Dr Phil Hammond 💙
@drphilhammond
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Comic, author, speaker, retired doctor, Private Eye's medical correspondent MD. Stories: strobes @private -eye.co.uk Inquiries: vivienne @vivienneclore .com
North Somerset
Joined March 2010
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Pinned Tweet
Today’s suggestions to fix the NHS
1. People who shelter their money in tax havens can still order an emergency ambulance, but it has to come from the Cayman Islands
2. All members of the cabinet should be treated in the worst performing hospital in the country
Add to the…
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If approved, the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine will be manufactured in Germany and Belgium. We have ordered 40 million doses. Their transport is temperature and time critical. Let’s hope there are no issues that would prevent free and fast movement of goods at our borders in January.
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Dear
@BorisJohnson
&
@MattHancock
, for the avoidance of doubt, could you please name the 40 new hospitals, the timescale for completion, the cost, how the need for each was determined & precisely what you mean by ‘new’ and ‘hospital’? Thank you.
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Please RT if you would like me to consider standing against
@Jacob_Rees_Mogg
again, as an independent for one term only. As before, I would step aside if a better unity candidate emerges, or if
@UKLabour
&
@LibDems
decide to fight each other & I would only further split the vote.
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If the Queen had labelled this as a leaving event, she could have had the whole palace around her and copious drinks afterwards, and still have complied with
@BorisJohnson
’s version of the rules and guidance.
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All I want for Christmas is a competent government...
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Vaccines protect us against cholera, diphtheria, hepatitis, Japanese encephalitis, measles, meningitis, mumps, pertussis, pneumonia, polio, rabies, rotavirus, rubella, tetanus, tuberculosis, typhoid, varicella, yellow fever, ano-genital cancer, warts AND COVID 19! I'm having it.
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Mr Johnson was particularly riled by newspaper reports of Ms Symonds being referred to by Cummings loyalists by nicknames including “Princess nut nuts”. In other news, excess deaths in the UK are at 70,000 this year and we still don’t have a deal with the EU with a week to go.
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Apparently the government is going to ask retired GPs to help out in a coronavirus pandemic. Those over 80, in which the mortality rate is highest, will be particularly attracted to this job opportunity.
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Good news. We are testing and quarantining everyone out our borders from Monday. Bad news. It took us 100,000 deaths before we did it.
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I don’t know where the government buys its software from, but I can get the latest version of Excel for less than £12 billion
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Could anyone give me just one example of where outsourcing has worked really well in the NHS or indeed any public service? Perhaps the best birthday present we can give the NHS & its staff is to stop outsourcing vital services, and join up care so no one falls through the cracks.
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When people who have refused to be vaccinated are admitted to hospital with Covid, do they also refuse all other treatments based on knowledge gained in the last two years because they are ‘too new’ and they want to wait for more evidence? Genuinely interested in the answers.
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Dear
@UKLabour
&
@LibDems
, I know you have both ruled out any formal co-operation to defeat
@Conservatives
but, if only in North East Somerset, could you cooperate to unseat
@Jacob_Rees_Mogg
? I have stood down to avoid splitting the vote. Please unite or he will win again. Pls RT
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If you have symptoms of any infectious respiratory disease, you should minimise human contact irrespective of what your PCR or lateral flow test says. It’s a British tradition to go to work or your GP when you’re shedding billions of virus particles, and it’s time we stopped it.
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It doesn’t matter what
@BorisJohnson
says on July 19. We are now living with high levels of COVID-19 again, thanks to reckless border control measures, but people are deciding on their own risks after vaccination & a hugely hypocritical Health Secretary. Govt. has lost the plot.
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If we had a public inquiry into Brexit, as well as Covid, we’d have many of the same characters, the same attitudes, and the same bullshit. A government built on hate, lies, narcissism, fear, bullying, innumeracy and tribalism is unlikely to deliver for its people. And it hasn’t.
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Just remember we wouldn’t be in the position to slag off general practice if general practice hadn’t delivered 70% of the vaccines. We’d still be counting the bodies....
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Vaccines may be our way out of this pandemic but they won’t change the social and environmental conditions that gave rise to the virus in the first place. We have to fundamentally change the way we treat animals. Until we do that, we’ll always be at risk from zoonotic viruses.
