Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Lateral thinking that’s put to the test of time
Boris Johnson says we’re in an “incomparably better position than this time last year”. This is true because last year only a few people had the virus, which seemed unfair, but now we’re all getting it, which creates a sense of community.
Soon it will make more sense for the people who DON’T have the virus to selfisolate as there will only be 50 of them in the whole country.
We’ll take a lateral flow test and sigh: “Oh no, I’m negative. Now I’ll have to stay indoors until I catch it again.”
The problem is that the Government insisted its solution to the current phase of the pandemic was that we should all test ourselves regularly. But within a few days we’ve run out of tests.
You can’t blame the Government for this as no one could have predicted that if you tell everyone to use a lateral flow test that would mean more people would need a lateral flow test.
This strategy of insisting everyone must have something that doesn’t exist is ideal for the festive season as it has a lovely sense of magic sparkle.
This week they should tell us that we can make ourselves immune by covering ourselves with unicorn tears, or drinking the juice of the wibbly-wobbly plant that grows on an island made of glitter in the sky.
Health Secretary Sajid Javid explained the reason for the shortage was the “huge demand for the tests”.
So it’s our fault. Maybe they should have explained the rules more clearly and said: “It is essential that you take a lateral flow test every day, but whatever you do, don’t ruin everything by using a lateral flow test to take the lateral flow test. Try using a bicycle bump or some leftover parsnips from Christmas.”
If Boris Johnson ran a market stall, he’d shout: “Oranges, orange, oranges, GET your oranges, oranges, oranges.”
Then if someone said, “I’ll have an orange please”, he’d answer, “I haven’t got any oranges, you idiot”.
Maybe we could share the tests the way we did with bathwater during the war. Then one day there will be documentaries in which someone says: “We only had one lateral flow in the whole street so we had to make do.
“Every morning we went round all the houses and scraped each other’s noses with the same cotton bud. Then we’d all sit in a circle and watch it come up positive and that was all the entertainment we needed back then.”
Perhaps it was a Christmas game, such as one of those played at a party where you’re supposed to do the opposite to what they say.
Tomorrow they’ll announce,
“Never wash your hands, and dribble over random strangers” and we’ll begin to get the idea. So we should be proud and thankful that while other people have a break, this government stays admirably dedicated to being extraordinarily useless, even over Christmas, displaying a commitment to incompetence that sets a new and exciting standard for all of us.