Outrage fatigue seems unlikely

I read Robert Barman’s column about “outrage fatigue” setting in [Letters and opinion, Gazette, December 16], firstly with a feeling that something is wrong and then with a gradually increasing concern and my own outrage.

Robert seems to think that the treatment Boris Johnson has been getting recently is just “personal nastiness masquerading as high principle”. And he ends up talking about “usual hysteria” and “outrage fatigue will set in”. I think this is a total misjudgement of the situation we are in: it is more like a kettle that was beginning to simmer and is now boiling over. Robert may have a memory that is liable to fatigue but I and I hope many others do not.

I won’t give you a complete list of Boris’s misdemeanours but these are just a few of the things we are meant to forget. Going back a couple of years, we have the illegal shutting down of Parliament, including misleading our Queen over it. Then there is Covid. We had a disastrous start to that; not closing down quick enough, sending infected old people back to care homes and so infecting the other residents, and not joining the EU purchasing of PPE so our hospital and care home staff couldn’t get adequate PPE supplies and were also

getting sick (and dying!).

As a result of these early infections, our Covid death rate has been amongst the highest of developed countries. And we still haven’t had an inquiry.

Following on from this, we had the scandalous dishing out of PPE contracts to people that knew members of Cabinet - cronyism. The consequent loss of millions of pounds will probably be found by judges to be corruption. OK, he will consider he has done well with the vaccination programme but he really did enjoy posing in a white gown when a more humble person would have emphasised the role of our scientists and the NHS.

And there is Brexit. Very nearly half the electorate voted to remain yet he decided that had the mandate to go for the hardest version he could achieve..

Illegal parties seem to be almost the least of his problems, although maybe Robert is right in saying they are something that has cut through. The Labour Party at last found a good slogan for that - ‘One rule for them and another for the rest of us’.

I think a lot of people will have a memory for ALL these and many other earlier “errors of judgement” he and his government have made.

So, excess deaths, cronyism, illegality: no; I’m not going to get “outrage fatigue”!

Richard Gibson

Giles Lane, Canterbury