Action stations for new Test Tsar
R‘SEX, sea and sizzling chemistry’ run promotional flyers about The Mallorca Files, the daytime crime show that dispenses unashamed escapism. Elen Rhys plays the Brit detective who is having a will-they-won’t-they relationship with fellow crimebuster Julian Looman. If you want to forget all about coronavirus for an hour or so, I recommend catching an episode featuring stunning locations and impossible glamour. It’s streaming now free on BBC iPlayer.
RBY THE time you read this, it may have happened. I certainly hope so. Boris Johnson must take a leaf out of his heroWinston Churchill’s book, and appoint a Test Tsar.
In 1940 with Hitler at the gates, Winston asked Daily Express magnate Lord Beaverbrook to galvanise British aircraft production. Many would have declined to sip from such a potentially poisoned chalice, but Beaverbrook seized it with gusto.
Within weeks semi-moribund aircraft factories had been kicked, bullied, and electrified into action. Production shot up by 15 per cent. Beaverbrook wouldn’t take no for an answer, not from Vickers Supermarine, who built fighters, not even from the British public. He demanded they hand over their aluminium kitchenware – “saucepans for Spitfires” – and they obeyed, in their millions. By the time The Battle of Britain started, we had just enough fighter aircraft to keep the Luftwaffe at bay.
We need a Beaverbrook today to do the same thing with our hopeless coronavirus testing programme. Pharmaceutical giants, testing specialists, delivery companies, must be cajoled, bullied and browbeaten into sweating blood to deliver both tests the country is crying out for – one that reveals if someone is currently fighting the virus (which allows us to identify local hotspots and ring-fence them); the other to show if you have already thrown it off and may have
JHOW do you decide when a trip out is essential or not? Earlier this week
Richard did some shopping for an elderly lady who lives near us. Now our daughter, 32, needs help as her boiler has broken down and while this is April, it’s still quite parky and she cannot find any electric heaters in the countryside where she lives. So, should we drive an hour to her place with a couple of spare plug-ins we have at home? Don’t know what the police might say... but we’re going. developed some immunity. The latter test is key to two crucial outcomes: getting NHS workers who are actually immune out of pointless isolation and back on the front line; and getting us out of this terribly damaging lockdown. It’s the only exit strategy that will work.
As we head into week three of this crisis, Boris needs to issue the Churchillian imperative, scrawled at the bottom of many a wartime memo: “Action this day!”
As to who the Test Tsar should be, there are plenty of candidates. I’d nominate Sir James Dyson, a can-do inventor, technocrat and businessman with a track record of winning. Tim Steiner of Ocado is a whirlwind of energy. Sir Richard Branson built a global empire on getting people to do exactly what he wants – and Alan Sugar rarely loses a fight.
We should also remember that we’re not staying at home because we think we’re going to die.The Black Death this is not. Many who contract coronavirus don’t even realise it.We’re in lockdown to protect the NHS from catastrophic overload. Mass testing – of everyone – will guarantee that doesn’t happen.Then we can all get back to normal.
“Action this day.”