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Trust simply falls to pieces if the people who make the rules break the rules. They’re just sitting on high, taking the piss and doing as they please.
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Dear
@DrRosena
, I’ve been watching your tone for a while now and I think it’s absolutely pitch perfect. Thank you for all you’re doing on the front line and in parliament for justice, patient safety, staff safety and a better NHS.
I will respectfully challenge the Government - I want our country to succeed.
However, I will not 'watch my tone' when dozens of NHS and care staff are dying unnecessarily.
A clip of my Q to the Health Sec today.
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Top tip. If you can walk, walk. The faster and further you walk, the less likely you are to die and the more likely you are to have a good quality of life (unless you suffer from postexertional malaise). If you enjoy walking, you’ve pretty much got life sorted...
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The problem with politics is that there are no competence checks. Does the health secretary know enough about health? Does the Chancellor know enough about the economy? Does the PM know enough about anything? The UK would do better if we knew our leaders knew what they were doing
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There are two ways to reduce your risk of dying from
#SARSCoV2
. The first is not to catch it. The second is to make yourself as healthy as possible, so if you do catch it, you’re likely to fully recover. We need a big push on public health to protect us in the future.
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Good news. Boris Johnson and Prince Charles will soon be immune, and able to return to the intensive care front line. There they will be able to share their expertise on how they managed to get tested.
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Dear
@Jacob_Rees_Mogg
, if you want to pick on a doctor, feel free to pick on me. I shall enjoy the exchange. I fully support
@djnicholl
& the concerns he has raised about the impact of a no Deal Brexit on the NHS, on drug availability and on patient safety. He is anti Wakefield.
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.
@PHE_uk
is under direct control of
@MattHancock
. If it has failed, he has failed. The National Institute for Health Protection is simply the Health Protection Agency we used to have before it was merged into
@PHE_uk
in 2012 with 40% budget cuts. Hancock will still be in charge
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How about a windfall tax on the PPE profiteers who have trousered millions for equipment that was either unused or unusable? Money needs to be recovered for contracts that weren’t delivered to specification, but a tax on the huge profits could also help the cost of living crisis.
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I was sacked by the BBC as a local radio presenter in 2018 just for saying I might stand against Jacob Rees-Mogg in the 2019 election. I was initially told I would just have to stand down for purdah, then someone higher up changed their mind. It’s quite a fearful organisation.
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The government clearly isn’t capable of protecting your health, but you are. Get outside, stay active, socialise safely, eat food that’s delicious & nutritious, take vitamin D, have 5 portions of fun a day, frequent local cafés, pubs & restaurants if you can, relax & sleep well.
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The NHS is the endpoint of most health problems, & delays can make them worse, but it is not the cause of them. Health is largely socially determined. To fix healthcare, we need to fix housing, heating, nutrition, sleep, stress, cruelty, education, exercise, isolation and poverty
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If the pay review body for the NHS was working, we wouldn’t have 133,000 vacancies.
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If growth was always
@Conservatives
paramount priority, why did we leave the single market?
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Perth WA locks down immediately for 5 days after a single case of Covid is identified. Break the chain immediately. That’s the way to do it. Far less longer term harm.
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Shit life syndrome is by far the biggest determinant of ill-health. We all need decent jobs, diets, a living income, green space, shelter, security, friends, clean air, purpose & kindness. If we focus on these, the economy & NHS will thrive. If we don't, chronic illness will win
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Dear NHS & Care staff, if you are experiencing critical shortages of protective equipment & ventilators, & other serious safety issues, you must document them with photos, notes, email etc & evidence of who you disclosed your concerns to. Otherwise there will be no accountability
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I wish
@BorisJohnson
all the best, but it does rather illustrate why the herd immunity plan was such a bad idea. All that huddling up at press conferences & shaking hands in hospitals because we thought only the old & sick would get seriously ill. How wrong we were.
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I’m not sure of this & nobody can be; but my best guess having spoken to lots of non-conformists is that
@BorisJohnson
lost all moral authority to impose another lockdown when he allowed Cummings to keep his job with a nonsensical cock & bull story having clearly broken the rules
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The new Covid plan has officially been called ‘hybrid immunity’. It’s a combination of fully vaccinating the most vulnerable, & then opening up in a big wave to allow a combination of infection & vaccination in the least vulnerable to deliver herd immunity. Unproven & high risk.
