I was thinking of other alliterative terms too, but good taste prevents me from using them.
The long-awaited speech from the Prime Minister on TV tonight turned out, after two days of leaked snippets, to be pretty much useless. It wasn’t so much a speech as a succession of vague mumblings, and very short on detail. It did verge on the Shakespearean in being told by an idiot and signifying nothing, but there was a sad lack of sound and fury.
Shakespeare – British Library
As a result, I am none the wiser about the way forward, but I do have a feeling of deep gloom. I didn’t have much confidence in the Government before lockdown, and I have less now. The only time I’ve been reasonably happy with the conduct of the Government coincided with the period the Prime Minister spent in hospital.
We don’t have a plan, it seems, just ‘the shape of a plan’.
It reminds me of Churchill – ‘ this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end.
But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.’
It is not a plan. It is not even the beginning of a plan. It is the shape of a plan.
Sadly, Boris Johnson, in addition to being no Shakespeare, is no Churchill.
Churchill
Forgive my underwhelming response, but I now have to plan for going back to work.
This starts tomorrow, or Wednesday, or the first week in June. It’s even more non-specific if you work in a pub or restaurant.
They would like me to walk, cycle or use my car because public transport is going to be limited due to the need for social distancing. That should quickly undo all the gains we made by staying at home for six weeks.
And there was no mention of masks.
Although we are allowed to do a bit more mixing they are going to beef up the police powers by doubling the fines for breaches of the regulations. If severe punishments worked I’m sure we’d still be hanging people for stealing handkerchiefs, but try telling a politician that.
That never looks correct in writing, but I checked it up and dictionaries seem happy with either handkerchiefs or handkerchieves. The spellchecker isn’t, but that’s life. The strange thing is that I pronounce it handkerchieves, but spell it handkerchiefs.
I’m just watching a programme about Ladybird books, which is why I’ve missed my deadline. It seems that a child only needs a vocabulary of 12 words to start reading. One of them appears to be ‘dog’ but ‘cat’, it seems, is not necessary. Adults, they claim, have a vocabulary of 20,000 words. I am dubious about that. I honestly doubt that I use 1,000, but I really can’t be bothered to count them. I do know it’s possible to get by with eight words on my drive to work. These eight don’t feature either ‘cat’ or ‘dog’.
I just went looking for a vocabulary test to see how large my vocabulary is. Instead, I started to do a quiz about how long I’m going to live. Based on diet, lifestyle and various other quasi-scientific mumbo-jumbo I have 6 years 293 days and 32 minutes. That’s a bit less than I calculated in a previous post. (2,483 compared to the previous calculation of 2,920). That’s a nuisance as I was planning on using those 500 days to write my memoirs.
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A Man with No Plan
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Trade ya!
No trade necessary, you can have him for nothing. He was born in America so he is one of yours… 🙂
It’s quite clear, you can either go back to work or you can’t…perhaps. The only good thing that might come out of this is the people might begin to value local government again as centralised government has proved unable to do the jobs that local government should have been doing, like delivering PPE to care home promptly and judging which workplaces might be safe to open.
Although broadly agreeing with what you say, I keep thinking of how much care homes charge, If they want the profits they should take the responsibilities that go with them. I know this was an exceptional situation but many of them seemed completely unprepared.
We know the feeling of impending doom over here, too. This has been a rough year, and will only get more interesting as it progresses.
I would have said I’d like something more boring for the next 12 months, but after the lockdown I’ve had enough of boredom now. 🙂
Unfortunately, I couldn’t laugh, but I did admire the clever use of Shakespeare. As far as I’m concerned, any post that includes Shakespeare always gets a tremendous boost. Our countries are in a pickle, aren’t they? They both have leaders that shouldn’t be allowed to sell cars, never mind lead a country. I am so hoping our leader will be gone in November. I know your system doesn’t work the same way as our does. Hope you have a change soon. And good luck with the reopening. Hope you don’t have to go to work too soon. Clif and I are lucky in that we both have pensions coming in and don’t have to worry about going to work.
Thanks for this – I didn’t watch the programme.
If it is any consolation, you have helped me laugh for the first time in a long time!
If people need to drive to work, who is going to be around to sort out all the bumps and scrapes that ensue? Will garages now be open for MOTs etc?
How do you buy a bike to cycle to work if outlets selling them are closed still? And do people want to be walking or cycling if they do night shifts?
Certainly, there are too many questions and not enough answers.
Yes, it’s good to know I can still spread laughter. 🙂
Completely agree about the questions that need answering. There seems to have been little thought involved in the return to work.
I despair!!!
Of course, in the December ‘19 general election, no one could have foretold the current catastrophe – and I’m not sure any of the other offerings would have been able exhibit more joined up thinking, but there will be people out there who still don’t get it.
Anyway, spreading laughter is good 😊
I’ve seen a lot of governments come and go. The best you can say about most of them is that they are no worse than the previous lot. Unfortunately they are very rarely better than the previous lot either.
😆
By the way, I’ve just been reading on a French forum comments on Macron’s plans for leaving lockdown – or would feel that the French feel the same about his approach as the British do about Johnson’s: shambolic, contradictory….
I’d hate to be a politician. Bad enough to be thought untrustworthy and duplicitous without also proving yourself to be as useful as a chocolate teapot.
At least a chocolate teaspoon should taste nice!
Good God. I’m ashamed at the comfort it gives me to read about the incompetence of other nations. The incompetence of my own is pretty alarming. Meanwhile, I’m eating lettuces and radishes from my own garden garnished with smoked salmon, which is such a nice treat–and one I’ve been giving myself regularly during this mess…Stay well and try to stay sane inspire of our incompetent leaders, whose first thought seems too be for the stock markets and the economy, which will tank anyway if everyone is dead…
They are already changing their minds.
I have to admit that I was thinking of my American readers as I wrote last night – I was thinking “Things could always be worse…” 🙂
Giving yourself a treat is a good idea. I’m going to treat myself to a day at home watching TV…