Quote Originally Posted by trampie09 View Post
The English in the name of the UK stole our testing kits and PPE.
That was a myth which at the time was designed to sidetrack the Welsh and Scottish Governments from criticism. There was nothing preventing other nations' governments from obtaining their own PPE but at the time the international market was such that demand far exceeded supply so Wales and Scotland were happy to leave it to the UK government to purchase and organise the distribution and to take the flak.

As for testing, the Welsh Government simply abandoned the testing target of 9000 as it had failed to provide the infrastructure to deal with anything like that number; it had nothing to do with stealing tests. Later the Chief Executive of Public Health Wales claimed not to have been advised by the Welsh Government of that target despite the fact it had been widely reported in the media. A shambles if ever there was one.

On PPE, Mark Drakeford, revealed that his administration's pandemic stockpile had from 2016 onwards failed to contain a single protective gown but that was contradictory to a statement to the Senedd by Vaughan Gething, who was asked whether the stockpile contained gowns, visors, swabs and body bags. He stated: 'All of those items were available in our pandemic stock.'

In fairness to both the English and Welsh governments PPE has a shelf life of only between 3-6 months and stockpiling, the warehousing needed and the frequent replacement requirements was not financially viable given the rarity of pandemics. (Apparently a 3 month supply of PPE for the UK would require 5 acres of warehousing.) But, in answer to the above statement, there was no Welsh PPE for the English to steal and the abysmal record of the Welsh Government on testing had absolutely nothing to do with testing kits being stolen.

In the interest of balance, if Welsh PPE and testing kits were being stolen, please comment further. I would be fascinated to read that.

Let's face it all governments have questions to answer when this pandemic is over but I doubt whether the stealing of PPE and other equipment by the English will be one of them.