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In some parts of the country, 31% of care home staff come from the EU. Some areas already have a 26% vacancy rate. And on January 1, EU recruitment will plummet because workers earn less than the £26,500 threshold. A very predictable recruitment crisis on top of the Covid crisis.
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The benefits of vaccinating frontline NHS staff early are multiple. You protect them, you hopefully stop them from passing the virus on and you keep them at work to keep both Covid and non-Covid services running. It also reassures staff that we value them enough to protect them.
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A very thoughtful letter from a nurse in the current issue of
@PrivateEyeNews
. How we die matters as much as when we die.
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Breaking News:
@BorisJohnson
compares partying in the basement of Downing Street during lockdown to sheltering underground from Russian bombs in Ukraine. “Both went on all night. Nobody slept. I didn’t know if I’d come out alive.”
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Breaking news. The Tory leadership candidate will be decided by who can name the 40 new hospitals whilst keeping a straight face…
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If
@BorisJohnson
believes
“We truly did everything we could, and continue to do everything that we can, to minimise loss of life and to minimise suffering” then he has absolutely nothing to fear from a Public Inquiry into the UK’s preparation for & handling of the pandemic. Now
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The trouble with blaming the public is that the 20% of people who don’t give a shit, still don’t give a shit. The 80% of people who are doing their best, trying to balance a number of competing complex risks, and frustrated at the lack of testing, get more pissed off and angry.
Health secretary overarching message this morning: if there’s another national lockdown the public will only have themselves to blame
#Covid19UK
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I liked
#LineofDutyFinale
. Someone very greedy & mediocre gets repeatedly promoted above his competence, and whoever did the promoting gets off scot free. Meanwhile, systemic failings are written off as a few bad apples. A neat summary of institutional accountability in the UK.
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“I was in charge of making the rules, and demonstrated I understood them fully by communicating them to the public in all seriousness on multiple occasions. However, I genuinely misunderstood how the rules applied to me personally.”
@BorisJohnson
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Breaking news. In plans to clean up the culture in Westminster, speaker Lindsey Hoyle has announced that all MPs will have to download an app on their mobile phone to monitor whether they are accessing pornography whilst in the chamber. It’s called Tractor and Trace.
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This tweet has not aged well. I thought we would reduce the number of deaths by doing the basics right. Go in hard & fast. Test, trace, isolate, break the chain. All we needed was German leadership, planning & efficiency. Instead, we invited the virus in & let it run riot. Sorry.
More people died falling down the STAIRS than from SARS. The media never ignites a killer stairs scare, but it loves a killer virus. Currently
2019-nCoV has moderate transmissibility and relatively low pathogenicity. I predict again more people will die falling down the stairs.
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Teachers should have priority vaccination irrespective of occupational risk. The welfare of children in any society should be paramount. Any teacher who gets Covid can’t teach, so their students fall further behind. We should vaccinate teachers to protect children’s education.
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Dear Mr Javid, it would be enormously helpful if you could name this hospital and the other 47, and also clarify what you mean by ‘new’. Are these new buildings on new sites, or modifications and upgrades of existing services?
Looking forward to opening one of new 48 hospitals later today.
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Politically, the last 12 years have been a colossal waste of time that has done far more harm than good. The economic, environmental, mental and physical health of the nation has markedly declined. No wonder so many Conservative MPs don’t wish to stand at the next election.
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The fact that the wealthiest in the UK live 8 years longer than the poorest, and have 20 more years of disease free living, is as shocking as any Covid statistic. It’s also one of the main reasons our Covid outcomes are so poor. Covid accelerates existing inequalities.
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I would kill for a new series of Yes Minister now
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The NHS has saved
@BorisJohnson
‘s life & the vaccine rollout has saved his career. He is entitled not to reward NHS staff more than 1%, & they are entitled to turn their back on him every time he, or any minister, turns up for a vaccine photo opportunity to bolster their career.
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Cummings’ Brexit ‘success’ was built on the fear-mongering lie that millions of Turkish immigrants were heading for the UK. In other news, the children of Turkish immigrants to Germany have developed a vaccine that could control the pandemic.
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Covid is just one of many serious threats to public health. Cancer, heart disease, poverty, unemployment, homelessness, mental illness, pollution, abuse etc etc. If you relentlessly publish the data on one risk whilst overlooking the others, more people die from forgotten risks.
