This imprint certainly does not augur well for Boris Johnson that too at a time when his personal credibility has been at stake for two matters; first, his utter failure to fight corona pandemic and second, he has not succeeded in giving a concrete shape to the Brexit deal. Along with this his government has come under peoples’ scrutiny for giving contracts to ferry companies that owned no ferries, caused chaos on the railways and banned books for prisoners.

It is nothing but simply a coincidence that while the government has little intention of letting the previous committee’s potentially embarrassing report on Russian interference in British politics be published, the good men and women, those who dare to question the government’s zealotry, are often tainted by unattributable briefings to the media.

Some of the prominent political faces were purged from the party last year for daring to oppose the government’s Brexit approach. This punishment of dissent is dangerous. At a time when the government faces the enormous, concurrent challenges of Covid-19, Brexit and the deepest recession in living memory, and is planning radical reform of the civil service, it should welcome wisdom and experience. But it does not appear to happening.

There is no denying the fact that Boris has been resorting to falsehood to protect himself. There is a general impression that Johnson’s government is rapidly losing authority. His “consultations” on his switch from “Stay Home” to “Stay Alert” in the corona pandemic has come as shocking news to leaders who said they first learnt of the change in papers and believe it is dangerously premature.

At a time of national emergency, with thousands of lives at stake and people looking for authoritative guidance, Boris knowingly dispensed advice to viewers in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland that contradicted what Nicola Sturgeon, Mark Drakeford and Arlene Foster were telling them.

The root cause of this mess is not hard to make out. Caught between the cabinet hawks and party donors who want to reopen the economy as fast as possible, and the doves who stress the need to save lives, Johnson has produced a muddled compromise that has pleased neither camp.

He promised “a world-beating system for testing potential victims” but could not accomplish the mission. David Spiegelhalter, the Cambridge statistician, accused the government of an “extraordinary” failure to prioritise testing, and called its use of statistics “not trustworthy”.

As if what he has been doing is not enough, barely a week back Boris Johnson blamed the care homes for huge deaths alleging that they did not follow coronavirus procedures. This has indeed been a nonsensical wild allegation. The fact remains that care workers are not getting the adequate support from the government.

After his reckless observation groups of care workers, unions and MPs hounded Johnson alleging that he was shifting the blame for the high death toll on the care giver. They alleged that was purely an attempt cover up his failure to meet the challenge and face the situation.

Till July 15 the total UK coronavirus death toll has been 45702. Incidentally the public health officials had proposed a radical lockdown of care homes at the height of the pandemic, but they were overruled by the Boris government. The reason for spread was the failure of the government to supply the protective gears.

The accusation of Boris against care workers is viewed as an attempt to shift the responsibility. It is said the fear of future inquiry into how the ministers responded to the situation and how the UK came to have the highest coronavirus death toll with the proportion of care home deaths 13 times higher than in Germany – could be seeking to lay some of the responsibility on outside bodies, including Public Health England (PHE).” Has been primarily responsible for shifting the blame by Boris.

The duality in the stand of Boris could be made out from the statement of a No 10 spokesman insisting that Johnson was not blaming care homes. He in fact said, “Boris has observed that care workers have done a brilliant job under very difficult circumstances”. He added: “The PM was pointing out that nobody knew what the correct procedures were because the extent of asymptomatic transmission was not known at the time.”

Its everywhere, whether UK, India or USA, the frontline warriors, the life savers, are not accorded the due respect they deserve. The situation is more alarming in the countries governed by the rightist political parties. The rulers are more self-cantered and intent to enhance their own stature and personal images than the warriors.

Care workers with coronavirus face an awful choice are forced to live a secluded life. They look after our loved ones but are often forced to ignore their own sickness. If these caseworkers are ill-treated in India, humiliated by the neighbours and tormented by the society, Nancy in UK is also feeling frustrated and wondering whether she and her colleagues would have to end their lives.

There is some small difference between the care workers of India and UK. While in India they are supposed to work in the health centres denied of the proper protective mechanism and financial motivation, in UK workers like Nancy are not paid proper sick pay. The UK’s sick pay scheme is the meanest in the industrialised world. When ill, one might usually splutter through a working day and keep earning. Today when corona has been ravaging the world, they are at the front to face its wrath.

A recent study has revealed that a large number of frontline warriors have succumbed to the corona. These primarily include the black people or Asians. These people are really in a very bad state. It is really sad commentary on the capitalist economy and on the stature of the developed nations that these care givers are denied of basic protective equipment. They belong to the category of poor and are often in deep debt. It is shocking to know that often these care workers has to share the masks among themselves. (IPA Service)