Story: Concerns are rising over the UK’s coronavirus testing capacity, as the website for booking test kits struggles to cope with the volume of requests and huge queues build up at drive through points.
Reasonable take: Ah yes, a rise in demand for tests as schools re-open and increasing numbers of people return to work, who could have foreseen such a situation?
Brain rot: Rude that the entire UK population isn’t applauding the fabulous government 24/7, actually, says senior Tory minister whose investment firm was recently accused of “cashing in” on the pandemic.
Witnessing Jacob Rees-Mogg go about his business in the House of Commons feels like watching a period actor at an English Heritage site who has permanently trapped himself in character after accidentally ingesting too much mercury. Merely observing his form is like gazing at a living fossil from a bygone era, a horseshoe crap in a three-piece suit trained to rule over the masses from his hatching.
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So when met with criticism of the government’s famously flawed coronavirus testing system, following weeks of reports about people being offered COVID-19 tests 100 miles from home and then not even getting them in some cases, it would have been uncharacteristic of him not to accuse the British public of being snivelling ingrates.
Responding to a question about tests from his Labour shadow, Valerie Vaz, Rees-Mogg insisted: “Instead of this endless carping, saying it’s difficult to get them, we should actually celebrate this phenomenal success of the British nation in getting up to a quarter of a million tests of a disease that nobody knew about until earlier in the year.”
This was despite the fact Boris Johnson had already appeared before the Commons liaison committee and conceded that the COVID-19 testing system “has huge problems” – that there isn’t enough testing capacity, that deaths rates “will rise”, that many people are “deeply frustrated” and that any plan for a large-scale use of near-instant tests is “a long way off”.
Not to sound like a moist-eyed ancient bastard, but I fondly remember the days when words had meaning. What is this complete garbage we are being treated to? On one side of the coin we have Rees-Mogg saying the government is doing a “phenomenal” job, on the other we have the Prime Minister of the sixth richest country in the world posturing like they’re a ragtag group of charity volunteers doing their best with limited resources.
“Unlucky, everyone in team GB! We’ve unfortunately finished with the worst excess death rate out of everyone here today, but remember, it is the taking part that counts!”
I guess this is where the bar is set for Britain these days: Tories acting resentful because we aren’t patting them on the back for fucking up the most important moment in a generation. It’s as if Rees-Mogg cannot comprehend that we’ve seen other countries’ testing systems (partly, I imagine, due to his Victorian brain being unable comprehend modern technology), so expects us to think all this is “good”.
We’re being forced to ride this broken loop where the government spaffs millions in taxpayer money on contracting essential medical work out to their shit mates, who inevitably fuck up and get bailed out in time to do it all again, as though it never happened. It’s like being trapped in a crap sitcom.
It’s obviously obscenely inconvenient to drive several hundred miles after work for a test, even if you’re feeling in tip-top shape, so fuck knows how Rees-Mogg and the gang could possibly think doing a 24 Hours of Le Mans-style pilgrimage to John o’ Groats in a Seat Leon with flu-like symptoms and three screaming children in the backseat is something we should “celebrate”.
This calamitous mishandling of the Test and Trace scheme was best summed up by its boss, Baroness Dido Harding, who says she doesn’t believe that “anybody was expecting to see the really sizeable increase in demand for coronavirus tests”.
I mean, “no one saw it coming” is a pretty strong statement, given the nature of the pandemic. Who the fuck is advising her? Captain Edward Smith? The night guard of the city of Troy? A big kahuna of a second wave is coming and our lifeguards have their backs turned, trying to chirpse an Australian backpacker.
This sort of shit just makes we want to scream. The British summer is officially drawing to a close and the Tory in-crowd are now just flat out pretending the coronavirus has been a sleeper story.
It seems the Tories are too busy conjuring up arbitrary laws about who can and cannot meet up, depending on where you fit in the class system, as Boris Johnson’s “Rule of 6” showed with its exemption for groups who want to go grouse shooting, where up to 30 people can gather as long as they’re hunting with guns.
