Extending the Lockdown indefinitely until there is a vaccine is complete madness. This is not a war and the Government has choices that any Minister should be big enough to take

It is said that the best jokes always contain an element of truth. This one doing the rounds on Facebook captures the reality that too many people are scared to speak up and say: that fear of Coronavirus has taken over all logical thinking and is being used as the excuse to make what ifs real rather than it being ok to be honest about what is actually happening in other ways.

Stupid is as stupid does, and the Government is bathing in the glow of the flames from the British economy which it torched when it locked down the entire Country preaching to us that it had no other choice.

Of course, when you believe your own propaganda and you have embarked on a stupid course, it pretty much follows that you will then take further stupid decisions that will make the original decision even worse.

With Health Secretary Matt Hancock following up by confirming the content of an earlier Tweet from Nadine Dorries that was clear to readers that the Lockdown would continue until a vaccine for Coronavirus is ready, we can now be certain that this Government has stupidity at the heart of its Coronavirus strategy, where some simply refused to countenance the idea that it was anything other than intelligent before.

Contrary to the story these MPs are telling us when they are bugging themselves up, fighting Coronavirus is NOT the same thing as fighting a war. You cannot go on with an indefinite Lockdown to fight a pandemic simply because there is no need to do so, where as in a war you must go on becuase it is the only way to secure a result.

A vaccine will not be identified, tried, tested and rolled out for many months as a minimum and in all likelihood this is a process that could easily take 18 months to two years and possibly more.

This ‘how long is a piece of string’ approach to managing anything helps nobody becuase of the uncertainty that it creates. For a government to adopt it as policy to address a national crisis is crass stupidity at best – particularly when the Government has a different choice and a very different direction that it could and still can take.

It is simply unacceptable to destroy the British economy and with it the lives, jobs, incomes and businesses of so many with the untold consequences it will being simply on the basis that maintaining life at a standstill either fully or in party might prevent the death of a number of people who were already most likely to be nearing the end of their life anyway.

Yes, it sounds tasteless to put it this way.

But we do not elect MPs and Governments for them to get emotional and run away from difficult decisions that might sound unpalatable on the news or get some lobby or another’s back up because the Government aren’t instead heaping praise and preferential treatment on some specific demographic group that is a cause celebrate in some way.

People have died. People are dying. People are going to continue to die either way.

But the suicides. The business closures. The job losses. The domestic violence. The abuse. The hunger. The bankruptcies. The debt. The evictions and much more that could have been prevented. All of the things created by the lockdown and this Government’s failure to mitigate the effects of it’s actions are not inevitable and never were.

The developing crisis that is now cutting into all parts of our society was created by the Government’s choice. It will end in economic disaster for us all with personal consequences for so many that it doesn’t bear thinking about.

Waiting for the vaccine is not the answer. Neither is continuing with the Lockdown in any form.

People need to be able to return to work, to their businesses, to their courses, schools, clubs, gyms, pubs, shops and evening walks.

Responsible government would ensure that a system of governance was in place to make sure the NHS can cope as best it can at any one time, but at the same time accept that some deaths are inevitable from Coronavirus and that it will be much better for everyone to treat people like adults and give them back freedom and choice.

The Government needs to wake up before its too late and accept there’s a different way.

The Government MUST End the Lockdown NOW and do everything possible to mitigate the effects of the problems that the Government has caused.

Nothing else will do.

picture thanks to unknown

Chancellor Rishi Sunak says the Government is being honest with people as he now tells us that he wont be able to protect every business. Neither statement is true

Finally, in the past 24 hours, media talk has shifted away from supporting the NHS and nothing else.

It is instead beginning to focus on the unfolding financial disaster that is hoovering up businesses that were viable before the Lockdown was imposed and is set to cast millions of us into unemployment in the days and weeks ahead.

Watching the Tory supporters club lauding everything that Boris and Chancellor Rishi Sunak have done as being heaven made, since the travesty of the Lockdown began, is enough to make an objective observer’s stomach churn.

