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13 Jan, 4 tweets, 1 min read
A day of shame for a government that has screwed up its pandemic response worse than almost any other.
Through a lethal combination of incompetence, callousness and corruption.
theguardian.com/world/2021/jan…
When this is over, there must be a proper reckoning. Not a limited inquiry chaired by a government stooge, but an independently-appointed, full public investigation with an open and evolving mandate.
We should also demand an official period of mourning for all those killed and disabled by this terrible, avoidable catastrophe.
So far, Boris Johnson has scarcely acknowledged the victims of the pandemic.
And in the meantime, and even more importantly, we urgently need a completely new approach from the government. It must begin with a plan. To me, the most shocking fact of this whole fiasco is that the government STILL doesn't have one. theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

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More from @GeorgeMonbiot

George Monbiot Profile picture
15 Jan
This was always the real Brexit agenda: ripping down public protections.
Here's what I wrote in 2017 about what we would lose and what we would gain from Brexit. It's all playing to the script.
monbiot.com/2017/04/07/the…
It was crystal clear that the losses would outweigh the gains - for everyone except warlord capitalists like the Barclay brothers. Image
Read 7 tweets
George Monbiot Profile picture
14 Jan
A lot of words need to be eaten by people who were not just wrong about the pandemic, but dangerously wrong. They bear some responsibility for the catastrophe we now face.
A big part of the problem is that the BBC chose to interpret its duty of "impartiality" as providing airtime for people who contested scientific facts, even when they were demonstrably wrong. Image
It has made the same mistake with issue after issue.
And sometimes it's not a mistake.
Sometimes it's an attempt to generate noise.
If people talk about your programme, that's deemed a success, even if they do so for all the wrong reasons.
Read 5 tweets
George Monbiot Profile picture
13 Jan
This is the mind-blistering fact that everyone should be aware of. The government still has *no plan* for ending the pandemic. Or even for ending the lockdown. I knew we had a troupe of clowns in charge, but this is beyond incompetence.
My column.
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
Taiwan's most recent death from covid-19 was on May 11th last year. It stopped the virus without lockdowns. How? Mostly through its genuinely world-beating test-trace-isolate-and-support system, developed with the help of participatory democracy. Compare, contrast and weep.
See those numbers on the y axis? They are the actual numbers. SEVEN deaths in total from covid-19, in a nation with over twice our population density. This is what competent government looks like.
Read 10 tweets
George Monbiot Profile picture
12 Jan
At every turn the government has undermined public trust and unity, by creating the impression that rules are for little people, while the elite can do what it wants. theguardian.com/politics/2021/…
Compare and contrast.
Oh, and by the way, we're still waiting for @MattHancock to speak out against Dominic Cummings's trip.
He condemns ordinary people driving 5 miles.
But not Cummings driving 264 miles.
Read 6 tweets
George Monbiot Profile picture
11 Jan
Heaven forbid that "scrub" (ie regenerating woodland) should be allowed to return to our treasured wet deserts. And thank goodness the BBC is on hand to warn us about this terrible threat.
It's quite right, though. Without repeated grazing by sheep, the denuded, eroded landscape you can see in this photo would revert to natural vegetation, which in the Lakes is temperate rainforest. Perhaps @BBCCountryfile could explain why that's a bad thing?
Allowing the land to rewild would create habitats for a wide range of species and draw down carbon. Recovery starts with bracken and "scrub", then continues through ecological succession towards rainforest.
Read 4 tweets
George Monbiot Profile picture
11 Jan
Over the most recent recorded 7 day period, the UK has suffered the world's second highest rate of Covid-19 deaths/million. Considerably worse even than the US. statista.com/statistics/110…
Why is our death rate so high? Because we have an incompetent, irresponsible government, without a clear strategy, constantly surprised by events, that put more effort into enriching its chums than into crushing the disease.
It handed crucial tasks to profiteers and appointed unqualified people to highly sensitive roles (eg head of test and trace). Even to this day - and this is the crucial fact - it has *no plan* for ending the pandemic. Just a string of reactive, disconnected policies.
Read 11 tweets

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