A sheep farmer has been convicted of two counts of contaminating food, after putting three jars of baby food laced with shards of metal in two Tesco stores.
Nigel Wright is facing up to 14 years in prison after being found guilty at the Old Bailey.
The 45-year-old had demanded £1.5 million from Tesco after lacing baby food with razor-sharp shards of metal.
Two mothers found the metal pieces when they were feeding their children after Nigel Wright began his two-year campaign in the spring of 2018.
The married father of two threatened to inject tins of fruit with cyanide and salmonella unless the supermarket giant handed over the money in Bitcoin.
Nigel Wright signed off his emails and letters ‘Guy Brush & the Dairy Pirates + Tinkerbell the naughty fairy’ and claimed he represented dairy farmers who had been underpaid by Tesco.
He triggered two nationwide recalls on both Cow & Gate and Heinz baby food as a result of the threats, prompting the supermarket to clear 140,000 products from the racks.
A detective posed as a Tesco worker named Sam Scott to hand over £100,000 in the cryptocurrency to trap the blackmailer.
Nigel Wright was captured on CCTV buying wine and flowers for his wife after placing a contaminated jar on the shelves of a Lockerbie branch on November 29 last year. He also placed two jars of contaminated food on the shelves of a Rochdale store.
Scottish mother Morven Smith felt sick when she spotted the shards in a jar of Heinz sweet and sour chicken her 10-month-old son was eating.
Morven Smith, from Lockerbie, had already fed several spoonfuls to her baby when she found a shard of metal in the bowl in December 2019.
She said that she had taken the bowl out of the microwave and had given her son a couple of spoonfuls when she saw something shiny and she picked it out with her fingers. She said it was horrible and she felt sick and was so shocked.
Her husband found a second piece of metal at the bottom of the jar and the incident led to a nationwide recall of 42,000 tins of the product.
A second mother, Harpreet Kaur Singh found shredded chippings of metal in jars of Heinz Sunday Chicken Dinner and Cheese and Tomato Pasta Stars.
The mother sobbed as she told the court how she had been minutes away from feeding them to her nine-month-old daughter.
This is shocking, and how could anybody do this to innocent babes, especially when this man has children of his own, and he might have been targetting Tesco but it’s the mothers and babies that suffer.
And how did this man even think what he was doing would work? Did he think that Tesco would just take his word when he showed which one he had contaminated? Did he not realise that Tesco would dump it all, and clearly this guy is not the full shilling.
Shamed ex-MP Eric Joyce has evaded prison after pleading guilty to making an indecent image which highlighted a 12-month-old child.
Eric Joyce, 59, admitted the crime at Ipswich Crown Court in July and was told to sign the sex offenders register.
In court, it was revealed he had on a device a 51-second film depicting a number of children, one of which was said to be 12 months old. The judge sentenced him to eight months in prison suspended for two years and ordered him to complete 150 hours of unpaid work.
The charge alleged that Eric Joyce made the shocking image between 7 August 2013 and 6 November 2018 and Judge Mr Justice Edis, sentencing the former shadow minister said: “You have pleaded guilty to an offence which involves the possession of a category A film of a little less than a minute’s duration.
“That film showed the sexual abuse of very young children.
“That these acts of abuse happened is because there are people like you who want to watch these films.
“If there was no market, those children wouldn’t be subjected to these very serious offences.”
But the judge added: “You have sought help from people well able to provide it and there’s evidence before the court that that has had an effect on helping you reduce, perhaps completely, your impulsive behaviour, and that’s happened over a significant period due to the delay in these proceedings.”
Mr Justice Edis further sentenced Eric Joyce to a sexual harm prevention order, which will continue until further order of the court.
He was also given an 18-day rehabilitation activity requirement and directed to pay prosecution costs of £1,800.
In an earlier hearing, Judge Emma Peters informed the court that Eric Joyce maintained he accessed the video via an email which he said was a spam email. She added that at the time he was drinking heavily and that he had now undergone work with the Lucy Faithfull Foundation and a psychotherapist.
Judge Peters informed the former shadow minister, of Worlingworth, Suffolk, that the offences cross the custody threshold and she said that it was going to be a question of whether it’s immediate or suspended.
Eric Joyce left Labour to serve as independent MP for Falkirk in 2012, stepping down before the 2015 general election. He spent 21 years in the Army, rising to the rank of major.
This man got a suspended sentence for having improper pictures of a young child, yet a person caught growing a cannabis plant gets 5 years in prison, where is the justice? And this guy was an MP for goodness sake.
What an utter farce, but then it wasn’t the judge’s children on that video and how is it conceivable that someone, especially an MP can evade prison for child abuse?
It looks like our justice system is made to protect MPs, serving and retired and it’s now coming to the forefront that there are a lot of influential people out there and not just MPs who are degenerates and marauders, but it seems it’s only right that the justice system protects its brothers.
The amount of displaced children has hit a 14 year high with approximately 130,000 stuck in B&Bs and temporary shelters and devastating new figures today reveal there were 129,380 children living in temporary accommodation in England on March 31.
The number is up 3.1 per cent on last year and is the highest quarterly figure reported since summer 2006.
More than two-thirds of all people stuck in temporary accommodation, a measure of homelessness, have dependent children dwelling with them and some 1,550 parents with children are living in what is deemed to be short term B&Bs.
And while that was a 29 per cent decrease on last year, 530 of those parents had still been in B&Bs past the allowable limit of six weeks.
Overall the number of households in temporary accommodation rose 9.4 per cent last year to 93,000.
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government announced this increase was mainly motivated by single households and may be connected to the coronavirus ‘Everyone In’ scheme.
The scheme took rough sleepers off the streets and housed them in accommodations like hotels, increasing the number of people in temporary accommodation but Labour warned a new surge of homelessness is on the horizon as landlords get permission to restart evictions, which was banned for five months, and is scheduled to start again this Monday.
Shadow Housing Secretary Thangam Debbonaire said that these figures highlight the pressing need to extend the eviction embargo, to avoid thousands of more people being made homeless in the run up to winter.
And he said that before COVID, we already had devastatingly large numbers in temporary accommodation as a direct result of 10 years of the Conservative government, whose methods have thrust people into destitution.
And that the Government have known for months that an eviction crisis was emerging and not for the first time, it has been too hesitant to take action and that we’re now facing a possible disaster if the embargo is lifted with no strategy for what comes next.
In three months, approximately 5,000 households were threatened with homelessness after being served a no-fault eviction notice and a quarter of all households who applied to their council for assistance were renting from a private landlord at the time – 19,160.
Polly Neate, chief executive of Shelter said that thousands of more renters have since had their lives turned upside down as the country sinks into an economic free fall and with the daily news of new job cuts and the eviction embargo set to lift on Monday, the coming months are likely to see a devastating homelessness crisis unfold unless the government steps in to safeguard people’s homes.
Of course, no child is alone in these B&Bs, they’re there with their parents, but are usually not given many options but to go there or the children would be put into children’s homes.
