I’m
still furious about the fact that Cummings is still in his position after he
has been shown to have broken the lockdown guidelines. He formed the rules; he should resign or be
sacked.
If I
am furious about the fact that Cummings is holding on, I am sickened by the
continuingly awful performance of the man who calls himself the Prime
Minister.
His inability to articulate a convincing
argument in the briefings and the embarrassingly inept responses to questioning
revealing his shocking lack of detail in his understanding of his briefs used
to be the basis for the reasons that I detest this shallow apology of a
concerned politician having anything to do with the levers of power – but now I
think that his demeaning protection of Cummings has taken pride of place in my
reasons to despise the man.
It is clear that Cummings should be fired,
he is a glaring example of the ‘one rule for us and another for the rest’, he
is a self proclaimed populist and disruptor, but in the case of his lockdown
misdemeanours he has behaved like a typical member of the elite and the
establishment (with a small ‘e’) has come to his aid.
The feeling of the public however does not
match that of the sometime prime minister (who has now surely forfeited his
right to capital letters for the office that he has so demeaned) and the way
that he has slavishly protected his advisor.
Too many members of the public have done exactly as the guidelines
suggested and have suffered the consequences for them to be anything like
sympathetic to the so-called travails of an over privileged git.
Even though I am resident in Catalonia, I
feel personally slighted by the government.
I have abided by the rules for over ten weeks, not only for my own
safety, but also for the safety of others: the simple logic of safety. But that sort of logic is only for the little
people of whom Cummings is not, of course, one.
I do not think that the feeling of being
cheated will go away and Johnson’s government (if we can call it that) will be
forever tainted. Unfortunately the
British electorate doesn’t seem to have many scruples about accepting tainted
goods and so my hopes for the future are few.
Quite apart from the criminally inept
mismanagement of the viral crisis, when I really want to depress myself, I
start thinking about what mess they are going to make of Brexit. Silly me, they have already made a mess of
it, I wonder what sort of monumentally, catastrophic balls up they are going to
make of it.
Whatever else this crisis has illustrated,
one thing is abundantly clear, the personnel that form the government is of
woefully limited ability.
Castelldefels
is getting ready for the tourist season.
Restaurants are partially open and when I passed the centre of the beach
part of Castelldefels there were people queuing for places in the limited
dining accommodation available. To the
untrained eye things looked like a normal late May Saturday evening. There were few masks and little to no
physical distancing – but there again, we are allowed to meet in groups of up
to 10!
Neither Toni nor I are clear about how the
rules change on Monday, when we go from Level 1 to Level 2. What new delights at playing at freedom will
that allow us!
