Having read your other post I take this now as sarcasm.

Yip, they're all just lazy, part of the problem, expressive waste, lefty woke snowflakes.
(Just thought I'd join in)

Honest question because I don’t know, but what was an Oncologist/Urology/Cancer consultant- and their team - doing with COVID patients ??

Offering the best care they were able. All hands to the pump sort of thing. It’ll have been difficult even for those working in more immediately relevant areas of medicine, trying to treat patients with a new disease. But they’ll all have some useful/applicable knowledge from their training/rotations.

There’s also things like patients with cancer, multiple sclerosis, etc., etc. being routinely treated with immunosuppressive therapies, and managing the additional risks associated with that, developing and implementing new treatment guidelines, which will also have created more work for oncologists, neurologists and other specialists. To be fair, I don’t know how much impact that had overall, but it was something I was quite aware from my work.

You make a good point about teams, as well. There’ll inevitably have been disruption to them and I can easily imagine that’ll have created bottlenecks, or required fewer people to each do more.

Cheers for that, clears things up with me a little, not sure it’s something that can be measured but based on all this there are going to be a lot more deaths from other causes than COVID that would have been avoided under normal circumstances

Do you know if GP’s have had similar roles because a lot of practices don’t seem to be having as many face to face or even telephone consultations- and it sounds like it’s going to be the norm rather than going back to the old ways- and things like telling my 80 year old mother the only way she can book an appointment is via an online service, of which there was not a chance of her doing that.

You think of the intellectual horsepower in the NHS - its huge some of the brightest people in this country work within it. What was the bottleneck that Covid caused that stopped the NHS functioning as normal? ICU all its capacity was used up by Covid patients. In a private company that issue would have been tackled and an alternative strategy devised and implemented pretty quickly and given cost wasn't an issue even more so. Next will be we didn't have the staff - how difficult would it have been to retrain nurses to work in ICU with Covid patients - let's face facts most of them were receiving exactly the same treatment. You could then have deployed your expert ICU nurses/doctors back to doing what they were used to everything carries on?

The idea that the whole resources of a hospital were directed towards Covid doesn't hold water - you would simply wouldn't have the room to house them all. A&E was very quiet - normal surgery non-existent through put was down 80-90% are you seriously suggesting all that excess capacity was all used up managing Covid?

On other matters - there is now a ground swell for unlocking everything earlier given the numbers - Labour want to go with the current timetable. Labour didn't want schools to go back - why because the unions didn't think it was appropriate - have we seen a huge spike since schools returned?

Brexit seems to have quietened quite a lot - to most people it has had no impact to the normality of their existence - which is what Boris told them - Starmer on the other hand said it would be armageddon which as yet hasn't happened. Labour said it was a mistake not joining the European vaccination program - how wrong he was.

Foreign aid - most people would suggest the money is better spent here at the moment - Labour just don't seem to be able to judge the mood at all.

Labour seem to be nowhere - if it was for Boris being sly and underhand with a few things Labour wouldn't have anything to say

Good grief, you've created enough straw men in that post to populate a series of Worzel Gummidge.

Just to acknowledge that I have been looking at this through a fairly narrow window, and I am just some random on the internet.



I think GP surgeries were nervous about becoming infection hotspots, and that contributed to more remote consultations. I’m not really sure, being honest.

I think you raise a good point about your mother and online services. My parents are around that age, just a little bit younger and I know what you mean. I think the pandemic has accelerated a lot of trends, in an already fast changing world, and it is getting difficult for older people to keep up and access the services they need, in both the public and private sectors.

To ZZB:

I think the pandemic was a metaphorical public health tsunami, rather than creating a bottle neck. Not all problems have solutions that allow optimal care for everyone. Like after a battle or a disaster when doctors have to let some people die who they could maybe otherwise save to focus on others with a better chance, or let somebody lose an eye to save somebody else’s life. It really wasn’t just like a bad flu year. Also it went way beyond ICU, there were plenty of very sick people needing care without being on a ventilator. I am seriously suggesting that COVID-19 required A LOT of extra resource and that inevitably affected other elements of healthcare delivery.

I don’t share your confidence that a private company would necessarily have come with a successful alternative strategy, and haven’t seen one suggested. If anything, I’d suggest that track and trace suggests that directing large amounts of public money to the private sector is not necessarily a universal panacea.

Brexit has been swamped by COVID-19. And in fairness, we did avoid a no deal. I mean, it is poop - but it is done. There’s no political mileage for Labour in it, and even the Tories are on fumes in terms of stoking resentment against the EU for enforcing the agreement they campaigned for and signed up to.

Foreign aid - I’m a sceptic. It is often seems to be more about bribery than a real support for ordinary people. Those bribes sometimes aren’t even well-incentivised.

Labour aren’t saying a great deal of substance, I agree. They need at some point to do more than drawing public attention to Carrie Antoinette, Johnson’s inability to redecorate a flat with a public-funded limit of £30,000 and his solution to funding the outstanding £58,000 to get it to a liveable standard. He obviously should have got Marcus Rashford to start a campaign for him. But it is a start and feels like it has got more of a chance than Corbyn’s approach. A low bar, admittedly.

