My wife’s 93 year old grandmother used to say that the problem with common sense was that it wasn’t very common. She should be running our Government.
We’re in the middle of the most complex and devastating pandemic in a century, accompanied by the worst financial crash in human history, and all kinds of data models are being espoused. The UK government actually show graphs every day and then publicly say they’re wrong. How reassuring.
So, let’s get it straight.
In February, or at least very early March the UK government needed to do three things:
1) Lock down the country and prevent anyone from flying in. Anyone flying in should have been quarantined for two weeks and tested. This began to happen yesterday, three months into the pandemic and is, in my opinion, the reason 30k UK citizens died needlessly. Our PM was too busy writing a book, our nerds were building their stupid models and not using common sense.
2) Ensure the NHS wasn’t over-run. This they achieved. Thank you NHS, please now ask for payback from the guys who would have gutted you or at least sold the lucrative bits to the US healthcare business they have shares in. They owe you big time.
3) Protect care homes. 90% of all deaths have occured in the over 70s and many over 70s live in homes. There should have been an immediate strategy. The government basically did an Auschwitz on this and let tens of thousands just die. Hence our dreadful mortality rates.
A bunch of Oxford Thatcherites, who aspire to Greco-Roman-Victorian British Empire governance strategies, elected by a rabidly racist electorate to ‘get us out of Europe’, did not help.
Exit is simple. Keep anyone over 70 or with an ‘underlying condition’ isolated, especially from kids, and let everyone else get on with their lives. This is no country for old folk. Yes, ironically, those Brexit voters have been taken out in swathes. The young people of Britain have karma.