I posted this five years ago on 13th March 2020.
On the anniversary of COVID being recognised as a pandemic I’m re-posting it.
Michael Rosen tweeted at the time (13th March 2020):
The reason why the UK is not doing what other countries are doing is because we know more about everything than foreigners.
Michael Rosen almost certainly had contracted COVID by this time underlining Boris Johnson’s disgraceful (at best) lack of action five years ago. His eventual decision to order a lockdown on 23rd March 2020 was arguably at least a week too late.
Whatever one thinks of Boris Johnson’s statements on the coronavirus they are notable for how they differ from more or less every other European country. One senses a perspective of Podsnappery (a character in Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend) who would dismiss ‘Other Countries’ and being ‘Not English!’
Mr Podsnap’s world was not a very large world, morally; no, nor even geographically: seeing that although his business was sustained upon commerce with other countries, he considered other countries, with that important reservation, a mistake, and of their manners and customs would conclusively observe, ‘Not English!’
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