Is the UK now giving off strong Third World vibes?

But that's what the likes of Truss, Patel and Raab want. Raab was the genius Minister for Brexit who didn't realise how much trade went through Dover.

Truss still hasn't got the hint after her beloved markets told her to f*ck off, a book out and turns up at the Tory conference like the ghost from Christmas past. That takes a whole other level of gumption and lack of self awareness. There has to be a screw loose there, the lift doesn't go to the top floor there. Another know it all who sidelined the civil service and advisors, hell anybody with half a brain, when she went ahead with that budget.

At least Cameron, toff that he was and as robotic as May was, they were semi competent politicians who listened to advice.

Mad here??

The lunacy was across the water.

People getting hit with enormous fines during lockdown while others could happily go out for a spin to test their eyesight or clap for carers on Westminster Bridge headed by the useless Ex police commissioner Cressida Dick.

Covid was a horrendous way out for a lot of people. I felt much safer here in Ireland than I would be as part of the UK clownshow.

Having worked on construction sites where common sense totally deserts the scene in the act of satisfying some stupid counter productive action to prevent a risk that cannot appear as anything but a bit of decoration or a filler on a risk assessment, One gets accustomed to an overreaction on some occasions.

I don't think Ireland's response was overreacting. Gasping a few final desperate breaths because an acquaintance wanted a pint in company isn't my idea of appropriate risk management.

British citizens are not valued or respected by their government, you don't lie repeatedly or withhold the truth from your fellow citizens if you have an iota of respect for them.

That's why so many were expendable.

There was a lot of suspicion that NPHET wanted to kill Irish pub culture, but there are plenty of other threads that covered this.

And more Covid shyte, sorry goodlad, I think Nicola Sturgeon had to force Boris's hand a couple of times. IIRC she announced the closure of schools and Boris had to follow.

As Cummings called him, the shopping trolley, he's all over the place! Couldn't make a decision to save his own life, or others.

I could never get the reluctance to lockdown because the Brits love their freedom too much, argument. I mean we'd all seen the Zombie film type scenes coming from Italy, and Spain was going that way. Boris and his British exceptionalism shyte cost thousands of lives.

You're right on the Tories not making it up as they went along , Serco running track and trace and making a balls of it or having a fast track system to award their cronies multimillion contracts, that type of stuff is going on years.

The NHS had a track and trace system, scaled back and underfunded for years under the Tories, but the basics were there. Ignoring them and giving the contract to an omnishambles of a company like Serco is par for the course.

And they'll give Serco yet more contracts despite their track record. Rewarding failure seems to be an ideological belief with this shower.

Was Ireland worse because our COVID death rate was half of the UK?

The other difference of course was the UK shutdowns trailing Ireland by a week, thereby allowing exponential spread which you seem to think was a better bargain.

Little difference? More than double a death rate than Ireland that has a more centralised population than England?

Then slowest bounce back in the oecd.

Is this what winning downwards is?

I remember Johnson in his Greenwich speech calling the news of lockdowns in China as "autarky" and "market fragmentation" and barely as a health issue.

Even after he ended up hospitalised I never got the impression he took it seriously. His only focus seemed to be wordplay and Churchill adulation.

Brexit was a complete fantasy and he let it fill his own fantasies.