SDP leader William Clouston is joined by author and academic Joanna Williams, to discuss how the country has responded to the pandemic. William and Joanna discuss their thoughts on the March lockdown, the ethics of allowing the virus to spread among the non-vulnerable, the shortcomings in the government’s “stop-go” approach, and where the opposition to restrictions has been over the course of the crisis.
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I have been very engaged by the SDP over the last 2 years or so. However, I am in need of some hmmmm help in understanding how the SDP if in power (!) might have dealt with the pandemic.
I have been listening to William Clouston’s interview with Joanna Williams (who I read in Spiked). I’ve listened to most of the talk – really should not yet be writing – but I don’t get a sense of the nitty gritty details of what you would have done.
Do you publish some of the ideas anywhere? Either in an essay or podcast?
It’s one thing to say that we need to protect children but you don’t flesh this out with information about how their parents and grandparents would be protected if all places of education are kept open.
My niece has an underlying health condition and is on a thumping immunosuppressant. She is at Edinburgh University. We have all kinds of discussions as many of her views fall into the area of The Great Woke ! However, recently she declared that her cohort seemed very keen to look after people in need in far flung places but don’t seem to take it on board that there are protective measures that need taking when they are with her.
Would we have all looked after each other?
Another anecdote for what it is worth – just to get it off my chest so to speak ! A professional gardener who is 35 years old joked in my company that he saw Covid as revenge for older people having voted for Brexit. I look quite a lot younger that my 70 years and I think he may have forgotten my age. I reminded him that it was my generation (and quite a lot of people more elderly) who started Friends of the Earth, and did all the science on which around environmental pollution.
AS YOU STATE ABOVE – THIS EMAIL IS NOT FOR PUBLICATION.
I really am looking for any material you have published on an alternative to lockdown.
As there is now a silver lining perhaps in this pandemic regarding vaccines and immunity ,I see many problems ahead. As discussed on other podcasts here ,the issue of an over inflated post graduate population (which was here before the pandemic) will come to the fore. These young souls who have had their educational and social experiences strangled by these lockdowns , many wont even be able to return to the service industries as that will be very much smaller. I remembered that irony of students being in quarantine whilst the pubs were open nearby for elderly people to drink as Joanne stated. I currently work in retail and you would be amazed at the number of maskless frail people buying sleeves of 100 cigarettes .As Neil Oliver says rights do come with responsibilities. Part of the reason why we have had many deaths in this country is testament to the quality of the NHS which has prolonged lives in this country to enable people to live in care homes. In other countries life expectancy is shorter and they have had less Covid deaths because they have simply died younger of other causes of which they would have survived here due to NHS treatments.
We have to get on with our lives these restrictions must end and if that deaf mop haired buffoon Johnson doesn’t listen then He needs to go take Hancock Witty and Sage with him
This government has handled Covid19 disastrously not as bad as Trump in the US or Bolsanaro in Brazil but Johnson and the 2nd rater’s in this government need holding to account