I’m staying working from home and supporting my local economy and sustainable local businesses, living a less stressful life and reconnecting with my family.
I'm also reducing my risk of catching this deadly virus. Selfish, maybe, but eminently sensible in my opinion.
I’m lucky I work from home and have done for a couple of years, and I know my life and work balance is so much better.
During Covid millions of other commuters have come to the same conclusion and that is why Boris’ latest push to get us back to work or the office is doomed to failure.
How long before he comes out with another Big Brother soundbite cliché to whip us back on to those deserted trains?
Boris and Cummings succeeded in scaring us all half to death and made George Osborne’s and David Cameron’s Brexit Operation Fear campaign look like a vicar’s tea party.
The propaganda worked and we all did our duty and stayed home. In fact, that is about the only success they have had during the pandemic.
The rest of the handling of this health crisis has been a complete and utter shambles.
From following the science of saying masks were not necessary and that Cheltenham could go ahead on March 12 right through to the latest debacle over schoolkids being told to wear face masks a day or two before they returned to school.
If it is true that it is “vanishingly rare” for children to get Covid, then why the screeching U-turn on masks as the kids packed their satchels? It doesn't add, up does it?
The constant attack on ‘lazy lefty teachers’ is a disgrace. Teachers aren’t lazy or workshy, and they are not scared of hard work. They are simply scared of catching covid, and who can blame them?
Yes, I know it’s true that kids are not dying of Covid but they are super spreaders and teachers are not kids, are they? So, they will still be exposed.
The guidelines for schools to put in safety measures like social distancing and opening windows are a joke, a sick joke.
Entire Cabinet need their vision sorted
The social distancing guidelines will work as well in schools as they do in our boozers on a busy Friday night! They won’t work, plain and simple. They are the medical equivalent of a chocolate fireguard.
Boris’s campaign to whip us back into the office and city centres won’t work either because big business simply don’t want it either.
Already a survey of major firms has declared that many are not going to push for workers to return from the kitchen table to their expensive glass and steel offices in the city.
For god’s sake, his own health minister Matt Hancock said yesterday that he didn’t mind where his own civil servants worked from as long as they “worked effectively”.
However, Boris is playing ‘operation fear mark eleven’ and warning us, by briefing his favourite newspapers that, “if you don’t go back to work you are at risk of losing your job.”
The pattern is clear, they are again pushing the blame back on to us, the people, rather than their own incompetence of not getting on top of the pandemic and being prepared back in January.
However, the Comical Ali of the UK Government, Transport Secretary, Grant Shapps, is telling us that it is safe to return to work! This of course from the man who went to Spain on the eve of the country being put into quarantine!
It’s clear that it is not only Dominic Cummings who needed an eye test - the whole Cabinet needs to get their vision for the UK sorted.
Boris and Rishi need to wake up and smell their overpriced Starbucks and admit city centres were already dying before the pandemic.
There is no real way to rescue them, the old model is dead.
So, here’s an idea guys, let’s start forcing the Amazons and eBay’s and other internet giants of this this ‘new normal’ to pay the correct amount of tax in the UK.
Commuting is also dead, so let’s scrap HS2 and invest in home working via super fast broadband all over the UK.
Let’s positively encourage working from home and stimulate local economies instead of the over reliance on London.
I agree that we are not going to return to normal but does the new normal have to replicate the mistakes of the old normal?
Time for a reset, a new vision
Germany have just extended their version of the furlough scheme until the end of 2021. That’s right: another whole year but Dishi Rishi is refusing to even consider an extension and is winding our scheme down while distracting us with a half price burger.
Mark my words, you will smell the burning rubber of tyres and the screech of a handbrake turn on this in a couple of weeks because, I'm sorry, Boris is not going to be able to get people back to work in city centres yet.
They should make the decision to extend furlough and let people continue to work from home NOW.
Those who say it will cost too much, just hold on, we are already up the proverbial creek without a paddle, what is the point of adding to our troubles with mass unemployment?
Extend the furlough as Germany has until the economy begins to recover. Instead of giving us a tenner off a junk meal let’s give people real spending power in their back pockets and a form of job security with the furlough.
This is a time when we need clear sighted leadership. This is a time when the UK needs a big vison, a new start.
Instead we have a frail looking Boris who looks like he’s lost his teddy bear. He seems to be scared of his own shadow, where is his famous optimism now?
