The Budget

[the other bob wilson]

I don't think I said I rated Johnston above the others any where in my response.

I said I was still more likely to vote for the Tories if there was an election now, which is not the same thing. I suspect by the time I have to vote in a national election again there may well be a different leader. Either that or Boris will have to up his game as leader.

The Tories seem to finally be learning some of the lessons from the Pandemic. They are correctly being more cautious over lifting the lockdown ( there will always be disagreements as to whether they are going too quickly or too slowly) and thus far ( and keeping fingers crossed) the vaccine program is going well, better it seems than most other countries ( especially the EU!!!!)

There is of course a raft of things they will now need to get right. They have already talked about changing the NHS by unwinding some of Lansleys reforms but they need to bite the bullet on Social Care fairly soon (though neither will directly affect us here in Wales since they are devolved, although they may influence decisions here if they get it right.

Brexit has been "done"!! Well sort of but there are still; of course many loose ends, how well they have sorted them out should be apparent at the next election.


It is difficult to judge a political leaders competence until he has been tested in office. Opposition is a different matter. Sir Keir certainly is far more competent than Corbyn but that is not a very high bar in my view.


You mention Sturgeon. I would not have voted for her anyway because I would not vote for independence if I was there. I am not against independence per se but I think if either Scotland or Wales went for Independence now they would faced years of struggle, Indeed if either of the enquiries now ongoing find she has breached the ministerial code she should in my view resign.

Finally I disagree with some of your last sentence, particularly your point comparing anyone who currently votes conservative with the Labour voter who, in the expression used at the time, would have voted a donkey into certain South Wales valley seats as long as he or she wore a red rosette. Yes the Tory parties competence can be questioned over some of their pandemic response but I think most government in Europe and many round the word have struggled with the Pandemic and had similar problems (lack of PPE, insufficient testing wrong decisions on lock down etc) This doesn't make the mistakes OK, but dealing with this pandemic was horrendously difficult for most countries, and I think pretty all the governments I have known in my lifetime would have struggled. In addition to the various things they need to improve such as social care they also need to develop a robust Pandemic plan which takes account of all the lessons learnt. And of course there need to be a public enquiry.

You might not rate Johnson more than other party leaders perhaps, but it seems that you're still "probably" going to vote for him. Bearing that in mind, I see you're saying Nicola Sturgeon should resign if certain things happen on a matter that has now been ruled on yet. Contrast that to your attitude towards the party you consistently and will "probably" vote for again with its leader who will not tell voters how many children he has fathered, has been sacked from a national newspaper for lying, has used phrases which can be considered racist in articles he's written and has had a conversation with a convicted fraudster about having a News of the World reporter beaten up. This man, who sets himself up as a "man of the people" has, reportedly, been continuously bleating about how his £150k a year salary is not enough and so is looking to set up a charity to have the flat at 10 Downing Street renovated at a cost of £200k when the maximum allowed public grant is £30,000.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...at-refurb.html

That man leads a Government which includes a Chancellor who promoted a "Eat Out to help out" scheme offering half price restaurant meals that came into force days after Chris Whitty had said “We have probably reached near the limits, or the limits, of what we can do in terms of opening up society,”. This was at a time when SAGE was saying that they had no confidence that R was still below one - see link posted by Surge in the Coronavirus thread for more on this.

Also in this Government is a Home Secretary who had to resign her previous Cabinet job over unauthorised meetings with the Israeli Government which breached the Ministerial Code and an Education Secretary, widely regarded as incompetent in his current job, who had to resign his job as Defence Secretary amid allegations of leaking confidential National Security information. Besides that, there's a Health Secretary who was judged to have "breached his legal obligation" by not publishing details within 30 days of contracts being signed - a man who awards very lucrative contrasts to the landlord of his local pub!

Despite all of this, it appears that you're inclined to give the Government the benefit of the doubt - as it would appear are very many who voted for them fifteen months despite a horrendous death toll from the pandemic in which the latest excuse for the Conservatives made by their apologists is that we're all too fat. To me, that displays exactly the sort of thinking that I mentioned earlier that people in the valleys are often accused of when it comes to casting their vote.