A big news day today – for the first time the death toll figures will include those in care homes, giving a more complete picture, and the PM has become a father again. While it’s a relief that he won’t be taking paternity leave so soon after returning to ‘run the country’, media fawning overContinue reading “Wednesday 29 April”
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Tuesday 28 April
Sections of the media came under fire this morning for failing to cover or covering very superficially the scandal revealed by Panorama last night. This centred on the discovery that the government was counting each single glove as an item of PPE in order to misrepresent the figures and imply they were meeting demand whenContinue reading “Tuesday 28 April”
Monday 27 April
As the PM returned to work today, interestingly promising to be transparent and to involve opposition parties in lockdown exit planning, the Guardian suggested 6 urgent tasks lay in his already challenging in-tray. Besides the obvious lockdown strategy (about which ministers are said to disagree), the other 5 concern testing (claim of reaching 100,000 aContinue reading “Monday 27 April”
Sunday 26 April
Continuing the theme for a moment of one of the hidden costs of the pandemic (worsening symptoms and deaths due to the postponement or cancellation of urgent treatment for life threatening conditions, mental health crises etc), Independent health correspondent Shaun Lintern challenged the BBC this morning, tweeting: ‘BBC News this morning saying NHS intensive careContinue reading “Sunday 26 April”
Saturday 25 April
While people are still processing the news about Dominic Cummings’s attendance at SAGE meetings, it emerged via a confidential Cabinet Office briefing leaked to the Guardian that Ministers were warned last year the UK must have a robust plan to deal with a pandemic virus and its potentially catastrophic social and economic consequences. This leakContinue reading “Saturday 25 April”
Friday 24 April
A big news day – 19,506 deaths so far, moving up to the 20k thought shocking several weeks ago, but also the testing website closing within hours and the revelations about the alleged independence of the government’s scientific advice source. Amid continuing talk about ‘ramping up capacity’ for COVID19 testing, it was reported that theContinue reading “Friday 24 April”
Thursday 23 April
A big day today – it’s World Book Day, St George’s Day, Shakespeare’s birthday and Ramadan starts. I wonder how much these days mean to people. Obviously, none of these celebrations can take place in the usual way. For World Book Day, the custom of giving out free books will happen later and readers areContinue reading “Thursday 23 April”
Wednesday 22 April
Besides the daily death toll, another depressing piece of news is Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty’s view that the UK will have to live with some social distancing measures for the rest of the year. Today’s Guardian editorial paints a reactive rather than proactive picture of the government’s COVID19 strategy, presenting an analysis of what’sContinue reading “Wednesday 22 April”
Tuesday 21 April
This morning housing minister Simon Clarke was the latest junior minister to be found wanting by interviewers, including Piers Morgan – ‘savaged’ in the words of one source. On the PPE saga and the latest news that the Turkish supply still had not been released, Clarke made on the Today Programme what must be theContinue reading “Tuesday 21 April”
Monday 20 April
As we enter the 5th week of lockdown, the government issued two rebuttals to the searing Sunday Times article, one saying the article ‘contained a series of falsehoods and errors’, the second concerning a Financial Times story on efforts to source privately designed ventilators. On another rebuttal, Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth told the SophyContinue reading “Monday 20 April”
Politics and mental health - the missing link? 