Dead Cats and Escaping Goats

The Long Suffering Husband and I were discussing the Dido Harding stuff that's currently in the news.

If you've missed it then apparently she has thrown her hat in the ring for the job of CEO of the NHS when Simon Stevens steps down in July.  She seems an unlikely candidate, with no frontline NHS managerial experience and a reputation of royally mucking up the Test and Trace system.  However, I can't seem to find out who actually makes the decision on which candidate gets the job, so maybe it is Boris' decision and he will be happy to appoint someone who is prepared to be the scapegoat when he dismantles the whole thing.  To make matters worse she has then gone on record to say that if she's appointed she will make the NHS less reliant of foreigners.  Has the woman even been to a hospital recently? Apart from a clearly racist dog whistle which will appeal to the old people who are constantly complaining that they can't understand their doctors it does seem a very bizarre thing to say if you want to run a service that has around 170,000 non-British staff.  If she had said that we need to train more British people to be medics we could have all got excited.  An investment would be on it's way but this, well this is just stupid.

Anyway, I suggested to the Long Suffering Husband that she might just be a dead cat.

He had never heard of the phrase.

"You know, a dead cat?"

"No.  I have no idea what you are talking about.  She looks like a woman."

"You know?  You do know!  Don't you?  It's a media thing.  A distraction.  "Here look at this dead cat so you don't notice who we are going to give the job to, who will do a much better job of privatising the whole thing than she could."  Dido is the dead cat.  She can't possibly be a genuine candidate.  Dido is a good cat name, don't you think?"

We agreed on something.

"She does look a bit like the cat that's got the cream."

"Or the Cheshire cat, with the smile that stays beyond it's usefulness."

"She's certainly a cat with nine lives."

"A fat cat."

"The cat amongst the pigeons."

"Oh well, there's more than one way to skin a cat."

After our conversation I started to wonder about the scapegoat and decided that Matt Hancock was supposed to take that role but has turned out to be an escaping goat because we all think he's actually tried to learn how to do his job better.  He might be useless but at least he's a trying escaping goat.