It should have been obvious from the start that the Lockdown was a very dubious way to address a Pandemic, where so many unknowns and variables were involved.

The response to the impact of the Lockdown on jobs, incomes and businesses was never considered in the depth that it should be or even really thought through.

Telling the Country’s workforce and business owners in March, immediately following the Lockdown being imposed, that nobody would be left without help sounded great to those who were listening and trusting, rather than questioning at the time.

But for those who have been left to fall down the very sizable gaps in the Government’s provision, the potential fallout from this Conservative Chancellor’s failure to understand the very nature of how business works and think through how his decisions will affect them first, and ultimately us all thereafter, looks increasingly bleaker by the day.

Some of the most simple problems in life are in fact so simple, they are just too obvious for some to understand.

In this case, for politicians, it has been the absence of the basic understanding that throwing money around at only the most obvious groups of people to have lost their income because of the Lockdown, was never going to fix the problem for everyone else. Nor would it help the whole UK economy in any beneficial or balanced way.

Instead, the Government and the people who advise them have opted to create complicated solutions that were destined to make things difficult rather than simplify what was always needed by People and Business to be a very simple outcome.

Even now, the problems caused by the Lockdown at the beginning can only be addressed by putting a temporary halt to ‘normal’ monetary flow.

Bringing a a halt to normal monetary flow means suspending the need for all people and businesses to pay bills for normal services or products unless they continue to operate normally during the Lockdown.

Stopping ‘normal’ monetary’ flow was and remains the simplest way to treat everyone fairly and in the same way during the Lockdown and the period of recovery thereafter.

That way, the impact will always be relative to what those people have and what they earn – as any policy that is supposed to work for everyone universally always should.

It was and remains within the power and the reach of the Government to enact such a policy now.

The Government can and should mothball the financial situation for all those who are about to lose jobs or businesses and put life on hold for them so that it can be resumed, once normality has returned.

It can only be an unforgivable lack of understanding of how business, the economy and monetary flow works by the Government, or a deliberate move on the part of politicians and their advisors – whose first loyalty is to the world of finance and the banks – that the ‘solution’ we have to the impact of the Lockdown has been created and rolled out in the way that it has.

With things unchanged and left as they are for the duration of the COVID-19 Pandemic, you only need to follow the Taxpayers money that the Government is pumping out through these policies to see who it is who will still be doing well and profiting out of what has continued to be business as usual for them, during a period of national crisis for everyone else. They are the ones who are still getting paid exactly the same – if not more – as they were in ‘normal’ times.

Addressing the realties of the crisis that will accompany any pandemic would never please everyone. Some will feel they have less. Some will want a lot more. But there is no excuse for our political leaders to fail to enact decisions and public policy which is fair and treats everyone like they are valued by Government and Society and being in need of exactly the same help when the experience we are all living through is exactly the same.

When considered fully in context, the Chancellor’s latest warning there will be tough times ahead is ridiculously after the fact. Especially when it is his own and the Government’s Policies in response to Coronavirus that were the beginning of the real problem the UK is now facing, rather than the Pandemic itself being the cause.

The stupidity, self-interest or mixture of both that has led to this situation is of such magnitude that it would be justified and reasonable to demand that the Government resign.

The problem is that a Labour administration under Kier Starmer could not offer us any better and would potentially create an even bigger mess than the Conservative Government as the so-called champions of business are doing so, with an 80-strong majority all on their own.

We are stuck with a Political class that is so out of touch with the lives of the people it governs, it is going to make a very bad situation for us all considerably worse.

We can only hope that if civil order breaks down as a direct result of what the Government has done, the void that will be created will be filled by someone or something that knows how to turn this all around and make things right.

The NHS MUST be reformed after COVID-19 so that front line and clinical staff are valued as they should be whilst universal health provision for all remains something our Country can afford

It is at the pinnacle of a National Crisis and not after the event itself that the most pertinent questions should be answered about how supply chains and service provision can be improved to ensure that the national response to the same thing happening again is future-proofed.

