I used to watch TV news every night – all the way through. Now, I turn it off after five minutes of watching ranting from a Prime Minister, who seems totally confused and can’t string a sentence together – he has lost me completely. Covid is uppermost in his mind, and there is no mention of the shocking way cancer care has been neglected.
However, he is showing signs of getting bored with being Prime Minister; instead of getting on with leading by example (watch The Queen, Boris, she knows what to do).
Trawling through Britannica on https://www.britannica.com/biography/Boris-Johnson it lists all the many jobs Boris has had, including being fired. I can see him making an announcement shortly that he is off to pastures new., as he has already made it clear that he needs more money.
When the Queen addresses the Nation, she speaks sense and manages to hit the nail on the head every time. And, she definitely leads by example, so Boris could learn a thing or two from her. Another clear speaker to watch is Jonathan Van Tam, the ex-Deputy Chief Medical Officer, who always gave good advice on TV. As an ex-journalist, early on during the first Lockdown, I was fascinated one evening to see ITV throw the rule books out the window when Van Tam was on during a prime slot on the 6 o’clock ITV News.
What he was saying was clear, lucid and sensible. That night he was on a roll, and as the cameras turned, I watched as ITV let him speak on and on, instead of cutting him off for other news items, until almost the finish at 7 pm. I’ve never known a speaker to be given over half an hour on a News programme, but he was speaking honestly and knew his subject; definitely what the public wanted to hear.
During Van Tam’s talk, he mentioned the official U.S. website fda.gov as being the best source for information on Covid-19. I shot up at that, as I would have expected him to promote an NHS website – but no, he even repeated fda.gov a second time, to make sure we got the message.
The week before, I had had a long talk with a senior member of the 119 (Covid) telephone advice call centre. She mentioned that “the best information is on the fda.gov website”, but said they weren’t allowed to use it “as it’s not an NHS website”.
Unbelievable.
Instead, we are supposed to listen to a scruffy Boris, obviously wearing a suit purloined off a scarecrow, who loses his thread as soon as he starts speaking. If he is incapable of following the Autocue, perhaps his expensive Eton education is at fault; incidentally, Van Tam went to Boston Grammar.
I am waiting for Boris to get totally bored – then am sure he won’t be able to resist one more exploit, and we will see him depart Downing Street shooting down a zip wire.