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Well, this is where I’d go for analysis too

Jana Bacevic is assistant professor of sociology at Durham University. Linsey McGoey is professor of sociology at the University of Essex

The reason Britain has had a bad pandemic:

It may be tempting to explain the government’s lagging public health advice by a lack of clear evidence, the novelty of the situation, or just “bad luck”. But this obscures the degree to which the government has also exploited the uncertainty generated by the Covid-19 pandemic for economic and political gain, by using the facade of incompetence to narrow the political choices available to the public.

In a report released last December, the cross-party joint committee on national security strategy condemned the government for having “failed seriously to consider how it might scale up testing, isolation and contact-tracing capabilities during a serious disease outbreak”. But the report missed a key aspect: the delay in scaling up public testing helped to prime the space for private UK-based firms to enter the market.

Yep, it’s all been done so as to privatise the NHS. Obvious innit? ‘Coz Tories is bastards.

What other analysis would you expect from sociologists?

9 thoughts on “Well, this is where I’d go for analysis too”

  1. I see the (entirely predictable) PHE testing clusterfuck has been conveniently memory-holed.

    Recording results on an excel spreadsheet (and thereby losing data) being just one of the fuckups. Refusing to cooperate with non-PHE testing labs another.

  2. “by using the facade of incompetence to narrow the political choices available to the public.”

    Why “facade”? Never ascribe to malice what can explained by bog-standard actual incompetence.
    Especially in situations where manure actually hits in an environment mainly populated by professional chairwarmers aiming for a comfy pension because “these things never happen”.

    The UK is hardly unique in this, really.

  3. Given that the vaccination service is – arguably – the most efficient and customer-service worthy initiative for decades, then bring on privatisation ASAP!

  4. using the facade of incompetence to narrow the political choices available to the public

    Why don’t they narrow the range of publicly funded political activist careers available to progressive twats by defunding useless degrees such as Sociology?

  5. The Meissen Bison

    government […]by using the facade of incompetence to narrow the political choices available to the public.

    Governments hardly need a facade of incompetence given their natural propensity in that direction. Indeed they would likely not be competent to construct such a facade if they tried.

    Political choices are available to the public at elections and not otherwise. The entire piece is top quality guardian-grade drivel.

  6. Surreptitious Evil

    Yet the enormous sums spent on starting up the NHS-owned and run Rosalind Franklin lab (and therefore rolling off the private labs from contract) is?

    Or is that just fantasy, albeit one I have regular contact with in the day job?

  7. What’s an “assistant professor”? Has the U of Durham embraced American nomenclature?

    If they’re following the US model, it means ‘glorified teagirl’. What used to be called a post-doc.

  8. It’s proof of Conservative Party incompetence that they have been totally unable to sell the NHS off to the highest bidder, despite having been the party of government for the majority of the time since the birth of the NHS.

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