- The Choice
Time for those in power to be held accountable
Where to begin, the decimation of the NHS, the wasted billions spent throughout the pandemic, the government and NHS manslaughter of our elderly who were sent to die in their thousands, the government abuse of power forcing uncessary lockdowns throwing millions into poverty, the mainstream media with their government propoganda campaign of inciting fear to the masses. There are many lessons to be learnt from this pandemic, but none of that can be learnt without finding out where things went wrong and why, would it make a difference, afterall, The Chillcot enquiry was highly critical of Warlord Blairs actions with regards to the Iraq war and he ended up as the Middle East Peace Envoy! In the commercial world, those responsible for such monumental failings woulb be fired and lucky to find a job stacking shelves for a living, but for the political elite, it seems that failure and negligence are part of the job requirements.
Accordint to Statista.com the UK has seen a loss of over 80'000 hospital beds over the last 20 years, whilst hospital admissions and the UK population continues to grow, this downward trend began with Labour and continued with the Tories, so Labour has as much fault on them as the Tories https://www.statista.com/statistics/473264/number-of-hospital-beds-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/
Funding in staff recruitment and training has been slashed by a decade of austerity meaning that the purpose built COVID-19 hospitals have been unused due to the shortage of staff available to run the hospitals, government ministers knew this when building them.
In Scotland, the NHS, which is a devolved issue, has not been spared it's share of bed and funding cuts as highlighted in the below articles:
When the politicians harp on about locking down the country to save the NHS, let's remember two things, that the NHS is here to save us, not the other way around and the fact that the NHS is a bursting point and has been for some years is purely down to the political choices, which is completely disgusting when we see billions of tax payers money wasted.
The New York Times has recently reported that there was at least 9 Billion Pounds worth of contracts awarded to persons or companies with links to the Conservatives, the pandemic led to levels of spending never seen before in government history, billions of tax payers money given to enrich the friends of the political elite without question, without transparency, all because they could, the laws put into place for the response to the pandemic allowed the government to go on a mass spending spree, whilst the opposition stood by and clapped along with them, it's an absolute disgrace and every penny of tax payers money needs to be accounted for, information on spending made public and the spending needs to be justified, simply saying that it was spent this way because there was a pandemic is simply not good enough. Why is the mainstream media ignoring this, the BBC, ITV, remain silent when they should be asking the politicians to explain themselves.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/17/world/europe/britain-covid-contracts.html
The other disgrace in this pandemic is the way our elderly have been treated, the ones who were most vulnerable, the ones who our government claimed that we needed to protect the most, sent from hospitals to care homes without being tested. Do not resuscitate orders given all in an effort to free up hospital beds. The Amnesty International report titled 'As if expendable' highlights serious failures by the NHS and Government, the report specifically mentions the situation in England, and when asked the SNP were quick to highlight this, however, considering Scotland has a higher care home death rate than that of England, this highlights that Scotland has faced the same unacceptable breaches of human rights and those responsible accross the UK need to be held responsible for these shocking decisions and failures. The report can be read here:
https://www.amnesty.org.uk/files/2020-10/Care%20Homes%20Report.pdf?kd5Z8eWzj8Q6ryzHkcaUnxfCtqe5Ddg6=
Let's not forget that the UK has borrowed a staggering 400 billion pounds this year yet we have one of the highest COVID death rates in the world. What if instead of spending this money on furloughs and lockdowns, we spend it on providing free hand soap and sanitiser to the poorest in society, what if we provided the elderly with the care and support they required, what if we gave the vulnerable, the support they needed so they didn't need to leave home to collect their groceries, what if we supplied free gym membership encouraging the larger members of our society, the ones most suseptable to COVID in their younger years, to establish a healthier lifestyle. Instead, we have governments who built hospitals they knew they couldn't staff, created laws they when they didn't have enough police to enforce them, laws which made a mockery of society, you could have 30 people at a wedding or funeral, yet 300 on an aircraft, you could sit in a pub for a meal, but not for a pint without the meal, McDonalds classed as an essential business yet gyms closed.
We have a government which forces you to wear a mask in the workplace yet they are exempt to wear them in parliament, a government which gave MP's £10'000 to 'work' from home yet promised civil servants will get no pay rises for the forseeable future. A government which created track and trace system which has been franchised out, costing the tax payer millions yet doesn't work.
Every single COVID-19 death in the UK is the result of our government(s) failure to protect the vulnerable and the elderly, it is an absolute disgrace the way the pandemic has been handled, there should be an enquiry and those responsible for failure should be held to account. What we currently see is polarising governments encouraging those who follow their authoritarian rules to demonise anyone who stands up against them.