Let's talk about patriotism, shall we? People who love their country don't sit on their hands and do nothing when they know an infection is sweeping across their country.
Let's talk about patriotism, shall we? People who love their country do not destroy their country's trading position with the world's biggest trading union, or promise "free trade" and deliver the opposite, or deliver barmy borders within their own country.
Let's talk about patriotism, shall we? People who love their country do not run down its health service for a decade, leave its staff hideously unprotected, promise them a reward in due course and then offer them 1%.
Let's talk about patriotism, shall we? People who love their country do not exploit a pandemic by gifting HUGE contracts to their mates, pub landlords and donors, then hide those contracts and fail to hold useless "suppliers" to account.
Let's talk about patriotism, shall we? People who love their country do not illegally and disgracefully close down its Parliament, lie to its Queen, and deny its people the right to protest.
Let's talk about patriotism, shall we? But when we do, let's talk about it with people who care for others, who value decency and compassion, who are on the side of the people, and the rule of law, and who are genuinely interested in our communities and our prosperity.

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More from @DMinghella

24 Mar
This is me exactly one year ago, on the way to King's College Hospital with Covid. It's an anniversary I'd sooner forget, to be honest. But I'm sharing it for a reason.

1/10
Yesterday, Boris Johnson excused himself for presiding over our crushing first wave with suggestions to the effect that "We didn't know what we were dealing with back then", that it was a "novel" virus, etc. He wants us to buy his overall line, "We did everything we could".

2
But let me tell you about King's College Hospital. Exactly 15 days before this grim day, on 9 March, I attended King's for an ultrasound. One of London's biggest teaching hospitals, it was humming, busy as usual.

3
Read 10 tweets
1 Mar
Most people accept that, although lockdowns badly harm our economy, they are sadly necessary - and mean less economic harm in the long run.
But when it comes to schools, the argument is that school closures badly harm our children, so they must be opened.. 1/
The same tests - of safety and risk of greater damage to education and well-being in the long run - are not applied. This may be due to the myth that Covid doesn't affect kids. It does. Kids have the most infections (highest prevalence). And a whopping 12-15% get Long Covid.
2/
And of course all kids live among adults, to whom they spread the virus.
The discussion about kids is just a version of the overall lockdown debate, and the same rules ought to apply: reopen when prevalence is low; in phases; with partial occupancy, masks and ventilation.
3/
Read 6 tweets
4 Jan
There's this idea, now infecting even the Remain "side", that Remainers ought to be moving to a more accommodating, accepting position. No. Leavers ought to be putting their hands up and admitting this is not the Brexit they promised or intended, and showing some humility.

1/4
Nor is it a question of "meeting in the middle", fond as I am of compromise. Remainers did not bring this about, nor lie to achieve it; they did not take away people's rights and freedoms; they did not "fuck" business. They do not continue to lie about its "upside".

2/4
But the bottom line is this: the exhortation to "come together" is not genuine. On the tail end of "You lost, get over it", in the wake of a FAR harder Brexit than anyone contemplated in 2016, and with no attempt to offer the remotest comfort to Remainers, it amounts simply

3/4
Read 5 tweets
24 Nov 20
Festival of Brexit?

Festival of disaster capitalism.
Festival of Brexit?

Festival of red tape, tariffs and taxes.
Festival of Brexit?

Festival of fear. Of foreigners. Of cultures. Of skin tones.
Read 14 tweets
23 Nov 20
Flabbergasted at the cost of Covid - a debt we will all carry - and furious all over again at the regime's gross incompetence. Not just the lives ruined, but the economy shattered. They didn't "fix the roof when the sun was shining" - we were caught completely on the hop - ...
..and when the rain did come, they insisted we would be impervious to it; that there was no way it could bring our great British ceiling down. But by any economic or social measure, the ceiling is down.
How bad, compared to others?

Chart shows perhaps the worst net economic hit in Europe (worse even than Spain, which is predicted to bounce back better in 2021).

On economic damage, Tory "stewardship" is one of the worst in Europe. On loss of life, same.

statista.com/statistics/110…
Read 4 tweets
8 Oct 20
Trust me, if you had been in or near a Covid ward, if you had been struggling for breath with no idea whether they'd end up intubating you, or whether you'd see your family, or even a whole human face again, if you had felt that icy fear, the terrifying loneliness of it...

/1
... you would NEVER spout that "we'll just have to learn to live alongside it" BS. Instead, you'd want, as I do - on behalf of all those who have suffered, who have died, who have nursed and attended - to punch the f*cking lights out of anyone who repeats it...

/2
.. and as for the academics, those few, those happy few, who for reasons of attention or contrariness or stupidity or sponsorship - God knows - who, without submitting to peer review, pronounce with gravitas these same "it's just flu" lies...

/3
Read 8 tweets

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