JUSTIN DUNN’S ROOM 101 Why does the Mayor of London put BEES before paramedics?
WHAT’S ANNOYING HIM THIS WEEK?
IF you don’t live in London, clap your hands.
If you do, consider slapping them around your chops.
Because bosses are now “encouraging” their workers to remove their Superman pyjamas and replace them with a suit.
They want you back at work. Not just “working” but “at work”.
This “encouragement” will come in many ways.
Mostly it will be gentle chiding, a reminder of how great it is to have to shoot the breeze with actual colleagues in an actual place.
No more buggering about with Zoom meetings or the accompanying worries about whether Live Jasmine will pop up on your feed.
But with the carrot also comes the stick.
Many are being told to go back to the office or else they’ll find someone else who will.
It’s pretty hard to argue the toss, too.
Because let’s face it, for those able to, working from home has been pretty much a doddle.
Furious
While going back to work in the office, especially if you’re in London, sounds bloody awful.
For the great brains that run the capital, still currently largely resembling a ghost town, have spent lockdown cooking up ideas to make our finest city the most awful place to work in.
They’ve ramped up the “congestion charge”, which is Green Party-speak for “extra road tax on top of your road tax which is on top of your income tax and council tax and fuel duty and national insurance and VAT”.
They’ve packed loads and loads of London’s inner borough roads with flower planters and barriers, so that cars can no longer drive down certain side streets.
And they’ve put miles and miles of pointless cycle lanes everywhere so furious motorists, stuck in pollution pumping traffic jams, can stare at the empty tarmac while they fume.
This, we are told, will make BEES very happy.
And I’m glad for the bees, because I’ve never met one I haven’t really liked. But there’s the problem. I have never met an ambulance driver or a firefighter that I haven’t liked, either.
Yet London mayor Sadiq Khan evidently thinks bees are far more important than first responders.
Robbed
He must do. Because he seems more arsed about the availability of pollen snacks for bees than he is about the saving of human lives.
Paramedics now have to battle all kinds of new traffic restrictions to crawl through London.
And that means inevitably that more people will now die in the back of them. All because of a sodding bee or two. So while those of you outside London might be groaning at the idea of driving a few miles to the office, where you can park for free and not be blamed for killing polar bears at the same time, think on.
You could be being told to return to your central London base, where it’ll cost you a mortgage to get there in train fees, or an actual palace-sized sum to save the world, while still almost certainly getting your car robbed anyway. But try to look on the bright side. If you’re really, really lucky, you might get away with not being stabbed.