Our round-up of the best, most pertinent and amusing comments of the week that have caught our eye.
In response to Richard North: NHS has become the cause, not the cure,
Mark Forsyth wrote:
This clearly shows that all Covid patients should have been transferred or admitted to the Nightingale Hospitals and not to the general ones. In the same way that TB was treated in a separate unit.
Even if it meant transferring equipment from mainstream ICUs, it would have allowed normal hospitals to continue with day to day treatments.
Mike C wrote:
Unfortunately the broad minded, adult conversation taking place here will not be replicated across the MSM. The absolutely shocking levels of hospital acquired infection in UK NHS hospitals is a national scandal. The way our older friends and relatives have been treated by the NHS over the past 20 years, without us rising up against it, is an awful indication of how lazy and uninterested so many of us have become. We can only get the change we deserve when we demand it, when we realise that it’s not about money/equipment/number of staff it’s about culture and caring. I for one, after losing both parents early to poor NHS care, hope that the public inquiry into this debacle uncovers the same institutional ineptitude in the NHS as is being uncovered in the Fire Service post Grenfell.
In response to Anna Roberts: Spitting blood over the dentist lockdown,
Dacorum wrote:
This is a very informative article about the very real difficulties in obtaining dental treatment during the covid epidemic.
Dentistry during the pandemic poses very special problems that need to be overcome and what was completely missing is any discussion (or comments from posters) as to how dentists can protect themselves and their patients (and subsequent patients) from Covid given that any drilling in the small confines of a dental surgery would send large quantities of droplets and aerosols into the air. Wouldn’t dentists and their assistants need air purifiers to filter the air they breathe and exhale as well as all the extensive PPE we see doctors and nurses wear when dealing with covid patients in hospital? Without that level of protection for dentists, how can they safely drill teeth at this time? Equally patients need to be certain that when they visit the dental chair that the chair and environment is thoroughly cleaned and free from covid.
Steve wrote:
Why can’t dentists use SCUBA type breathing apparatus guaranteeing them safe air?
In response to Peter Day-Milne: Our new state religion,
Not-so-polished Corner wrote:
Cracking article. Thank you. One of the things that this lockdown has revealed is that people are terrified of death. So terrified that they would rather cower at home than risk opening their front doors. Sadly that includes many churchgoers. One might have thought the Bishops could have offered constructive teaching on this – particularly as the incarceration has straddled Easter, Ascensiontide and Whitsun. ‘Where O death is thy sting? Where grave thy victory?’ Instead, they have emasculated pastoral support and relegated the church to the same level of importance as a nail bar.
In response to The Conservative Woman: Church leaders threaten legal action over closure,
derekbuxton wrote:
I was disgusted when the Government put Churches on the closed list, it never happened before, not even during the 2nd World War. The Churches are to provide comfort and solace and have always done so come hell and high water. It is nothing to do with this weird Government we seem now to have. I remember voting Tory but have got something I do not recognize!
In response to Michael St George: How much more will Johnson take from the out-of-control BBC?
Malcolm wrote:
The fact that, as a serial offender in this respect and subject of previous ‘warnings’ from her employer, Maitlis kept her job, albeit after a couple of days missing in action, shows beyond doubt that the BBC has no intention of reforming its partisan ways. Root and branch reform is now needed to an organisation that, despite its illustrious past, is nothing more than a socialist mouthpiece, secure in the knowledge that however much the public at large may disagree with its views, it is guaranteed to have a steady flow of income. A private company that alienated sufficient people would struggle to survive, and if the BBC wishes to behave as a private company, rather than a publicly funded corporation with obligations under its charter to be strictly neutral, then it too should have to find its funding from the private sector. Scrap the licence fee and see how many would be willing to pay good money voluntarily to receive its content.
UmUmUmUmUmUm wrote:
The harridan is still in her job, and the BBC still exists because as always, the Tories are utterly, utterly gutless. They will fight for nothing, (least of all conservative values), stand for nothing, except office. They believe in nothing but the latest opinion polls and trade figures. Their only vision for the future concerns their performance at the next election. This is why Communism and the hard left in Britain has always had so much room for manoeuvre to do damage, and has come to infest and dominate the MSM, particularly the BBC, which is now nothing more than the broadcasting arm of the Labour party. As long as the Tories are doing well by their own narrow opportunist criteria, they are not much interested in tackling the left or defending conservatism. It would just cause a fuss and rock the jolly old boat too much.
