Hong Kong graffiti (Debate)

Fri 24 Apr 2020, 14:04

Charlie, I feel your anger and mostly share it – but I’d say it’s more a question of competence.  The government tries to hide behind the ‘scientific and medical advice’ – but as Mark Steel quipped, the science must be different in Germany. With a much larger population they have had (figs 23/04 at https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries) 5369 deaths against our (hospital only) 18738, and have carried out over 2m tests compared to our 0.6m.    Res ipsa loquitor eh Boris?

I’m trying not to make this party political – and even though pandemic planning was seemingly abandoned by Cameron’s government, I can think of a number of former Conservative ministers in whom I’d have had much greater confidence to make the right decisions now and to get things done.  But I am soooo tired of hearing the waffle and blather that comes out daily from Boris’s Poodles (even on R4 this morning Hancock was incapable of distinguishing between how and when), while key workers – of all sorts and on whom we depend for so much - remain so ill equipped and poorly protected and we are so far behind in testing & tracing.  Why is it always the same in this country – lions led by donkeys??

Some consolation in agreeing totally with Tony re Starmer – pity the Beeb only showed such a selective slice of PMQ on the News – though what a job he has in front of him.  And sure Courts has better things to do – like worrying about whether the Union Jack was the wrong way up so he could ingratiate himself with Rees-Mogg (see Ali & Mathew’s posts on the ‘Robert Courts’ thread below) – there are other ways of expressing that of course! 

 More seriously (hard to take Courts seriously after that), there could of course be a much longer answer to Liz’s original request than this:  Too early to say, I’d say – except that we won’t be able to return to the ‘old’ normal, not because it was ‘the problem’ (it might have been but when did we ever stop making the same mistakes?) but because with the way things are going, the ‘old’ normal simply won’t be attainable.  And whatever you think of the ‘old’ normal, that’s going to make life very tough for a lot of people (however much birdsong they can hear), on top of all the suffering caused by the virus itself.

 Not to put too fine a point on it, unless we want the economy to collapse through the floor, to have millions unemployed, to see our children lose their education and social and family life as we’ve known it to cease – not to mention governments using it as an excuse to become ever more authoritarian - we are going to have to face some tough questions – and soon - about how we live with this virus in our midst while protecting those vulnerable to it as best we can.  But we are nowhere near to addressing that question (unlike the Scots who have at least begun to) while the Poodles refuse to treat us as grown ups, haven’t a clue themselves and run round like headless chickens repeating the ‘stay at home’ mantra.  Yes, we’ve got that.  But it’s not enough, is it?  And don’t kid yourselves it’ll all get sorted when the Ringmaster’s back!

PS I wrote this mostly last night, before I’d heard David Hare (playwright, 72, just been through ‘the worst 18 days’ of his life but thankfully survived) on R4 this morning.  Got it bang on!