THIS week Boris Johnson ordered us all to stay at home unless our work was “absolutely essential”.
I wonder what he thought would happen. That we’d all wake up and think: “Nah. My job’s not important at all. I’ve been wasting my life really, so I’ll stay in bed.”
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Everyone thinks their job is important, so everyone went to work, and this meant that in London especially, the public transport system was rammed full of commuters. This made everyone very angry.
I don’t want to blame anyone for what’s going on. If you shut a country down overnight there are bound to be issues. It’s no one’s fault.
I do, however, have a helpful suggestion for people who really do need to get to work. A suggestion that no one will have considered. It’s a means of transport that’s virus proof.
You can’t be infected when you’re inside it and you can’t pass your infection on to anyone else. It’s called the “motor car”.
For years, successive leaders and politicians have done their best to squeeze it out of society.
They’ve lowered the speed limits and raised the taxes and introduced congestion charging and even suggested, hilariously, that if you absolutely must have one, it should have an electric motor. Like a milk float.
Even the great libertarian Boris Johnson — a former motoring correspondent for GQ magazine — has been involved, handing half the road network over to wretched cyclists.
Well, now’s the time to stop all that.
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During the Covid-19 outbreak, when it’s important we keep our distance, all parking restrictions should be lifted.
Cars should be allowed to use both bus and cycle lanes and all traffic cameras should be turned off. I know this flies in the face of what the eco-mentalists say is good for us but buses are petri dishes so park them at the depot.
Trains and the Tube are no better, so turn off the power immediately. In the last three months of last year, 32million people in this country had jobs. And that’s handy because at the last count there were 32million cars registered for use on the road.
This means that everyone can get to their place of work, safely, in a virus-proof cocoon. Strange isn’t it. For years we were told that cars would one day kill us all. But now it’s obvious that actually, they are our knights in shining armour.
Queenie quiz
IMMEDIATELY after Prince Charles was diagnosed as Covid-19 positive we were shown a reassuring picture of Mrs Queen hard at work.
But when was it taken?
I only ask because the phone she was using looked like it was from about 1971.
Who was she calling? Dial-a-Disc?
It’s nuts on the net
WHILE scrolling through my phone the other day I was interested to read that I could increase my immunity to coronavirus by taking more vitamin C.
Then I was told I would not catch it if I stared for two hours every day at a picture of Charlize Theron.
Later, I received news from someone whose neighbour’s aunt lives next door to a doctor’s cleaning lady that I should drink my own urine.
But I was quickly distracted by someone else whose hairdresser had hacked the World Health Organisation and found that under no circumstances should I eat anything containing vitamin C. Or look at Ms Theron.
And then I remembered something Important. Every single thing on the internet is b******s.
Zorb ball snag
WE saw this week a photograph of someone shopping at the supermarket in a Zorb ball. Nice idea. Totally safe.
But there’s one small problem.
How do you reach anything on the shelves?
Obeying ze rules
AS I write, the whole world is trying to work out why Germany is doing so much better with the coronavirus than everywhere else.
The bald figures are certainly intriguing. In Britain, 4.6 per cent of people who catch the disease go on to die. In Italy, it’s a terrifying nine per cent. Whereas in Germany, it’s 0.4 percent.
Experts have claimed that the epidemic started there in the Bavarian Alps, so the people it affected were young, fit skiing enthusiasts. Who barely noticed they had it.
Others have pointed to the fact that Germany has many more beds for critically ill patients than Italy. And a HELL of a lot more than the UK.
Then there’s testing. For months German medics have been testing the sort of numbers the rest of the world can only dream about. I wonder, however, if anyone has considered this: The Germans do well . . . because they are German.
I was once told by a professor at Rome University that: “You can have as many laws as you like in Italy. Just so long as they are not enforced.”
So, when the government there first told everyone to go home and stay there, they simply carried on riding around on their Vespas and kissing everyone.
It’s the same story in Britain. We were told to stay at home but because the sun was out, we all hit the park for a picnic.
The Germans are different. You tell Wolfgang that he must wash his hands every 15 minutes and he will wash his hands every 15 minutes. You tell him to go home and he will do so, immediately.
It’s probably considered racist to talk about national characteristics these days. But in these troubled times I’m going to plough on regardless and say that if we want to survive, we’ve got to be a bit more German. And for once, do as we are told.
Builders, tick – cement?
CONSTRUCTION workers were told the day after the shutdown that they could carry on if they were working outside and could keep a sensible distance from one another.
I was thrilled about this because it meant work could continue on my new house. But it can’t. Because the chaps in the hard hats and hi-viz jackets can’t get hold of any cement.
Which I’m told is an important ingredient in a building project.
Lamb fee chopped
WE keep being told that the supermarkets will be able to keep up with our demand for food. But I seriously doubt that.
I was told this week that the supplier providing my farm with veg seeds had closed. And because he had no delivery drivers, he was dumping his stock.
I’ve now found a replacement and I will be getting them in the ground next week. But who will harvest them in three months, when the people who normally do this kind of thing are stuck in Latvia? Students? Fat chance.
To make matters worse, a lot of peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers and courgettes you buy come from Spain.
And who, right now, in this locked-down country, is planting them, and packing them and taking them to the docks or the airport? Still, there is some good news.
Vegetarians will be forced to abandon their idiocy and start to eat meat. Lamb looks like a good bet. Because all the restaurants and pubs are shut, and exports are tricky, prices have more than halved in the past seven days.
Bloody annoying for me as a sheep farmer. Bloody good news for you though.
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