.
The UK government is detached from reality, haphazardly making up national health policy on the fly. At disastrously muddled press conferences, ministerial sociopaths (and dissemblers like Dr. Jenny Harries) spin ongoing public health disasters as triumphs.
Boris Johnson and his cabinet live in a dream. Nothing in their privileged upbringings has ever suggested that responsibility and reality should transcend ego and ambition. Trapped in a Trumpian regression, they are in abject denial about the UK pandemic and poised to invoke another public health disaster.
This should come as no surprise. In April 1982, Martin Hammond, Boris Johnson’s housemaster at Eton wrote:
“Boris sometimes seems affronted when criticised for what amounts to a gross failure of responsibility (and surprised at the same time that he was not appointed Captain of the School for next half): I think he honestly believes that it is churlish of us not to regard him as an exception, one who should be free of the network of obligation which binds everyone else.”
People like Johnson, Michael Gove and Matt Hancock exploit a human frailty: our tendency to accommodate liars…while they tell us what we want to hear.
Boris Johnson’s career is strewn with lies, abuses and follies but many seem not to care. Do you enjoy a bit of casual racism? Boris is your man. Do you want to simplify a complicated world via scapegoating? Boris will oblige! Boris has surfed every regressive tendency of British society to become the people’s champion.
While Boris believes what suits him, says whatever voters cheer and while people remain invested in his lies, we take out loans against truth. Sooner or later that debt is paid.
Despite the salutary lesson offered by the Dominic Cummings hoopla, many remain hypnotized by Johnson’s wishful thinking.
Let’s compare the UK and South Korea: both are industrialised western style democracies with similar populations and population densities. South Korea, being close to the viral epicenter, had less time to respond to Covid-19 than the UK.
South Korea has a proven track and trace system, an effective testing regime and far fewer cases of Covid-19 (11,402 compared to the UK’s 271,000) and far fewer deaths (269 compared to the UK’s 37,837)
The UK’s track and trace system does not work. UK testing remains chaotic: still ‘struggling’ to match test results with NHS records.
South Korea has recently recorded 79 new infections. In the UK there are an estimated 8,000 new coronavirus infections a day, outside of hospital and care settings. Scientists are deeply worried about this but the tories are not: whatever happened to ‘following the science’?
So which nation do you think is more worried about the danger of a second spike of Covid-19? Why South Korea of course!
The UK is relaxing Covid-19 lock down restrictions on Monday.
The Daily Mail chirrups about “Happy Monday” and that “Boris says yes it’s time to fire up the barbie!”. The Daily Mirror rejoices about “Families Reunited” and The Sun cheers that premier league football is to return.
The South Korean government is restricting school numbers and closing public spaces like art galleries for two weeks.
But the tories live in a dream world of entitled exceptionalism. For them, consequences are for little people and public health secondary to elite political and economic advantage.
Here is what is going to happen next.
Demob happy and delighted that Bojo is telling them exactly what they want to hear, large sections of the UK are going to effectively abandon the lock down. Shops, pubs and workplaces will re-open; public transport will be packed. Common sense will prevail over this delusional group think for some.
Within a month infections will rise and so will deaths. By September the UK will be in a renewed state of crisis as hospitals fill up and panic buying returns. Then the winter flu season will make matters even worse.
Faced with the consequences of their reckless irresponsibility, Boris Johnson’s government will look to shift the blame on to scientists, civil servants and the public. A draconian lock down will have to be reimposed or even the pretence of caring about public health will have to be abandoned.
A second UK Covid-19 wave is inevitable – reckless polices guarantee it. Can we protect ourselves and our families? With savage injustice many will not be able to stay safe and will be forced into unsafe workplaces.
The UK pandemic is not over – you are being lied to.
If you possibly can, Sodium Haze urges our readers not to send their kids to school on June 1st and to stick with the best instruction the government has issued thus far:
Stay at Home. Protect the NHS. Save Lives.
Since 2013 I have worked between 4-6 hours a day on this Ad-Free site: trying to give a voice to those without the power or agency to speak out for themselves and uncovering truths that well paid journalists in the corporate media dare not utter.
I am a home schooling parent on a low income – paying for the domain, web hosting and security entirely out of my own pocket.
If you found this article useful and could spare us a few shillings to help keep our lights on, it would be very much appreciated.
Thank you in solidarity with all our readers. John Lynch, Editor.
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