31 December (Part 2) - That Was The Year That Was
My
most recent almost normal event was a family gathering on 1st February. A
couple of birthdays around that date prompted a gathering in Wiltshire; a
dozen of us and I was laid low with the flu or some such bug coughing my insides up. Looking back on it it bore all the
symptoms of Corona Virus including not fully recovering for four or five months.
In the few weeks that followed I dragged myself to the weekly pub quiz cowering
in a corner and still coughing. By early March with the Covid warnings there for
all to see the pub quiz was abandoned but on 11th March I took myself and three others off to
Bletchley Park which was in full on Covid mode. Hand sanitizer, social
distancing, barriers everywhere and the canteen barely functioning.
And then life as we know it stopped but not one person at those gatherings or
friends locally caught my bug.
After a few weeks of dithering the Government decided on
various disastrous and confusing courses that has taken us to where we are now. A place that statistically
at least looks not a lot different to the situation six to eight months ago.
Whether a lockdown sceptic or fanatic there are statistics to prove your case.
Little stands up to detailed scrutiny and almost nothing stands up to logical analysis. It may
be incompetence from the likes of Matt Hancock or maybe he is just a control freak drunk on power.
Whatever he is he is clearly a liar. Yesterday I heard him say that the Excel Centre is a
fully functioning Nightingale Hospital. He takes us for fools.
Why has Ofcom banned the broadcast of messages which might contradict the
government’s Project Fear? Several lesser known radio stations have been
sanctioned for throwing doubt on the official line. Why are people arrested
for filming empty hospitals? Why are undertakers not pleading for more capacity?
Why do Social media channels banish the voices of medically qualified people who
see things differently to Vallance and Whitty?
Everywhere one looks there are unanswered questions the most recent being that
despite me living in Bexley and less than a mile from two primary schools one will
open next Monday and one will not. Why? We are all served by the same hospital
and it begins to look like an act of political spite by a Conservative
Government willing to put lives in jeopardy to make a point. Unforgiveable if so.
How can anyone think that this Government leaves 2020 with its reputation
enhanced? How can anyone not have seen the wokery and thuggery employed by the
police once they were let loose with an ill-defined rule book? At age 77
the Office of National Statistics says I might have eleven years left. A Conservative
Government just stole one of them and their incompetence will never be forgotten. Now
we have them planning to vary the vaccine dosage contrary to the advice of
the pharmaceutical company. Is there no common sense left in political circles?
Whatever happened to Millicent Martin who sang on my
favourite TV programme of the 1960s? ‘That Was The Week That Was’. (Still alive in the USA.)