the times | Wednesday January 26 2022 27
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Buy prints or signed copies of Times cartoons from our Print Gallery at timescartoons.co.uk or call 020 7711 7826We feel like fools for following the rules
Those who lost loved ones are wondering why they did as they were told while Downing Street staff partied away
any eventual Covid inquiry needs to
ensure that this loss of perspective
and compassion doesn’t happen
again. Simon Ruda, co-founder of
the Behavioural Insights Team, says
he believes “the most egregious and
far-reaching mistake made in
responding to the pandemic has
been the level of fear conveyed to the
public”. Remember the chilling
“Don’t kill Granny”?
Lockdowns were necessary but
politicians and advisers should have
spent more time balancing the risks.
It’s clear now that some were semi-
detached from the suffering. There
should have been more discussion
about the mental health issues
arising from incarcerating the young,
vulnerable and old with so little
human contact; more debate about
obesity, with many sports centres
and swimming pools closed even
after everyone was encouraged to eat
out to help out; and there should
have been more attention paid to
other illnesses, such as cancer.
Johnson has demeaned the
extraordinary sacrifices people made
and every new twist of the parties
scandal makes it worse. The British
are natural rule-breakers, so why did
we follow so meekly? Lives have
been saved but we’ve been made to
feel ridiculous. Many won’t trust so
obediently again, preferring to rely
on their own judgment, and I don’t
blame them.that leaders, civil servants and
scientists only issue edicts they are
also prepared to follow. If they don’t
think they are sane or sensible for
themselves, it isn’t appropriate to
force them on Queen or country.
Matt Hancock obviously wasn’t
planning to adhere to his own advice
as health secretary when he was
asked how long the ban on casual
sex would last and replied, smirking:
“Sex is OK in an established
relationship.” But most took himseriously. Then there was Sarah
Everard, concerned she may have
broken a law walking home, who
got into the back of a police car and
lost her life.
Most people I know bent a few
minor regulations, maybe using a
friend’s indoor loo during a barbecue.
But one neighbour, a judge, adhered
to every rule, explaining that his
credibility and authority in court
were on the line if he so much as
flouted the one-way system at Tesco.
Psychologists say part of the
grieving process is to be able to find
a positive narrative after a
bereavement. The same goes for the
pandemic. It’s hard to move on butWe can’t blame the officials who
enforced the rules; a few appear to
have enjoyed their draconian powers
but some are feeling desperate.
There’s the local vicar who told me
he’s now horrified that he demanded
young children sit separately from
their grieving families at funerals.
He remembers with shame
reprimanding a widow with dementia
who started singing softly as her
husband’s coffin was carried up the
aisle.
The police may also feel
embarrassed that they used
loudhailers to force the exhausted
elderly off park benches and fined
students £10,000 for a quiet get-
together. They probably felt they did
the right thing at the time but may
now be re-evaluating those decisions
as they hear stories of Downing
Street staff merrily breaking swings.
There are the teacher friends who
couldn’t check on their most
vulnerable children and who in some
cases never saw them back in the
classroom again. Social workers were
forced to abandon their at-risk
families if they could not reach them
via Zoom, knowing domestic
violence figures would spiral. Care
home staff told me they felt they had
been turned into prison wardens.
The only way to feel better is to
ensure that if there’s another
pandemic there is more common
sense next time and less hypocrisy:I
keep thinking about it now. For a
year we couldn’t go into my
mother’s room in her care home
as she lay in bed recuperating
from an illness. We finally saw
her when regulations changed and
she was allowed to be wheeled into
the garden, but she died alone,
having seen her husband of 60 years
once from a distance during the
pandemic. Yet only a few hours after
her death her four children were
ushered into her room to pay our
respects, hold her hand and clear the
cards we had sent during lockdowns.
Boris Johnson has made us all look
like idiots — why on earth did we
stick so rigidly to all the rules? It
haunts many of us now as we watch
each revelation from the Downing
Street party days.
I’m having conversations again
with friends, acquaintances and
readers who never said goodbye to
their dying parents, children or
spouses, who missed their baby’s
birth, whose cancer spread because
they didn’t want to bother their GP,
yet meanwhile Carrie Johnson
appeared determined to celebrate
the prime minister’s 56th birthday
with a cake and M&S nibbles.
Most of us are desperate to move
on as the pandemic recedes but can’t
until the police have investigated. Of
course we should be focusing on
Russia, Ukraine, Afghanistan, the
cost of living crisis and resuming our
lives but it’s hard not to agonise
about whether we did the right thing
in adhering to all those draconian
regulations when they were being
broken with such careless disdain by
those who made them.
Most politicians did behave. I
interviewed Jake Berry, the Tory MP
for Rossendale and Darwen, who
couldn’t visit his critically ill wife in
hospital. Guy Opperman, agovernment minister, couldn’t
support his wife when she fell ill
while expecting twins, who died.
Many medics, under greater
pressure than Downing Street
occupants, often didn’t see their own
families for weeks. Professor Hugh
Montgomery told me how his teenage
son drowned snorkelling alone while
he was in London leading an
intensive care unit saving other’s lives.Elderly people were
forced off benches and
students fined £10,000
Social workers had to
abandon families they
couldn’t see via Zoom
Alice
Thomson@alicettimes