And children are on the streets at a tender age normally because of their home lives. Of course, the immigrant predicament does need a shakeup but we can’t indict them for everything.
The whole population could get regular coronavirus tests as standard as part of a future strategy to ease lockdown, and the Health Secretary claimed a huge project is underway in Government to swamp the country with tests for everyone, even those who have no coronavirus symptoms.
However, Matt Hancock declined to spell out any specific details of his plan or set a deadline for it, saying only testing would be ramped up over the remainder of this year.
It also comes after the Government repeatedly grappled to meet other pledges on testing earlier this year. Yesterday 150,000 tests were carried out in the United Kingdom.
However, it’s not clear how his ambitious pledge would be financed or whether it would apply to devolved governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland but Matt Hancock claimed if the moon shot works, it could allow some of the remaining constraints on businesses, and meeting family and friends, to be lifted.
The Health Secretary stated that mass testing, population testing, where they make it the norm that people get tested regularly, will enable them to, therefore, give some people their freedoms back, and that it’s a huge project in Government right now.
It comes after researchers found up to 72 per cent of people who tested positive for coronavirus did not have symptoms and the Office for National Statistics announced the group didn’t report symptoms at the time of a swab test for COVID 19.
However, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said figures were unknown because symptoms were self-reported, and some forms may be blank and the sample size was also small with only 165 people who tested positive so the margin for error was pretty wide.
Currently, tests need to be sent off to a lab and it takes time to turn around, making regular mass testing difficult and Matt Hancock stated his plan will only work if new, much faster tests, such as one that can deliver a result in ten minutes, pass the evaluation at Porton Down.
He said that some of them you only have to use saliva rather than having a swab all the way down the back of your throat, meaning anyone can administer it or self administer it.
Some of them don’t need a lab on the test, which means you don’t need to send it off and get it back and with the best ones you get the results in ten minutes.
But he added that he wasn’t going to put a firm deadline on it and that they were going as fast as they could, working with dozens of companies, both homegrown and international, to get the very best testing capacity.
And that this moon shot to have testing ubiquitous and ready to reopen all sorts of things to decrease the burden of the quarantine arrangements, to enable them to reopen parts of the market, that was an especially significant project in Government right now.
Separately, England’s weekly coronavirus survey would be hugely expanded in an effort to find more people who are spreading COVID 19 without symptoms and the infection survey would increase from regularly testing 28,000 people per fortnight in England to 150,000 by October.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) survey presently intends to increase to include 400,000 people and ministers are also working with Heathrow Airport to obtain a way for coronavirus testing to reduce the quarantine period.
Studies for the government’s scientific advisors have suggested people could be tested twice, once at the border and again about a week later, to cut the 14-day isolation down to 10 or 8 days.
However, Matt Hancock said the details are still being worked out, as any system can’t let many sufferers through the cracks and it’s been reported that Cabinet Ministers will meet next week to discuss strategies to replace blanket quarantines with COVID 19 testing for travellers.
Documents released on Friday from Sage’s June 18 meeting showed the scientific group found that double testing of travellers significantly reduced the chance of false negatives and could enable quarantine duration of less than 14 days.
It comes as Gordon Brown launches a campaign to promote science jobs and research as part of the COVID 19 economic recovery.
Speaking at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the former Prime Minister will call on MPs, local leaders, unions and businesses to back staying inside Horizon, a European research and science programme that pioneers medical, environmental and hi-tech research.
The ex-Labour leader said the COVID related jobs crisis means maintaining and generating new jobs and is the biggest economic challenge we will encounter across the United Kingdom in the next few months.
And people across Britain have a realistic perception of the big financial problem now facing us and is about solving the job crisis and it’s about whether you’re for full employment across our regions and nations, not whether you’re for or against Europe.
And the science and jobs benefit of Horizon membership to our universities and to high-quality ancillary companies will be essential to our four-nation COVID economic recovery plan.
Gordon Brown, who speaks at the festival on Friday, will be joined on the virtual platform by European Commission vice president Frans Timmermans and he’s expected to confirm the EU wants to maintain scientific research and development with British universities, despite Brexit.
I feel a huge blob of déjà vu coming because it wasn’t that long ago when Matt Hancock was telling everyone that we were going to have a world-beating Test and Trace app. However, what followed was a shambles.
Now here he is again promising what he knows he can’t or won’t deliver. How dumb does he think the British people are? And as that saying goes ‘Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me’.
And I’m no conspiracy nutcase but something clearly isn’t right with any Government who’s demanding that we all give what is effectively a sample of our DNA to them and now people are saying that this isn’t about the virus, it’s about a New World Order and Agenda 21 but it’s a pretty good way to lock the world down in the name of a virus.
And isn’t it illegal by International Human Rights law for a Government or anybody come to that to force another human being to undergo any medical procedure, including test and vaccination without there informed consent?
But since when have our Government’s given a drat about legality? And will a Tory contributor be profiting from the sale of these mass testing kits?
Dominic Cummings has been questioned by a former top prosecutor to give evidence about his movements through the coronavirus lockdown, as in May the Prime Minister’s chief aide drove from London to Durham despite having COVID 19 symptoms.
And it was said that Dominic Cummings might have broken lockdown rules, following the revelations of his journey, and a separate 60 mile round trip to a local beauty spot, but Dominic Cummings explained the excursions by stating that he and his wife Mary were self-isolating at his family’s farm in Co Durham because they were worried about childcare for their four-year-old son.
Dominic Cummings then claimed a trip to Barnard Castle was to test his eyesight. However, eyewitnesses maintain they saw him in Houghall Woods in Co Durham on the morning of Sunday, April 19, but Dominic Cummings maintained he was in London that day.
However, former Chief Prosecutor Nazir Afzal’s legal team have written to Dominic Cummings and his wife, Mary, asking for data about their movements on key dates in March and April.
Nazir Afzal stated that all they’re asking, on behalf of the law-abiding public, is that Dominic Cummings, who’s continually talked about the importance of data, provides the data that will evidence his whereabouts and confirm he was telling the whole truth.
He further stated that they’d written to his wife Mary because she had yet to give an account of her whereabouts, which has become increasingly relevant as witnesses give their accounts, and that the public deserved the truth and nothing else.
Mike Schwarz, an associate at Hodge, Jones and Allen solicitors, said in a letter to Dominic Cummings, that their letter was provoked by testimony from additional witnesses, that put him in Durham on the morning of 19 April 2020, and indicated that he had returned there a second time.
And that appears to be inconsistent with his statement that he gave in the Downing Street Rose Garden on 25 May 2020, when he announced that in the last few days, there had been numerous media reports that he had returned to Durham after 13 April and that all those narratives were incorrect.
Dominic Cummings further referred to a particular report that he returned there on 19 April, and that data on his phone could confirm that this was untrue and that local CCTV footage if it existed, would further confirm that he was telling the truth and that he was in London on that day, and that he wasn’t in Durham.
The letter that Dominic Cummings got asks him to make available particular data in his possession at the time, and available from independent recording devices, capable of establishing his story.