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Good luck
@BorisJohnson
. He’s got a very difficult weekend ahead of him, writing two columns. One for if we win, and one for if we lose...
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If we’re going to spend £200 million on
@covidinquiryuk
, the very least we could do is to pay a tiny fraction to an IT forensics expert who would have no difficulty in retrieving
@BorisJohnson
‘s “missing” WhatsApp messages. They have been magically “lost” for a very good reason.
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The scrapping of the 45p tax rate was always a temporary measure to allow hedge fund managers to make a killing on the falling pound. Now they have, it’s safe to reverse it. Until the next time…
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To make it easier to get medicines,
@theresecoffey
has announced a trough of drugs close to their use by date will be available outside all GP surgeries and pharmacies, with a sign saying "help yourself". People will also be able to deposit their unwanted drugs in the trough.
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People unhappy about very long NHS waits. But if you vote for a decade of flat line funding with no proper staffing plan & add in a pandemic, it's entirely understandable the service is in meltdown. Health & care cost a lot, most goes on staffing, we have no plan & 100k vacancies
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What lessons do we need to learn from the pandemic? I'll kick off. 1. People who know what they’re doing (vaccine development, procurement and roll-out) tend to get much better results than people who don’t (PPE procurement and roll-out, test and trace). Your turn. No hate please
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There is no point in having an “independent”
@covidinquiryuk
if the government controls what information it does and does not submit. It becomes a completely pointless and hugely expensive whitewash.
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Looking for a clear, strong message today from the government’s scientific advisors on the pros and cons of lifting all Covid restrictions. If they don’t agree with the government’s actions, they should say so publicly. That’s the whole point of being independent.
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Wife develops symptoms? Go into work. Worried about you and your son getting it? Cram into a car with your wife for 5 hours. Ask your nieces for help, walk in the woods, use NHS, take unnecessary 30 mile trip and get out of car. The actions of a man who believes in herd immunity?
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Breaking news. Boris Johnson has a minor anus procedure to release the 211 MPs who were inside.
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I would much prefer it if
@CMO_England
did a separate & independent science briefing first, so intelligent people could figure out what the best thing to do was. Then
@BorisJohnson
could explain his policy, & we would soon see how closely it follows the scientific advice, or not.
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If ever we needed more evidence of how appalling the NHS can be at acting on the legitimate concerns of staff who are morally, professionally and legally obliged to blow the whistle, this is it. The mother of all cover ups, until it was too big to deny.
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The managed decline of the NHS since 2010 was always going to end in mass staff vacancies (150,000+), mass avoidable harm, mass migration of staff to countries that value them more & mass industrial action. Negligent oversight, planning & funding have led us to this NHS disaster.
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Dear
@SteveBarclay
, please don’t peddle the lie that
@TheBMA
has placed preconditions on negotiations. They haven’t and neither should you. It’s time for you to grow up, get around the table and negotiate. What could be more important in your in tray?
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The
@covidinquiryuk
is a very powerful example of how “duty of candour” and “freedom to speak up” don’t work in public life. Witness after witness details how incompetent they thought the UK response was at the time, and yet nobody spoke publicly about it at the time. Why not?
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If we are going on data not dates, we should probably delay indoor opening for a fortnight and compensate businesses for losses. It wouldn’t be the end of the world but it might delay the end of some lives.
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Well that was quick. I’ve been sacked by
@bbcrb
for announcing my intention to stand for
@NHAparty
against
@Jacob_Rees_Mogg
. Thanks
@thinktwink
@RMegi
, the loyal listeners & the fabulous team at Dr Phil’s Saturday Surgery. It’s been a hugely enjoyable 12 years.
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How dysfunctional does a government department have to be for an employee to hide a spy camera in the bosses’ office, & the boss to conduct urgent government business using public money via a private, unscrutinised email account? We need an inquiry to start before the shredding.
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Did anyone expect an inexperienced Health Secretary with no background in health, a penchant for un evidence-based tech solutions & a tendency to say anything to keep his boss happy would manage a pandemic brilliantly? Scientists don’t enter politics because it’s full of bollocks
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All the potential prime ministers promised to deliver on the 2019 manifesto pledges. So could the host of the next debate ask them to name the 40 new hospitals, what they mean by “new” and “hospital”, and give us a progress update on the 50,000 more nurses and 5000 more GPs?
