We’ve been told, by the leader of the House, Rees-Mogg, to stop carping on about the woeful lack of COVID-19 tests and the extraordinary lengths that people are going to get one. Instead we are told that we should be celebrating that this country has managed to create a capacity to test 250,000 people per day.
Why? I have the capacity to be a billionaire but will never be one. It is the number of actual tests carried out that is important and which is falling well short of the government’s target once again. Less than 100,000 are being done every day (now up to about 200,000) , still a sizable number but a small percentage of Johnson’s Moonshot objective of 10,000,000 tests per day, a number he no no longer recognises even though he is recorded as having said it. Very Trumpian.
The same day, the papers were filled with stories about how Johnson is struggling to live on his paltry pay of £150,000 per year. He even has to buy his own food and can’t afford a nanny. I have no desire to comment on his private life but why can he carp when we cannot? It’s not as if he wasn’t aware of what the job was offering before he went for it.
What has happened to the Tory party of my youth? Love her or loathe her you would never have heard Thatcher moaning about her lot, indeed if my memory is correct there was a time when the cabinet took a pay cut to send a signal to the rest of the country that we all had to tighten our belts.
It used to be the party of law and order but now plans to put in law its ability to break the law. It used to be the party of fiscal probity but is now spraying money around its friends in a way that even the National Audit Office thinks has the potential to be corrupt. It used to be the party of the self made person, where individuals are responsible for their family and get on their bike in times of trouble.
Not now. Johnson made his bed and should lie in it. He and his cronies should leave the carping to those who have a genuine grievance, who can’t go to work because they need a test and can’t get one.
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 