Seems to me that in the midst of a global pandemic, that has sadly taken hundreds of thousands of lives globally, the thing that some people are getting pissed off about is wanting a new buzziest of buzzy buzz words or slick three word mantras. Each new iteration shorter and snappier than its antecedent.
No sooner did BoJo* and the rest of the spin team come up with "Stay Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives" that it was time to line up the next triumvirate of wordage. Within a few short weeks we were given a simpler message "Stay Alert, Control The Virus, Save Lives" Now we have the simple trio of "Hands, Face, Space"
(*By the way, as if the Worzel Gummidge haired buffoon actually had any creative input between shagging secretaries and wondering how many actual progeny he has sired - "allegedly" ...back off Lawyers...)
In Work Life 1.0 BC (Before Covid) it would be a rare treat to spend a day or two at home "working", trawling Netflix for something new to watch and checking your favourite Pornhub bookmarks. It was kinda naughty and really good fun becasue we weren't really supposed to be doing it.
All of a sudden every fucker is at home, all the time, and eating up your bandwidth downloading an entire 100 hours series of "Real Housewives Shagging in Chelsea On Ice" or "Escape your Homes Under the Faraway Sun Swap" or somesuch other bollocks.
Now don't get me wrong here, I'm a big fan of daytime telly under normal circumstances but when my twentyteen bazmillion tetrabytes of storage is all filled up so my tea time celebrity general knowledge quiz show fails to record, I lose my shit. It's my goddam TV on demand that I goddam pay for so let me have space left goddamit!
And its not even just the telly stuff either. If you've got a home with more than you plus the Mr/Mrs/Mx, you'll have noticed how fucking noisy every single other person who lives in your house is. I'm fairly sure they always were but its tolerable - briefly - in the hours of 7am-8.30am and again from 5pm until around 8ish, but now its literally 24/7. All day. Everyday.
Because I'm a posh man of means I've got one of those Ummurican style fridges that stands tall and proud with double doors and temperature gauges, ice dispensers and stuff and although I must have known this before Lockdown 1.0, its makes a "beedeebeep beedeebeep" noise when you open the fridge side.
Now as I said, I'm sure this wasn't a surprise to me when I heard it but with a houseful of liggers and squatters and generally noisy inconsiderate individuals, its going off every fifty three point six seconds as yet another scavenging pair of eyes and hands rapes the shelves for any edible comestible not nailed down. (even the dodgy stuff - feta balls, breakaways and coconut yoghurt tubes) Oh yeah, and it also has another even louder beep when it's been left open for longer than is a normal "reach in and grab" actionable event which can only be stopped when the door is closed, although that one rarely goes off as the next of the household scavengers has already been in and out.
If I was designing a new torture method to grind down even the ruffty-tufftyiest of international spies, it would be to sit them in a slightly off centre not-that-comfortable office chair, listening in to a lecture on whatever is the most boring part of your job (with a quiz at the end so you cant even have a sleep) and play the "beedeebeep beedeeebeep beedeebeep beedeebeep" over and over (and over and over) again.
I'm telling you right here and now Jack Reacher might last till morning but Bond would break in half a day - guaranteed. Literally a noise that makes me want to Van Gogh myself.
So - the evolution of the Govt catchphrases then. Apparently the first version was kinda OK and most people understood the message but it was deemed not quite scary enough as "protecting the NHS" was seen as a bit fluffy. I mean, who'd want to do anything to help arguably the World's greatest ever social programme? Replaced with the less friendly and definitely vaguer instruction to "Stay Alert" because, as we all know, the country needs more Lerts. I was however encouraged to "Control the Virus" and I deliberately took some time out of my busy Netflix/Pornhub schedule to teach it to wee outside and not chew the fuck out of the furniture. Oh wait, No, that was the dog. I taught the dog that... the virus carried on infecting people and killing people regardless. Inconsiderate bastard.
And now we're all about the HandsFaceSpace. Wonderfully constructed and supported by all manner of TV and radio adverts that surely cost more to produce than it would have to actually equip our front line healthcare workers with proper personal protective equipment and give them some real time off rather than the double-treble shifts they work.
Don't get me wrong here, I'm all about giving the masses a message that can be easily understood and observed but, seriously, with all the shenanigans of full lock downs, local lock downs, firebreak lock downs, circuit breaker lock downs, tiers and tantrums, would it not have been easier to come up with an entirely simpler message at the very beginning and work up to the detail as we went along?
Here we all are a week or so away from Christmas (or a week or so after depending on if you are reading this on Catch Up) with a new tiered lock down in place until next week when it all goes "go where you want for five days" before going back to even more locked down lock down.
Time will tell if holiday season 2020 will be remembered as the one where everyone got to see each other and be merry and bright, or if it's to be studied by school kids in years to come as the very epitome of "that didn't go so well did it?"
So my view, for what its worth, is stay at home (if you can), protect the vulnerable amongst us, help those that may need it and generally speaking don't be a selfish bell end.
Merry Christmas
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