A week is a long time

Harold Wilson, famously didn’t say “A week is a long time in politics.” He was apparently mis-quoted at the time of the Sterling crisis in 1967 when they devalued the pound. Now that the Bank of England is printing money on loo roll and quantitively easing it into the economy Prime Ministers don’t have to be responsible for that sort of thing and a week is a long time for all of us.

I’ve falling into this weekend feeling more tired than I can ever remember with no where to go or no one to see to take my mind off things I fear that next week will also be exhausting. When your life is the same, day in, day out without a change an hour can feel like a long time in a day.

I followed a retired couple down the road on my lunchtime walk yesterday. I was socially distant but I could hear them as they used their outdoors-with-hearing-aid voices. 

He said, “But I don’t want to go to Perrywoods again!”

She snapped back, “Well, where else is there to go?”

A week feels like a long time but simultaneously drags on a bit. Time is like that.

In politics, this week a lot has happened and simultaneously not happened.

We had a briefing last night. Not Boris, who is self isolating but Hancock, who actually isn’t bad at briefings. He’s happy for questions to be asked, sticks to a simple script and seems quite relaxed. Last night, Johnathan Van Tam and Stephen Powis were via Zoom because they too were self isolating. Someone had challenged JVT (or Penfold) to pretend he was on an airplane. 

“Over,” he said at the end of each reply. It made me want to talk to him on the phone to see if this was his preferred style but I suspect it was all part of the challenge. Last time he talked about vaccines (not the group) the metaphors were train related. This time they were about planes. He said that we were on the glide path but we could still crash and burn. The landing is always the most dangerous part.

In other political news, on anti-bullying day, the government sent a clear message.

While MPs were wearing odd socks the inquiry into complaints from Priti Patel’s staff that she had bullied them came back. An independent body concluded that she had broken the ministerial code by bullying staff. There was some mitigation noted that her staff had not been very co-operative but possibly shouting and swearing at them on a regular basis was not the response required.

The Prime Minister looked at the report and on anti-bullying day he decided that he didn’t think the Ministerial code had been broken. His reason being that she hadn’t realised that she was being a bully. He didn’t even put her on the red traffic light or tell her to stop.

The person who had written the report resigned.

Someone came forward to say that she had been told, on several occasions that swearing at her staff was not allowed but she had continued. 

Bullying might be a tricky thing to define but on anti bullying day most of us would be surprised that a report that has taken 8 months to write could be ignored, when any reasonable person would believe that it’s never ok for your boss to swear at you. The message is clear though. Go ahead, Ms Patel, shout and scream at your employees, make them fearful and feel as though they are small and worthless. That’s fine for you to do because the Prime Minister has your back.

Gosh, no wonder I’m tired.