Susan, with all due respect it's not every dot and comma. It's the big stuff like PPE, like discharging people back into care homes thus seeding the disease in a vulnerable population, it's being clear on your messaging, it's not pretending to be the Superman of capitalism, it's getting a decent test, track and trace operation up to speed. These are not dots and commas. These are the essentials. If they were getting these right, then I personally, probably would not be so annoyed that a government advisor drove to Barnard Castle to test his eyesight, but when they get the big things wrong the little things then start to really irritate.
I get mightily tired of some posters thinking that I am somehow quibbling over minor issues, I'm not. It's the big stuff the government got wrong and on current form I'm not seeing a huge improvement.
People died who need not have done. That is down, in part, to our government. Sorry/not sorry if that doesn't fit in with some people's world view.
I agree
And I'll freely accept that there were some things that frankly any UK government would have struggled with - for example testing capacity back in March, because we simply didn't have anything in place historically (unlike some countries) and you can't simply conjure up test facilities from nothing in days.
But most of the issues I'm talking about were both predictable and predicted with sufficient time for the government to make the necessary changes and put things in place. Yet time and again they've ignored sensible expert advice and taken their own path, as if you win this not by getting things right (even if that is exactly the same as other countries), but by creating a bespoke UK solution.
Examples - PPE, e.g ventilators - rather than just buy existing designs, increase manufacturing capacity the UK felt the need to have a competition for completely new and untested designs.
Track and Trace app - other countries had this ages ago using the power of google/apple etc, but we refused to simply take the technology and use it in the UK - we had to have our own.
Testing - early on the government wouldn't trust and wouldn't use experts and facilities in universities - rather they had to set up their own mega- facilities (which took months) and guess what - they couldn't procure the equipment or consumables, so long after we'd offered to help they came begging to borrow our equipment, consumables and people ... but they had to go and work in Milton Keynes (in our case, despite our labs being in London).
Exam grades - for months the government were being told that the algorithm and adjustments would disadvantage kids own the poorest areas, but they didn't listen and when what was predicted happened they seemed bemused and ended up in knee jerk U turns (which themselves created huge problems and extra work for schools and universities).
Just a few examples, I'm afraid.
