No jab, no job — it’s a no-brainer
CHEERFuL Charlie Mullins, the Rod Stewart lookalike who runs Pimlico Plumbers, says he won’t employ anyone who refuses to have a Covid vaccination. No jab, no job. No problem. Mullins has spoken to his lawyers about modifying the contracts of his 400 existing staff and making it mandatory for all new hires. Sounds good to me. Our boiler went on the blink this week. Frankly, who would you want to come and repair it — someone who’s had the vaccine or Typhoid Mary’s spotty kid brother, runny nose in full flow?
yes, we live in a relatively free country where vaccination against anything is not compulsory. But why would anyone object? As Mullins puts it: ‘Most people would crawl across the snow naked to get a vaccine at the moment.’
Amen to that, although you’ll be relieved to know that we’ve decided against Gary illustrating me doing just that. When my number came up on the escape committee a couple of weeks ago, I couldn’t get there fast enough. There are some advantages to being an old git.
It seemed like a good idea at the time, even though 12 hours later I was shaking like Terry McCann locked in an industrial freezer and spent the night hallucinating like my old hippie mate Spot, who dropped a tab of bad acid during the Jimi Hendrix set at the 1970 Isle of Wight pop festival and convinced himself he had snakes coming out his eyes.
When I emailed my GP with my symptoms the next day he told me not to worry because he’d had exactly the same violent reaction to the Oxford/AstraZeneca version.
Mrs Littlejohn was given the Pfizer job and was right as rain. Luck of the draw, I guess.
My FRIEND Hunter Davies relates how he was walking home triumphantly across Hampstead Heath, after getting his first Pfizer dose at London’s Royal Free Hospital, when he bumped into one of his snooty Leftie neighbours who informed him: ‘We’re waiting for the Oxford jab.’
Ok, yah. Be careful what you wish for, pet. Still, I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. I’d have had the British Leyland jab, if there was one. Get in there! My horrors had passed in 36 hours and I reckoned it was a small price to pay. I can’t wait for the second dose.
Some of you may be surprised at my support for employers like Mullins making vaccinations mandatory. After all, libertarianism is one of the unwavering, underlying principles of this column.
For instance, I’m viscerally opposed to identity cards — and disgusted by the Old Bill using Covid to stop motorists and demand to know where they’re going. They were even throwing their weight around on Valentine’s Day setting up roadblocks on bridges and main roads to prevent lovers getting together for an illicit cuddle.
But after a year of climbing the walls, anything that accelerates the process of getting life back to normal should be embraced with both hands.
Face it, if we’re ever going to travel abroad again, vaccine passports will be required. We already have to apply for visas or Estas if we want to visit the u.S, and get fingerprinted at the port of entry.
And post-Brexit, we’ll have to jump through a few bureaucratic hoops to get into the Costa Fortune, too.
If you want access to a private club, you have to show a membership card. Football grounds, theatres and cinemas demand to see your ticket before they’ll let you in. So what’s the big deal about carrying a card indicating you’ve had the jab?
These are extraordinary times which call for extraordinary measures. Why wouldn’t you want to know if a tradesman entering your home had been vaccinated?
Who wouldn’t be prepared to flash a card to gain entry to a cherished boozer or favourite restaurant? It’s not ideal, granted, but the alternative is house arrest and penury.
We are where we are, like it or not. To be honest, I don’t particularly. But needs must.
If carrying a vaccine passport means I can finally get to see my mum and my sister in America for the first time since January 2020, then so be it.
If this is the cost of opening up the economy, then bring it on. In case you haven’t noticed, British business (online apart) is going to hell in a handcart. Figures out yesterday showed that two million people haven’t worked since last March. Furlough is hiding the true level of unemployment.
It will take years for the jobs market to recover. The hospitality sector is on its knees.
As this newspaper said yesterday, it’s time for boldness. Boris should ignore the sirens of the ‘science’ and kickstart the economy now that millions of the most vulnerable have been vaccinated.
If some people don’t like the idea of getting the jab, tough. I wouldn’t force them.
BuT maybe refusniks should have to wear a bell round their necks and sport a sandwich board declaring themselves ‘unclean’.
My instinct is that many of those opposed to vaccination are perfectly content ‘working from home’ on full pay, while stuffing their faces with Hobnobs, watching daytime TV, and boasting smugly about how much they are saving on commuting costs and lunchtime sandwiches.
The unions, naturally, for purely political reasons, want lockdown to go on for ever, provided their members are still cashing their pay cheques. But the money is going to run out, sooner rather than later.
Some selfish employers, too, are happy to have their staff lounging about at home, doing sod all. Why should they care, while Dishi Rishi is footing the bill?
They’re living on borrowed time, with borrowed money. Once furlough ends, though, they’ll be handing out P45s like confetti.
But others, like Rod The Mod manque Charlie Mullins, don’t have that kind of luxury. Through the coldest winter in almost 14 years, and with boilers going on the blink every day, he can’t afford not to insist on his staff being vaccinated.
The economy needs to roar back, sharpish, or we’re all screwed.
If that means no jab, no job: No problem.
It’s a no-brainer.