er - that person "on the wrong side of every argument" is you, pete
If we'd done track and trace properly - you know, as several other countries did - we'd have spent less, lost many fewer people and not had to lock-down that second time (or impose as severe a set of restrictions). We'd also be much better prepared to face further variants of this or new diseases. Instead, the government you cheerlead for wasted tens of billions on a system that never worked, just as they wasted tens of billions on a furlough system that was wide open to fraud and tens of billions on PPE from extremely dubious sources (and which was often unsuitable). Their response to COVID was, and continues to be, one of the greatest scandals in the history of this country.
As for this, for once stop regurgitating what you read in the papers and actually look at what is going on. Very few countries outside of the West have gotten involved in sanctions against Russia; countries that our history of alliances say should be helping counter the weaponisation of energy supplies are not doing it (indeed they are coining it in even more than the Russians are). The Russians and Chinese have spent years in diplomatic and development efforts across Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin / South America, have propped up / brought about friendly regimes there and already supply vital resources to an awful lot of countries, resources that the regimes running those countries could not easily replace or survive the loss of. When Putin says that governments representing most of the world population are neutral or pro-Russia he is not lying - it is easily observable truth.
Speaking of easily observable truth, then there is "Russia is getting its arse kicked" - please look at a map of this conflict. They occupy a big chunk of Ukraine and that chunk is growing.
Then there is climate change, which is demonstrably happening already across parts of the world and for which we are offering insufficient support (as was seen yesterday) whilst also clearly not doing much ourselves to reduce the problem from our end. Yes, the likes of China, India and especially Russia are guilty as well but they'll have the ability to give more help (food, renewables, "security assistance" etc) than we will.
Finally this isn't about Russia or China being great, its about the need for people to get out of the complacency that the media and government are pushing out and realise that we might actually be at considerable peril here. Russia and China together could represent a potential threat considerably greater than the Soviet Union at the peak of its powers, and at the same time Western governments and societies are divided and poorly led (or incompetent in our case).
I appreciate this is a complete waste of time with you of course.
