Passing Observations 15 (A coronavirus special)
Dr Vernon Coleman MB ChB DSc FRSA
1. Why are so many doubtless well-meaning people doing odd things to raise money for the NHS? The NHS doesn’t need money. It needs more common sense and more compassion.
2. There is much talk of a low slung wealth tax to make the middle classes pay for the crisis that has been created out of next to nothing. This would be truly stupid. Every country which has ever introduced a wealth tax has abandoned the idea because it always results in a fall in the total tax take. Those due to pay it either work less (and use up their savings to avoid the tax) or simply move to another country.
3. Who is paying YouTube to put promotional messages for the NHS underneath my videos? My videos are not monetised – which means that I do not allow advertising or sponsorship.
4. It has been obvious for ages that the people who need protecting from the coronavirus are not the over 70s but overweight, black diabetics. (They are the people most likely to die from the coronavirus.) But no one likes to say this. And no minister dares to put overweight, black diabetics under house arrest.
5. Shopping is, in future, going to require a good deal of standing about – waiting for someone to leave so that another shopper can enter the store. I intend to buy a shooting stick. It will be easier to carry than a folding chair.
6. Farmers don’t have anyone to pick their fruit and other crops. We need a Land Army. Why not instruct fit people whose wages are being paid by the Government that they must become temporary fruit pickers for the summer?
7. The people who created this unholy mess (the politicians and the civil servants) are immune to pension problems – they all receive massive pensions paid for largely by taxpayers. Everyone else is pretty well buggered. The Government has instructed large companies to stop paying dividends and millions of pensioners (and those about to retire) will have to try and live on the world’s smallest state pension.
Copyright Vernon Coleman June 3rd 2020
Vernon Coleman’s book Coming Apocalypse (which describes how the coronavirus crisis developed, and what is going to happen next) is available from Amazon as a paperback and an eBook.
Home