“You can meet one other person from outside your household in an outdoor, public place. But please keep two metres apart. Please stick with the rules and don’t take risks.” This was Matt ‘Shagger’ Hancock addressing the nation 15 May 2020. Two hours later, here’s the prime minister Boris Johnson in the garden of Number 10, enjoying a wine and cheese party:
It was all within the rules, said Dominic Raab. It was merely people “having a drink after a busy set of work meetings”. He continued: “I think there’s a lot of exhausted people, and they, as people do in work, were having a drink after the formal business had been done.” Play me the world’s smallest violin. Can you imagine just how exhausted people were “after a busy set of work meetings”? Far more tired than mere doctors and nurses, for example, working endless shifts in full PPE, who strangely didn’t venture into the hospital grounds and get stuck into the wine and cheese after saving people’s lives. Do these people take us for fools? Well, yes.
This isn’t even what Number 10 said had happened. Their version was that the image showed people still taking part in work meetings, you know the sort of meetings where you pop out into the garden and knock back the Vin Rouge. Someone is lying again.
On that day, people were saying goodbye to loved ones via Zoom, were unable to attend the funeral of loved ones because Matt Hancock has said: “You can meet one other person from outside your household in an outdoor, public place. But please keep two metres apart. Please stick with the rules and don’t take risks. Apart from me, obviously, because I’ve got a bit on the side – don’t tell the missus – and Good Old Boris can do what he likes because rules only apply to the little people. Now go away while I hand out PPE contracts to my wealthy pals.” (I may have made up some of this quote.)
There were many more people in Number 10’s garden than there were at my mother in law’s funeral, that’s for sure. We totally understood the need to keep each other safe and acted accordingly. But then, 18 months later we learn about this and I am very, very angry and upset.
Let’s be honest about this: Johnson, Hancock and Raab are liars and hypocrites. They tell us the photograph was of a meeting AND of a post meeting piss up. They tell us to follow the rules and they ignore them.
As Johnson prepares to lock down the country all over again, he must be smugly thinking, “I’ve got away with it again” and maybe he has. But maybe, just maybe, this time he hasn’t got away with it again and the Great British Public have finally sussed out the lying charlatan, shyster and narcissist Johnson for what he is.
“Please stick with the rules and don’t take risks.” Yeah, good luck with that one, Mr Johnson.
