Coronavirus

[Witton Park]

I hope (but it almost certainly won't happen) that we can have a grown up conversation about health and social care provision in this country when the dust settles.
I suspect though there will be cries to just put ever more money in to what we have.

[Graham Breeze]

Like last weeks times article , and all the Brexit coverage it will be a massive distortion with a grain of truth.
There’s always a lefty somewhere in NHS willing to lie. It is as reliable as death and taxes.
There is a reason the media are the least trusted group in the present crisis. Called crying wolf.

I prefer listening to those whose day job is sourcing ventilators and PPE.They are aghast at the coverage.


Tell Me. what do have to say about EU? now you know one of the NHS biggest suppliers of PPE, which was ordered before any other country, refused to deliver because macron stole it. That is one of repeated incidents round the world, so I am led to believe by those who do the job?

Had YOU placed the order in feb, would you be expecting to have to go again to world markets to order elsewhere in March? only to be let down again? Would you blame Hancock for the failure to get it, or the french, or just accept there is a shortage,

Like every other critic , everything is easy for those who don’t have to do it.
We would have lost the war with the attitude problem shown by our NHS now.

The media want to mourn a few tens of (sadly ) deceased nhs workers.
What about mourning the other 20000? Across all professions?

One thing is for certain: with the decimation of the only true key workers in private sector business who make the cash everyone spends , we will struggle to support NHS at present levels. As history shows there are always doctors who can be bought if you “ stuff their mouths with enough gold” to quote the man who started NHS, The problem as always is paying for them. Even more difficult now the prima donnas have shut the economy in case they get overwhelmed. NHS was set up because doctors charged the ordinary man 3-5 days wages to see them. Nothing has changed.

I have every admiration for the doctors around the rest of Europe and Portugal in particular , who do it on far less salary, they have far less resources, they accept the problems Of limited supply and they just get on with the job, they don’t spend every waking hour attacking the government that pays them.

Read Portuguese media and doctors interviews there. It is a breath of fresh air.

Mmmh. I like you Oracle (although you skulk behind anonymity)
and as an intelligent and educated chap of broad experience you are an asset to the Forum - but I think what I admire most is that your views are always moderate, well balanced and expressed in such an even - handed way.

[anthonykay]

Mmmh. I like you Oracle (although you skulk behind anonymity)
and as an intelligent and educated chap of broad experience you are an asset to the Forum - but I think what I admire most is that your views are always moderate, well balanced and expressed in such an even - handed way.

Graham, I think someone on this Forum has previously pointed out that Oracle doesn't do irony.

[Oracle]

Mmmh. I like you Oracle (although you skulk behind anonymity)
and as an intelligent and educated chap of broad experience you are an asset to the Forum - but I think what I admire most is that your views are always moderate, well balanced and expressed in such an even - handed way.

I guess I just like chucking pebbles in a pond Graham.

But then, Tom bowers doesn’t do “even handed” either!
Like newspapers , he makes a very good living telling the side of the story his audience want to hear.
You buy a bowers book if you really don’t like a person, and you will find the warts you guessed were there.
In as far as he praises, he damns with faint praise.

That is why I am rather disappointed at MikeT not taking all with a pinch such as last weeks times, this weeks panorama. If you look at the cast of panorama they were current or previous labour activists and I recollect the producer is a close relation of a labour MP. So it should have carried party political broadcast headers, except not even Starmer would sink that low! I am even handed. I have equal contempt for all journalists.

Seriously, if you listen to Portuguese TV it is chalk and cheese to U.K. tv. The journalists just try to present what is happening, not gotchas, the doctors express frustration at some of the difficulties but they accept them as a fact of life. Even the opposition are supportive. They are angry and rightly so at EU for the lack of help.

It is too easy to criticise, and the medical profession seem to reserve the right to do little else. So I chuck a few stones back. If doctors were such all knowing people why are there billions in negligence claims? They are fallible like everyone else, indeed the ones they incessantly criticise. I don’t blame doctors for being fallible: I blame them playing for holier than thou!

In the U.K. could you imagine the NHS prima donnas we have now, had they been in WW2?
They would be telling Churchill he could not send armies more than 2000 strong, to make sure the medics are not overloaded, and they will only do that if Boris guarantees protection for them, and all equipment brand new. In short with the doctors and Sadiq khans transport workers we would have lost the war!

[Graham Breeze]

I guess I just like chucking pebbles in a pond Graham.
But then, Tom bowers doesn’t do “even handed” either!

I certainly hope not. If he doesn't excoriate Branson I shall ask for my money back.

My son, daughter, grand-daughter and daughter-in-law all work for the NHS on the clinical side. It is they I take notice of on Covid-19 and PPE, not journalists. Journalists?: "Anyone here been raped and can speak English for the camera?"

The later part of my career was in organisational development and change management and to do that you need an understanding of and unquenchable fascination in the behavioural quirks of people - and a droll sense of humour.

So the occasional in your posts might suggest that you aren't actually rabidly foaming at the mouth as you type - but just testing the water!

[Mike T]

I certainly hope not. If he doesn't excoriate Branson I shall ask for my money back.

My son, daughter, grand-daughter and daughter-in-law all work for the NHS on the clinical side. It is they I take notice of on Covid-19 and PPE, not journalists. Journalists?: "Anyone here been raped and can speak English for the camera?"

The later part of my career was in organisational development and change management and to do that you need an understanding of and unquenchable fascination in the behavioural quirks of people - and a droll sense of humour.

So the occasional in your posts might suggest that you aren't actually rabidly foaming at the mouth as you type - but just testing the water!

The way Branson interacts with women in public makes my skin creep. I hate to think what he is like when the cameras are not there.

[Oracle]

The way Branson interacts with women in public makes my skin creep. I hate to think what he is like when the cameras are not there.

But there’s the thing. Advertising is fascinating. If you are geek enough to watch ads, ( one of my interests) you see the better advertisers split test. Virgin certainly do on the web. That is : they randomly send different versions of ads to different viewers and calculate which get better click through and buyers. They build from that base to maximise sales.

Pictures draw attention,What works depends on the nature of the product and buyer. Faces always work better in some media, advertising on Facebook without them is a waste of time, and even the expression, happy or sad, and whether the face is looming straight at you, towards the headline can matter. Good advertisers test all of it.

If you want financial advice, young and pretty wont work. For customer support , not too pretty and not to young is the face people trust. Female certainly works better. I am certain to advertise clinical services or surgery needs something far more staid and professional.

I am guessing virgin has tested pictures to death and have confirmed that for records and selling airline tickets to primarily middle age male business class executives and also holiday products, young and pretty and lots of them works. Is it branson’s fault that sex sells, or part of the human condition?

As the author of the seminal work “ influence” on psychology of persuasion has said. We are all patsies. We go where we are led, not realising just how much.

Which is rather the subject of Bowers book.
Is it all a mask Branson wears? For advertising I am absolutely certain it is.

So the Branson behind the cameras may well be a different man.
Or just maybe it is the real Branson, who has happened to hit on the markets , in which pictures with women readily convert to sales.

[Graham Breeze]

So the Branson behind the cameras may well be a different man.

And as for Oracle away from the Forum?

[Oracle]

And as for Oracle away from the Forum?

A miserable old git, who agrees with everything on “grumpy old men!”

Tell me Graham. Does it scare you how much YOU agree with on grumpy old men?
You can admit it to us, nobody is watching!

[Graham Breeze]

...nobody is watching!

Not at all. I suspect Forum usage has regained the dizzy viewing figures associated with the heady champagne years of Yorkshire Thug. Which I attribute all to you.

Or that virus.