So much effort within, on behalf of and supporting the NHS and it’s staff is being expended during the COVID-19 Lockdown, that many people including the Media and our MPs too are failing to allow room to think about the lessons that should already have been learned.

From the responses to appropriate comments and questions on social media, that much is sure.

It is now essential for the Government to ensure that the future of our universal healthcare service for all is safe and that we can all be confident that in a time of a future medical crisis like there is with COVID-19 now – should a pandemic or similar be repeated – the Country will find it much easier to cope.

NHS Staff are doing the best that they can with the resources and the support that is available.

But the time it has taken to put resources like ventilators and PPE in place, the need for the recall of retired and specialist staff who had let their registrations lapse and the suggested need for the whole country to acquiesce to a Lockdown in order to ‘Protect the NHS’ speaks volumes about the problems that already existed within the NHS before the Coronovirus Pandemic began.

We must all ensure the Government is compelled to both consider and act upon these supply and resorting issues immediately and appropriately when the COVID-19 Crisis is over and done.

If the real and underlying condition of the NHS is not considered in this way now, the lack of political will to deal with real problems unless they are under the media spotlight will ensure that nothing like the change that has been necessary for a very long time will ever get done.

Don’t be deceived into thinking that the money and resources that are being thrown at our hospitals now without limit will make a difference to the Nurses, Doctors and health workers in the long term. It won’t.

The NHS has institutional and cultural problems that cannot simply fixed by providing the Health Service with more money at a rate that is neither sustainable or at a cost that the Country can actually afford.

What the NHS needs is complete bottom to top reform.

Comprehensive reform is the only way that real value can be given to frontline clinical staff and their support – both in terms of what they earn, the responsibility and influence that they have and the support they have from the Government and the Public Sector.

Money will never work as a genuine solution to the problems that the NHS has, even if it looks that way, because more money will simply maintain the service in the state and condition that it currently is. And the NHS is not a happy place to work.

What we have learned and are now likely to accept is the people who do frontline jobs in services such as the NHS, healthcare, waste collection, transport and working in supermarkets too all have roles which are just as important to our lives and existence as any celebrity, football player, company CEO, journalist or politician – if not more.

Everyone has a big part to play in making the wheels of the Country turn. Not even bankers are the untouchable gods that they would like us to believe.

WE ARE ALL THE SAME. WE ARE NOT AND SHOULD NEVER BE DEFINED BY WEALTH, JOB, INCOME OR ANYTHING ELSE THAT MAY APPEAR TO MAKE US LOOK DIFFERENT TO ANYONE ELSE.

The Government must now take steps to ensure that REAL value is attributed to NHS Staff not only financially, but in the public policy and measures that the Government can take to support ALL people who are currently underpaid in relation to what it costs to live.

One of the most ridiculous things that I have read in recent days was that an advert had gone out from one particular Health Trust to employ a diversity officer at about twice the wage of a frontline NHS Nurse. This kind of stupidity in the management of political correctness applied in the workplace represents everything that is wrong with the NHS today. It has to stop.

This is part of a massive problem that the Government can and should be tackling head on.

Things that the Government should do include:

