Matt Hancock.
The best way I could describe him to someone who has never heard of him is to imagine that Britain elected the Wheelers from Return To Oz into government and made the stupidest one Health Secretary. I don’t know what it is. The disconcertingly insincere smile that doesn’t match the eyes, the childishly macabre voice or the fact that he inspires the same feelings of creepiness, revulsion and dread in people as my number one childhood nightmare did.
He’s always been the poster boy for confident incompetence, but ever since he was appointed health secretary he has turned blaming others for his Party’s deliberately irresponsible and bloodless handling of the pandemic into an art form.
So far he has blamed the Chinese, fat people, poor people, the Labour Party and Identity Politics among many others for their handling of the Coronavirus. So who is it this week? Not surprisingly it’s young people this time, since the UK’s recent 2988 increase in Covid-19 cases has been mainly within 20-29 year olds.
The way he has framed it implies that anyone under 30 has put our nation in danger with their hedonism and their illegal raves. Where some bloke who tells everyone he once punched a copper in the Poll Tax Riots takes your temperature on the door by licking your forehead, before sending you off to do lines of Chinese cocaine off the back of a coughing live bat.
“Don’t kill your gran”, Hancock told them. You will give her the Rona.
But what are we really looking at here. It is absolutely no surprise that this age group would be the demographic dominating the rise and it isn’t for the reason we are being told. Government advice surrounding the virus is so disconnected and bizarre it often reads like a series of statements written by the Duolingo owl.
Don’t Kill Your Gran
But they still encouraged you to use the Eat Out To Help Out scheme. Go out, treat your friends, treat your family. You’ll be saving our country by doing so and likely be served by someone who is aged between 20-29, because they’ll get sacked if they don’t. But that’s fine. It’s safe. As long as you practice social distancing.
I doubt very much anyone in the cabinet has worked in a bar or restaurant or they might realise just how laughable it sounds telling pissed people to social distance . As someone who was employed in hospitality between the ages of 15 to 23, it’s hard enough trying to keep their hands off your arse most days, and unless they now have fully ascended Jedi’s as door staff at Yate’s now, I’m not sure how they’re supposed to split up a fight from 6 feet away.
Don’t Kill Your Gran
But people in their twenties in service jobs are more likely to be on zero hour contracts which affords them very little rights. They’re less likely to be unionised or otherwise organised in the work place. They aren’t easily going to be able to refuse to go to work and earn the wage that they need to give half of to their landlord because apparently landlords are the only ones who cant suffer a loss of income.
Don’t Kill Your Gran
Or maybe they don’t have a landlord. Since we have nearly half a million multi-generational families in the UK thanks to gentrification, lack of social housing and mortgage companies requiring a twenty grand deposit and a blood oath before they’ll lend you enough to buy a converted BT phone box to live in. Kind of hard not to kill gran when your back and forwards from work all the time and have to share a bathroom with her.
Don’t Kill Your Gran
Because you know if she dies it is your fault right? No matter that she’s 70 and still working in the local primary school because she got fucked over for her pension and cant afford to retire yet. No matter that the Tories have already killed a lot of grans already with their austerity measures, constant welfare cuts and their decimation of the NHS. That while they encouraged us all to put victory rolls in our hair for VE Day and form a conga line of nationalist propaganda as deadly pathogens hung in the air, they never adequately protected our care home residents- you know— those who were actually around in the war or its immediate aftermath.
What they tell us is that it is safe to travel to work, it is safe to be at work, it is safe and necessary to put your kids back in school so you can return to work and you are a terrible parent if you don’t. Hey shielded people, you must also come back to work to pay your mortgage and bills but you must also never leave the house because it’s selfish to expect healthcare if you get ill. It is safe to spend money in shops, pubs, bars and restaurants and you must do this as much as you can unless you hate the British way of life, but you must not seek out any meaningful human connections at one of the most upsetting and uncertain points of your life that do not involve your debit card, or we’ll hit you with a massive fine that you’ll have to take on extra shifts to pay off.
Don’t kill your Gran. But also, protect the economy, and if that means some pensioners die, too bad.
Right?
punkfoodbandita 