Coronavirus: UK could be 'worst affected' country in Europe

[AtW]

The government isn't inept and is doing the best they can. I'm impressed by the Nightingale hospitals and distribution systems put in place. Sweden is doing herd immunity and have lowish rates of infection and death but completely different demographics and population distribution characteristics. It's not surprising that a virus hits heavily populated areas and culturally close communities hardest such as the large UK cities. There's no cure so you get it and survive or die and the older you are especially 60+ the risk of death increases. All any government is currently doing is flattening the curve to provide time to build resources and develop tests and vaccines. At some point they'll start lifting the restrictions, probably end of May, then there'll be another spike of infection worldwide but we may have the resources to cope. Comparing the damn statistical lies with widely varying data sources does no one any good. Or is your hobby simply slagging off the UK government?

Boris your medical team insisted you log off and stop spouting tulip for at least a week.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Must be a new definition of "inept" that I've never previously encountered.

"Inept" really doesn't cover this bunch of no hopers.

[scooterscot]

Let's face it Scoots. You're loving the fact that the UK is close to a 1000 deaths per day.

You spend a huge amount of time and effort looking for any news story that you can post on here to "prove" how terrible the UK is. You post negative crap every day and have done so for years.

You just have not got over the Scottish referendum and BREXIT results.

If the results of this pandemic had played out differently in the UK you would not have been praising the result, you'd have been looking for a reason as to why it didn't count.

If there was a country out there doing it worse, I'd be all over it. However, the UK is out in front at the minute...

I like the attempt at character defamation after you read something you did not agree with - proper wail indoctrination! Should have thrown my house price in there somewhere for the topping.

[LondonManc]

Doing the best they can isn’t good enough - those tulips did not prep for it, cut pennies to lose lives and hundreds of billions: this is criminal

You're claiming it's criminal but the country was a financial basket case with nothing in the kitty when Labour left office. How many threats do you prep for and at what cost?

We've had to endure austerity to get money in the coffers. There are still too many taking out and not enough paying in. Best route out? Cashless society imho. Stop all the grey area cash in hand untaxed work that goes on, be it people working in shops, people flogging merch at football matches and concerts, builders doing extras, taxi drivers, whoever. The more that pay in, the more base level taxes can be dropped.

[AtW]

BS - tax revenues gone up, spending on -pandemic preparedness was small, which is most likely why thye cut it britally - they own it 100%.

It was possible to borrow at cheap rate too to shift spending on infrastructure from taxes to borowing, but of course that did not fit Osborne’s narrative that all the cutting is due to high debt.

Either way NOW debt going to be through the roof, os all the pain of last 10 years is down the crapper.

Agree about cash - they should phase it out ASAP, it’s health issue now.

[LondonManc]

Agree about Osborne being useless - 6 years in a finance role before becoming Chancellor? How many companies of any size have a CFO with only 6 years of finance experience?

The austerity was necessary, though. You may not remember but under Blair and Brown we were living in an unsustainable credit culture - mortgages at six times income with self-cert commonplace, etc. Completely impossible and any housing price crash would have turned us into a third world country. It was only Asian investors in London that prevented that happening in 2009.

[AtW]

The austerity was necessary, though.

Austerity as in cutting wellfare spending and making it necessary to work rather than be on benefits - yes, but not what moron Osborne did - put in the future real cuts, increased taxes straight away, and rignfenced basically very large part of budget (NHS, pensions) so that cutting would have to be more brutal everywhere else, including preparing for pandemic - that was easy for them to cut because who the feck was monitoring those? There were no left wing "thinktanks" to shout about it in the Guardian, so they must have cut it (just like Trump did).

Mistake was to avoid borrowing for infrastructure - that would have removed some of the spending from taxation and would have allowed to balance budget, which has not happened and now won't happen probably ever - last 10 years are completely lost now.

[LondonManc]

Austerity as in cutting wellfare spending and making it necessary to work rather than be on benefits - yes, but not what moron Osborne did - put in the future real cuts, increased taxes straight away, and rignfenced basically very large part of budget (NHS, pensions) so that cutting would have to be more brutal everywhere else, including preparing for pandemic - that was easy for them to cut because who the feck was monitoring those? There were no left wing "thinktanks" to shout about it in the Guardian, so they must have cut it (just like Trump did).

Mistake was to avoid borrowing for infrastructure - that would have removed some of the spending from taxation and would have allowed to balance budget, which has not happened and now won't happen probably ever - last 10 years are completely lost now.

What budget would you put on it, without knowing what pandemic it would be?

[AtW]

What budget would you put on it, without knowing what pandemic it would be?

There are people who did good job at predicting this pandemic - pretty spot on, spending could have been over 3-5 years if necessary - most important was to setup ready infrastructure for mass testing, protocols when and how to shut down stuff, app for contact tracing should have been available and installed etc.

Would it have cost more than few billions? Certainly less than 10, smart people invest before tulip happens, that would have saved hundreds of billions now

[scooterscot]

What budget would you put on it, without knowing what pandemic it would be?

Not really a difficult question to answer. Look at the economic cost to GDP after a year of lockdown x 2% and I bet you that number still dwarfs anything the government can come up with.

Less not forget the money that's already been pi$$ed up the wall, lost ferry contracts / compensation to euro-tunnel, DUP... etc