Members of parliament want to kill us. Not all of them, but quite a lot do. Take Iain Duncan Smith – please. He’s among a number of hard right Tories who want to scrap the two metre rule so, for example, pubs can reopen.
“The number one and single most important priority to unlock the economy is getting the distance down to one metre,” Duncan Smith told the Daily Hate Mail. “The hospitality sector simply can’t make a living at two metres. It’s worth a few extra deaths – quite a lot, actually – in order for people to get pissed-up in their local Wetherspoons.” I’ve taken a bit of liberty with the final sentence – like making it up, for example – but that’s the gist of what he’s saying.
Did you watch yesterday’s shit show of a daily news briefing featuring the Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) Sir Patrick Vallance and the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Chris Whitty, who flanked some ludicrous posh blonde bloke who struggled to string one word together? Toe-curling. Boris Johnson, for it was he, announced all manner of minor easements to his semi-lockdown which has still managed to bring about 63,000 additional deaths since COVID-19 came along. “We’ve had to abandon our policy of reopening schools to all pupils this summer because we don’t have a clue how to manage social distancing,” Johnson didn’t say, but should have. “We’re going to open them all in September because things will be exactly the same, then, but hopefully something will turn up. However, you can go to the zoo from Monday, although you can’t go in the reptile house.” Thanks for that.
Messrs Vallance and Whitty kept being awkward. Whitty explained, slowly and surely for the benefit of the man child to his right, that the pandemic was far from over. Rather than that, we were still in the middle of it. The two metre rule existed to reduce the chances of the virus being spread. “Yes, but the pubs…” thought Duncan Smith.
The odious Tim Martin, chair of Wetherspoons, is desperate to reopen his pubs as soon as possible, presumably for the benefit of any surviving old men who previously provided his pubs with money during the day shift. The two metre rule might safe lives, but it wouldn’t save Martin’s profits. If both Iain Duncan Smith and Tim Martin agree on something, you can be reasonably certain that it’s probably not good.
Dominic Cummings, to all intents and purposes Johnson’s brain, recently came up with his new slogan, ‘Stay Alert. Control the Virus. Save Lives’, something he certainly did when driving a car load of COVID-19 to Durham, as you do. It doesn’t apply to him and neither Iain Duncan Smith or Tim Martin want it to apply to them, either. So, is it right, as Duncan Smith suggests, to “unlock the economy” now?
Maybe Cummings could come with a new slogan, like ‘Take back control’ and ‘Get Brexit done’? Given that there are currently 40,000 new cases of COVID-19 every single day, and this country has suffered over 500 deaths in the last two days alone, figures which don’t look too good when compared to, say, New Zealand where the corresponding figures were none and none. How about ‘Go out for a pint and die’? A catchy little number, don’t you think? I’d copyright it if I could but I suspect Cummings has already done it.
That’s the reason the rest of the world is reopening relatively safely and we’re reopening whilst the virus is still running wild. Our government’s handling of COVID-19 has been an abject lesson in complacency, mismanagement and downright incompetence. Does anyone seriously think Johnson and Cummings will do any better when they “unlock the economy”? Nor me. In the world of the illiberal elite, no lives matter.
