Covid-19

Modern life is full of vile words and phrases. Dr No is not taking about the more traditional terms of abuse aimed at race and sex, but of the new elitist terms of abuse aimed at proles, thickos and others who for whatever reason have failed to embrace the Establishment narrative. Take vaccine hesitancy, the catchall phrase for all who decline, as they are perfectly entitled to do, to have a vaccine. A picture is cast of a timid individual, perhaps like a child reluctant to enter a swimming pool, who will nonetheless get there in the end, after a little encouragement from the grown ups. The term is innately paternalistic, condescending and belittling, and made all the more sinister by the fact that the cure is invariably some form of political re-education, indoctrination or behavioural nudging. How curious then that one of the groups most likely to show vaccine hesitancy is the one group we might reasonably expect to be the most grown up about health care, health care workers themselves.

It is now almost a year since the British government decided we couldn’t be trusted to look after ourselves. Instead, we need an avalanche of draconian regulations to protect us from our selves, and such is the zeal with which the government has applied these regulations, that we now have hundreds, or thousands if you count the individual clauses, of these intrusive rules that interfere with our normal behaviour. The nation that only eighteen months ago sang Britons never never shall be slaves at the Last Night of the Proms rapidly and voluntarily enslaved itself to these draconian regulations. Even now, over 75% of people polled want social distancing measures, including masks and the two metre rule, to remain in place until at least Autumn 2021. In another poll, over 50% of those polled said they would miss some aspects of lockdown when it is over. Perhaps most bizarrely of all, almost half of those polled think they look as good as, or better, wearing a mask, than they look when not wearing one. In contrast, in Germany, a land once described as a nation of automatons led by a lunatic who looks like a clown, 60% of people polled think that their lockdown should be eased. Today, it is the Germans, and indeed many other European nations, who refuse to be slaves, while we have become the nation of automatons led by a lunatic who looks like a clown.

Clive James once wrote about how he agonised over getting metaphors right. His efforts certainly, to use a clichéd metaphor, bore fruit. One of Dr No’s favourites describes Demis Roussos. ‘His stage manner reflects the opulence of his domicile. There is an immense reserve of inner warmth, as in a compost heap.’ Then there is the near perfect description of Barbara Cartland. ‘Twin miracles of mascara, her eyes looked like the corpses of two small crows that had crashed into a chalk cliff.’ Neither are kindly, but it is not the TV critic’s job to be kindly, but to observe, and in the writing add something, and James’s writing is perfectly larded through and through with metaphors that add richness and flavour, like the marbling in a fine piece of beef.

Competent enough when reading out Google finance reports, Radio 4’s Simon Jack falls apart when loaded with a ministerial interview. Even with the bar set as low as it is these days on the Today programme, and the minister for jabs having all the appeal of a lump of blu tack stuck on the seat of your pants, Jack approached the interview like a teenager rugby tackling a brick wall, only to crumple through lack of preparation. Attempting to ask why individuals with learning disabilities weren’t being prioritised for vaccination, given their high covid mortality rate, it soon became apparent that the interview was to be as illuminating as mountain of Welsh coal slag. Click. The sound of silence filled Dr No’s kitchen.