Coming soon on a screen near you!
Recently the UK has been making headlines around the world for all the wrong reasons. Not surprising our ex EU partners have been sticking in the knife, but Australia and other Commonwealth and ex colonial lands have been pointing out, with some glee, the right mess we find ourselves in.
It's own fault. I'm not the first to say that somehow we think we're different, we can plough our own superior furrow. Except it ain't superior and it's taking us in the wrong direction.
I understand there are a number of apps which can help in tracking and tracing covid infections. Some apparently work quite well. We are developing our own. You might not trust Goggle or Facebook to keep your location data safe (except we do) but would you trust our Government? There is, I suppose, the argument that developing our own app brings on our technological skills and start ups. Except we gave up developing our own 5 G capability and, instead, are using the Chinese. Also we started to develop our own GPS after we realised that leaving the EU would mean restricted access to their Galileo system. The UK would have its own GPS not an inferior US or cursed European model. Except we haven't got very far. Even the policy papers are running late and now, not surprisingly, given how much we're in hock to, the £5 billion costs are providing considerable pause for thought.
Bear with me as I am confused. We hear that now we're on the road to freedom people from abroad arriving in the UK will be required to self isolate for 2 weeks, yet when we were "on the up" covid death wise any tom dick or bug could enter. Is this true? We're all being encouraged to cycle to work because the transport system will be operating at 10% capacity. Given the UK's citizen's love affair with the horseless carriage I anticipate gridlock on the roads and a bonanza in parking fines - a real career opportunity for anyone thrown out of a productive, worthwhile, wealth generating job because of our Government's multiple missteps.
It will be interesting to see which Boris turns up tonight. Will he be taking a leaf out of HM the Queen's book, adult, sombre but in a "we can get through it chaps" tone, or will we see the skittish, playful, jokey persona that wooed us when he was Mayor of London. The trouble is he doesn't do serious very well, possibly because the poor fella doesn't know what it is to be serious. People say that his close encounter with death might have infused the lad with some sense of the serious side of existence, but I doubt it.
Do have some sympathy for us - but not too much. We apparently like austerity - we have had 10 years of it without rebelling - as well as muddling through. We elected a bunch of politicians to lead us that have been pretty poor. Cameron the Coward, May the Forgettable and now Boris the Mendacious.
I'm not despairing, just reflecting how it is.
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