UK Today in Coronavirus
From today the UK has made the move of closing all travel corridors in a further bid to manage massive pressures on the NHS currently due to the ongoing pandemic and also as a further step of protecting vaccine rollout as well as worries over new variants of the virus that are continually popping up in various areas of the world, this will last until at least 15th February. Everyone who arrives in the UK must now self-isolate for up to 10-days. Everyone travelling into the country from today will also need to have had a negative COVID-19 test before arrival.
Travel corridors were introduced as a way to help struggling airlines keep in some-sort of operation during the pandemic, but now with them being all temporarily closed the aviation industry is expected to take another big hit.
As pressures mount on the NHS there have been calls for emergency legislation to protect medics, nurses and doctors from criminal investigations over “unlawful killings” due to decisions made over coronavirus treatment, as current guidance is not adequate for the current crisis the NHS is under.
In perhaps quite a concerning statement, Sky News has reported that a doctor treating COVID-19 patients has said that those affected by the virus are younger than in the previous year of the pandemic and also generally sicker as well. It will be interesting to see as time goes on through this year of the pandemic if this pattern repeats out across the country, if so it could mean that new strains of the coronavirus are effecting people a bit more severely and at different ages more so than before. Of course much more evidence is first required to make a full determination on this. But the signs are nonetheless worrying and goes to show more than ever why following coronavirus restrictions and lockdowns at this time are more important than ever.
In a fairly divisive move the Luton council closed three of its vaccination centers temporarily after snowfall in the area, although many have stated on social media that they believe it was an over-reaction to only very small amounts of snow. Such moves can also have an adding impact to slowing down the progress towards the 15 million vaccine goal by the middle of February. It was not long before the Luton council decided to reverse its decision and reopen the centers, but it is another observance of possible unforseen things that can get in the way of the vaccine rollout and goal.
Meanwhile as schools and other places of education continue to be closed, charities have expressed concern over some of the most disadvantaged pupils educational prospects being worst effected by it and that as much as a decade of progress could be wiped out. Many disadvantaged pupils believe they won’t get the grades they deserve after exams were scrapped. School closures have also had a strong impact on the mental health of pupils.
Those who are disadvantaged and have to study from home face the prospect of not having the appropriate working space/environment needed or a stable enough broadband connection or even access to a computer at all – making it basically impossible to study from home in any case. Many have derided the Education Department for having not provided laptops to students who need them.
The US claims it has intelligence that researchers in China’s Wuhan lab had become with symptoms similar to COVID-19 in the autumn of 2019 before the first identified case of the outbreak occured. The US Department of State has alledged that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was conducting experiments with a virus that was genetically similar to COVID-19. This raises some concerns that the virus was accidentally spread from a Wuhan lab rather than naturally. Officials are open to both possibilities. But the Wuhan lab has denied any possibility of this being the case, while China has been open to the possibility of the virus originating outside of its borders, which also has some evidence, although not enough. The majority of scientists still believe the virus has a natural origin and that it begun in China.
China has been accused of originally trying to cover up the outbreak and also being slow to release crucial information, and it is alledged the state had silenced certain people and officials in the country from giving first-hand accounts.
A survey has suggested that paramedics and ambulances are currently stretched so thin that people are dying while waiting for them. It is widely believed that the crisis in the NHS has far worse than when the first wave of the outbreak took place. Paramedics and other ambulance service staff are said to be more terrified than ever to go out on there shifts under the current crisis. Many have blamed PPE that is not up to standard for making the situation even worse.
Finally Dominic Raab has said that all UK adults will have been offered the first dose of the coronavirus vaccine by September of this year in an interview with Sky News. He also said the government is hoping to gradually begin lifting coronavirus restrictions from March onwards.
Dutch Government Resigns
The entire government of Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the Netherlands has resigned after a mass scandal involving childcare subsidies was revealed by an inquiry. The scandal had a particular effect on those of certain ethnic background and dual citizenship, making unlawful and mismanaged claims against thousands of families of welfare fraud and trying to force them to pay back large sums of money they didn’t have, further putting such struggling families into deep poverty, mass debt, financial ruin, unemployment and thus tearing many such families apart from within, in a scandal that lasted a decade.
The government will now stay on in a caretaker role until fresh elections take place on 17th March. The Mark Rutte coalition came about after elections that saw off the threat of the right-wing eurosceptic populist Geert Wilders, coming in the times not long after BREXIT and the election of Donald Trump. Despite the scandal Mark Rutte and his party still enjoy favourable polling ratings and they are expected to win enough seats again to take a leading role in the next coalition government, likely with Rutte as Prime Minister again.
Due to how the electoral system works in the Netherlands via a proportional representation system, there can be weeks or even months of political wrangling after elections before a coalition government is formed and takes power, a single party gaining enough seats to rule outright is almost an impossibility. This is typically the case in many European countries, and other countries around the world that use such a system, unlike the United Kingdom which uses First-Past-the-Post making single-party majorities much more common and a requirement of coalitions much more rare, and when coalitions are required to form power the negotiations and coalition itself is usually far less complex and less time consuming in the UK due to this.
The last coalition government in the United Kingdom was between the Conservative Party and the Northern Irish Democratic Unionists Party after a shock surge for Corbyn’s Labour in the 2017 election, and before that in 2010 a coalition was formed between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, although the outcome of that coalition devastated the Liberal Democrats who have since vowed to avoid coalitions – the party is yet still to recover the number of seats it had at its height before the coalition, if they ever do.
Uganda Election Outcome
As was expected the long-time President of Uganda and one of Africa’s longest serving leaders Yoweri Museveni has been declared the winner of the presidential election in Uganda after facing one of his toughest opponents, a singer called Bobi Wine who had a strong following with the young. Bobi Wine has accussed the government of having rigged and intimidated its way to victory.
Yoseweri Museveni will now serve his 6th term in office, having been in power since 1986 and he has since that time been accussed of corruption, voter and opponent indimidation, human rights abuses, unfair tight media control, abuse of state agencies including the Electoral Commission, and abusive use of authorities and armed forces to enforce his grip on power and turn elections in his favour.
Although Yoseweri Museveni won the main presidential contest, he has seen a number of his ministers and even his vice-president voted out in down-ballot races with dozens of pro-Bobi Wine candidates having won and unseated members of the ruling party. The Vice-President was said to have been so shocked by his defeat that he was admitted to hospital.
Bobi Wine himself has also claimed victory in the presidential contest, disputing the officially reported results and alledging vote rigging and unfair intimidation tactics in which he became frightened for his life. He has said he will be taking all legal action he can in challenge of the results.
During the election itself Bobi Wine also said that his own home had been surrounded by armed government soldiers and did not allow him to leave.
In the run-up to the election independent monitors had also been arrested and prevented from properly observing the election while UN and other foreign observing teams had been refused entry to the country, with both the EU and US giving up their attempt to observe the elections.
Thank you for reading this post, if you have any queries please Email me, you can find my Email in the Contacts & Community section. Please also follow The Weekly Rambler on Twitter, Reddit, Pinterest and Facebook which you can access through the buttons at the bottom of this website. You can also use the social media buttons under each blogpost to share with your family, friends and associates. You can also subscribe to Email notifications at the right-side of this website to know whenever a new post goes up (you can easily unsubscribe from this at any time through a button in each Email notification), or alternatively you can use an RSS Feed Reader. Please also join my FB Group The Weekly Ramblers Readers Group where readers can more easily talk with each other and also with me whenever I am on, you can also find it in Community.