Care home ‘heist’ shows we’ve really lost the plot
More than once, I’ve wondered what it would take for this Government’s lockdown rules to be exposed as lunacy. Now I know: it’s the laugh-til-you-crythen-hiccup-with-misery tale of the Yorkshire Care Home Heist, straight from Pinewood Studios.
The cast includes a septuagenarian trained nurse, a confused nonagenarian nan, and a former Coronation Street actress-turned smartphone camerawoman.
The action centred on nurse Ylenia, 73-year-old daughter of 97-year-old Tina, who has dementia and lives in the eponymous Yorkshire care home.
They haven’t seen each other for nine months, due to draconian lockdown regulations. So shortly before the country was, once again, placed in full lockdown, Ylenia muscled her way into the building, tenderly placed her mum into a wheelchair and pushed her out to the car.
Her insistence that she was taking Tina home and would draw upon her professional qualifications to care for her there fell on deaf ears. We know this, because her daughter Leandra (the former soap star, remember?) was filming it.
The police were called to the scene (en route home, they’d stopped off at a garden centre) and promptly arrested Ylenia. I’m not sure of the charge – nan-trafficking could be one option, or perhaps aggravated TLC.
Either way, she was handcuffed – yes, really – and driven away. I’d like to think she got the full blues-and-twos treatment on her way to the station, where she was duly de-arrested.
She went home and drank a strong cup of tea with Leandra to steady her nerves. It would be lovely to report that she has since chartered a helicopter for a Mission Impossible- style sequel.
But, in reality, Tina is back in her care home, condemned to live out these precious remaining days, months, cut off from her loved ones.
How unutterably wretched. But then, is there anyone in this Cabinet with a shred of humanity?
Certainly not whoever decreed that, under Lockdown 2, students cannot return home before December 2. Not for reading week, not for physical illness, mental health, or just because they are 18 and desperately want to escape incarceration with a bunch of strangers and/or need a hot meal.
And what about the clinically vulnerable? They are effectively under house arrest, having been given new instruction just hours before Lockdown 2 came into effect on Thursday to stay put unless they have a medical appointment or to exercise.
It’s hard to guess how long the British public will comply with increasingly restrictive government edicts that demand great sacrifices from us – that forcibly separate families, turn care homes into jails for 97-year-old nans, and close down society at the point where figures show localised lockdowns are working – while signally failing to create a test and trace programme that is fit for purpose.
The social contract has been well and truly broken.