Death may be natural…but ruining lives by mistake isn’t
IN the olden days when people had warty faces and lived in houses made from mud, everyone accepted that they’d die of something disgusting, and quite soon.
But now we’ve got it into our heads that we are not going to die of anything at all. Ever.
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Scientists work tirelessly so that we can survive cancer and when they start to have some success and people start to die of dementia instead, they work tirelessly to eradicate that as well.
We certainly see this attitude on the roads. If you stop and think for a moment, you will realise that moving from place to place is bound to be a bit dangerous, whether you’re on a bicycle, or a horse or in a car.
But our beloved leaders won’t accept this. So they lower the speed limits and then lower them again and they erect speed cameras to make sure we stick to them.
And they build bus lanes and cycle lanes to make sure no one crashes into anything and if someone does manage to die in an accident, they respond by lowering the speed limit again.
Because in their heads, dying is not allowed. We’re even seeing this thinking when it comes to warfare. There was a time when brave young men would climb into a Spitfire or out of a trench but now, with drones, we can fight a war in the Middle East from a light industrial unit in Lechlade.
This means that young men no longer have to run about with guns and can sit at home instead, eating fruit and beans and driving around in their Volvos at 12mph and not dying until they are six hundred years old.
And that’s why we are in such a muddle with the coronavirus. We believe the invisible stress ball has no right to kill anyone, even if they are frail and eighty or if they weigh two tons and have to be winched on to the lavatory every morning.
Like pretty well everyone, I was supportive of the total lockdown back in the spring. We didn’t know anything about the virus back then so it was wise to hide under the bed while research was done. But we do know a bit about it now. And what we know is that, mostly, it kills people who were going to die soon anyway.
Breaks my heart
But to give them that extra week of life in the loneliness of their care home or the misery of a sanitised hospital ward, we have embarked on a truly ludicrous path of self-destruction.
God knows how many will be unemployed when the furlough scheme ends.
And God knows how the Government will ever pay back the money it’s now spending to feed every child whose iPhone is less than a seven.
I was in London this week, which is supposedly faring better than towns and cities in the North and I could not believe how many shops that I’ve been using for years are now gone.
I think of all the people who work in cinemas or bowling alleys or hairdressers or pubs or garden centres or airlines or restaurants or travel agencies and it breaks my heart.
Their lives are being ruined because we’ve forgotten something important. No one’s getting out of here alive.
HARRY'S BLISTERS
HARRY Markle announced this week that his life changed after spending some time walking in his wife’s shoes.
I bet it did, mate. You now have blisters and almost certainly a fractured ankle.
Sneak a peek, Em
A MODEL called Emily Ratajkowski, who is 20 weeks pregnant, announced this week that she won’t know the sex of her child until it is 18 years old.
Honestly love, you don’t have to wait that long. Just look between its legs when it’s born and you’ll know straight away.
I BLAME JEZ PALS AS WELL
SO, Jeremy Corbyn has been suspended from the Labour Party for refusing to acknowledge that he’s a disgusting anti-Semite.
And now his hideous friends like Diane Abbott are lining up to defend him.
Naturally, Sir Keir Starmer is acting tough by mowing down cyclists and putting even more gel on his Lego hair, but the fact is that he was part of the party when it was acting like the Nazis.
Which means he was part of the problem as well.
If I was still at the BBC I couldn’t say this, but I’m not, so I can.
Don’t even think about voting for them until every single one of the hateful Trots has been banished to a small rock in the North Sea.
ODD CHOICE
APPARENTLY, the weird king of Thailand has decided to spend lockdown in the German ski resort of Garmisch-Partenkirchen.
Well, that’s what officials are calling it, but I happen to know the actual resort is called, er, “W*nk”. Which seems to be an odd choice for a man who’s holed up with his four wives and 20 girls known as “sex soldiers”.
COVID? SMOKE IT OUT
WE’VE all been to a gig at some point where they’ve wheeled out the smoke machine.
But few of us have ever realised that contained in the smoke is something called triethylene glycol, which is a mild disinfectant that can sanitise surfaces and kill flu viruses.
So I’m just wondering.
Has anyone thought about using it today in cinemas and theatres or on aeroplanes and trains?
BEST ONE YET
LOGISTIC experts are trying to work out how a Covid vaccine could be given to every single person in Britain quickly and efficiently.
Apparently, one suggestion is using laid-off cabin crew because they are trained to marshal a large number of people and keep them calm and happy while they queue. It’s not the worst idea I’ve heard of.
UN’APPY WAY TO VIEW TV
LIKE everyone over the age of twelve, I’m pretty much incapable of attaching something to a tweet or changing the font on my laptop or accessing an “app” on my television.
So I don’t know what I was thinking of when I decided to watch Chelsea play Southampton on the new pay-per-view system.
At one point, the screen went blue. Then I got a message saying I had exceeded my spending limit. And then I was told that the viewing card I’d taken out to read the number had to be inserted for the payment to work.
I finally managed to get the match onscreen just as Southampton scored an injury time equaliser. This week, I decided I wanted to watch some episodes of Billions with Damian Lewis, which haven’t been aired yet.
My kids do this all the time. They whizz their fingers around their phones and in seconds, they’re watching not just the Bond film that hasn’t been released yet. But the one after that as well.
It only took a couple of hours but now I’m signed up to a £25-a-month subscription that doesn’t have the final episodes of Billions. At least I now have something to keep me busy during the locked-down winter. Trying to cancel the payments.
SIR LEWIS A NO GO
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AFTER Lewis Hamilton beat Michael Schumacher’s record to become the most successful racing driver of all time, there were yet more calls for him to be knighted.
But it won’t happen because he doesn’t pay UK taxes.
I know Sir Jagger and Sir Green got away with it, but these days, if you don’t cough up, you can’t have a K.
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