Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the...
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You mentioned in an earlier post that dealing with this pandemic was never going to be easy, and I absolutely agree with that. But to be frank the governments responce to covid 19 has been absolutely diabolical. Once again, they failed to open the nightingales and segregate covid patients, leading to thousands of noscomial cases. They moved people from hospitals into carehomes untested, in effect killing thousands, they stopped testing at a time when it was most critical, instead telling people to isolate at home with family members, exposing them to repeated indoor exposures.
Its been absolutely shambolic, the government are an absolute and utter discrace, and thats me putting it mildly.
Cases per 1m population we rank 52nd
Deaths per 1m population we rank 6th
that's not the mark of a well handled issue is it?
Not true that there is no separation of patients who have or are suspected to have COVID-19 - the hospitals in Cumbria have them on separate wards and have separate entrances to the hospitals.
There were some actions taken on moving patients from hospitals to care homes which have proven to be tragic mistakes and we need to learn from that.
Britain never stopped testing as a whole, we were always trying to increase the capacity to test which took longer than it should have. In the meantime there was a need to focus the testing capacity we did have on those who it was most important to test. I'm not saying that the decisions made on this were perfect, but whatever had been done would have been wrong.
Every time the government changes any policy they either get people saying they should have acted faster, should have taken longer to give people more time, or usually both. There criticisms can't all be right. You can't change the policy faster than you can communicate it out to people.
All international comparisons should be taken with a bucket load of salt, it is extremely difficult to be certain that the right like-for-like comparisons are being made, but no, the UK is not at the top of the list on every metric.
2 you are dead right they need to learn, but "some actions" is very mild.
3 Britain stopped testing people, they told them to isolate at home with their familys and not report they had it until it was critial, critical ones were almost always subsequent family members. What ever had been done may not have been perfect, but 52 hightes cases, 6 highest deaths.
4 they keep on changing the policy faster than they can communicate, look at the manchester restrictions announced on blooming twitter.
5, Comparisons have to be made, how do we know anything with out comparison, thats what we do, this restaurant is better than that one, this road is smoother than that one, this car is faster than that one. Our government made a bigger cock up of dealing with covid than most others.
I never said we were top of the list on every metric. I said we were 52nd in case rate and 6th in death rate.