Help.

Help.  Every morning I wake up (eventually) and one of the first things I do is fire up my laptop and check my emails. There is rarely anything there of real interest, but I check, just the same.  Then I check my news feed on Facebook and see if there is anything of interest which deserves my immediate attention, and when I discover that there is not I move over to Twitter and do the same there. It saves putting on the radio and having to endure the Today Programme, (I just typed that as Toady, should I have left it?).

At one time Today was the programme we woke up to every morning. Now I can't bear to listen to the news on the BBC. I don't think, despite what many on the left would claim, it is particularly biased in favour of the Conservative Party as such, although the Today editorial and presenting team have form, but I find it quite nauseating the way it slavishly parrots the propaganda which is daily churned out by this government. It is perfectly possible that they would do the same whatever the colour of the government of the time, who knows? Only time will tell.  However this is particularly pertinent at present as we all huddle in our bunkers, isolated and frightened.  We rely on the government of the day to protect us.  That is after all one of the main functions of a government.  If we can't rely on it to do that, or at least make a decent stab at it then why bother to have one at all?

Anyway.  Why 'Help'?

I don't watch daytime TV.  It offers so little and delivers even less, so I am not an aficionado of Good Morning Campers, or whatever the programme is called, and I receive my daily gobbets of wisdom through the medium of Facebook and Twitter, part digested, so much more palatable and easier to chew.

And.

And recently I have found myself agreeing with, nay even applauding (which seems to be very fashionable at present) that odious hypocrite and all round despicable excuse for a journalist known to us all as Piers Morgan. He seems to have got his mojo back and the bit between his teeth, if I may be allowed to mix metaphors in a slightly disturbing way. I still have to remind myself that this is the man responsible for hacking a dead girl's phone, but he certainly gives the anaemic government 'spokesperson of the day' a good going over.  It may be because Piers himself feels vulnerable to the virus, who knows? For me it's almost like discovering that Fred West played bass in my favourite band.

There is something disturbing about the way this government is handling the crisis. They behave as if we are all amnesiacs with no access to the internet. They tell us black is white and then deny doing so, despite irrefutable evidence to the contrary.  Now that the Spaffer in Chief is holed up in Chequers with his pregnant mistress, and apparently incommunicado, it is left to a procession of dead eyed zombies to give the daily press briefing.  Some make such a hash that we may never see them again. Will we see Priti Patel gracing the podium any time soon? I do hope not.  Her combination of psychopathy, estuary English and inability to read numbers was too excruciating even to enjoy.

And then there are those chosen to be sacrificed on the altar of Morning TV.  The reserve team.  Is this really the best the country can produce? If so we really are buggered.

And the only thing I have learned so far is that they will not answer a straight question with a straight answer. It's as if the are all taking part in a National Obfuscation Contest. And damn it some of them are good.

But it doesn't need to be like this.  The default setting for a Tory spokesperson is to deflect and, if that doesn't work, lie. Why? Why can they not tell us the truth? Admit they got things wrong.  This is an unprecedented situation.  There is no accepted correct way to deal with it.  There has to be a certain amount of 'suck-it-and-see'. What is important is that they learn from their mistakes and use what they have learned wisely.

'We are following the science', says Matt Hancock.  Really? What an utterly meaningless statement.  Science is a system of studying and testing in order to try and make sense of the world in which we live. In science having a theory disproved is as important as having one proved. It is science which is trying  to find both a cure and a vaccine.  Science is not an instruction book, it is the means of writing one.  And in this case there is no book yet.

The problem is that outside the world of science, failure is seen as a weakness.  Those who fail are losers.  Fighters recover.  If you don't recover, presumably you didn't fight hard enough. Winners 'take it on the chin' and barrel on through.  They spit in the eye of the virus. 

Tell that to the families of those who died.

We all want to survive.  None of us wants to die, so my message to our government is:  Grow up, tell the truth and who knows, maybe you'll earn some respect, even from me.