A Good Day (to bury bad news)...

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On the current events re Non-Gov-UK™: as forecast days ago here in Fairview Heights, the escalating situation on the borders of Ukraine has given Doris a timely international situation to occupy his statesmanly thoughts and time. His statement to the House regarding the situation today threatens to bury the Partygate scandal once and for all, aided in such a timely (coincidental? - surely not) fashion by the prior announcements that the Metropolitan Police would now be investigating lockdown infringements at Downing Street and that this would delay the publication of the Gray report into same. In an almost perfectly-timed piece of political theatre - it's no wonder that the Paymaster General was smirking during the debate following the urgent question raised by Angela Rayner - the executive managed to almost completely diffuse the situation in the space of two hours.

No matter how serious the growing situation in Ukraine - and it is potentially very serious, the government should not be let off the hook for past crimes and misdemeanours; for their paucity of probity and lack of any moral compass whatsoever reflect forward to future conduct as well as on the past. Why should we trust them to act with any seriousness in a foreign land when in their own country, during a global pandemic, they treated their own electorate with disdain and contempt. This also matters greatly, despite many on the Government's side of the House attempting to trivialise it, aware only too well that their Churchillian moment was waiting in the wings to effectively bury the debate about it.

During the first lockdown, I was still working as a designated key-worker, and customer-facing in the field, travelling widely throughout North Wales, including the Covid hotspots of the North-east of the country. Everyone, and I mean everyone, in those areas, obeyed the emergency laws deployed at that time. In the more urban areas, such as Flint, very often this meant people being confined in quite small homes with only the occasional visit to the shops for essentials.

An exemplar of the effects of the lockdown for me was one house I visited in the centre of Flint. A small home with a tiny patch of concrete out front in lieu of garden, and a young mother with a new-born and a toddler screaming the house down and refusing to take his afternoon nap: no quiet or respite for the mother. No parties or even a decent piece of real-estate to calm the domestic bedlam - no escape to the countryside or estate park to roam in. My point is that despite the real potential for a war in Europe being present, it should not deflect from the Government's domestic improprieties, short or long-term: too much harm has been caused to too many people at home for that.

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