Placing a ban on the use of agency and contract staff to fill frontline NHS roles to be enacted within 18 months
Placing a ban on the outsourcing of management work to contractors, freelancers and consultants to be enacted within 12 months
Management of all operational functions to be placed back in the hands of experienced clinical staff
Rescind the European Working Time Directive and replace it with legislation that allows each individual to work the hours they choose to, providing their doing so will not put others at risk and that they can only work hours above those they are contracted to do so as a personal, non-coerced choice.
The creation of a parallel extended vocational route (a genuine apprenticeship or time served route) to degree qualification as a Nurse for non-academically inclined candidates
The cancellation of tuition fees for Nursing, Medical and other NHS-related undergraduate degrees for academic candidates
GPs, Drs and Consultants who leave the NHS after receiving a UK education and on-the-job training with the NHS to be required to undertake 10 years service in their post-trained NHS role after the completion of training before they can ‘go private’
That any employee transferring from a commercial sector role be required to undertake a minimum of 6 months clinical operations experience before being able to take up their new NHS role, unless they have gained worked within the NHS as a full-time NHS employee within the preceding 5 years.
That no Public Sector employee should receive bonuses for carrying out the function that they were employed to undertake.
All purchasing to be carried out for the whole network by a centralised service with ordering only carried out at local level
The NHS ‘internal supply chain’ to be managed and operated by the NHS and not contracted out to external suppliers
The cancellation of all existing PFI arrangements
Removing the ‘right to sue’ from anyone who has not directly paid for NHS care in the event of something ‘going wrong’. (Directly to include those receiving private treatment on a private healthcare policy)
Set up a specialist NHS Adjudication Service to make judgement on any negligence claims from patients who have directly paid for treatment
Setting a basic standard of living level, ensuring that the providers of essential services such as utilities are either in public hands or run on a strictly not-for-profit basis and resetting the property market to ensure that standard housing is affordable to all.
Remove the ability of Unions to call strikes or any kind of industrial action
Set in law the requirement that the CEO of any health trust cannot earn more than 10 times the wage of the lowest paid member of staff in the trust – including any enhancements that come with the role.
Pensions to be brought in line with general requirements
The changes made by Gordon Brown to Pension Funds in 1997 to be reversed

One of the most important requirements of successful change for the NHS and equipping our Hospitals to be prepared for all future events is the acknowledgment that the NHS does not stand alone.

A significant number of people work professionally within the NHS and its supply chain. But by its very nature as a public service, the NHS and the people who staff it are effected by Public Policy right across the board.

It is therefore essential that the Government no longer treat the NHS like it sits in an isolated bubble – just as people outside of it understand Westminster and everything political to operate..

What the Government does for or to the NHS will have an effect on other public services and industry, just like what it does for them will affect the NHS too.

Some of the changes that need to be made are specifically related to the management processes within the NHS. But not all of them, as there are many more.

Identifying and implementing policy for the NHS and its staff that overlaps with other areas of life is beyond essential.

Without it, the next time we need the NHS just as we do with the fight against COVID-19 today, it will have long-since been placed in critical care.

Some workers want this amount of money whilst others want more. But our needs are the same and government support is favoring some over others when we should all be getting exactly the same – not just in money but also support

If you dare to look at the headlines or glance across the editorial of any of the national newspapers that might be worth reading, you will see today that there is talk within Government of there being Ministers who are doves and others that are hawks.

The growing argument between them is the subject of when the COVID-19 Lockdown should end. The so-called Hawks want the Lockdown to begin to end at the beginning of May, whilst the so-called doves want to wait until the Whitsun Bank Holiday at the end of May before even a loosening of the current restrictions can be allowed to begin.

When you have been writing about the massive holes and inadequacy of the financial support that the Government is providing since the Lockdown began like I have, as well as questioning the cost of the Lockdown vs. the benefit too, you might think it would be natural for me to be happy that at least some of our MPs are looking at all of this in the same way too.

I’m not. And the problem is that they are not even in the same room.

Whilst certain Ministers are clearly aware of some of the issues already being caused by the Lockdown – as they are being flagged by Civil Servants within their Ministries, they are not aware of others whilst many MPs are clearly unaware at any meaningful level of the real crisis that has been started by the Lockdown.

A personal and costly disaster is now starting to unfold in front of more and more of the people just like you and I and it is going to slowly but surely soon come into full view.

We have been conditioned to think and view certain behaviours as acceptable by the world around us. The behaviour of self-serving politicians, an Establishment that cares not for anyone other than its own, and a media that is so obsessed with the sound of its own voice have all contributed significantly to the selfish approach to life that we have which we don’t recognise as being wholly self serving – because right now its just the ways that life tells us things should be done.

