Andy Richardson: 'A miserable litany of grey'
Where has all the fun gone?
Remember when you could turn on the box and see a former reality TV star suggesting citizens in the most powerful nation on earth drink disinfectant to wash away the coronavirus? And then, that moment of realisation: the man at the podium is President of the USA.
Remember when Dom sat in The Rose Garden; an unelected SPAD working for a Government dedicated to rooting out the unpalatable behaviour of unelected officials. He told us he’d driven his wife and child to, erm – even now, it still sounds like a Christmas cracker joke – test his eyesight. How we laughed.
Remember when we could sit in front of the Gogglebox each night as politicians told us stuff we’d worked out weeks earlier? Or remember when Boris lied about devising a world-beating test and trace app – Ireland and Germany have both done pretty well, Mr Prime Minister, if you need any help?
And then there was Super Matt in Hancock’s Half Hour, making up targets on the spot, it seemed, that were mysteriously met when the Government massaged figures by including tests that hadn’t been completed?
Those were the days.
Now it’s a miserable litany of grey. Day after day, we receive official confirmation that we’ve really not done very well through Covid-19. While nurses, care workers, binmen and others were the Best of Britain, elected politicians were the worst.
The Commons Public Accounts Committee – it’s really powerful and in charge of scrutinising the money, a bit like a husband or wife – is the latest to weigh in, calling the Government’s failure to plan for the economic impact of the pandemic ‘astonishing’.
That’s on top of the news that we’d ignored the recommendations of the Government’s pandemic dry run back in 2016, Operation Cygnus. Doh.
Indeed, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy didn’t even know about the 2016 pandemic planning – I guess pandemics are a health issue, aren’t they? They obviously don’t cause mass unemployment or escalate our national debt to a level higher than the value of the economy itself, do they?
Let’s not use the term ‘confederacy of dunces’, tempting though it is. We’ve still got a Public Enquiry to get through – though Boris may delay that, a bit like he delayed publication of the report into those pesky Russian spies.