The legal team also want location history data from all mobile phones used on particular dates and location history data from vehicles the couple travelled in.
The letter says that as an accomplished prosecutor, Mr Afzal is very mindful of the national security, privacy and other matters that might relate to specific data and information saved on Dominic Cummings mobile phone or other devices.
And that the request have been thoroughly limited to location data for the dates and times at which Dominic Cummings was acting in a personal rather than professional capacity, and in relation to which he and his wife Mary have previously expressed their readiness to disclose vital details to the public.
They did not ask for Dominic Cummings to provide or approve the disclosure of any data or information that was not immediately related to his whereabouts – Downing Street refused to comment.
Durham Constabulary made it clear that they would not be taking any further action against Dominic Cummings and that by placing himself at his father’s premises he did not breach the regulations.
And the Prime Minister said that he believed that Dominic Cummings acted reasonably and that he considered the subject closed, and Dominic Cummings stated that he thought that in all circumstances he acted rationally and constitutionally, weighing the safety of his family and the extreme position of No 10 and the public interest in effective government to which he could contribute.
However, it’s a fairly simple matter, all he has to do is present the evidence to demonstrate that he wasn’t lying because if he doesn’t then people out there are going to think they can smell a rat.
But divert, dispute, redirect and lie – it’s the Tory way, and Dominic Cummings shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it because of who he is, even by the authorities, and it’s about time the right thing was done, and that he’s properly held to account.
We the public elected them into Parliament in the first place, therefore we have every right to ask challenging questions, and they shouldn’t be given the right to refuse to acknowledge them because they’re answerable to us, the public.
Did Dominic Cummings think about what would have happened if he’d broken down in his vehicle or got a flat tyre? Especially knowing he had symptoms of coronavirus, driving those miles, anything could have occurred.
What would have happened if he’d been involved in a car collision? And if anything would have happened, he would have had to have breakdown recovery out, or if he’d been involved in a car crash, paramedics would have been in close contact.
I bet he never thought of that? And I don’t know why no one has put that to him for questioning, and we know it didn’t happen, but what if it had? He didn’t think of that when he went on his travels, and I wonder what he would say to get out of that one?
Tory Matt Hancock has confirmed Public Health England will be scrapped, and the change has now started.
The Health Secretary announced the drastic changes with immediate effect despite fury at him for doing so in the midst of a pandemic, and he stated there will be more private sector partnership in future as he sets up the National Institute for Health Protection (NIHP).
Public Health England (PHE), which was responsible for essential coronavirus testing and research will have its pandemic work merged with that of the much-criticised NHS Test and Trace programme.
The new NIHP will oversee both, led by Tory peer and David Cameron’s pal Dido Harding. In the meantime, PHE’s work on obesity, addiction and other essential public health problems will be given over to councils, who’ve had their public health budgets cut, and across the NHS, including GPs and pharmacies.
But Matt Hancock risks new rage after acknowledging there’s not yet a plan for who will oversee the new public health work. Instead, he stated he’ll consult widely with more news in the coming weeks.
The new NIHP will report directly to ministers and support the clinical leadership of the Chief Medical Officers, and Matt Hancock told the think tank Policy Exchange that it’s conceived amid crisis but it will help maintain vigilance for years to come.
PHE has long been scrutinised by figures in No 10 for scaling back community testing in March, over counting coronavirus mortality by including anyone who died at any time following diagnosis.
But ministers have also been accused of using PHE as a scapegoat for other shortcomings in the crisis.
Matt Hancock gave no date for the merger to be complete but announced it would start today, and that the new Institute would be formalised and running from spring 2021.
PHE chief executive Duncan Selbie will be supporting the transition but seems to have been dismissed from his position, but Matt Hancock said Michael Brodie, PHE’s former Finance Commercial Director will step up as the interim chief executive.
Matt Hancock added that from today, PHE, the Joint Biosecurity Centre and NHS Test and Trace will run under a single leadership, reporting to Baroness Dido Harding, who will establish the NIHP and undertake the global search for its future leadership.
The Health Secretary’s decision to scrap Public Health England has been branded as reckless and careless.
Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth tweeted that last year ministers outlined PHE’s priorities, but they didn’t consider planning for a pandemic, and a structural reorganisation mid pandemic is time-consuming, energy-sapping, it’s also unsafe and certainly irresponsible.
Richard Murray, chief executive of the health think tank, The Kings Fund, reprimanded Matt Hancock’s decision to break up Public Health England (PHE), and he said that Public Health England seems to have been found guilty without a trial.
And that it was unclear what problems the government are expecting to solve by carving up PHE and redistributing its responsibilities, and unquestionably, there are questions to be acknowledged about England’s administration of the COVID 19 crisis, and that the middle of a pandemic isn’t the time to dismantle England’s public health agency.
Colin Hutchinson, a retired surgeon who leads the Doctors for the NHS campaign group, said it slaps dogma in the face, rather than sound management, and a major restructuring of deckchairs isn’t the priority here when we know there’s still so many icebergs about.
Now is precisely the time we need public health strategies to take greater prominence in the United Kingdom, and PHE’s remit is to protect the nation’s well-being and reduce health inequalities.
And one would have expected the remit and purposes of the PHE to be expanding with a concurrent growth in funds, instead, the government wants to destroy the agency.
Matt Hancock said the new Institute will have a singular and ruthless purpose, shielding people from outside threats to this country’s help which includes biological weapons, pandemics, and infectious diseases of all kinds.
He said it would combine world-class expertise and scientific support, but in a move that will infuriate many on the left, he seemed to boast there will be more private sector involvement in the new body.
Challenged by drug giant Pfizer how the private sector could get involved, Matt Hancock answered that the truth was, we couldn’t have done it without the private sector, and that they couldn’t have expended testing in the way that they did, and that they couldn’t have expanded contact tracing in the way that they did.
Matt Hancock acknowledged that the United Kingdom went into the pandemic without the ability to deal with it and that they were making the transition now because they wanted to do everything they could to fulfil their responsibilities to the public, and to strengthen public health in the United Kingdom.
Baroness Harding, the head of the new body, was elected in May to lead England’s contact tracing programme but her reputation is mired in controversy, and since then, the programme has encountered questions about performance and value for money.
The peer was put in the House of Lords by her university buddy David Cameron in 2014, and while she’s the chair of NHS Improvement, Baroness Harding has also held senior positions at Tesco and Sainsbury’s.
And she was chief executive of TalkTalk when it was fined £4000,000 for security failings which led to 157,000 customers personal data being stolen.
Her latest position as chief of the NHS Test and Trace, which was launched in May, has also been mired in controversy.
The service, essentially outsourced to Serco and Sitel, scaled back its national operations and handed more authority to local councils after failing to reach more than a quarter of COVID 19 sufferers close contacts.
And plans to launch a companion app was pushed back by months after it didn’t work and had to start again from scratch.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock maintained the National Institute for Health Protection (NIHP) will sustain a level of independence in order for ministers to get unbiased advice.
