The Tories care about people? Well, some of them don't

If anyone ever tells you that the Conservatives don’t care about people, ignore them. The Conservative and Unionist Party most certainly care about people. 

Or at least, some members of the Conservative and Unionist Party care about some people.

 

Unfortunately, if you fall outside the select band, then it really is a case of ‘screw you’. 

 

And the past few weeks have offered two perfect examples of that.

 

At the end of September, I received an email, ostensibly from the secretary of state for health, Sajid Javid MP, on the basis that I had been advised to shield last year, when the pandemic got into full swing.

 

Let’s be entirely clear: I had cancer in 2018. “Had”, in that I am currently still free of it after major surgery – and a massive thank you to my GP practice and my local hospital for ensuring that checks have continued throughout the pandemic – though it could still come back.

 

I have high blood pressure (only diagnosed in 2019, so I’m going to blame the bleedin’ Tories) and I’m overweight.

 

But not exactly being at death’s door. I have had just two days off sick during the pandemic, continuing to work full time throughout, from home – and indeed, being part of a very small team that has won an external award for the work that we have done during that same pandemic.

 

Though of course, if you read the Express, Mail, Sun, Telegraph or other such publications, you’ve probably been told that nothing like that has happened and that anyone working from home hasn’t been ... well, working.

 

For more clarity: although I live in a very small flat, I’m fortunate enough to be able to work at home with a decent physical set up, as I’ve previously been a freelance journalist, self-employed. The OH, though never freelance, was also in the same position in terms of his ability to work from home, prior to his retirement in June 2020, which was planned 12 months before.

 

But let’s consider Javid’s email advice to those who had been shielding – in other words, those who had been described by their own GPs as “extremely clinically vulnerable” to COVID-19.

 

“You should continue to follow the same general guidance as everyone else,” it declares. This can be found at https://www.gov.uk/coronavirus. But “in addition to any condition specific advice you may have been given by your specialist in recent weeks ... as someone with a health condition you might also want to think about extra things you can do to keep yourself and others safe.”

 

Okay ... so what might those be?

 

“This could include:

• considering whether you and those you are meeting have been vaccinated – you might want to wait until 14 days after everyone’s second dose of a COVID-19 vaccine before being in close contact with others;
• considering continuing to practise social distancing if that feels right for you and your friends;
• asking friends and family to take a rapid lateral flow antigen test before visiting you; 
• asking home visitors to wear face coverings;
• avoiding crowded spaces.”

So, these are things to “consider”, right?

 

To start with, there is no mention of clinically vulnerable people – or members of their family – being expected to travel to workplaces.

 

There is a sense that those who are ‘genuinely’ clinically vulnerable will be old, retired and not with members of their household expected to attend an external workplace.

 

Still, I suppose it made a change from the paper snail-mail letters ‘signed’ by “Matt” [Hancock] and Robert Jenrick.

 

However, it is a total abrogation of any responsibility for public health from the health secretary. 

 

A couple of weeks ago, having been informed that I must be in the physical workplace at least two days a week, I sat in a room for a hybrid meeting, where the social distancing was not what it should have been. Given my personal circumstances, I was very close to freaking, walking away from the physical meeting and joining it online.

 

I have heard the argument that I need to learn to live with the risks. Yet this seems to assume that I need to learn to live with me increasing the risks to my partner too. That is ethically appalling.

And all it would have taken was for the UK government to say that, if you had shielded last year, then if remotely (there's obviously a joke here) possible, it would be best to continue working from home.

 

Instead, people have been put into an invidious situation whereby employers can demand they do something that increases the risk – not only to themselves, but to others in their household who don't get to make that choice.

And of course, at the time of writing, COVID-19 cases, hospitalisations and deaths are rising.

 

And nobody saw this coming as a consequence of ‘Freedom Day’.

 

However, this is not the only example of the state of the UK’s government. Just before the start of the Conservative Party conference in Manchester, Prime Minister Boris Johnson was challenged in a television interview on how to measure his promised ‘levelling up’ between the country’s regions.

He answered: “I’ve given you the most important metric – never mind life expectancy, never mind cancer outcomes – look at wage growth.

“Wage growth is now being experienced faster by those on lower incomes. It hasn’t happened for 10 years or more. That is what I mean by levelling up.”

As it happens, the claim about wage growth is a lie – but then again, his lips were moving – but what a thing to openly state: that life expectancy, falling in the UK for those not as well-to-do as the prime minister, and cancer outcomes* don’t matter.

 

It’s almost like the Conservatives ... some Conservatives ... really don’t give a flying one about the masses.

 

* Just a note to say, let’s not forget that, while his then wife was being treated for cancer, Boris Johnson was busy shagging another woman.

** And another note to say that the cartoon used above is from @chrisriddell50, and I hope he forgives me for using it here.