s scientific advisers, who say that concerns about exceeding the reasonable worst-case scenarios had been known about for weeks. Insiders expressed concerns about the government’s unwillingness to do anything seen as unpopular”. Now they have to act. More people will die. And that will not be popular.

This Government does not know what it’s doing. That’s why we are totally screwed.


Enjoy your visit to Zelo Street? You can help this truly independent blog carry on talking truth to power, while retaining its sense of humour, by adding to its Just Giving page at

https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/zelostreet7

2 comments:

Jonathan said...

Well we did warn the public that the Prince of Fools and his merry band of liberartarian f******** we're making it up as they went along and on the back of fag packets...

40 years of neoliberalism, 4 years of being told we don't need the public sector, public service is dead. the private sector can do it cheaper, more efficiently and are experts in everything.

Except the reality has hit home, the private sector the Tories crow about has failed and its cost the UK dearly in lives lost and lost economic output.

You reap what you sow, but the Tory dominated media will deflect any responsibility to others, looking for scapegoats and easy targets to pin responsibility onto too ala Corbyn being the obvious target.

Anonymous said...

Hard warnings about the lethality of CV-19 and how to deal with it were issued between January and March by the Chinese government, the World Health Organisation and The Lancet.

All the warnings were ignored by the gang of spivs, liars and charlatans in Downing Street. Who still found time to enrich their pals and themselves on the backs of the horror.

And the Starmer Quiff Gang?....Pffftttt....A bubble and squeak of "support" for the culprits. Now the Quiff wonders "How did we get here?" A man so hollow with dishonesty, lies and hypocrisy the only surprise is he hasn't slowly fallen inwards.

If nevertheless the British people forget what these tenth rate cowardly poltroons have done to the country and its culture.....they can't complain at the inevitable repercussions.