Are we really meant to believe that the announcement of the Pfizer vaccine wasn’t held back until after Donald Trump ‘lost’ the US election? Of course, it was. Once again no one wanted to give Trump’s campaign a shot in the arm, did they?
But this news management also exists in every Downing street press conference and it makes me sick. Tell us the facts, the diagnosis and the prognosis and what we can do to help. Stop the spinning please.
Yesterday one tabloid reporter asked Boris the ridiculous and emotionally charged question of whether she would be able to hug her granny at Christmas?
Instead of giving her a direct, no compromise, answer Boris once again sugar coated the pill. He should have said, ‘no you won’t and you had better get used to the idea now’.
Look, let’s be straight, we should cancel the traditional Christmas and face the reality, that we all need to take a bit of pain to get some massive gain.
So, I’m afraid we have to say good bye to the office party, the fumble in the stationary cupboard, photographing your arse on the photocopier and being sick into your handbag in the taxi.
Please stop bleating and tweeting, knuckle down, stay safe, stay distanced and wash your bloody hands.
But no Boris will not say any of this as he is desperate to be seen as the man who saved Christmas!
You watch, he will lift the restrictions so that it’s another free for all, just like ‘eat out to help out’. We will all be able to pull a cracker with granny on Christmas Day but three weeks later, like a bad Christmas cracker joke, granny may well be in intensive care and isolated.
Christmas needs to be cancelled and cancelled now - just like Eid and Diwali have effectively been cancelled.
People will still stuff their faces, get drunk and fall asleep during the Queen’s speech but just with our immediate family.
It’s not that big a sacrifice, is it? If the reward is that we can look forward to a return to the way of life we used to have. I think if Boris was honest about this now and laid out the stark reality of this ‘Christmas Present’ people would get behind the idea.
Yesterday was the perfect opportunity to lay out this tough reality whilst still welcoming this light at the end of the tunnel but again Boris bottled it.
It could have been his JFK moment where he could have bastardised the famous ‘ask not what your country can do for you, but what can you can do for your country’ quote.
The furlough has already been extended to March and obviously the hospitality and entertainment industries will need to be compensated too.
Write off 2020 and start afresh in 2021
However, there is also a massive need for us all to pull together and do our bit. This could effectively give us all the best possible Christmas gift, which is a safer new year.
I welcome the fact that Boris has now decided to test every student before allowing them home but he needs to go further, much further. He needs to get the army to test and treat them and then transport them home in army coaches. They need to be told to remain at home and study via zoom and that all bets are off for when a return to University will be allowed.
In fact, I would go further: I think he basically needs to write off 2020 for the terrible year it has become and plan to start afresh in 2021.
That means he needs to close all schools now too. Furloughed parents or one parent can look after the kids and essential workers’ children can be accommodated as they were in the first lockdown.
I have a friend who is a GP and he was telling me yesterday that kids are presenting at the surgery after testing positive but with no real outward symptoms of Covid. However, 2 or 3 weeks later their mum, dad or granny is going down with the virus.
There is no escaping the fact that the kids are spreaders.
Whole schools and year groups are already being closed because of self-isolation when one kid gets the virus so let’s just bite the bullet, take the ‘medicine’ and close them down until the New Year.
Before you start bleating about kids missing out on their education please take a ‘chill pill’ and realise that another few weeks, in the grand scale of things, won’t do much more damage to their prospects.
Likewise, Boris needs to stop being anxious and dithering and delaying and make a decision to follow the lead of Wales and cancel all exams for 2021 and mark the kids on their classroom work.
The country cannot afford the cock up of Summer 2020 to be repeated next year.
Yes, there is an economic cost to all of this but let’s be frank the economy is already in Intensive Care and we cannot pull the plug now.
My mum used to say that if the medicine doesn’t taste horrible than it won’t do you any good. She was correct and it is now time for the whole UK to hold their noses and swallow hard in the hope of building a stronger, healthier nation for the future.
