Boris Johnson lacks ‘nous’ in leadership test – Yorkshire Post Letters

From: David Collins, Scissett.

ALL the problems we seem to have today seem to have one thing in common. A lack of common sense.

Anyone who put any thought into the exams fiasco would know that using an algorithm to over rule reality is nonsense.

An algorithm is a very useful device when facts aren’t available or for analysing data. But because you don’t like what reality throws up is no reason to try to use artificial data to change it. Officials may think teachers have been over-generous. Has it ever occurred to them that the better results were due to there being no exam stress to artificially reduce the marks?

The same lack of common sense applies to Covid statistics which are at best an estimate, at worst plain wrong. It is of little use mixing people who die of the disease with those who had it as a side-effect which may contributed to a death and those who had no effects from the virus but died anyway. Also the statistics don’t necessarily cover everyone who had died but weren’t tested. If the Government doesn’t know, it should say so.

We also have a Parliament which seems to only criticise what has already gone before. The best brains in Parliament should be putting them to use helping to solve the current crises, not pontificating in committee on the past.

I have one solution for the future. All politicians and civil servants should have to take a GCSE before getting the job. That would be in “nous”, as I would call basic common sense, which is clearly lacking at many levels.

From: John Cole, Oakroyd Terrace, Baildon, Shipley.

GETTING people back to work is easier said than done and would be a great deal easier if Boris Johnson in particular, and the Government in general, had not handled the Covid crisis so incompetently.

What our Prime Minister is reaping are the consequences of, among other things, his failure to lockdown earlier. This stems from his failure to take Covid seriously. (Quiz question for 30 years hence: “Name the Prime Minister who chose to miss the first five Cobra meetings relating to Covid”).

You do not beat a pandemic by attempting to tough it out with ill-based optimism, bluff and bluster. The coronavirus has no respect for English exceptionalism. Marginalising local authorities with their well-established links into local public health in order to favour private sector partners is ideology getting in the way of success.

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James Mitchinson