I recoil at the faux compassion spoken by the BBC interviewer during the interview with the grieving Zoe Davis in regard to her twin dead sisters, including the words “and then for them both to pass must be incredibly difficult?“ and I am reminded of the alleged editorial policy of the Boston newspaper which went ‘If it bleeds; it leads’. Multiply that one sad story by the number of Covid-19 deaths, and you have a news editor’s daily wet dream.
The ‘gotcha’ questions hurled by reporters to a bunch of politicians standing behind the barricades of lecterns in a large room in No. 10 Downing Street, is but the reality of our political life, which could well be paraphrased with the saying, “What are you hiding; and why are you hiding it?” If the Government didn’t put forward a spokesman at such a time of national crisis, they would be battered in the News, both print and visual. As it is, they have, reluctantly, placed themselves in the firing line. It could well be remarked, “Thats what you get the big bucks for”; although how anyone could prepare either themselves, or indeed their Government, to argue about something which was only a galactically distant possibility; or a supposition in the minds of the likes of ‘Survivalists’, beats me.
I am also reminded about the equally hoary theory which stated, ‘It all about the money’. The politicians who will be pushed to apologise for not spending millions if not billions on extra equipment, protective or otherwise, high-tech, innovative, experimental or otherwise: should well be asking, in return, the questions, “If we had spent all this extra cash, mostly borrowed, on warehouses full of masks, gowns, new and improved ventilators, I.C.U.-equipped wards, a fifty-times upscaled P.P.E. distribution system unheard of just two months ago, a virus-casualty hospital which comes straight out of a fantasy novel; all fully-equipped in NINE Days : where would the savings have been made within an already top-heavy and unwieldy NHS? What areas would be stripped of the millions casually poured into one after the other ‘special interest’ sector had pushed for capacity, or specialists and rooms for ‘this extra’, or that ‘nice to have’ facility?
Would those ‘reversed’ questions also include the query that would ask whether the towering scorn targeted against a Government which was proposing to spend all that cash on a mere supposition: a supposition which would have meant that the Government was facing the greatest threat to the Four Nations’ very existence and survival since World War Two: was really justified, or just imported for the occasion?
Would the savings have to come from all those expensive NHS IVF facilities, paid for by the taxpayer, so that many women who have ‘delayed’ having a family because of their oh-so-vital careers; can now have three cracks at a hugely-expensive facility because they are on the borderline age of fecundity, and haven’t been able to ‘ring the bell’ for this ‘longed-for family’?
Would the savings be made by slashing the cash now allocated to be spent on ‘PrEP’ pills, marketed and spun as being the ‘threshold’ towards defeating HIV and Aids; but in actual fact demanded and pushed for by homosexual men who decline to use condoms, because these detract from the alleged pleasure unprotected sexual acts give by the ‘flesh-to-flesh’ contact so desired by these weirdos?
Would some of the savings come from the lucrative area of plastic surgery, where larger, or for a very few cases, smaller, breasts are demanded for women of all ages on the grounds of a ‘threat to mental health’ if the enlarged attributes are not immediately realised by the ‘suffering female patient’?
The ‘lockdown’ has meant the separation of all sixty-odd million of us, all separated into our own individual spaces. It has been hard, but with technology, with a half-way decent broadband connection, at leats we can talk to a vital image; even if it isn’t a patch upon real life. When I read or hear of the separation of families, I, as a mere stripling of 79 years, miss my four grandchildren so very much. I honestly don’t know if they miss me, as the second-eldest seems permanently glued to either tablet or phone screen; but would live in hope that the enchanting smile of my youngest grandson will, in due course, and with all proper safety procedures in place, light my life once more.