JOHNSON AND STARMER ARE BOTH BAD FOR THIS COUNTRY

 Last day of January - let SKWAWKBOX do the talking. This says it all.

Starmer falls even further behind the man responsible for over 100,000 needless deaths

 

Lethality and dishonesty abound – yet Starmer’s failure to oppose is giving Johnson and the media an easy ride.

We will be much better off without them.

Boris Johnson has presided over the deaths of more than 100,000 UK citizens and counting – deaths that the example of New Zealand, with only 25 deaths in the whole pandemic and none since September, proves were entirely avoidable, especially in an island nation – and has combined that with the developed world’s worst economic collapse of the pandemic.

Over that he has ladled dishonesty, fake news and an array of excuses that would embarrass an addled schoolboy who hadn’t done his homework.

Yet Keir Starmer and the party under him have fallen further behind Johnson and the Tories in the public’s estimation – in spite of the friendly and even fawning assistance of much of

I SAW 20 SOCIALIST MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT GATHERED AROUND A TABLE - THE STUFF OF ARTHURIAN LEGEND

 What an inspiring picture from the SKWAWKBOX today. A reminder that all is not lost. Where there is life there is hope. The Socialist Campaign Group of MPs actually still survives in Starmerland and here is the evidence:

The Socialist Campaign Group - spot who's missing.

  

This is the SKWAWKBOX story:

 

LEFT MPs DEMAND NEW COVID STRATEGY TO SAVE LIVES

'The UK has now officially passed the horrific milestone of 100,000 COVID deaths – one of the highest death rates of any country in the world, though in reality that number was passed a considerable time ago.

This huge loss of life is not solely the result of Government incompetence, which is as far as the so-called 'mainstream' media will go, if they address it at all. It is the direct result of the Tory Government refusing to try to eliminate the virus - as New Zealand and other nations have so successfully done - instead, trying to “live with the virus” and “balance” the loss of lives and the economy and failing disastrously on both. Unless the Government urgently corrects its approach then many tens of thousands more COVID deaths are inevitable.

This crisis has deepened pre-existing inequalities in our society with those in lower-paid work and unable to work from home, Black and Asian communities and those in poorer housing amongst the hardest hit.

The UK coronavirus death toll was absolutely avoidable. Had the government followed the 'Zero COVID' strategy adopted by numerous countries in East Asia and the Pacific then many thousands of lives would

MAD AND BAD LEADERS WITH THE POWER TO SHAPE THE SCIENCE - HOW WE BECAME THE VICTIMS OF HERD IMMUNITY

 My recent appeals to readers to join the 29 kind souls who have pressed the Follow button on this blogspot have not been successful - but I hope you don't mind if I continue to make my appeal. This is not a vanity project. It is about getting the stats that may help persuade a literary agent or publisher to take on my submission of 'Dying to Know'. 

Meanwhile, this blogpost was stimulated by today's SKWAWKBOX mailing about the refusal of the Guardian newspaper to publish a letter from the author and poet, Michael Rosen, who nearly died from COVID-19 last year. Michael was an undergraduate at Oxford at the same time as me. I am sure we shared the demonstration space on more than one occasion but I never knew him to speak to. Everything I've read about him since confirms the impression made by his own writings: he is a talented, lovely man.

Michael Rosen

Here is his letter, courtesy of SKWAKBOX: 

Author Michael Rosen, who came close to death last year when he suffered COVID-19 complications, wrote to the Guardian about the Tories' original (and frankly murderous) plan to create 'herd immunity' to the coronavirus without a vaccine, which would have caused up to a million UK deaths and perhaps more.

The paper did not publish his letter. It is reproduced below with permission:

Dear sir/madam

Jonathan Freedland’s comment ‘Lies about Covid, insisting that it was a hoax cooked up by the deep state, led millions of people to drop their guard and get infected' (‘Trump may be gone but his big lie will linger’ Guardian, Jan 15) misses the point. If we look closely at what was being said in official circles in March 2020, we can see quite clearly there was a plan to create ‘herd immunity’ without vaccination.

Robert Peston had his usual inside story on March 12 in ‘The Spectator’ with a headline “Herd immunity’ will

PICK AND TWIST YOUR SCIENCE - HOW THEY AVOID TAKING THE BLAME FOR OVER 100,000 DEATHS

 I have spent my lockdown charting this tragedy in Dying to Know and am now back on the familiar path of finding a literary agent/ publisher. My book is well worth reading. I am the historian by academic training and I have become a fledgling scientist and economist for the purposes of my pandemic tale. This will be my third publication.  

I hope you find this BLOGPOST worthwhile. It would help my path to publication for my book 'Dying to Know' if you would press the Follow button at the top of the blog post (on a full screen) - 29 followers to date. Thank you. 