Matt Hancock said that he definitely wanted to give the best possible advice that was objective and given without hesitation or favour and as open to external challenge as possible.
But Jonathan McShane, chair of the Terrence Higgins Trust said that at the same time, you need to operationally be able to come together and work seamlessly together and that if you formalise independence too much you could cause friction in that part of the relationship which gets in the way of response.
And with exemplary spirit and honesty, the Government is passing the buck to the NHS, and what a great idea it is to make drastic changes in the midst of a pandemic, and I’m shocked that Boris Johnson hasn’t remained in Downing Street to ensure this important move takes place smoothly.
Where is he hiding now? Perhaps he’s rented a cabin on the bank of the Loch Ness. No doubt the monster would love to sink its teeth into his juicy behind.
First, the Government gets this assignment of NHS money into the private sector by dumping the hard problem of testing and tracking onto councils. Perhaps a similar approach will be used in the near future to put more of the NHS into private companies hands.
And they will probably use companies like Atos, Maximus, Capita and Serco, and watch out for all the mash-up that will come from this mess. What a great way to hide all the ineptitude and statistic manipulating.
And I dare say, in a short while, when the argument is done and dusted, Boris will arrive on the battleground to bayonet the wounded. And now a public body is to be discarded to make way for a private company part of the way through a global pandemic and led by a person responsible for the Track and Trace disaster.
You just couldn’t make this up if you tried, and yet dimwits still bleat on about how amazing the Tories are.
People who repeatedly ridicule rules on wearing face coverings could be fined up to £3,200 under tough new rules for England.
Failing to wear a mask in places like stores and on public transport carries a fine of £100 at present, which is decreased to £50 if paid inside two weeks. That £100 fine isn’t being increased.
But under new measures in the coming weeks, repeat offenders will see their fine increased on each repeat offence, with a maximum penalty of £3,200. That means someone who offends three times will be fined £100 the first time, £200 the second time and £400 the third time.
However, No 10 has given no date for the change.
Meanwhile, people hosting raves or other unlawful functions of more than 30 people can be slapped with £10,000 spot fines, amid a wave in house parties during the lockdown.
Yet there are mounting questions about how the penalties will be imposed.
On public transport, where masks have been compulsory in England since June 15, there have been only 33 fines reinforced so far, but new constraints came as the Prime Minister declared lockdown easements that were suspended earlier this month could go ahead from Saturday, such as close contact beauty treatments and wedding gatherings.
The moves were suspended from August 1 due to concerns about a slight rise in the number of people in England testing positive but that now seems to have levelled off, and Boris Johnson stated that most people in the country are following the rules and doing their part to control the virus, but that we must remain focused and cannot become complacent.
And that was why they were strengthening the enforcement powers available to use against those who repeatedly flout the rules, and he’s said that at every stage he has said that their plan was to reopen society and that the economy is conditional and that it relies on continued progress against the virus.
And that now, they’re able to announce further reforms which will enable more people to return to work and the public to get back to more of the stuff they’ve missed. However, he said that he will not hesitate to put on the brakes if needed or to continue to implement local measures to help control the spread of the virus.
Home Secretary Priti Patel said she wouldn’t let progress in stopping the virus to be threatened by a small minority of foolish people, and she said that the measures convey a distinct message – if you don’t cooperate with the police and if you put your well-being at risk, action will follow.
From August 15, beauty salons will be able to resume services such as facials, eyebrow threading and eyelash tinting.
Salon staff will have to wear a face mask as well as a visor, following changes in scientific advice.
Wedding parties for up to 30 guests will be allowed, in the form of a sit-down meal.
Casinos, bowling alleys, skating rinks and soft play centres will be able to reopen.
Indoor theatres, music and performance venues will be able to reopen their doors to a socially distanced audience, and pilots of sporting events with spectators will return, starting with the World Snooker Championship at Sheffield’s Crucible Theatre over the weekend.
These modifications won’t apply in specific regions where local constraints are in place.
And how can someone be penalised for something that isn’t law? There is no punishment without law and no one can be held liable of any criminal offence on account of any or breach which didn’t constitute a criminal offence under national law at a time when it was committed.
Nor shall a more substantial fine be forced than the one that was relevant at the time the criminal offence was perpetrated, and some officers have now questioned how the new law will be implemented, allowing people to be fined £100 for refusing to wear face coverings.
And any law would put added pressure on officers who are already being stretched to the limit, and to expect the police to patrol the supermarket aisles, looking for shoppers not wearing a face covering, is nonsensical and unfair.
They just don’t have the resources, and this would basically undermine the model of policing, which is to police by consent.
Of course, there will be times where the police will have to get involved, but this shouldn’t come as a shock to anybody, and police officers have more than enough to deal with by policing the pandemic and reacting to the countless other calls they get.
And if a storekeeper calls the police because someone hasn’t got a mask on, they haven’t got the capability to restrain them, so that person can just walk away, and now we’ll have police driving around looking for people who aren’t wearing a mask, and it’s utterly ridiculous.
Face masks are a frightful imposition, and criminal negligence continues. Shopworkers come into contact with many different people so are more inclined to be contagious than most.
And then people become bad at sustaining physical distance when they’re required to wear a face mask.
Then you have to remember that policemen are only civilians in uniform. They’re not members of a disciplined regime working just at the Government’s request.
The police have no power to force Minister’s preferences, only legal regulations, which don’t go anything like as far as the Government’s guidance.
This is what a police state is like. It’s a state in which the Government can issue orders or express preferences with no legal power and the police will enforce minister’s wishes.
And it’s time to remind ourselves that, despite the Secretary of State for Transport saying that the wearing of face masks on public transport is compulsory, there’s currently nothing in legislation, neither the Coronavirus Act 2020 nor the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) Regulations 2020, that enables a police officer to force a UK citizen to wear a mask on public transport.
However, there’s been an unbelievable mass of medical and scientific conclusion that not only do masks do nothing to prevent the spread of SARs-COV-2, but that non-medical masks of the kind we’re being encouraged to wear on public transport by the Government, which is apparently a life-saving tool, can compromise the wearer by increasing the risk of infection, either through a build-up of the expired virus on the inside of the covering or by increasing the frequency of hand to face contact while applying, adjusting and removing the covering.
It may further reduce the wearer’s intake of oxygen, although evidence is inconclusive. Although apparently, it can cause headaches, dizziness, shortness of breath or worse.
Making such guidance mandatory, therefore, may be in violation of Article 1 of the Human Rights Act 1998, where everyone’s right to life shall be protected by law, and given the widespread association of face coverings with subservience, both historically on prisoners and slaves and in contemporary cultures, it may also infringe Article 3: ‘No one shall be subjected to degrading treatment’.
And, given the importance of proof of the political motivation for making face coverings compulsory, and in the absence of definitive scientific evidence backing this decision, it may further infringe Article 14: ‘Enjoyment of rights and freedoms without discrimination on grounds of political opinion’.