In response to Timothy Bradshaw: TCW’s Brexit Watch: Keep up the good work, Mr Frost
mancunius wrote:
I find it puzzling that the UK government is even continuing to try to talk to the EU, as it is obvious Barnier is simply stonewalling. The excellent Frost is presumably not allowed to pull the plug and say ‘Fine, have it your own way, we’re now going for WTO.’
On the evidence of his bruising meeting with the Commons Liaison Committee, Boris should not be allowed anywhere near a negotiating table. He has not yet recovered from illness; he is not in command of his brief, he has fatal lapses of cogent thought and expression, shambles, bumbles and stumbles, stammers, stutters and mutters, and appears to have lost any ability to argue.
I would suggest leaving Boris to do what he does best – being decorative, smiling boyishly, and throwing the occasional meaningful glance – while we let David Frost get on with it.
NI is a different ballgame, and not part of the talks. Boris has already conceded it to the EU, which is why they want to see him doing what he agreed to. To get NI back as part of the UK we would need to replace the NI protocol in the WA. But we need to change the protocol for another, vital reason: NI is also a dangerously open back door for the EU. There needs to be some measure in place to guarantee that EU goods cannot find an illicit, non-taxable route into the UK – and vice versa – otherwise other countries will refuse to conclude trade agreements with us.
Ray Bassett is desperately needed on our side in such NI talks, as he knows precisely what is and isn’t meant by the Belfast Agreement, and he understands the UK position. He could help cut through Barnier’s blarney. We should offer him a seat at the table, and honorary UK citizenship to go with it.
In response to Nick Booth: So long, succour: Bill Gates is taking out a copyright on kindness,
DespiteBrexit wrote:
Wealthy people usually switch to ‘philanthropy’ for a mixture of reasons, practical and spiritual. In the case of the latter, it can be an attempt to assuage their guilt or as a response to the belated realisation that possessing wealth is not the same as being of value. Truly altruistic philanthropists do not need to tell the world that they are philanthropists; in fact, they would probably prefer that activity to reman relatively unknown.
There are many individuals and businesses in the software field who, having found themselves on the receiving end of Microsoft’s sometimes brutal modus operandi, probably choke at the thought of Gates as a ‘philanthropist’.
I’m Old Fashioned wrote:
A geek bearing gifts! Priceless, I’m so glad you can laugh about this and give us all a much-needed chuckle in the process.
In response to Belinda Brown: Contemptuous creed of the zealots who dictate sex lessons,
Newman Noggs wrote:
The private lives of those producing such material for the corruption and degradation of our children should be subject to the closest scrutiny. Why do such people seem to have such an obsession with having unfettered access to young minds one wonders? What is their real purpose?
In response to Andrew Mahon: Black or white, ‘affirmative action’ makes victims of us all,
Booty wrote:
Those companies recruiting by affirmative action are the ‘useful idiots’ working towards the bigger Cultural Marxist goal of turning everyone against white, western civilisation.
As to who would make the Marxist revolution, Marcuse explains: ‘In place of workers there would be a new underclass of revolutionaries drawn from youth, women, ethnics and homosexuals and any group that could be disaffected and alienated from western civilisation’ We can also update his list today by adding LGBT and Islamaphobes.
In response to Paul Homewood: Harrabin’s hot air over a month of sunshine’
paul parmenter wrote:
Even if temperatures are rising, it doesn’t prove that man-made CO2 emissions are solely responsible; or that the continuation of such emissions will inevitably cause the planet to roast until it bursts into flames everywhere and we all die. And yet every shred of evidence about any rise in temperatures anywhere is triumphantly seized upon as if it were proof positive that it must be so. And indeed if such evidence is in short supply, the advocates of this doomsday scenario just make some up. They seem to have stopped trying to prove any directly causative link (because they can’t?) and just leap from assumption to assumption, expecting to take all the rest of us with them.
