Johnson told a group of Tory MPs this week that "the reason we have the vaccine success is because of capitalism, because of greed". Realizing that the cat had jumped out of the bag, he quickly told them "strike that from your memories"!

    Heaven forbid that he should be accused of questioning "British innovation" or the "proud partnership" between Oxford University and the Swedish company AstraZeneca, established by luring greedy pharmaceutical AZ with large sums of public money to help create a "British" vaccine. Yes, which will provide lots of money for greedy shareholders, once this phase of the pandemic is over...

    Anyway, this "quip", which slipped out of Johnson's mouth, wasn't criticism of capitalist greed. Throughout the pandemic, he’s considered that greed for profits was the very best motivation for private companies "to get things done".

    Never mind that the contracting to the profit sector of PPE procurement and the crucial life-saving, test, trace and isolate system, has proven to be a fatal mistake. Deloitte, Serco, Sitel, after 12 months of "trying" still haven't delivered. Or was that 12 months of trying to find ways to eat up £37bn of public money? By the way, so much for Johnson "regretting mistakes", let alone learning from them.

    This policy was catastrophic and it was criminal. It is counted in the 147,179 who died as a result of catching Covid (ONS figures for 12 March) over the short 12 months since lock-down was declared, too late, by Boris Johnson: among the highest tolls per head of population in the world. Yes, because of Johnson's refusal to curtail the greed of private capitalists and close down the economy in order to "save" an under-resourced, failing NHS, and really, actually, to "save lives"!

    "Do you regret anything you did, Prime Minister?", asked the embedded journalists. Regret? No, he blamed his failure on the fact that Covid was caused by a "new" virus. Except that novel virus pandemics are nothing new: there was Ebola, Sars, 'flu..

    Raab blamed it on"lack of data". Another lie! There was plenty of data - but to use it, ministers would have had to listen to the Chinese and follow their example. It's incredible that these arrogant bigots refused to do that... to save our lives. Or is it? 

    Hancock said on TV this week that this was "the hardest year in a generation". The festival of hypocritical tears from the politicians for "every single life lost" is a shameless and sickening spectacle and should go down in posterity as the most cynical political debacle "in a generation".