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Thread on Covid & Govts - an opinion
Yesterday was not a good day for Ireland. Eamon Ryan's claim that Govt was caught 'off guard' wby the virus was gobsmacking. Stephen Donnelly's tv interview was in the realm of the absurd. For some, an insult to a public who had given its all
Yesterday was not a good day for Ireland. Eamon Ryan's claim that Govt was caught 'off guard' wby the virus was gobsmacking. Stephen Donnelly's tv interview was in the realm of the absurd. For some, an insult to a public who had given its all
But the injury to the public had come earlier, much earlier, in the FG Govt's failure to properly establish & reinforce our best defence & protection against the virus: Test, Trace Isolate (TTI). It's an injury & failure we have only now discovered.
The crisis now in health & education proves that in the past months, instead of prioritising a public-health strategy, the FG govt was prioritising a public-relations strategy. The spin of 'win' in prime-time speeches & photo ops took precedence over readying TTI & schools.
Though disagreeing with @MichealMartinTD's politics, I see him as a good man, now holding the Office of Taoiseach. I believe he has been unedifyingly upstaged by his Tanaiste in a 'beefed- up' office with unprecedented & unnecessary trappings of power
The Tánaiste became ubiquitous in being Minister for Everything. There was hardly a portfolio he didn't have a public view & voice on. Until the no-show at the press conference. In my opinion this no-show was a bad show & it lacked respect for the Taoiseach and his Office.
Bcs, what we're discovering now is what was not done on the previous administration's watch. In the whirl of PR & marketing & insider bets about speeches, the basics of good government were not attended to: TTI, classroom, overcrowding, the dire state of health service
Ireland was all mink coat PR. Covid Commando underneath. Yes, the current govt's response to the Covid situation is mystifying. Their PR is not as good. And in the end that might be better for the country. We can cut down on the plastic. #FF was handed a poisoned chalice
Of how FG closed down too late, caved to lobbyists & opened up too early, ignored NPHET advice on access, travel & quarantine, failed to establish TTI, abandoned our nursing homes, refused to advise masks never mind demand them, did not tackle overcrowding in our schools on time.
This is the reality for FF and for all of us. The reality of the shallow politics of public appeasement and pleasing and popularity. Of looking constantly in the marketing mirror and the latest focus-group find instead of looking out for the risk & dangers ahead for the public.
It'll be the death of us yet politically & let's hope not physically. The public too has a role. Swathes are dependent on 'Messaging'. In Cork the messages were things you did on Shandon Street before 10 a.m. Now Messaging is a thing we wait for as a nation? Thankfully many don't
Yet for all that Messaging, there is too little public communication - actual communication with the public - about the non-fatal impact of #Covid19. Unlike the previous '18 Covids' its multi-system impacts will have medium & longtem impacts on our abandoned health service
Therefore, it's time we measured our Covid fight & success by a metric other than fatality. Fewer deaths means winning in the headlines only. In the body of the story, people will suffer including our exhausted medical staff who are heroes in a crisis & Nobodies when it's over
So please, think about politics and govt beyond the headlines & photo ops. Think about the real story. People will say @MichealMartinTD got what he wanted & now he must pay the price. Maybe, but we are watching a degrading political floorshow as he does,
A degrading political floorshow in which our kids are still going back to school in the most overcrowded classrooms in the EU & where our health service & the people who work in it & give their all are hanging by the proverbial thread, bcs good pr mattered more than good govt
We are facing difficult times. Our children are our whole lives. And we are sending them back to school in a chaos that started long before #FF moved up one in the Confidence & Supply game of musical chairs, but is only now exposed to the public.
By that I mean the public that wants to see. The none-so-blind will carry on. But the rest will suffer regardless like our migrant workers in meat-plants, our people in DP. Our people. They live in Ireland, they work in Ireland. Some kill our meals-with-faces so we don't have to.
#Covid19 is exposing the dark side of our economy & our society. Our ideas of who is Someone and who is not. Maybe we didn't think much about it before, but now we are. And let's think hard bcs the politics of consuming and consumerism is finished.
All we were doing is consuming ourselves, the Earth, each other. Enough is never enough. Apologies for a long thread; thanks for reading. Twitter not a place for nuance. But the human heart is. Good luck to all for the new term. Stay safe. Be well. #COVID19 #schoolsreopening