And it’s hard to take advice or guidance from anyone, namely Boris Johnson who ended up flouting the rules and ended up contracting coronavirus, and then so blatantly supported and defended his advisor who not only broke the same rules but also lied horribly trying to defend the indefensible.
It seems as this is just plain old simple fascism, there’s no disputing it. This is all about control and has precious little to do with the virus, and fines appear to be the Tory response to everything.
And who does Boris Johnson think is going to implement these penalties? And how often are the police able to impose these fines? When the police are already stretched dispensing with other offences, they can’t possibly take this on as well, and all I can see is utter chaos.
What’s this Government going to do next? Put everyone into internment camps. Liberty and freedom are just an illusion – pay your taxes, do as you’re told or go straight to jail.
So, this is the latest from Boris Johnson, at a time when we need a true leader as Prime Minister but instead, we have a babbling, blathering clown having a mid-life crisis. Who hardly wears a mask whilst conjuring up mega-fines towards Britons for not wearing a mask.
But this is what happens when you elect a populist government. They only do what they believe is going to be popular, and everything that they’ve done has been reactive, not proactive.
Nothing is thought through – no joined-up thinking, just contradiction and chaos, and they couldn’t organise a how-do-you-do in a house of ill repute.
A new viral video shows a man so hostile about a grocery store’s mask policy that he had to be picked up and carried out of the store by his son, with the man repeatedly screaming that the virus is fake and called employees and spectators an offence, ableist word for wearing masks.
The episode occurred in a store in Tucson, Arizona. The guy was accompanied by three young men, at least one of whom was believed to be his son.
The man repeatedly asserts the pandemic isn’t real and seems mystified and infuriated that people won’t learn the truth, and mocks everyone, saying that they were a bunch of fools wearing masks and telling them that the pandemic wasn’t real.
And as the man became more upset, his condemnation became more and more profound and profane. Look at you fools, he said. You’ve got a fcking doily on your face. You retard, you look like you fcking got it off your mom’s countertop.
Someone in the background could be overheard asking the man if he felt better now, as his son attempted to move him toward the door, so he could get him to leave, but at this point a tall man in a mask approached the assembly, telling the man that he needed to stop shouting at people.
The man then starts threatening the tall masked man as his son then begins pushing him toward the door as he called the tall man a dork, saying that he looked like some kind of giant f*ck dork and offered him to come outside to see how tough he was, and then said that he would beat the mask off his face.
It was at that point that his son picked him up like a giant toddler and carried him out of the store, but the man never ceased yelling insults. Calling them fcking pssies, and that they were all a bunch of p*ssies wearing masks.
On Twitter, people couldn’t help but chuckle at how ridiculous the situation had become, and that they couldn’t imagine saying something unfavourable while you’re being carried outside by your own son, but then that’s the perks of having a large son, you can carry your own father like a little baby, and it’s horrifying to see a toddler using such language.
But not everyone found it funny, with someone saying that they didn’t regret their decision to stay home because people are getting wild out there, and it now appears that these masks are just pushing people over the edge.
This guy is a real class act, and I don’t remember the last time I heard someone use such bad language that was older than a school child – what a dad, I do feel bad for his son.
The man has not been named, and it’s not known if the police were called.
I hope his son gave him Time Out on the naughty step because if you act like a two-year-old, then you deserve to be treated like one, and however incredible this was, in some ways, it wasn’t because this is the manner of conversation that’s going on all over the world.
Fears are mounting that France will be added to the UK’s quarantine travel list, leaving thousands of Brits facing weeks in isolation upon their return.
Ministers are thought to be planning new measures for a swathe of countries that also encompasses Switzerland, Poland and the Netherlands amid a wave in European coronavirus cases.
They could join Spain and its islands on the table of countries where returnees will endure 14 days of self-isolation, possibly putting their jobs at risk.
It came as Boris Johnson warned that ministers will not hesitate to force a quarantine system for travellers from other countries to the United Kingdom if needed, and speaking on a visit to a school in Upminster, Essex, he stated that he didn’t want to advise people about their individual holidays, personal decisions and that they should look at the travel guidance from the Foreign Office clearly.
But what he did say was that he hoped people would expect them to do this, in the context of a global pandemic, and that they’ve got to keep looking at the data in all countries to which British people want to go.
It’s been a tremendous struggle for the entire population of the country to get the disease down to the levels that we’re currently seeing, but of course, we don’t want reinfection, and apparently, that’s why our Government are keeping a particularly close eye on the data in destinations around the globe.
Spain has now been hit with new travel constraints in a setback to its tourism reliant economy, while there are concerns that France, Germany and Holland could be put back on the UK’s quarantine list after spikes in cases there.
Summer holidays have been blamed for rising cases in Germany and Italy, while France has tightened its face mask rule in tourist hotspots such as Paris and the Mediterranean retreat of Saint Tropez.
Nevertheless, Europe has yet to see a significant spike in mortality or hospital cases, amid indications that many of those testing positive are young and less vulnerable to the virus.
France has accumulated 10,002 new cases in the last week, the highest number since April and a clear increase from 7,391 the week before, and the Government’s COVID 19 scientific council warned last week that France could at any time lose restraint over the spread of the virus.
Some French towns are now needing face masks outside, including the Mediterranean resort of Saint Tropez and other tourist regions.
Paris and Marseille, the two largest cities in France, have both ordered mask-wearing in congested outside spaces such as open-air markets and the banks of the Seine.
Asked if France could be added to the quarantine list, the Prime Minister’s official spokesperson said that they keep the data for all countries and regions under continuous review and that any decisions to update the exemptions list would be notified by the latest health data so that they can move swiftly.
And that they’ve been updating the exemptions list on a weekly basis in order to make sure that it reflects the shifts in the international health picture, and it was added that if there was a necessity to act very rapidly in order to preserve public health, they would not hesitate to do so.
Sadly, during the pandemic, there isn’t a risk-free way of travelling abroad, although the population’s made a tremendous effort in getting the virus down to levels that we’re now seeing in the United Kingdom.
However, the Government can amend the list at any time and they can also exclude countries from that exemption list, if there’s a maintained improvement in the health situation in a particular country, then they can restore exemptions or add some new ones.
But there also fears rising of a blaze of jobs amid warnings a third of firms are planning to lay off workers this autumn, and shock analysis has discovered huge numbers of businesses expect to axe positions in the third quarter of the year as coronavirus rams the economy.
Many of the cuts are set to come from hospitality industries such as hotels, restaurants and cafes, as well as stores that were already on the brink before the pandemic.
The hit surfaced in a poll conducted by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) with the recruiters Adecco Group, and Labour demanded that the Government ditches plans to abandon the furlough scheme completely by October, forcing employers to take on the entire cost of workers salaries again.
Meanwhile, figures released this week were scheduled to establish that the United Kingdom has formally entered a recession, with the second quarter of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) contracting, and official jobs data had been scheduled.
Figures are generally expected to show the economy declined massively during the second quarter following the pressure of the virus lockdown.