In a post-Brexit, post-Cummings reality, what do you think are the most important Government messages and policies are?

I'm glad you spotted that - It's not even subtle

Some very good point - I take on board your point about the impact of Covid - but I disagree as to how the NHS reacted - it could have been significantly better - the extended waiting lists across all disciplines is testament to that. Stopping vital cancer care seems ridiculous to me - the oncology units are usually separate entities and cancer care is by no means an isolated case.

For me - finish the vaccination program, get the waiting lists down - throw money at it, get kids back to where they should be in terms of learning - again invest but wisely, return society to some degree of normality - no masks etc., clean up the government's act or the perception. Review taxation if we all need to pay more so be it.

Wonder if he will resign after tonight's result in Hartlepool, momentum will want somebody more hard left making alienating tham even more from the working man

Maybe Labour need a proper hard left, Marxist, Communist in charge? Anti-EU, pro-Brexit, pro-Brexit party, pro-Gilets jaune, condemnation of identity politics including LGBT ideology, opposition to Scottish independence. The hard left sound like a dream for these left-behind, working class heroes in post industrial wastelands. Although the anti-capitalism thing might not go down well. These poor, left behind folk don't half love their capitalism.

Maybe just somebody they can connect with ,you know somebody from outside the London centric bubble,somebody like Caroline flint who respected the brexit vote ,a Democrat if you like

The old working class that formed the bedrock of Labour support for decades no longer exists in the post-industrial age.

The Blairite social democratic wing now seems old fashioned and dull. It asked people to be better without offering many of them much in return.

The Corbynite hard left inspires passion but only in a very narrow constituency, and is alienating to many more.

The Johnson Tories have reframed themselves as the champions of those neglected by a long period of quasi-centrist politics. Labour either has to come up with something new (and I don’t know what it is) or hope that people eventually see through Johnson in a post-Brexit, post-pandemic political environment. It is a poop state of affairs for Labour, and I think they might just have to wait it out.

The only chance labour have got is the 2nd coming of new labour ,ousting momentum and reconnecting with the working man of which there are many and appealing to middle England again

Plus your assumption that the old working class bedrock of support has gone is just wrong ,all the fa Tories, workshops and building sites are full of disgruntled labour voters who saw the last labour cabinet for what it was ,nobody who I spoke to who had been life long labour voted for them ,the vast majority voted Tory with a few that couldn't face the thought voted brexit party

It's all culture war stuff now, rational arguments about policy don't cut it any more. Unfortunately for Labour that's what they were, relatively, good at.

It's not a culture war ,its about listening to the constituents,Mary Creagh being a fine example, opposed the brexit result, she knew better ,got voted out and blamed Jeremy Corbyn ,didn't take responsibility for her own action and words

You make my point perfectly: Brexit itself is peak culture war, that's the point. It's not about economics or making people's lives better, even the people voting leave don't think that's the case. It's about winning.

Imagine voting for a party who’d rather spend money on a poxy flat than feed hungry children, and whose leader openly said he’d let the bodies pile high, which he did. I hope Hartlepool gets whats coming to them in spades - more austerity.

Labour have a big problem - they are so out of touch with everyone except the lefty elite in London and some university dominated towns/cities. Over time the young vote they thought was in the bag will flow away to the likes of the Greens and the SDP as we see all over Europe.

People are sick of Labour telling them how bad the country is - we see it on here all the time, especially when Brexit was higher profile. At least Boris tries to big up the country. Yesterday sending the gun boats into Jersey was a masterstroke of timing - what do you think Labour's response would have been? The Tories believe in the UK - Labour don't.

Boris wants to stop kids having to wear masks in school from May 17 - a very good move all round - guess who thinks its a bad idea? 12% pay increase for the NHS - its ludicrous.

Now we have agreed that carry big long term debt is acceptable we can have a slow gradual repayment plan so austerity should no longer be an issue to the extent it was under Osborne and the economy will grow rapidly in the next two years it will be difficult for Labour to make a dent - in fact it could be even worse at the next GE.

What Hartlepool shows is the tittle-tattle of Westminster doesn't register with them - even at a local level it seems Labour are losing council hand over fist. What are Labour's key policies - they need to lay them out and hammer them home for the next 3 years - otherwise you could see Labour becoming a fringe party of Marxists like Corbyn, McDonald, Russel-Mole, Burgen and the bonkers woman in the North East

No he doesn’t and no they don’t.

Let’s also not forget the fact that Boris first and foremost is a homophobic racist. People keep voting for a party led by a “man” like that, and they say the UK isn’t institutionally racist.

Yeh let's see if we can get Arthur Scargill out of retirement and in government ,the only way you old socialists will be happy ,worked well last time didn't it mind you it will be hard to entice him out of his plush canary wharf pad
Just face it the average joe does not give a flying fook about wall paper or the like ,they wanted results and believe it or not some of us are patriotic without being racist

Of course it's about economics try telling that to the various trades whose day rates had been undercut,making their income a fair bit less ,london labour rates in general are down to the mid 90s levels