Are we really in this together?
I wrote to my M.P. this afternoon…
Sir,
For many weeks now, my family and I have followed the rules laid out by your Government because we believed it was the right thing to do in order to protect the NHS and save lives.
Nevertheless, we have watched in horror as the death toll has climbed and climbed to the shaming levels we see day on day. We have wept at the horrific stories of our front line workers who have been killed by simply turning up to do their job and care for us. We have learned of the horror families have faced, as loved ones died without ever getting the chance to say goodbye, or even give them the funeral they deserve. We have been shocked by stories of carers dressed in bin bags for want of PPE and looked on as a 100 year old man felt he had to try to do what he could to help fund a health service systematically starved of funding over many years.
This is a record that should shame every single member of your Government.
Yes, we did our part and stayed at home because we felt it our moral duty.
However, over the last two days we have learned that this compliance was actually optional all along.
Those families suffering from Covid and yet still stoically self-isolating while caring for their children apparently had no need to do this. Furthermore, a shameful parade of senior ministers have come out one by one to tell us that no one had ever needed to do that, and those families that had were not caring parents.
It would have been fine, it seems, to take our viral load over to our elderly relatives, shedding as we go, travelling hundreds of miles in order to put them at risk so that they could care for our children. Then, while we were there, we could also pop out to local beauty spots and spread it around a bit more. And, a bit later on, we could have done that all over again and that’s what was meant by the message emblazoned everywhere which said, ‘Stay Home’.
How foolish we were to think that this meant not to go anywhere, particularly when suffering the symptoms of Coronavirus.
To say that I am angry about this disgraceful act by the Prime Minister’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, in defiance of the UK Government’s own instruction is an understatement of the highest order.
The utter contempt his actions and his words show for the citizens of this country defy description. However they pale into insignificance alongside the Government’s response: minister after minister trotting out to defend him like a troop of well-trained circus ponies. I wonder just who it was that instructed them to do this.
The hypocrisy displayed shows how low Boris Johnson and his cabinet are prepared to crawl.
Their actions display a self-serving attitude of epic proportions; they make a mockery of the word democracy. They criticised, to a man, other high profile persons who digressed in this way only a few weeks ago; at least those officials had the good grace to resign. Cummings does not know the meaning of the word grace. He appears to lack any sense of morality or ethics and, although unelected, wields epic degrees of control and power over those that are.
He should be dismissed — it is that simple. To not do so exposes the spinelessness of Johnson, and to say that that he should stay makes every person professing this opinion appear every bit as cowardly and incompetent as their leader.
I met you once; you seemed like a reasonable person. I trust, therefore, that you will urge the PM to do the right thing. My heart bleeds for the needless deaths that have taken place this spring because your Government failed to act in a timely way to fight this pandemic; I urge you and your colleagues not to compound your mismanagement of this situation further in this way. To do so would cast further scorn upon those who have fought so hard to keep us alive and pour disdain upon the rest of us who did what your Government asked of us, albeit too late to save so many lives.
Sincerely,