As we look at the Locked-down COVID-19 UK, our thoughts will inevitably be about how the Lockdown is effecting us personally and the people around us, whether it is our jobs, source of income, the business we own and operate or any one of the large number of ways that each and every one of us has had our life affected or compromised in some way since life as we knew it changed in March and the Lockdown got under way.

No, it isn’t wrong to think about any of this chapter of our lives in this way. But as we fall over ourselves to shout about treating gig-economy workers the same as employees or to sign petitions to specifically tell the Government that we want directors of small limited companies to receive the same money as if they were an employee, we are collectively falling into the trap of thinking that different help and support for different people based purely on how differently they are employed will equate to the same thing. It won’t.

What we are overlooking is that all people share something very distinctive in common that makes us all the same. We all have regular bills that we need our incomes to pay and the amount we pay is relative to what we normally earn.

It doesn’t matter what they are or how much those bills are for. Whether you are young, a Millennial, middle aged, retired or very old, there will be bills that you have to pay or have paid on your behalf.

Beyond the fact that we are human beings who live and die, what we all have in common is our shared reality that we always have to pay a bill each month and in some cases many of them. That’s how we are all the same.

If we were to genuinely be treated the same by the Government and a situation were to never to exist where any individual, social group of business sector were to fall through the gaps, the Government would by necessity be targeting the help they can give at us all in a way that was proportional to what we earn or the situation that we are in – but in a way that would actually treat us all fairly because it would support and help us in the very same way.

The very same rules apply for businesses and business owners whether they are limited companies or sole traders too.

For us all, the flow of money into and out of our bank accounts is what makes life turnover. And for business – who in this sense are exactly the same as people, cash flow is king – unless of course you are the bank or finance house which creates all the money and to where all the money we pay out in the form of each and every bill we pay will ultimately flow to and end up.

We pay our bills to a service provider or company that has provided us with goods or the finance to do it. It might be a mortgage, rent, for a car, our phone, TV, electricity and gas or many other things that we might either want or need.

The company, person or business to whom we pay that bill and the money we use to do it will be in exactly the same position as you and I are. What we pay them is their income, just like our job or business is ours. From all the combined income they receive, they too have to pay their bills.

In many cases, this payment of different bills and transfer of money happens over and over again at different levels in what might be a very long chain, until the flow of the money ends up in the same place: the banks and finance houses.

If the Government really desires to treat us ALL exactly the same as it should – that’s equitably and in a way that is completely fair – it would temporarily stop the need and requirement for that money to continue to flow where the chain is no longer complete or simply has no start, so that none of us have to earn anything at any level or any stage of that chain to keep paying bills to the people, businesses or companies that are in the next link of the chain above us.

With the need removed to pay our bills for items that we wouldn’t order or commit ourselves to having during a time that we couldn’t afford to or would be willing pay for because they are a luxury and not a necessity, the only problem for the Government would then be a question of how people pay for food and essential items that we simply need to meet our real everyday needs – not our ‘wants’.

If the Government did this, it would create a genuine level playing field in a time of National Crisis that would benefit us all.

Stopping the need for monetary flow would significantly reduce the chances that businesses will not reopen and that more and more people will lose their jobs and income permanently once the Lockdown actually comes to its end.

Be under no illusion. This action would prevent misery for many and save a significant number of lives.

Without a universal financial support solution of this depth and breadth in place to counter the effects of the COVID-19 Lockdown, the problems and very challenging life experiences that many people would not have been suffering before it began, are going to get much worse. The impact of what the Government hasn’t done will affect more and more of us as the length of the Lockdown rolls on.

The Government should End the Lockdown right now. But if it refuses to do so, it must at the very least change direction with the financial support that it is giving all of us and do it right away.

Job losses
Suicides
Hunger
Business Closures
Evictions from homes
Administrations
Domestic Violence
Abuse and safeguarding issues
Debt
Insolvencies
Repossessions
Loss of custom and business
Debt and borrowing
Bankruptcies
Mental Health issues
Depression

And the issues that are the cause of any or all of these horrific life experiences are already on the rise as a result of the COVID-19 Lockdown.