Dying to Know - Running through a Pandemic is looking for a literary agent. My penultimate chapter includes this section:

'On Saturday 19 December, Johnson decided he had no option but to cancel Christmas for 24 million people in London and the south-east. It was another remarkable U-turn. For weeks, he and his ministers had been chorusing the message that three households could travel across the UK to mix in a Christmas bubble. Then came the realisation that hospitals within the NHS were on the point of breakdown such

THIS PRIME MINISTER LED US INTO THE WORLD OF HERD IMMUNITY - WE ARE NEARING 100,000 DEATHS

 The responsibility for our carnage lies primarily with the prime minister and his special advisor - Johnson and Cummings - who made the wrong decisions back in February last year. Their actions and inactions then are part of the sequence of neoliberal Tory misgovernment that followed. 

I have spent my lockdown charting this tragedy in Dying to Know and am now back on the familiar path of finding a literary agent/ publisher. My book is well worth reading. I am the historian by academic training and I have become a fledgling scientist and economist for the purposes of my pandemic tale. This will be my third publication.  

I hope you find this BLOGPOST worthwhile. It would help my path to publication for my book 'Dying to Know' if you would press the Follow button at the top of the blog post (on a full screen) - 29 followers to date. Thank you. 

 

Here is the latest twist in this sordid story, courtesy of SKWAWKBOX today:

'Former Tory MP Matthew Parris appears on Sky to exonerate catastrophic PM - while MP Lucy Allan quietly deletes 'like' of tweet calling for abolition of NHS

'Operation Absolve Boris' has begun. The Conservative party, which can never quite disguise its contempt for the Labour-founded NHS, has sloughed off even more of the facade to start its campaign to water the idea in the public consciousness that the blame for Boris Johnson's appalling and frankly murderous handling of the pandemic crisis rests with the NHS, not the Bullingdon boy.

Johnson's 'battle' with the pandemic - with grateful acknowledgements to Martin Rowson, cartoonist at the Guardian

Former Tory MP Matthew Parris was on Sky News this morning (thanks, reader and Labour activist Val Colvin for the pointer) - and Parris not only suggested that the latest scandal of slow vaccine roll-out was the NHS's fault, he 'jumped the shark' and suggested that he couldn't think of anything that Johnson could have done differently to reduce the scale of the UK's pandemic disaster, which has left this country with one of the world's worst death rates and worst economic collapses:

https://skwawkbox.org/parris-nhs-blame1-mp4/

Parris is not alone, with various Tory voices being given media time - or making comments on social media - to attack the NHS and shift the blame onto our underfunded and austerity-withered Health Service. Tory MP

NO IFS OR BUTS - SCHOOLS SHOULD BE SHUT

More SKWAWKBOX material - this is a nightmare - living in a land where misgovernment has become so blatant it hardly raises an eyebrow within the mainstream media.

And not a mention on Marr of mass school union action

(SKWAWKBOX - Sunday 3 January 2021)

Johnson - image from a virtual Downing Street press conference 

Boris Johnson appeared on the BBC's Marr this morning and was asked by Marr whether parents should send their primary-school children to school tomorrow. Johnson launched into a performance in which he claimed that:

·         'the evidence is not clear' whether keeping schools open is driving the pandemic

·         he has closed schools in the south-east because of the virus is 'surging' there

·         schools are safe, even though his own SAGE scientific committee says the pandemic can't be controlled without closing them

·         there is 'absolutely no doubt' that schools are safe

·         there is no doubt 'in my mind' that schools are safe

Johnson looked like he was parodying comedian Matt Lucas's parody of him:

https://videos.files.wordpress.com/hxH1b3ND/johnson-marr-lucas_hd.mp4

Shamefully, in a discussion of the topic of whether schools are safe and parents should send their children in, Marr completely failed to mention that the National Education Union (NEU) and Unison have told their members in primary schools not to go to work tomorrow because schools are emphatically unsafe, while the National Association of Head

WHAT BETTER WAY TO START THE NEW YEAR

SKWAWKBOX provided the material for me to close 2020 - and they are coming up trumps again with this gem of a post:

Huge popularity of former leader's move will stick in craw of his attackers

(SKWAWKBOX - 1 January 2021)

Jeremy Corbyn's new Project for Peace and Justice has met with a huge welcome, with widespread support on the left - and local Labour parties already planning to affiliate. It has also met with bile and vitriol from his enemies, who remain eager to rewrite history and bury the memory of the movement he led and galvanised - and its popularity.

Jeremy Corbyn - the tie and badge are tokens of remembrance for Grenfell

So the news today will come as bitterest gall to his enemies that tens of thousands of people have already signed up for the project's live launch event, with almost three weeks still to go before it happens. The announcement was made on the PJP's Facebook page:

Sunday17 January 2021 - 3 - 4.30 pm - PLEASE JOIN US.

 As well as Corbyn himself, the event will feature Zarah Sultana, one of the stars of Labour's 2019 intake of MPs, Unite head Len McCluskey, leading Jewish ANC member Ronnie Kasrils, former NUT head Christine