That comes after output dipped in the first three months of the year. Two successive quarters of contraction officially identifies a recession, which would be the first since the financial crisis hit.
Separate figures from the Insolvency Service have shown that more than 139,000 jobs were lost in June, and the number of firms that cut 20 or more roles throughout June was up fivefold compared to last year, increasing to 1,778.
And economic figures are expected to emphasise the scale of problems, with job figures and the lastest GDP estimate coming, and there are concerns that enormous numbers of people working from home is causing damage as businesses that rely on busy offices, from sandwich shops and pubs to dry cleaners and hairdressers will be stripped of custom.
Sandwich shop chains Pret a Manger and Upper Crust have now axed thousands of jobs between them, with Pret a Manger asking workers to take reduced hours.
Gerwyn Davies, of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), said companies were now facing the possibility of growing costs as the Government winds down its job furlough scheme.
And for numerous firms, the problem is that revenues are just not coming in, and there’s undoubtedly going to be a number of job losses, and firms that announced plans to lay off workers in June included Royal Mail, Jet2, HSBC, Jaguar Land Rover, Centrica and the Restaurant Group, owner of Frankie and Benny’s.
Comparable announcements ensued from other big names in July, such as Marks & Spencer, Boots and John Lewis, and High Street stores have been hammered particularly hard by the pandemic, with lockdown measures dramatically diminishing visitor numbers and forcing non-essential stores to shut for months.
But the jobs bloodbath is expected to intensify when the Government’s furlough scheme winds down in October. However, Chancellor Rishi Sunak has been asked to prolong the scheme for specific sectors that have been worst hit but has so far resisted pressure to do so.
And Shadow Business Minister Lucy Powell asked for the Government to urgently rethink their rigorous strategy, which will see the furlough scheme end completely in October.
The Labour MP said that the variable nature of the disease means that public health measures must be flexible and responsive, but it surely must follow that economic measures are to be the same and that it was clearly wrong and unethical to stop firms from opening their doors, cutting them off from any income, and to cut their furlough line at the same time.
They’ve stated that they can’t protect every job, but what we’re seeing is a blaze of jobs on the pyre. And what they need to do is target their support on the hardest-hit sectors or be accountable for another surge of mass redundancies.
As part of strategies to set an example and to get the nation running again, the Government has told civil servants, four-fifths of whom are still working remotely, to get back to work in central London or risk losing their prestigious Westminster offices, and Treasury officials are said to be contemplating a mass sell-off of the Government’s buildings in the metropolis before this autumn’s spending review.
And then we have the dodgy testing of the coronavirus, which means more contamination, but we’ve seen stuff like this before in media coverage with Weapons of Mass Destruction and theoretical nuclear weapons, which turned out to be propaganda.
And now if someone gets hit by a car, apparently they died of coronavirus, or if someone died of a heart attack, they died of the coronavirus, and Spain is doing a pretty good job at local transmission.
And it’s ludicrous as we continually see how it’s being blamed on tourists only because a lot of the spread has come from the inhabitants of Madrid and Barcelona, where infections are higher as they head off to their holiday homes in the south, taking the virus with them.
There were also cases caused by fruit pickers from Peru, from families gathering for larger gatherings with no social distancing and lots of customary hugs and kisses upon greeting, and this belief that Spain has a surge in cases because of tourists, especially ones from the United Kingdom is crazy.
And one of the many discrepancies in the COVID 19 narrative, going right back to March when people were put under house arrest, borders remained open to legal and illegal traffic, and with regards to the latter, you simply wouldn’t permit illegal immigrants to repeatedly breach borders in a genuine pandemic.
But don’t worry, if you need to get home from France in a hurry, there’s a fleet of rubber boats crossing from Calais to Dover you can use, and Boris Johnson has lost the plot, or our politicians are having a chuckle at our expense, while all the wealthy people are prancing all over the globe, and it seems that all unauthorised immigrants are welcome, so roll up, roll up.
And then we have Boris Johnson trying frantically to look like the strong caring type in images with children, but he really looks like a big overweight kid himself, desperate to look great but won’t do what needs to be done.
The Government has zero control over this country – the billionaire elites call the shots for their own control and good, and that’s been the plight for hundreds of years, as has been documented over and over again, yet the sheeple of this world will do exactly as they’re told.
We live in a beautiful country, simply stay at home people because why would you want to go travelling overseas when you can simply stay here and have an enjoyable holiday?
The sun has been blazing, we’ve had some gorgeous weather, and there is some beautiful places in England that people can go and visit instead of travelling overseas.
And the way our Government has handled this whole crisis has been a hodge-podge from start to end, and Boris Johnson couldn’t organise his sock drawer, let alone the country.
And why not just close all UK borders, that way people will know where they can holiday, the United Kingdom! Holiday here in the United Kingdom – stay safe, help yourself, and also help our own hospitality industry which has taken a heavy thrashing this year, it makes sense.
Over the years there has been increasing ease and affordability of air travel and mobility of people, airborne, foodborne, vector-borne, and zoonotic infectious disease are being transferred during commercial air travel, and this is an important public health problem.
And a heightened fear of bioterrorism agents has prompted health officials to re-examine the potential of these agents that could be spread by air travel, and the severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak of 2002 revealed how air travel can have a significant part in the accelerated velocity of newly emerging infections and can even start pandemics.
Billions of tourists travel by air annually, and many of those travel to the developing world, and even though it’s seldom reported and extremely hard to evaluate accurately, there’s a danger of disease transmission during air travel, and that risk has now become the focus of increased awareness.
During a flight, the aircraft cabin is a ventilated, confined environment that exposes passengers to hypobaric hypoxia, dry humidity, and close proximity to fellow travellers.
This space is regulated by an environmental system that controls pressurisation, temperature, ventilation, and air filtration on the aircraft, and even though this system is completely automated, the number of air conditioning packs in operation, zone temperatures, and the mixture of fresh and recirculated air delivered to the cabin can be managed by the flight deck.
When a plane is parked at the terminus, fresh air is furnished to the aircraft by auxiliary power units, but throughout the flight, fresh air is supplied into the cabin from the engines where the air is heated, compressed, cooled, and passed into the cabin to be circulated by the ventilation system.
The outside air is supposed to be sterile at normal cruising altitudes, and air circulation patterns aboard standard commercial aircraft are side to side (laminar) with air penetrating the cabin from overhead, travelling across the aircraft, and exiting the cabin near the floor.
Most commercial aircraft in service recirculate 50 per cent of the air delivered to the passenger cabin for improved control of cabin circulation, humidity, and fuel performance.
This recirculated air normally moves through high-efficiency particulate air filters (HEPA) before transmission into the cabin.
Normal airline cabin air exchange rates range from 15 to 20 air changes per hour compared with 12 air changes per hour for a typical office building, but cabin air quality has been the focus of numerous media investigations and critique from special interest groups.
Most of this interest is associated with the perception that airborne particles are spread throughout the entire cabin by the ventilation system.