No considerate and caring person would ever wish any of these experiences upon another human being. But the Government’s decision to implement the Lockdown, then failing to treat us all in the same way will ensure that a rise in these real-life horror stories is exactly what the UK is going to get.

No matter what the Media messages tell you or how unpopular TV presenters and Journalists may insist that the alternative to what the Government is doing will be, the Government MUST change direction and handle COVID-19 differently by bringing the Lockdown to a decisive end as soon as it possibly can.

If the Lockdown continues for any further time at all or not, the current system of financial support that the Government has issued doesn’t work as it should. It is creating many problems for individuals that not only include those mentioned or referred to above, but will in time be known to have caused many more whilst creating a national financial crisis and the accompanying personal hardship that none of us alive today will consciously remember having ever seen.

These wholly inadequate measures MUST be removed and replaced with a system that ends the requirement to pay bills for anything that has not been ordered or committed to during the Lockdown – with the exception of things like car insurance if you are continuing to use your car.

Despite the complication of doing so, the system should also be backdated to the start of the Lockdown (at least 23rd March 2020) and those who have been paid some or all of the £2500 per month average wage equivalent excluded from any weekly essential goods and food payment scheme until the equivalent of what they have already been paid through the current payments system from the start has been reached.

A £100 per week payment per person is enough for food and essential items for those who have lost all their income, have been furloughed or are not being paid during or as a direct result of the Lockdown.

Everyone who has been able to continue to work is doing a great thing to keep the Country moving when everyone else cannot. For them, having their bills stopped would be a payment holiday nonetheless. It would therefore be a financial bonus for doing their bit that would be fair and acceptable both to them and to all.

The damage that the Lockdown has already done to lives and businesses is already on target to be very severe indeed. But the cost of the Government failing to treat us all equally and in the same way will be catastrophic for us all.

Beyond a financial depression that is likely to be worse than the Great Depression of nearly a Century ago, the patience upon which civil order sits is already painfully thin, and the moves by the Police and even Supermarkets to behave like we have already become a police state does not bode well for the future of the UK if the Lockdown continues or continues without meaningful change to the system of financial support that is currently in place.

The lack of care and consideration for the impact of this Lockdown that has been driven by the advice of medical specialists, and measures to counter the impact that have simply not been thought through tell us that there is already a vacuum or absence of leadership at the top of the Government. This absence will help even less if that wafer thin patience is broken and the leadership void could easily be filled by alternative leaders who would happily expand and assert that police state deliberately.

Please don’t allow this to happen whilst we still have influence and a choice.

Let’s join together and tell the Government that the measures they have been taking aren’t helping us all in the same way that they would if they were fair.

Let’s also join together and tell the Government that its time to End the Lockdown now and treat everyone like we have the same value, whether or not we get talked about a lot on TV!

Media ‘celebrities’ are obsessed with being the news rather than conveying it. They hold a big part of the responsibility for the mess this Country is about to be in and its time for opinion dressed as news to stop.

The chances are you will fall into one of two groups. Those who are watching the endless Covid Show on the News Channels, or those who have all but switched off to the so-called ‘news’ programmes completely.

Watchers will either be cheering on the Government and all it does. Or most likely, they are too terrified by the messages that are playing hour by hour on what feels like autorepeat to miss a single moment or a minute of coverage that could end up making the Covid Pandemic even worse than it is already in some way.

Those who have switched off have long since realised how much destruction the Media is causing simply because they are being allowed to portray news in their very own distinctive way.

The Media – or rather the people they appoint to be their face – used to simply be Television and Newspaper Journalists. Not any more.

In their own minds the people who read us the news have become celebrities. They are no longer there just to ask the questions to find the answers that we all want to hear. They see themselves there to be the answer and therefore the news itself.

No better example of this exists than the preamble that Journalist Emily Maitlis gave at the beginning of Newsnight on Wednesday evening this week.

