In an unusual experience for me, I turn out to have been fairly accurate in my predictions of what was going to happen this December. I sit here tapping away at my keyboard in the fathomless depths of Tier 3, a position to which I have largely reconciled myself (because there's not a lot of point doing anything else). This isn't going to be a post bemoaning the fate of the hospitality industry this December, there's no point to it. The Government made their choice, and they chose retail, and no amount of reasoned argument will change that.
So, as my kitchen lies silent, I find myself in the highly unusual position of not having much to do in December. A spot of pottering to keep the place ticking over, but not much else. Bad news for me, even worse news for you, reader, as I have free time to bang out my ill-informed opinions and foist them upon a quite reasonably uncaring public.
As already somewhat smugly noted, I got a fair bit about what was likely to happen this month right. But one thing I got wrong was the guidance surrounding the day itself. The "unanimous" advice for the four home nations that you get to hang out with another household, or two, on the day itself, or for five days, or for a bit. But please don't do it.
Say what you like about lockdown, but at least you knew where you stood.
As part of the industry which has been the sacrificial lamb for the restrictions I am feeling particularly irked by the absolute dogs breakfast made of the advice surrounding the day itself. Running as it does counter to all scientific advice (as Professor Chris Whitty acknowledge at the press conference this afternoon) it is advice which is, essentially, going to mean some people die.
I understand the arguments in favour. But that's a distance from saying that I agree with them. The advice seems, to me, to be more politically motivated than out of genuine desire to alleviate the situation.I listened to a radio phone-in this morning to a young lady saying how she was travelling back to Liverpool from London to be with her family. How she didn't want to wake up alone on Christmas Day. I get it, but, as someone who has woken up alone on quite a lot of Christmas Days, I wasn't entirely convinced. Sometimes it's what you have to do. Quite a lot of people will be (gasp) working on Christmas Day, they don't have the option. Her argument had a whiff of entitlement to it (I had more time for the woman whose father was dying, and was unlikely to see another Christmas, fair enough mixing under those circumstances, but it's something of an outlier as situations go), a lot of people want to see their families, a lot of people won't be.
This is an argument driven more by sentiment than by science, and yes, I get that, too, it's a sentimental time of year. But as I pointed out in the last piece, no one got to mix households during Eid, or Diwali. And now, with a vaccine being put into peoples arms as I type, we as a collective country decide its a good idea to drive up another spike in cases because Christmas. Which means the day we get to get back to normal gets slightly further away.
I suspect a stronger Prime Minister than the desperately needy Johnson would have rescinded the original plan, rather than come up with this Horlicks of a response where he doesn't alter the advice but begs us not to follow it. This is the act of a man who really doesn't want to end up on the front page of the Sun mocked up to look like the Grinch. It is also the act of a man who wants a veneer of plausible deniability, when cases rise, as they undoubtedly will, he wants to be able to say "It's your fault. We told you not to do it".
What frustrates me, as I said in the last piece on this subject, is that it's just one Christmas. It's just a case of sucking it up this one time, having a quiet one and staying at home. I know it's been a shitty year, EVERYONE'S had a shitty year, but that doesn't entitle you to push the end-date of the shittiness yet further back, or it shouldn't. I want to be open, I want to be feeding people, but I accept that I can't for the time being, and that's okay, it's costing me an absolute fortune, but it brings normality a little bit closer.
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