Leading Belgium’s #COVID19 task force, Federal Minister Philippe De Backer from our sister party, Open VLD, has shown leadership and resilience in the face of crisis. I thought that our readers might be interested to see a liberal response to this crisis.
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Why Britain should be wary of Andy Burnham’s Devolution Revolution (Iain Donaldson)
“Build, baby, build” but don’t lower our ambitions on affordability (Victor Chamberlain)
Twenty-six years of evidence on drugs. Twenty-six years of cowardice. (Tanya Park)
Tom Arms’ World Review (Tom Arms)
Observations of an Expat: Gaza (Tom Arms)
The Joy of Six 1540
Are we doing enough to insure against climate change?
Don't mention the Isle of Wight Separatists' 1950s terror campaign
Fergus McClelland was the last illegal major British child actor
Labour and the Liberals in 1924 and today
Family: Scene Through the Eye of a Lens
Brexit: The Uncivil War - the TV drama with Benedict Cumberbatch
A power vacuum?
David Evans 
Tristan Ward 
Peter Martin 
Ellyott 
expats 
4 Comments
Sorry, Mark, but even given the mess the Johnson government is making of the crisis, I don’t think there is much to learn from Belgium or from Mr De Backer’s Liberal Government colleagues. Belgium has the worst coronavirus mortality rate in the world, having recorded 66 deaths per 100,000 people as long ago as May.
According to ‘The Independent’, scores of medics turned their backs on Prime Minister Sophie Wilmès during a hospital visit in protest at the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. Ms Wilmès made an unofficial visit at Saint-Pierre Hospital in Brussels on Saturday in an attempt to relieve tensions with healthcare workers, who are unhappy with how the government is dealing with the coronavirus crisis’.
The protest was staged to call for increased acknowledgement of their efforts during the pandemic, which has so far claimed over 9,000 lives in Belgium, with a further 55,000 confirmed cases, according to official figures. Nurses said they were “outraged” by a decree prepared by federal Liberal health minister Maggie De Block. Nurses called for the decree allowing unqualified staff to undertake nursing duties during the pandemic to be repealed, saying it disregards the skill and training needed to work as a nurse.
In 2018, under Maggie De Block’s direction, the strategic reserve of FFP2 masks was destroyed because of being out of date and not replenished. DeBlock later claimed she did not replenish them to save taxpayer money. The decision came under fire during the Coronavirus pandemic when the shortage of masks contributed to make Belgium one of the hardest-hit countries’.
I preferred the Dutch approach to the Belgium approach.
Holland’s so called “intelligent lockdown” involved fewer restrictions than Belgium and elsewhere. People weren’t told that they couldn’t leave the house without an excuse and what Cummings did wouldn’t have been illegal.
They also have a liberal government.
“They also have a liberal government.”
As in effect do the Belgians.
Yes Mr Raw that was my point