Boris Johnson’s carping critics are demoralising the nation

From: Richard Wimpenny, Fixby, Huddersfield.
Do you agree with this reader on the Prime Minister's handling of the coronavirus crisis? Photo: AFP/Tolga Akmen/Getty ImagesDo you agree with this reader on the Prime Minister's handling of the coronavirus crisis? Photo: AFP/Tolga Akmen/Getty Images
Do you agree with this reader on the Prime Minister's handling of the coronavirus crisis? Photo: AFP/Tolga Akmen/Getty Images

The CONSTANT carping from the BBC, press and opposition pygmies – people who have never had to run anything in their lives and have responsibility for nothing – is wrecking the resolve of the nation.

We do not want constant criticism of a government that is doing its best to deal with an unprecedented global emergency not of its own making.

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Whatever is done is wrong. Strong action early on would have been condemned as dictatorial and panic-mongering. Now it seen as too little too late.

A drive-in coronavirus testing facility. Photo: Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty ImagesA drive-in coronavirus testing facility. Photo: Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty Images
A drive-in coronavirus testing facility. Photo: Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty Images

The media entertainment game of comparing the UK’s performance with other countries is simplistic and misleading.

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To suggest racism as a cause of a high ethnic minority mortality rates is disgraceful.

Genetic factors apart, huge immigration rates have occurred more recently in Europe than in the UK, where mass immigration from the old Commonwealth has been going on for decades and where an older and more vulnerable generation in larger family groups in closely knit communities is ideal for spreading the virus.

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To compare Captain Tom’s generation with today’s is ludicrous. They had to fight a six-year war against a universally recognised evil – and then had to suffer decades of deprivation to rescue a bankrupted country so that today’s spoilt generation can live in its self-indulgent lifestyle.

Continued criticism of Churchill’s leadership could have lost the war and would simply have not been tolerated by the great mass of the British people.

That generation also accepted the need for families to look after their elderly parents and not to pass on the responsibility elsewhere.

Boris Johnson may have his critics but he has inherited a uniquely poisoned chalice which he has handled with great dignity and with as much clarity as circumstances allow, even at the quite obvious expense of his own health.

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For the good of the nation, he and his government need the support and not the continuous carping from critics seeking to score political points.

Only if this happens can the current generation be remotely compared with Captain Tom’s wartime generation.

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James Mitchinson

Editor