I feel I owe the OP and others who may have wanted to contribute to this thread an apology for posting that although I know the Welsh Government have done very poorly over the last few months, I did have a degree of sympathy for them because they are hamstrung to an extent by the partial devolution from the UK Government that they enjoy. This prompted a reply from someone who, it seems, wants to absolve the UK Government of responsibility for what has happened in this country and since then the thread has become almost entirely a back and forth between him and those who disagree with him.

To try and return to the matter addressed in the opening post, rjk has already posted in another thread about the graphic shown on yesterday's Newsnight, but, for those who haven't seen it, it shows that the 359 deaths recorded in the UK's official figures yesterday was thirty five more than the total number of people who had died with the virus in the same twenty four hours as the twenty seven member countries of the EU put together.

Yes, there have to be the usual caveats about different recording methods, a lag in recording deaths etc. but, come on, that isn't anywhere near enough to explain away the awfulness of that statistic. UK Government apologists are soon going to have to resort to claiming that we are the only country in the world to be recording deaths properly in their efforts to defend Johnson and his Cabinet of mediocrities - one of whom is, hopefully, not suffering from the virus after having to self isolate after looking distinctly poorly while delivering a speech a day after the idiotic decision, which he voted for, to end the virtual Parliament came into force.

I mentioned Newsnight earlier, last night's programme was devoted to how the virus has devastated care homes. It was sobering and sad stuff which left me thinking there had been so many unnecessary deaths because of blundering by Government and their advisers, but, in a way, it washed over me because it was just more of the same that I have become used to since Johnson took half of February off.

All of this on the day that our Prime Minister declared he took responsibility for the way the virus has been handled and that the people of the UK should be "proud" of our record. What I found startling is that the nonentities in charge of the UK are still polling at 40% plus, why?

The only answer I can come up with is that f*cking Brexit is still regarded as the be all and end all for a sizeable number of UK voters despite the fact that we will, very likely, be passing 40,000 deaths later today (most people know that, in reality, the figure is anything up to 50 per cent higher than that) and we are facing an economic situation that has not been seen before in most of our lifetimes.

Remember that forecast about two months ago that predicted that a highest in Europe 67,000 would die in the UK from Covid 19? Everyone ridiculed it and it was subsequently reduced to 36,000 - their original figure is not going to be too far from right is it (in fact it could end up being too low).

On the day after the election in December I had two Brexit supporting friends of mine saying in e-mails that they felt proud of Britain and the people who lived there. It was a refrain that was repeated in the media over the days that followed - do they, like our Prime Minister, feel proud today? Shame is more what I feel.