This prompted the UK government to form the Aviation Health Working Group in 2000 to further examine health aspects of air travel, including cabin air quality and safety.
There are four routes for the spread of microorganisms, contact, airborne, common vehicle, and vector-borne.
Contact transmission involves close contact in which body to body contact takes place or indirect place in which the susceptible person comes into contact with a contaminated intermediate host (fomite).
Large droplet transmission is judged a form of contact transmission in which large droplets (microns) polluted with microorganisms are generated when a contaminated person sneezes, coughs or talks.
These droplets are propelled short distances and deposited on a susceptible hosts conjunctiva or mucosa, and airborne transmission occurs by aerosolization of an infectious agent through droplet nuclei (residua of large droplets containing microorganisms that have evaporated.
These remaining droplets become aerosolised and disperse extensively, dependant on the environmental condition, and remain suspended in the air for an indefinite time.
Common vehicle transmission involves one inanimate vehicle, which carries infection to numerous hosts, and typically applies to microorganisms spread by food and water.
Vector-borne transmission results from the spread of disease by insects and vermin and all types of disease transmission is relevant where air travel is involved.
When are people going to wake up and really listen to what our Government are discussing and truly think about it, and why are we letting the Tories get away with this – controlling us like animals?
Everybody should be questioning this aberration now and thinking that something really isn’t right, and now it seems that Boris Johnson doesn’t have any power at all. Neither does he have a brain or the manpower to implement, and other Labour MPs look like geniuses compared to Boris.
Boris Johnson seeks to appear bold as brass but in fact, he’s feeble in body and in mind, while he criticises others for his absolute ineptitude. Yet he still continues to be the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom – why? Because feeble people voted him in.
And I wonder what percentage of people will quarantine in the United Kingdom, when and if there’s a second lockdown? Dominic Cummings presumably won’t be one of them because he’s too self-centred and self-indulgent, and we probably won’t be free of this virus until we have a vaccine or it simply burns itself out, which is more plausible.
But I suppose you have to be pragmatic because there may never be an effective vaccine – in the meantime, the economy will go down the drain and thousands of lives will be destroyed for years to come.
Then we have Sweden, they didn’t have lockdown and guess how many deaths they had, none. So, let’s just stop this, stay at home, save lives stupidity and let’s return to some sort of normalcy, instead of making the country panic because the Government loves the control.
That doesn’t mean that Boris Johnson shouldn’t stop illegals coming into the United Kingdom, he should. So, if you’re from another country and you’re not here to work, to study or to put something back into our society, then don’t bother because we can’t accept every asylum seeker with a hidden agenda.
Our Government can’t embrace them with open arms. Send them to extravagant hotels while waiting for a nice little home, benefits, free translator service and I almost forgot, a free television licence, while taxpayers are told they will have to wait longer for their pensions that they paid into their whole lives.
And Government incompetence is simply staggering, and does anyone else think that Boris Johnson has actually lost his mind – mind you, he’d have to have a mind in the first place to lose it.
And all of this is just a shattered crack now, and the Government here are the ones around the globe are panicky pitiful nanny state scaredy-cat clueless self-righteous thick-witted dimwits who are just seeking to run people’s lives.
And the worst people? The general public who simply kneel down and let it all happen to them, and it doesn’t matter whether we wear muzzles or not, the economy has been destroyed, and then we get penalised for it and we’re locked down – all that matters is leaving the EU, then supposedly we’ll be free again.
And who cares what the Government say, only the sheeple who have been conditioned by enforcement and bovine obedience, and people should open their eyes because our Government are watching the public domain, and eventually monitoring of people will become a whole lot more.
France resents our failure to arrive at a Brexit deal, and it could be unforgiving. British fishermen could have their fish supplies cut, lorry drivers as well, and imports of food and wine could also cease.
Some of our electricity is generated in France, with most of the UK’s imported electricity coming from France, via a 2 gigawatt (GW) electricity interconnector between the two countries that opened in 1986.
And if they did choose to close the tunnel then the United Kingdom would be in serious trouble, and Europe would be over the moon because then they could humiliate and isolate the United Kingdom.
This virus is a mind virus which is infecting people that is far more dangerous than anyone could have imagined, and over time will consume humanity and destroy millions.
It invades the mind of its prey and incapacitates their ability to use logic and critical reasoning and to challenge dangerous authority systems, and this virus is restructuring our whole way of life, and left untreated will cause the will of the human spirit to be extinguished and be under totalitarian rule – intentionally playing with our minds, and since the figure fiddling, it’s actually made people realise what’s happening.
And all that Boris Johnson is doing is trying to prove that he’s attempting to do something, but he’s a weak leader, and this country has been ravaged by all the COVID 19 restrictions.
If this was a flu pandemic, which can kill many people, we would have been told to get on with it, but I do despair for the millions of people who have mortgages, bills et cetera – they need to work.
The confusion over an increase in infections, from a virus where there’s near on 99 per cent survival rate, presumably higher as not everyone is tested. Well, people just can’t wrap their heads around it, yet the Government are urging people to get out there and spend, spend, spend, including going on holiday, then they take it away at the drop of a hat.
But it’s all about control – terror and fear, to make people feel isolated, desperate, depressed, afraid and to send them into a pathway of dreadful vaccines so that high tech giants and pharmaceutical giants can make a profit.
The majority of people in the country are fit, well and healthy and are out enjoying the summer, but the next flu season is virtually upon us, and doctors will be asking people to roll up, roll up for their flu vaccines and probably a non-safe COVID vaccine that will be the new offering.
The entire system has panned out precisely how it was supposed to, bit by bit, more control and panic, inconvenience to people, destruction of weddings, livelihoods, and family gatherings, and we’re now threatened with a future of over 30 years to pay for this.
So, now Boris Johnson is going to be ruthless about this pandemic, but it’s so utterly ridiculous, it’s tragic, and he’s not made one good judgment call since the beginning of this pandemic, he also didn’t bother to attend the flood sites either, what a dreadful Prime Minister.
And then there was the debate about locking down the over 50’s, but actually, it looks like the imprisoning of the over 50’s, which is shocking. That’s because when you get to over 50 you cost too much money in wages and health care, and this could all lead to a rather sinister end.
Thousands of NHS workers took to the streets of the United Kingdom to protest against their exclusion from a recent public sector pay rise announcement, and anger arose as NHS workers were disregarded in the latest round of public sector pay increases, despite more than 500 NHS and social care workers dying from COVID 19.
Unite, which has 100,000 members in the health service, supported its members wanting to attend the socially distanced protests, so that the government could see the extent of dissatisfaction and disappointment of NHS workers who continue to be in the frontline in the fight against COVID 19.
The flagship march which took place in London, started at St James’s Park before demonstrators made their way along Whitehall towards Downing Street, with a blue banner that read ‘End NHS pay inequality, together we win’ that led the march.
Many were displaying placards, including one which said ‘Boris remember my neighbour Lewis, what about his pay rise?’
‘He saved your life now reward us.’
