Paying through the nose
It’s now two years since I last visited the UK. Re-reading a blog I wrote then on the impending farce we all know as Brexit, I feel I now have the necessary distance to review the details of our present badly written British sitcom irrevocably stained by the psychodrama known as the Covid-19 pandemic.
Reflecting on the first blog, I summoned the wise spirit of George Orwell who in a piece entitled the Unicorn and the Lion, socialism and the English Genius mused about the British character. It’s so prescient that I have to bring it up again because it seems it is describing a lost nation: ‘gentleness, hypocrisy, thoughtlessness, reverence for law and the hatred of uniforms’.
I’m sure like the fragile denizens of our collapsing natural world there are still remaining pockets to be found in overgrown English gardens — upholding the qualities we should still hold dear — gentleness in particular, in that very British sense of polite respect. Even thoughtlessness, which in one sense suggests callowness and disregard of others could be also construed as a lightness of spirit and not taking things too seriously –in that sense, the preconditions to the internationally famous British sense of humour.
Hypocrisy still seems to rein supreme — as persistent as cancer cells and visible in the badly disguised machinations of the political class.
Never missing the opportunity to turn a crisis into a profitable glut fest of social control and intrusion of privacy, the present administration are doing a sterling job alienating not only a large swathe of the British public but also, Johnny Foreigner, now firmly held back at the portcullis gates clutching their passenger locator forms and certificates of good health.
As said, I haven’t been back to England in two years but have watched from a safe distance as the British have at once been terrorized by propaganda over Covid-19, snookered into their homes one lockdown after another and made to bang pots and pans for a national health service still missing 350 million pounds a week since 2020.
Not only does it seem that new normal rules do not apply to Johnson and co (the same ‘follow the science guy’ who happily shook hands with hospitalized Covid cases with inevitable consequences in 2020) but also that any slight return for lesser mortals to those salad days of yore will be achieved through:
a tightening mesh of forms,
a potential grilling at borders by uniformed officers (until of course, they automate these chumps into unemployment)
the rigorous application of harshly wielded and administered nasopharyngeal swabs
the payment of harsh fines and arbitrary confinement in beige Holiday Inn-esque rooms with dinners evidently provided by the NHS in lieu of the holiday you were hoping for.
I personally found the passenger locator form to be one of the more intrusive impositions on my privacy during my holiday (the only waiver there being the third tick box on gender ‘I’d rather not say’ but I’m sure they will take a look). Minutiae of detailing included my flight seat number (apparently you are still held potentially guilty as Typhoid Mary for spreading the disease to your fellow passengers even with both jabs and a face mask) and listing all the places where you plan to stay (evidently a form of high public theatre if Edward Snowden is right about the nature of our smartphones but still…).
I very nearly fell foul of that particular document for the omission of a single digit listing my flight number to the UK. I could well imagine being hung out to dry by an UK official for that typographical error in Blighty and being sent home but fortunately it was spotted at check-in and I was allowed to correct it on line just hours before the plane took off (phew!)
From the vantage point of my soapbox I would also like to take grave exception to the arbitrary imposition of testing before and after an appointment
Profiteering in a crisis is nothing new but this seems to have been raised to a fine art by the political class, who has carefully guided select capitalist chums to the test and trace trough with favoured contracts.
Of course, I dodged half a bullet for quarantine at the start of August when the present UK administration finally recognized that a Pfizer Biontech vaccine administered twice by a health official abroad has as much worth as one delivered by a lowly NHS nurse or similar.
This did not, however, preclude an expensive pre-flight nasal swab delivered in a portacabin surrounded by anxious-looking time pressed foreigners with hand luggage. Nor did it exclude an obligatory self-administered swab on day two of my trip selected from a list of 250 providers.
I wonder how many there were two years ago) alone in the South East, the majority of whom, I suspect will shut up shop in one more year and relocate with their loot to the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands or somewhere equally sunny (but not presumably before making a generous cash donation to the Conservative Party).
Personally, I am waiting for the stats on all these extremely important tests that are holding ordinary people back from seeing loved ones while the worst waves of the pandemic have flowed over us all — dogs have been proven to do a better job and are paid in dog biscuits and pats on the head.
Eight months into the rollout of vaccinations, I get it that many conspiracy theorists disregarding the facts of their BCGs, polio vaccine soaked sugar cubes and Measles Mumps and Rubella shots taken to protect them as children are eschewing the Covid-19 vaccine.
Conspiracies are a modern disease and the symptoms are potentially fatal.
Suspicion of authorities only grows when they reveal themselves to operate according to different rules than the ones you live by and enable profiteering from companies in cahoots with them.
Equally, poor communication of the facts only leads to further resentment — particularly when evidence of non-compliance based on poor communication might lead to further sanctions.
There is nothing quite like bureaucracy and the threat of disease and death to suck the joy out of any planned holiday — perhaps I should have waited another year to make my journey — or at least by the time which the pandemic had shifted to endemic and would be treated (hopefully) with a yearly booster shot.
Like most Brits, I have a hard-wired belief in the rule of law — the kind that allowed for an ordered society in spite of many uncontrollable variables that could otherwise devolve into chaos. Shambolic, expensive and hard to interpret demands simply make the process look like a crapshoot rather than a coordinated attempt to nail down the progress of a disease that has been all too easily politicised, weaponised and financially incentivised.
If George Orwell were sitting in the snug at the imaginary Lion and the Unicorn pub he might be deeply underwhelmed by the country the UK has become under Covid-19 — over-regulated yet still chaotic, fearful of the future and locked in a past that was never that great anyway.
But the Lion and the Unicorn was evidently a mythical place too — a place of good cheer, intelligent conversation and community — just the kind of place to escape a collapsing country run by public school-educated populists, business opportunists and uniforms.
Having returned now from the UK back to my splendid isolation in Finland, I was impressed by the doughty spirit of the people I met there — many of whom had suffered financial constraint, great emotional hardship and loss of health due to the disease itself in long or short form.
There was an unsurprising willingness to blame inept politicians for their obvious failings but also a sense of possibility unfettered by external actors — including those who wish to vaccinate everyone.
Free will is the cornerstone of democracy and the British for better or worse defend their right to uphold it — even if it puts them at risk of disease and death.
If you conflate incompetence, price gouging, misinformation and control with the authorities, it’s easy to fall back on the idea that popularly-held and disseminated ideas hold as much weight. The future will tell.
I wish the British, particularly the common people well in all their struggle against a system rigged to fail them.
Rule Britannia is a time past but government by the people for the people sidestepping the most egregious insults by populists and unchecked animal spirits would be a good start.
