Tag: Coronavirus

Before Covid-19, British colonial authorities allowed a deadly flu virus to spread from Hong Kong in 1968 with devastating consequences for the US and the rest of the world – one million people died.

With coronavirus killing tens of thousands of Britons, the government’s poor response to the crisis shows that the UK’s current form of ‘democracy’ cannot protect the public. The ‘Westminster model’ was developed to promote unregulated economic growth and prevent the public from real participation in how society is run.

The UK Ministry of Defence is using the Covid-19 pandemic to reverse a long-term recruitment crisis, which has seen it miss its enlistment targets for the past six years, and to repair damage to its reputation from the military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

There is money and power in identifying Russia and cyber attacks as the key security threats facing Britain — but not in addressing the more important issues of pandemics and climate change. Former UK intelligence chiefs are personally profiting from the ‘revolving door’ between government and business, and the public is paying the price.

The UK government’s failure to provide protective equipment to all health staff treating coronavirus victims prompts questions over whether ministers are legally culpable for failing to prevent deaths. But ministers routinely act with impunity and every prime minister since 1945 has been complicit in deaths abroad.

Despite claiming to help tackle the coronavirus pandemic, Britain’s military and arms industry continue to facilitate bombing one of the world’s poorest countries, which is most at risk from Covid-19.

British aid sponsors private hospitals for better-off patients from India to Zimbabwe, risking diverting doctors and money away from treating poorer patients who will be hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic.

With some Western governments failing to follow the World Health Organisation’s advice on tackling coronavirus, right-wing figures in the US and UK are seeking to discredit the UN body as pro-China. But Britain and the US themselves are the WHO’s largest funders and among its major influencers.

The UK government promoted exports of live animals and shellfish to China for years, knowing they would be sold at “wet markets”, amid repeated warnings from British health authorities that these markets posed an influenza threat, it can be revealed.

Since air travel was largely locked down to curb the spread of coronavirus, the UK military has airlifted personnel to at least six countries that have banned British travellers or flights — potentially moving thousands of troops.

Despite concerns over coronavirus fake news emanating from the Kremlin, it has been British government ministers and senior scientists who have repeatedly downplayed the severity of Covid-19 in the country’s parliament and in the media.

New analysis shows that Britain plans to spend hundreds of billions of pounds on expensive military projects while the UK’s under-funded public health system struggles to address pandemics such as Covid-19.

The risk of a global pandemic that could kill hundreds of thousands of British people has been raised by UK policy-making officials for more than 15 years without the UK’s security and intelligence agencies prioritising the threat, new analysis shows.

The British government has long been aware of the looming inevitability of an imminent pandemic flu crisis. Yet coronavirus starkly illustrates how outmoded and dangerous the UK establishment’s national security paradigm really is.

The UK government, which has been widely criticised for its slow and inadequate response to the coronavirus crisis, has failed to heed five areas of advice from the World Health Organisation – despite being its second largest state funder.