Emily has been lauded on social media for her sermon rubbishing the idea that Covid is the great leveller and spelling out the story for what it is really is. Yet her speech to a captive audience was subjective, very little to do with what critical thinking would identify as news, and in layman’s terms was little more than opinion. All given to us by the shovel load right in the middle of a National Crisis when news and information is the one thing that the Taxpaying Public should be able to expect the BBC to be getting right.

The slant, shading, unsubtle nuances or spin contained within this specific tirade was very much in keeping with the message that the mainstream media has been propagating right from the time that the Covid Pandemic took off in this Country.

A message that is wholly negative (because only bad news sells) and intended to deliberately foster fear about the Virus itself. It seeks to remove the boundaries of context and suggesting that ‘protecting the NHS’ and the medical or scientific operation to address the health issues relating to Coronavirus are the only thing that the Government response should really be about.

Yes, the BBC and other mainstream channels have been carrying other news about what the Chancellor has been doing. But because they cannot sensationalise the worsening of life experience for the many people who were suffering in this Country already and the exponential rise in numbers of people who will soon live that experience themselves, they pick up these real life stories that are happening and drop it as quickly as they can so they can replace them with their idea of what could be.

Put bluntly in real terms, a newsreader cannot sell you suicide as a reason for you to be fearful in the same way as they can sell you a Pandemic because there is perceived to be an element of personal choice when someone considers killing his or herself, whilst catching a virus offers you no choice and so fear is sold to you in different forms as the only protection that there really is.

What the Media fail to recognise and therefore tragically overlook is that because they have worked so tirelessly to sensationalise the whole Covid Pandemic using words and messages that are in most cases likely to be more than 95% opinion, they collectively hold significant responsibility for driving our Politicians to instigate this Lockdown without consideration for the real consequences.

The speed the Lockdown was imposed and the Government remedies came into being in response to noise the Media was making, provided us all with ill-considered solutions to the financial hardship that the Lockdown has imposed on people of all demographic backgrounds, career pathways and financial positions.

Regrettably we are not being led through the Covid Pandemic by the politicians that we should have.

We are being led by politicians who are the product of an establishment that sees no benefit or reason to be in touch with or to understand the people it is supposedly there to govern and care for.

Such is their inability to lead, our leaders are themselves being led by a media that has become wholly adept at creating policy by dog whistle without even knowing that they do so.

If real catastrophe is to be avoided across the uk, the Lockdown MUST be ended now.

However, to make things work as they should to benefit us all, it has become essential that the Media are pulled into line and reprise their true role as the providers of news and information rather than simply throwing out what they think we would like to hear and telling us all that its the same thing as news.

This is not about freedom of speech, freedom of expression or freedom of the press.

Real news should always be reported fully and without spin or angle. The only exception for us not to receive news would be when it is critical for the national interest to not do so.

This is about tackling misinformation and fake news at the highest level.

Make no mistake. Opinion in the place of news is what fake news really is.

The fact that this massive abuse of a position of public influence is considered legitimate doesn’t make what the newsreaders and journalists are doing any better or any more in the public interest than the stories of the conspiracists and social media channels where it is clear that the story being told has been built up on the basis of how the channel or username holder was paid.

The Government MUST stop prioritising the messages that it churns out on the basis of how newsworthy it is. The pre-briefings and copies of speeches that haven’t been given need to stop. Above all, the role of the Media has to be seen for what it is: a conduit and no more.

It is not the end in itself that those working as the names and faces of these Media outlets insist we should believe it to be.

To End the Lockdown in a way that causes the least pain that it can, the politicians need to start ignoring what the Media are telling everyone and start talking to the people who really count. Not just medical people or scientists who they tell us know what to do.

By taking then wider view and considering all elements of this very large equation, that’s how they can find their way to making decisions that are in everyones interests and deliver results that they cannot visualise now, but will turn out to be right.

image thanks to wikipedia.co.uk

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