[ad_1]
The hasty British had already begun a return to normalcy on Friday. It was too tempting. May 8, the day of victory over Hitler’s Germany, and now also: over the virus.
And so thousands of citizens across the kingdom spread Union Jack pennants through its streets in bright sunshine, dragged bubbly to the door, and toasted themselves from an unsafe distance. Why not? His own Prime Minister had announced the first post-crown relaxation exercises for Monday.
Then it was Sunday night. And Boris Johnson actually got in touch on television. But what he had to say didn’t seem like a rushed normal. But after fumbling caution. And after many contradictions. Johnson has promised clarity, but for the moment it has only fueled confusion.
The worst recession since the Great Frost in 1709
More than six weeks after the British blockade began, no one knows how the country can get out of it. And that obviously also applies to the government.
Johnson is in a desperate situation. The de facto house arrest under which he placed his compatriots has brought much of the British economy to the brink of ruin. The Bank of England expects the worst recession since the “Great Frost” in 1709. This is also because many more companies and workers than the government has ever imagined have fled under its generous rescue package.
According to the Ministry of Finance, more than 27 million people now receive support from the state. It won’t last much longer, so the government wants to force as many workers as possible to return to work as soon as possible.
Safe victory: the British in Chester celebrate the 75th anniversary of the end of the war
MOLLY DARLINGTON / REUTERS
At the same time, the virus continues to wreak havoc in the UK. The officially about 32,000 Covid-19 dead they are more than any other country in Europe has to complain about. Pompously announced trial offensive is stalling, tracking app not working properly. Several government scientific advisers warned over the weekend that ending the blockade too early could lead to more than 100,000 deaths.
Johnson, unusually defensive, attempted a balancing act on Sunday night. He himself called the three-month route to the crown crisis “the outline of a calendar.” He spoke of throwing away what had been accomplished, but warned of the “colossal cost” of downtime.
Scotland and Wales do not follow
For this reason, he urged all those for whom home work is not an alternative to return to their workplace immediately, knowing that so far no safe transport routes or protected working conditions have been created for travelers. Allowed tours and public restrooms beginning Wednesday.
But this will only apply to England, as Scotland and Wales adhere to current curfews. Do the police now have to patrol the English-Scottish border?
Johnson announced that the schools would open in June, but only for some of the students. He promised a new five-stage “Covid alarm system” that would be based on evaluating “hundreds of thousands of tests” a day; The government is miles away from this number. And he decreed that people traveling to Britain by plane will have to be quarantined for two weeks in the future. This applies “for the moment”, but not to travelers who choose the route through France, leaving a back door open for everyone.
Everything works, not for the first time, so confused and half-cooked that apparently even Johnson’s top ministers have lost track of the matter. In several interviews on Monday, Foreign Minister Dominic Raab, for example, managed to contradict himself on the question of who can meet with whom and when.
In the afternoon Johnson tried to clear things up in Parliament. “Any wrong move could be disastrous,” he warned, campaigning to find answers to the crisis “together.” But for a long time there was a broad front of critics against Her Majesty’s government.
Spray students with disinfectants?
The regional governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, for example, think Johnson’s new motto “Stay Alert” is so senseless and dangerous that they will stick to the old one (“Stay Home”) for now. Scotland’s head of government Nicola Sturgeon said on Monday that she would not play “Russian roulette” with her citizens. This threatens to worsen the long-standing conflict between London and Edinburgh.
English unions call for resistance because they fear ordinary workers will become guinea pigs. Teacher representatives are so concerned that they are seriously proposing to spray disinfectants on students before entering the classroom.
And even in Johnson’s cabinet, the recent Prime Minister riots have not been particularly well received. According to various British media outlets, various ministers are now pushing for a faster return to normality. The main brakes were Health Minister Matt Hancock and Johnson himself, the two members of the government who were infected with Sars-CoV-2. The fact that Johnson apparently printed his new 50-page easing rule (“Our plan to rebuild”) before the cabinet could fold was a bit overwhelming.
In short, according to the Labor opposition: Johnson had presented the British with a “recipe for chaos”.
In this context, the head of government may be upset that he has abandoned a multiple consideration plan for now: reopen garden centers starting on Wednesday. Several experts had advised this, because gardening, especially in Britain, serves to calm nerves.