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Most people involved in car accidents are wearing shoes. It’s time we banned shoes, or at least suspended their use, in all motorised vehicles across the EU until we have further information. Driving barefoot is far more risky but that’s the price we have to pay for safety.
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When I qualified in 1987, NHS waiting times were often over two years. Peoples’ lives would be ruined while waiting and some would even die ‘on the list’. 35 years later and we’re back where we started…
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My experience of 35 years in the NHS is that most people forgive honest errors, especially when made under great pressure. What they never forgive is arrogance, lies and cover ups used to bury errors. I suspect politics is similar….
#PartyGate
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Today I am announcing the formation of the Intelligent Kindness Party, or IKIP. Anyone can join for free. Everyone is a leader. You can simultaneously be members of other parties provided you try to make decisions that are both intelligent and kind. Please tweet your support.
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The advantage of being an island is that if you control your borders early you can keep the virus out. On the other hand, if you fail to control the pandemic, everyone else can close their borders to keep you out.
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Health chiefs are warning that they can’t guarantee patient safety during the strikes. But they can’t guarantee patient safety outside the strikes either. Demand for health & social care outstrips capacity so much that people are harmed and die every day for want of decent care.
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If you don’t pay NHS doctors what they’re worth for doing a high risk, highly complex, life-saving job - or restore their pay to what it was worth in 2008 - many will switch careers or move to countries that pay better. No amount of physician associates can make up for that loss.
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Dear
@SteveBarclay
, instead of taking legal action against nurses, please just sit down and negotiate with them. It’ll be much better for everyone’s health. Ditto junior doctors. The more you antagonise them now, the harder the negotiations will be. Threats & Bullying don’t work.
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There’s nothing remotely surprising about a second wave of Covid given it’s an infectious disease we don’t have a vaccine for. What would be surprising, & unforgivable, is if we handle it as badly as the first wave, with huge numbers of Covid & non Covid deaths & economic carnage
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The only thing I know about pandemics is that you have to go after the virus early and aggressively. Test, isolate, break the chain. Test, isolate, break the chain. Apart from Germany, only countries with recent SARS experience were quick enough to do this and shut it down.
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The next round of the Great British Coronavirus Experiment is underway. If you were lucky enough to survive Round 1, you now have to ease yourself out of lockdown using a mask, common sense & alertness, without a fully functional 'test, trace, isolate' system & data to guide us.
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Breaking news. Over 60 million people are suffering from Long Boris, caused by a politician who keeps mutating the truth and refuses to go away.
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You get the sense
@BorisJohnson
is trying to provoke widespread disobedience, anger & unrest in Manchester so the government has someone to blame for losing control of the virus (again). Test and trace needs to be part of the fabric of the NHS & local authorities, or it will fail
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If you don't vote, don't be surprised if you're shafted. If you do vote, you may still be shafted. But at least you went down fighting xx
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One reason the government is so keen on outsourcing services is so they can outsource blame. Many care homes weren’t cut out to cope with a pandemic, but some did. Large chains send huge profits off shore. We need a national care service with proper staffing & infection control.
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It’s much cheaper & less traumatic to stop people falling into the river of illness than to try to fish them out of it. This applies to Covid, coronary heart disease and cancer. Alas we cherish our freedom to throw ourselves into the river of illness, as politicians walk on by.
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A week ago, the government advocated herd immunity. 60-80% of us were going to get the virus at some stage. Now it’s saying it’s absolutely imperative we avoid all unnecessary personal contact so we don’t get the virus. I can see why people are confused & not sure who to trust.
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Delighted that England has a decent leader in Gareth Southgate, who uses wisdom, ability, compassion and intelligence to get results. Who knows, it might catch on...
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No wonder we have such high excess deaths. The muddled thinking of the govt around Cummings perfectly mirrors their muddled thinking around the pandemic. They can’t spot the risk of transporting an infected family unit from an area of high infectivity to one of low infectivity.
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One of the most ludicrous things about British politics is that the Prime Minister can answer ‘peanut butter’ to every question in Prime Minister’s questions, and nobody can compel him to change his answer, or indeed answer any question. It’s one big unaccountable pantomime.
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