Please just sod off now, thanks

Excuse me, I just need to go on a little rant.

To start on a positive note, while I'm pathologically biased against Boris Johnson and his bunch of self-serving idiotic racist cronies, the government has done a few things right during the pandemic. They implemented lockdowns. They furloughed workers and encouraged home office. They brought in mass testing. And though their innumerable u-turns point to an abysmal level of incompetency, they have at least been u-turns in the right direction. They've also made some good suggestions about replacing isolation with testing for the fully vaccinated, and at least made noises about using Covid passports in the face of their bewildering unpopularity.

None of this hides the truly disgusting levels of incompetence, however*. There doesn't seem to be all that much genuine malevolence in Johnson's government, except for that hellspawned demon Pritti Patel (seriously, how does she sleep at night ?) and aspiring Victorian imperialist Jacob Rees Mogg. And Johnson himself, to some extent. Boris is an authoritarian clownish psychopath who isn't out to inflict pain but just doesn't care if he does. Most of the rest just strike me as bumbling halfwits who've wandered into their jobs after making a wrong turn in a corridor, and ever since have been desperately hoping not to be found out. Or at worst, are suffering from high levels of Dunning-Kruger, thinking themselves statesmanlike while actually coming across as feckless amateurs.

* Even what they've done right has usually only been after they've been dragged into it, a la Churchill : the Tories will sometimes do the right thing, only after they have tried everything else.

The last few days have gone from things merely being awful to being an awful farce. It is a total, incoherent omnishambles. It doesn't even have a guiding ideology, let alone any practical principles. It's deranged.

First, the government never should have endorsed the term "freedom day". It should have learned from the countless times its unnecessary, high-handed rhetoric has blown up in its face - to make definitive assertions about inherently changeable events just makes you look like a moron. And lo, the pingdemic (which they were warned about but chose and continue to choose to do nothing about) makes a mockery of the whole process, to say nothing of the rising case and hospitalisation numbers. It's not much of a freedom if you start sending people to hospital.

Second, as cases and hospitalisation rates soar, it should not merely have shifted back the end of restrictions but significantly tightened the existing ones. It should be obvious now that there isn't any one solution but many : track and trace, frequent testing (oh yeah, the country also ran out of lateral flow tests, wonderful), rapid isolation, social distancing and masks wherever and as much as possible, lockdowns where things get out of hand, better ventilation, and to a lesser degree hand washing. You ease these measures gradually, as the percentage positive test rate drops below 5% according to WHO guidelines.

And, yes, vaccinations. These are important too. But the government has decided that vaccinations are a magic bullet and therefore all of the rest can go hang, including the ones which are of little or no burden. Despite the fact that their efficacy, especially the case of the Oxford vaccine, is significantly reduced against the delta variant. Obviously vaccines are necessary, but they are simply not sufficient by themselves.

Third, they decided that Covid passports will be required in nightclubs from September. This really got under my skin. It's a clear acknowledgement that the virus is dangerous and nightclubs are particularly susceptible to spreading infections, while explicitly saying, "just let it run rampant for now". It's bloody stupid. Surely, you should either close the nightclubs or set any entry condition (like a negative test and/or vaccination*) right now. How on Earth does anyone decide that it's okay to let the virus spread right now but we'll crack down on it later, when cases are soaring ? It doesn't make any sense !

* Even weirder, the government decided that it will only be vaccination that's accepted, explicitly ruling out negative tests.

(Johnson's explanation in PMQs that it would only be fair from September - because by then everyone will be vaccinated - I found laughably stupid. The virus doesn't care about fairness.)

Fourth, there's all that kerfuffle over whether isolation is or isn't mandatory. Now here I think some things have been at least a little unfairly criticised as confusing. There's nothing inherently confusing about "amber list" countries and I disagree with Labour's call to scrap the list. It's just that the government made a right hash of it. Yes, of course you can go on holiday in such countries, if they let you - but only provided you can self-isolate afterwards. To get drawn into arguments about permitted reasons for visiting amber list countries is to court confusion - just make travel allowed for any reason, but stress the requirement for self-isolation. That's all they needed to do.

What should not be confusing is the nature of the geopolitical block commonly known as France. Most people think of France as a country, but this government has decided otherwise. For in the list of countries according to risk we have red, amber, green and... France. Yes, really. Never did I think the government would be confused as to whether France was a country or a colour, but apparently this is too much for them to handle.

What should also not be confusing at all is the need to self-isolate if pinged by the NHS app. Here they flat-out contradicted themselves as to whether this was or wasn't mandatory, and then doubled down on the incoherency by saying employers would be evaluated on a case-by-case basis as to whether their staff should self-isolate. This is just inviting further disaster. Look, it's easy. Fully vaccinated staff in any profession should isolate until they test negative (which could be the same day), everyone else must isolate for a few days (say, 5) and then test negative to release. Bam, done. No need to delay this one at all - implement it immediately. 

Fifth, there's the pay "increase" of 3% for the NHS. After saying 1% was all they could afford, they've now dug deep and decided the NHS can somehow pay for itself. So if staff take the pay rise - a paltry one that does nothing to offset the decade of real-term cuts that amounts to more like 18% - they'll be responsible for funding cuts in the services. That tries to blame the staff themselves for the failings of the government. It's not a pay rise at all, but a cut - and an especially insidious and cruel one at that. And all this is coming from people who wanted to spend untold billions on a stupid bridge over a munitions dump and/or a tunnel from Wales to Northern Ireland, who think a new Royal Yacht will somehow be good for morale, who waste money hand over foot on defective PPE, who wanted a pointless "moonshot" £100 billion mass testing program, who spent upwards of £30 billion on a dysfunctional test-and-trace system, and who still insist that tens of billions more on getting from London to Birmingham twenty minutes faster is a good use of public funds. What a joke.

Oh, and Johnson outright refused to deny or even apologise for saying that it was only the elderly who die of Covid, as though they were unimportant. I could go on, but that's disgusting enough.

All of which is to say that I hate them. Their valuation of short-term economic gain over long-term impacts on lives, on insisting that we need to live die with the virus, is deplorable. They're not a government any more. They're a farce. Led by donkeys ? I'm pretty sure donkeys can at least manage to follow a path when it's so clearly laid out before them. This government would instead simultaneously announce that we're going left, right, sticking to the path, digging a hole, and staying put in order to take up line dancing instead.

Sigh.