Lockdown Update

It’s difficult to relay any amusing access-related anecdotes during lockdown. Since I was sent home to do my job on my sofa on March 17 the biggest access problem I’ve had is slaloming through Padme’s litter trays to throw my jeans in the washing machine at the back of the house. The Co-Op is still the only place I have ventured out to, adorned as its floor now is with X’s meant to indicate social distancing that are clearly not two metres apart. They must have been put down by the same person who decided how much space there should be either side of the disabled parking bays at work.

A lot has happened elsewhere since then, however. The headlines should probably about the rapidly increasing coronavirus death toll. Yesterday a record 980 people succumbed to the illness. In total the number of deaths in the UK is close to 10,000. That’s an almost unprecedented number even taking into account the annual and largely unreported deaths we see from seasonal flu. Yet it has not only been normalised after a sustained period in which hundreds have died every day, it has also been pushed to the margins of the news agenda by the fact that Boris Johnson is still in hospital with coronavirus.

You might be thinking that you feel sorry for the virus in that case. Now that he seems to be over the worst of it I’m inclined to agree. When he was taken into intensive care the kindest thought I could muster was that I hoped he didn’t die. Politics should never push us to the point where we are wishing death on individuals we don’t like or agree with. However, the media coverage of his situation has been nothing short of sycophantic rumination. His recovery has been pitched by Pravda the BBC as an act of heroism - his illness as some kind of martyrdom - irrespective of the fact that as recently as March 3 Johnson was boasting about having shaken hands with coronavirus patients on a hospital visit. If ever there was a man too arrogant and ignorant to read a situation, too convinced of his own infallibility then it is Johnson.

Because of this, while the media focus should be on attempts to flatten the curve of infection and so slow the death rate, it is instead on what films Johnson is enjoying during his convalescence. While he kicks back in front of Withnail & I a succession of even more witless clowns have replaced him at the daily press briefings. Dominic Raab - a man who it transpires does not know what an island is - is second in command while Health Secretary Matt Hancock has been trying his best to dodge what awkward questions there have been. Home Secretary and all around bucket of shit Priti Patel made a rare public appearance in that capacity today. You remember Priti? She’s the one whose immigration ideas would have prevented her own parents (and therefore her) from living in the UK and who wants to introduce the death penalty for farting in a bakery. Between these luminaries they cannot explain why NHS workers still don’t have enough Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for treating infected patients or why several flights a day still land at our main airports without checks.

People tell me constantly that this issue should not be politicised. Invariably, these are the kind of people who voted for this idiot government ‘because Brexit’ or ‘because Jeremy Corbyn’. Or the kind of people who refuse to engage with politics at all because ‘they’re all the same’. Often this last group go on to post all kinds of political statements on their social media which is fine because they ‘don’t vote’. All that I’m hearing from these people telling me not to politicise it is that they do not want to be made to feel guilty for the stupid and ignorant choices they made in the General Election in December.

The irony of it all is that in response to the economic crisis created by the lockdown the government has had to do exactly what it and its supporters told us was the greatest threat to our way of life and why Jeremy Corbyn ‘had to be stopped’. Spend public money. And lots of it. Chancellor Rishi Sunak has had to pledge billions to cover 80% of wages for businesses to stop them going bust. Yet those same voters will be comforted to know that he has already warned that it will all have to be paid back. What does that mean? In all likelihood it means another two years of austerity, job losses, pay freezes for the lucky ones, before a slight relaxation of the purse strings prior to the 2024 General Election. At which point the grateful idiots vote them back in and the whole cycle starts again. Only without a deadly virus next time. That should make Johnson look like Nye Bevan to his retarded disciples. Assuming they know who Bevan is which I know is a stretch. Rather like expecting Padme to name the England batting order in the 2005 Ashes series.

The money we are ‘paying back’ to Sunak when this is all over is our money. Money you have already paid in tax. Meanwhile, Hancock has the brass stones to single out footballers who, he argues, should take a pay cut to help their billionaire clubs through the lean period during which no football is being played. The PFA have not helped the situation, reacting slowly in their own self-serving fashion, but why is Hancock calling out Dejan Lovren or Phil Jones and not his billionaire banker mates or the irksome super rich in other fields like Richard Branson, Tim Martin or James Dyson? Footballers will no doubt do their bit financially, and many of them have already made massive donations to the cause. Who is to say that if they took a pay cut that the money saved would find its way to the places where it is needed? Do you trust the owners of Tottenham Hotspur, Newcastle United or - until a recent shame induced u-turn - Liverpool - to not pocket that money for themselves when they are (or were) all happy to furlough non-playing staff at the government’s (tax payer’s) expense?

It hasn’t been announced yet, but anyone who has been furloughed can expect that to continue for a while longer. Ludicrously - despite the absence of any evidence that we have reached the peak of this thing - despite warnings from science and health experts that we need to take things slowly even when we reach that peak - the media has nevertheless spent much of their time at this week’s daily briefings raising unrealistic expectations about ending the lockdown. What they might have been better served asking is not when it will end - that’s currently impossible to say - but what the stats might have to look like for restrictions to be lifted. For how long would we need to see a reduction in cases and deaths before restrictions are lifted? What structures will be in place to prevent further waves when we do come out of lockdown? None of this has been asked or answered, but we know that Johnson is well enough to tackle a sudoku puzzle so that’s something.

I have one last point to make. The restrictions that are in place have gone far enough. We do not need to see a complete lockdown that I know some people are calling for. A land where even your daily walk (push?) to the Co-Op would be off limits and all the local parks closed along with the already abandoned pubs, restaurants and cafes. Every day I see posts on social media from people foaming at the mouth because they have seen hordes of people on the roads, in the parks or in the shops. But what were the people writing the posts doing there? Everyone is entitled to go out for the reasons specified in the current guidelines and it is unhelpful for anyone to judge others for it. Let the police do that. They have been the powers to do so now and in any case, one of the few bits of useful information gleaned from the briefings is that the percentage of people flouting the social distancing rules is far lower than the great and the good of Instagram would have you believe. We are making a difference. It is just hard to appreciate that now because the figures we are currently seeing are the result of the government’s catastrophically slow decision to lock down which only arrived on March 20. Until then Johnson was shaking hands, telling us to take the loss of loved ones on the chin and hoping that the disease would only be as deadly as flu while offering the rest of us herd immunity.

I’m not suggesting that exaggerated levels of flouting of the social distancing measures means people should feel free or safe to ignore them. To those people protesting that they were more than two metres away from anyone else when they were sunbathing in the park I would say that if we all went sunbathing in the park it would become a very crowded, virus-friendly scene very quickly. You are not the exception while the rest of us sit at home watching endless repeats of Homes Under The Hammer and a coronavirus briefing that we are sure we saw word for word the day before. Do your bit. Take your stroll, walk your dog, enjoy your run, do your shopping. Whatever. Just piss off home when you’re done.

Otherwise there will be a lot more blogs like this than either you or I would ideally like.