ALL MOUTH NO TROUSERS : A leak from Downing Street today reveals a bold new initiative to be launched by government in coming days that will “take the fight to Covid-19”.
The plan, which was intended to be leaked, in order to gauge public appetite for it, will see the new NHS Nightingale hospitals transformed into “red, white and blue nerve centres of patriotic flags and bunting”.
“Covid-19 won’t see this coming,” a genius advising the government told LCD Views, “it’ll be so wrapped up in feel good nationalist fervour it will sit down with nausea and retch. That’s when we’ll deal the killer blow.”
What the killer blow is exactly remains under wraps, but it’s believed to be a badge of some variety.
“When this virus was busy mutating in Tufton Street, I mean, in bats and pangolins, it never dreamed one day it would face thousands of freshly ironed Union Jack flags. England will be so festooned in symbolism it won’t matter that what we’re actually doing is still herd immunity. What’s a few tens of thousands of economically inactive dead between friends? Hey? Grandparents. Huh! What are they good for? Huh! Say it again.”
It’s fair to hypothesise that the nerds running Germany, with their elected officials and their PhD’s and their pragmatism, and the bleeding heart snowflakes running New Zealand, with their voluntary pay cuts by MPs and commitment to the sanctity of life, can learn more than a thing or two by watching how we go about CV-19.
But what if the leak reveals there’s little public appetite for thousands of flags? That what anyone paying any attention at all wants is proper PPE for all people on the front lines and a regime of testing, testing, contact tracing and isolation?
“Then we’ll announce some big showy numbers so client journalists can run with it and meanwhile we’ll keep hanging flags. Simple.”