Boris Johnson Abandons Care Homes, Again.

Boris Johnson and the Vote Leave cabal holed up in Number 10 continue to churn out unrealistic promises and blatant lies. The Coronavirus crisis has highlighted this undeniable truth more than ever before. 

But this latest disgraceful shambles will take some beating. 

A pledge to regularly test all people in care homes for Covid-19, throughout the summer, has been swiftly abandoned. Government ministers promised the care sector a so-called protective "ring of steel", in the fight against the deadly virus. 

Yes, another three word sound bite that is literally not worth the paper it’s written on, following on from “Hands, Face, Space”, “Whatever it takes” and of course, “Get Brexit Done”.

They quietly ditched this pledge under the cover of a bizarre Honours list - which included gongs for Theresa May’s husband and a Labour MP that spent her entire political career campaigning against the “unelected Brussels bureaucrats”.

But, local authorities were told on Friday night that the timeline was being changed due to that age-old Tory problem of “unexpected delays”.

Please don’t tell me Chris Grayling had something to do with this? It would make sense. If Chris Grayling ever came up with a good idea it would simply be down to beginners luck.

We live in a time where the President of The USA attempts to run a country on Twitter, and the Prime Minister of Britain attempts to run a country through leaks and anonymous briefings. 

The latest ‘leaked‘ memo sent to local authority bosses on Friday night has led the government’s Adult Social Care Testing Director, Professor Jane Cummings, to say “previously advised timelines for rolling out regular testing in care homes” were being torn up because of “unexpected delays”.

So they won’t be regularly testing in care homes for Covid-19 until at least September.

Nadra Ahmed, executive chairperson of the National Care Association said -

"I think it's disgraceful, it's like we are going back several months." 

And she is absolutely correct. 

“We were calling for testing from the very beginning because we can only see that as the way we can mitigate the risk of spread within the services, or it even being brought in by asymptomatic staff or relatives.

I think this is one of the worst things that could have happened. It is the government actually backtracking on a vision that they've sold to the public saying they're doing all this for the care sector when the reality is they're taking back steps every single time.

"It is an absolute kick in the teeth to all those care staff who've been working really hard to get their services COVID-free. To all the relatives who've been told they can go and visit now safely, how do we do that? How do we actually do that?"

Absolute chaos, once again, due to the staggering incompetence and damning dishonesty of the most negligent government in living memory. 

Boris Johnson is a compulsive liar, and a coward. That’s hardly new information to most of us. This is the Prime Minister who said that “too many care homes didn’t really follow the procedures in the way that they could have” - directly shifting the blame for his failures on to care providers. 

A philanderer, a thug, a racist, a liar, and completely unaccountable, and his Etonian privilege tells him that it is his entitlement to behave in this way.

Matt Hancock, seen by some as the fall guy for Boris Johnson, insisted the government had thrown a ‘protective ring’ around care homes. Did they? Really? 

Of course they didn’t. They failed to act, despite concerns being raised about care homes being vulnerable in a potential pandemic, as early as January, by scientists on the government’s very own Sage committee. 

On the 12th March, the government switched focus from community testing to testing in hospitals, with only sample testing carried out in some care home settings. Like they couldn’t ever do two things at once.

Just days later, 15,000 patients from hospitals were sent back in to the community, including care homes, so the government could attempt to “protect the NHS”. Many of these patients were Covid-19 positive, untested, and thrown under the wheels of Boris Johnson’s big red bus. Protective ring, Mr Hancock? 

We have also discovered some 64% of homes for the elderly, or those with dementia, have not had a round of asymptomatic testing, with only 3,271 homes out of 9,144 receiving testing equipment. Another shocking example of what the government deem to be protection of our most vulnerable members of society. 

I could go on for hours on end about this. The callous negligence is out there for all to see, and is entirely consistent with their handling of the crisis since day one. 

When the world took action, locked down, and fought the deadly virus, your Prime Minister went on holiday, to write his book. 

Johnson himself says he “bitterly regrets” the spread of coronavirus in care homes. Does he really think this carries any weight with the 20,000+ families that have lost their loved ones in care homes? 

Even the NHS destroyer himself, Jeremy Hunt, called for care homes to stop external visits - 11 days before the government introduced their half-hearted, delayed, and ultimately way too late lockdown. 

We know some sort of inquiry will come in the future. We also know the inquiry panel will be hand picked to ensure an easy ride for Johnson and Cummings, who in my opinion, have the blood of thousands of British people on their hands. 

Johnson’s dither and delay cost thousands of lives - literally thousands, and this latest abandonment of their commitments to the care sector will go on to cost many more. 

Their negligence, their multiple failures, from “test, test, test” to an adequate supply of PPE for key workers putting their lives on the line, must never ever be forgotten and this awful heap of ghouls, masquerading as a competent government, must never, ever be forgiven

Rachael. 

Follow me on Twitter - @Rachael_Swindon