Wednesday 24 June 2020

To the pub

Without providing any data to back the decision up, yesterday Johnson announced that pubs, bars and restaurants would open on July 4th.

Which is a Saturday.

Imagine the carnage?

Social distancing can be reduced to a metre, because anyone who has been a pub at a busy time will tell you keeping a 1m distance from other drinkers is easiest thing in the world.

Hairdressers can open. Nail bars can't.

Professional football is already underway. Cricket is too dangerous.

Opening the pubs. Or announcing that pubs are opening is a huge distraction, and as I said yesterday, this Government only does announcements. It distracts from Cummings, repeated failure of the track and trace app, highest death rate in Europe, failures on testing, PPE, ventilators, care homes, schools and changing the rules that the Government set in April.

And follows no science.

The CMO tried to sound a note of caution, but the nation was already planning their first order at the bar on Saturday week.

Also announced was the fact the daily briefings which stopped being that weeks ago once the lockdown was going to be eased, are also now scrapped, and only to be brought back for big announcements. Which might mean they take place daily, as Johnson likes a good announcement.

Meanwhile there have been severe outbreaks at meat processing plants around the world; the US, Germany and now the UK, where factories have had to be closed as the virus sweep round in the chilled conditions. Chilled conditions that mimic a winter's day. With the virus rampaging across South America, in their winter, it seems a second wave here in the autumn is inevitable.

But open the pubs, bring back the football, KFC drive-throughs all round.

The economy has to be saved, no matter the human cost. So a no deal Brexit can wreck what's left.

Brilliant.

Is that everything?

Oh yeah, if you're shielding, I'd carry on if I were you.

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