Last month Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced a 3.1 per cent pay rise for 900,000 public sector workers, including senior doctors, teachers and police officers, but nurses were not included because they negotiated a separate three-year deal in 2018.
Junior doctors were also eliminated because they agreed on a new four-year deal last year, but Unite has announced that it’s seeking a large pay rise for its members.
The key demonstration got underway in London, commencing at 11.00 am at St James’s Park, with demonstrators then proceeding along Whitehall to Downing Street and ending with a gathering at Parliament Square.
Images show hundreds of demonstrators in masks parading with banners through the metropolis, and the Unite national officer for health Jackie Williams said, nursing staff and other related health professionals have responded with outrage to being neglected when pay increases were given to many in the public sector last month and the government not listening to the health trade unions call to bring their pay rise forward from April 2021.
In a decade of Tory austerity, NHS workers have seen their earnings cut by 20 per cent in real terms, and no amount of clapping and warm ministerial words can compensate for this climactic deterioration in income.
And poor rates of pay have contributed to the estimated 100,000 vacancies in the NHS and subsequent recruitment and retention crisis.
The public expects and ministers should deliver, an abundant pay rise for NHS workers that reflects their real worth to the NHS and society more generally, and NHS workers shouldn’t have to wait until April 2021.
Demonstrations are also set to take place in towns and cities around the United Kingdom including Basildon, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool and Ipswich.
NHS workers care for their patients and put public safety as an absolute priority, which is why they’re taking action to improve the pay for all NHS staff, and as a group who’ve been supporting people to independently coordinate demonstrations to highlight these problems, it’s essential for demonstration organisers and attendees to keep themselves knowledgeable of the risks, the latest public health guidance and the latest regulations, as these may alter quickly and may change across the United Kingdom.
And it’s clear the public supports an early increase and to disregard them would be at the Government’s own peril, and any attempt to deny workers a significant wage increase could rebound badly.
And health unions have made it clear that it’s down to the Government to act and show how much it values the NHS and its workers, and out of everyone who got a pay increase, nurses deserve more.
But they won’t get anything from the Tories because they’re attitude is that if you believe your job or your salary isn’t good enough for you, then quit, and if you don’t feel capable of getting a position with better pay, then be thankful for the one you’ve got.
However, if the Tories were front line workers on a 12-hour shift in a hospital with 150 COVID 19 patients clearing COVID clinical waste, I believe their approach would change. I mean feel free to join their crew, they wouldn’t last a day – hard-pressed NHS workers deserve a bonus, Boris.
Because we should be rewarding these workers who have risked their lives, and what about those that have died doing their duty, their families should be compensated as well. They’re nurses and doctors working on the frontline but they didn’t get danger money for that.
The Government might not have been able to protect them from the COVID 19 pandemic, but some of those people that died left behind families, and money might not be able to bring back their loved ones, but at least it would make life a little less hard, especially if they had children.
If a person signs up to go into the army and is on the frontline, they know they might not be coming home to their families, and their families are aware of this. However, a nurse or a doctor goes to work with the notion that they will be coming home, but many have not.
And now it seems that these nurses and doctors have to put up and shut up – but Boris you’re the Prime Minister and you’re supposed to know what you’re doing, rather than leaving it to your minions to decide because at the moment he doesn’t appear to know when he gets out of bed in the morning what his left foot is doing as he falls over his tongue.
Nurses should get a pay rise, at least they’re working – Boris Johnson hasn’t actually been seen about much. Maybe he should give his earnings to these frontline nurses and doctors. After all, he was happy to clap for them after he came out of hospital after his ordeal with the coronavirus, but he doesn’t want to give them a pay rise, but his clapping was aesthetically pleasing, and it made lots of people believe that he was a goody-two-shoes.
And for those who clapped for the NHS, perhaps they’ll wake up now because there are some fabulous NHS workers who deserve applause, yet the Government were culling the elderly while this ritual clapping was taking place.
And if anyone is to blame it’s the people that govern this country, not NHS workers because they don’t make decisions over cutting services and closing wards et cetera, and could you envision a hospital without nurses, even for a day, there would be complete turmoil as the doctors and other health care professionals wandered about aimlessly, not knowing what to do.
But the big image here is that it’s criminal in the United Kingdom that we pay members of the House of Lords £300 a day just for turning up for work, and we pay ridiculous expenses to members of both houses, yet we can’t manage to pay nurses a decent living wage for doing the job that they do.
And for those people out there that don’t think nurses should get a pay increase, let’s hope you don’t need those entitled monsters care anytime soon. Because that’s what they’re being called ‘entitled’ – not entitled maybe, but worthy of the job that they do on the frontline, and they’re not paid enough money to go to work with inadequate equipment so that they can put their lives in danger.
I can list numerous reasons why nurses deserve a pay increase. Many have cancelled annual leaves, worked seven to 12-hour shifts in 8 days. Covered shifts for co-workers who were unwell, stayed for at least one hour after every shift to ensure the ward is safe, without payment, oh, and held the hand of many deaths from this pandemic, with tears streaming down their faces.
Yes, it is their job, but these people are not robots, and the NHS was overwhelmed, particularly in ITU where they had twice the patient capacity and then watched people die in front of their very eyes because they didn’t have enough ventilators.
Boris Johnson has no honour, and even as people whine about nurses and doctors getting a pay increase, Boris is plotting to sell the NHS down the river. But instead, he should have a special respect for these superhuman people that work on the front line and never get paid for their worth.
Illness is neither an indulgence for which people have to pay, nor an offence for which they should be penalised, but the misfortune of the cost should be shared by the community. That was said by Aneurin Bevan, the Health Minister and predecessor of Matt Hancock who created the NHS.
And now we all clap like circus seals for the NHS, and now some are saying that they don’t deserve a pay increase – hypocrites. How many of you who don’t believe that nurses deserve a pay increase have lost a loved one to COVID 19?
And the majority of those people just shows their mindset towards health workers. Health care work isn’t attractive but they do it because they want to, but I bet Boris Johnson wouldn’t even be able to do the job that they do. I bet he wouldn’t be able to stand a second in the stench of an operating theatre, and health workers should be paid generously because health is the most important thing.
And we need to give phenomenal support for a wonderful team of NHS workers. Where would we be without their help and support? Rishi Sunak must have somehow missed the incredible work carried out by NHS workers, or has he heartlessly decided that they will work anyway, and he should be ashamed of himself.
And aren’t we forgetting that while everyone else got a pay increase every year, the NHS workers didn’t get one for ten years, and if you take inflation they’re still about 20 per cent less than they would be had their wages gone up with inflation?
And while we throw tantrums because we aren’t happy, they can’t because they’re too busy caring for our loved ones, and it seems that it’s a lack of funding and mismanagement of services that’s causing waiting lists to creep up, not the hard-working NHS staff.
All nurses and care staff should be getting the biggest pay rise ever. It’s long overdue and after all, the work they have done and are still doing, it’s the least our Government could do, and I can’t believe that anyone would be against this.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 