Boris, I’ll Sacrifice My Christmas, But Here Are 5 Things I Want From You…
To quote Mariah, “I don’t want a lot for Christmas”, which is helpful because Boris Johnson just cancelled it. But there are a few small things I would like…
The Prime Minister went on telly this Saturday to unexpectedly plunge the capital into ‘Tier Four”, a sort of crappy coronavirus bonus level that nobody knew existed. Tier Four is basically the lockdown we spent quarter of the year baking banana bread and Zoom quizzing through earlier this year, and comes in response to a new ‘mutant’ strain of coronavirus spreading like wildfire throughout London and the South East and which is reportedly far more infectious than your common garden variety of coronavirus. For everyone saying 2020 couldn’t get any worse: look what you did!
With Tier Four membership seemingly open-ended, it’s time for Boris and the government to make some promises to London in return for sacrificing our hospitality industry, our retail sector and now our Christmas…
1 – I want to know the date and time of my vaccination…
I want the government to send me a postcard with the exact date, time and location of my Covid-19 vaccination and I want it in the first week of January.
The word on the street is that the Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine is likely to be green lit by regulators next week. Unlike foreign jabs like the Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna vaccines, this is a home grown innoculation, developed here and made in North Wales. They may have already started cooking the first batches.
AstraZeneva think they can make three billion doses in 2021, an average of 250 million per month. Britain is first in the queue for 100 million doses (enough to vaccinate every adult), and even though that three billion target will include production overseas, it means that the Wrexham plant will likely be able to churn out medicine at a far faster rate than doctors can possibly jab the stuff into people’s arms. So in effect we will have all the doses we need on January 1st.
The challenge then, albeit a formidable one, is logistics. To put it kindly, this is a government which has not excelled at logistics (PPE and test, track and trace spring to mind – I tried each day this weekend to get a test after a few minor symptoms and was unable to access any tests at all, a fact that doesn’t fill me with optimism).
So in effect we will have all the doses we need on January 1st…
But given they’ve had since early autumn, when it became obvious a vaccine was coming, and there’s now a minister assigned to this task alone in the form of Nahim Zahawi, presumably planning Britain’s mass vaccination at scale is now perfectly worked out, with plans to take over football stadia, put mobile centres in Lidl car parks or whatever.
I want to know exactly when I’ll be getting mine, it will help bolster confidence in the government and give us an idea of how 2021 will actually work.
2. And I want London to be prioritised…
The government will likely want to guinea pig mass vaccination, as they did in Liverpool with rapid testing. Please make London the place that gets this first. We have the most virulent strain of the virus so we need the intervention first.
Plus, and at risk of angering other parts of the country, London and the South East are also the economic power house of the nation (this is a fact, not some kind of internal-jingoism; as a proud Lancastrian of course I’d prefer it if the industries of the north hadn’t been laid to waste by successive governments). If we have any hope of beating off the biggest recession in a century then London needs to get back doing whatever happens in those skyscrapers in the square mile.
3. I want a date when our city will return to tiers three, two and one…
If we know how many people we can vaccinate in how long, then we can predict when the tide will turn against the coronavirus. It’s reasonable to ask for estimates for when London will start descending the tiers based on vaccinations doled out.
While these predictions almost certainly exist in a binder on Chris Whitty’s desk, these should be made public so that business, and people, can start to plan for the ‘after life’. Even if they’re used as a yard stick to measure the government’s vaccination programme against, even if they turn out to be wildly out, we should know what they know.
4. And I want a stimulus package, now…
London’s shops just closed overnight at the busiest time of the year in the worst year ever. If, like me, you’re a last minute Christmas shopper and were planning to leave it all until the 24th, then you’re out of luck. As are your entire family, who will now be getting their gifts from Asda.
But with hospitality on its knees, followed now by retail and joining the theatre, events and so on we need to see cash. It has never been cheaper for the government to borrow money, so go ahead and mortgage the crown jewels or mothball an aircraft carrier, whatever it takes to pump money into these key sectors right now. This week. I want Rishi on telly this afternoon…
5. And how about a bank holiday, for good measure?
I realise this is pushing it but… Boris please can you give us a bank holiday, timed for the day that Britain is officially covid-free?
A national VC Day (Victory over Covid day) would be a great way to thank the nation for all we’ve done during this remarkable time. Much as the wartime generation celebrated the end of the Second World War with VE day, we can have fly-pasts, church services and royals on the balcony, but also perhaps another EOTHO scheme (and similar incentives for other sectors, perhaps) to make the long weekend go with a bang and help the economy start to recover.
These requests aren’t unreasonable, I’m sure we can all tag on our own wish list favourites, perhaps national living wage, a pay rise for key workers, a medal for doctors and nurses, a national memorial to the dead, whatever it is.
But fundamentally we really all want to understand how the government see us getting out of this situation. A warp speeded vaccination programme that makes Britain Covid-free in a couple of months and before our main competitors will give us an international edge and aid recovery.
Plus, it’ll make eating Christmas dinner for one almost bearable.
