Boris Johnson has warned that stronger lockdown measures may be required if people do not follow the rules, reports the Independent (it isn’t). We must avoid “false confidence, false complacency”, he adds. And the media is stuffed full of threats about a crackdown because people are “bending the rules”. I accept there is something in this, but it’s not the full story.
You know and I both know that many people do not obey social distancing rules. When I visit a supermarket, I feel like I’m the only one keeping my distance from others. And people seem to find it impossible to walk in single file on a pavement. All this is true and very annoying and it probably has added to the disastrous infection and death tallies, but surely not as much as the actions of the government itself.
It was the government that:
  • Opened everything up too soon
  • Didn’t have a September circuit break as scientists and medics were urging
  • Left borders open, allowing millions of people to enter the UK from all over the world, with not so much as a question asked, never mind a test given
  • Left businesses inadequately supported
  • Did not support vast numbers of workers
  • Told isolating workers that they would not get paid unless they were on benefits
  • Locked down too late in 2021, as they have always locked down too slowly in the past
  • Enabled a free for all over Christmas

And so much more. When I hear politicians blaming the people for COVID-19,  comments that are then cut and pasted on social networks by the hard of thinking, I can see what their game is. They know they have fucked up on an industrial scale and are trying to escape responsibility.

Yes, some people are breaking the rules. They probably learned how to do it by watching Johnson’s former mate Dominic Cummings break the rules with his COVID holiday to Durham and then being praised for ministers for so doing.

More of are have been told to work this time around rather than be furloughed, despite the stronger virulence of the COVID variant. More shops are open and takeaways are doing, well, takeaways. More children are at school and nurseries are still open. This is not ordinary folk bending the rules: this is the government making the rules and us following them.

Most of us would welcome being locked down, provided we were financially compensated for so doing. I don’t want to be out and about, risking my life and the lives of others. But I have no say in the matter. And that stems from the top of the shop: Boris Johnson.

So don’t give us this “false confidence, false complacency” bollocks, Bozo. It’s what you do, it’s who you are. And the mess we are in is mainly down to you.