the brilliantly leaping gazelle

The news goes from bad to worse, with the announcement of schools being closed from Friday, for two weeks initially, but in all probability longer. Much longer.

The powers that be clearly haven’t though this through, either that or their experience of being a parent was to let a nanny do all the work, leaving them free to do grown up things and have minimal unscheduled interaction with their children. Unless if it was strictly necessary or an emergency. Why am I thinking about Jacob Rees-Mogg?

This plus the Easter Holidays equals multiple mass murders across the country. I’m talking triple figures here. You think the deaths caused by the coronavirus are bad? Wait till the deaths caused the school closure start to mount? That’ll be loss of life on a biblical scale. Not just numbers of deaths, but the sheer depravity of the way they were killed. Holed up 24hrs a day, driving each other increasingly mad, with no food and less respite?Think ofa remake of ‘The Texas Chainshaw Massacre’ directed by Hieronymus Bosch. Think of the Old Testament. You get the idea.

Which leads me neatly on to an incident today whereby I had such an unexpectedly sudden thought out of nowhere I made an involuntarily loud noise, such that my friend remarked on it. ‘It’s just me being misanthropic.’ I explained. For some reason, self isolating made me think of an anchorite who Wikipedia describe as.

someone who, for religious reasons, withdraws from secular society so as to be able to lead an intensely prayer-oriented, ascetic, or Eucharist-focused life. Whilst anchorites are frequently considered to be a type of religious hermit,^[5] unlike hermits they were required to take a vow of stability of place, opting for permanent enclosure in cells often attached to churches. Also unlike hermits, anchorites were subject to a religious rite of consecration that closely resembled the funeral rite, following which they would be considered dead to the world, a type of living saint.

This was popular in 13^th -16^th Century Europe. Time for a return?

The news today that many supermarkets will have reserved early morning slots for elderly or disabled customers, in order to ensure the shelves haven’t been emptied by people panic buying is a good thing. I hope all supermarket chains adopt this fair principle and apply it to every day. In no way is there any hint of self interest in this. Perish the thought! I have not though of placing an advert online pimping myself out at £20 or £30 a time, although obviously, having grown up in Thatcher’s Britain, I well understand if the demand for something grows and that things is rationed, the cost of getting that thing will increase. Nor have I checked to see how many supermarkets are near me and if some have different designated slots available well, I could easily make £60 a day cash in hand! The cost might rise for the same basic service, but I’ll refuse to do extra’s. Absolutely. No way.

I might consider a block booking though, if a family want exclusivity so they can have me seven days a week, well that’ll cost ‘em. It’s a sellers market if they want to get to the supermarket.

Hang on! What about a women of a certain age who because of years of beauty creams and such, no longer look it? Will one need a passport to prove how old they are? And how disabled will you have to be? And how do you prove it? And to whom? And would it be like a nightclub, you know, where they stamp your back of your hand so you can get back in, so you can’t visit more than one a day?

As will come as a surprise to absolutely no-one familiar the writings my blog, I do not value the survival of our species as much as other people seem to do. The hysteria and doom mongering that has characterized the response Coronavirus episode is, to me at any rate, as bewildering as it is nonsensical. Yes, by all means be aware of the risks and ways to minimise them, but some perspective please. At the risk of causing offence to people who get offended by logic, all but one of the people who’ve died so far have been over 60 years old and all of them had underlying health problems, so the chances are that a harsh winter would have killed them anyway. Why is this not even mentioned, that we have an ageing population, one that the adult social care system is struggling to cope with so in essence all the Coronavirus is doing is hastening the inevitable.

Yesterday the government announced a raft of financial measures, which they hope will help people cope with the unprecedented economic challenges that necessarily arise following the government’s health advice. Good for them.! Jolly well done! Bravo! Goody gum drops!

However, methinks there is a better, more effective way to spend some of the money, a spend moreover that if properly implemented could easily become a truly innovative solution to the conundrum of footing the bill of an ageing population.

Government sponsored euthanasia.

No, seriously, before you dismiss it as ludicrous, think of the measures announced yesterday and then ask yourself exactly how many of them will have any practical efficacy beyond this present situation? Remember quantative easing and the theory that if the Bank of England printed £billions of new money, the banks would then pass that money onto small and medium sized businesses and this would help revive the economy after the global financial crisis? And, as is so often the case, what works in the theory doesn’t work in practice but what did work was the banks working for themselves and using the money to shore up their losses. Jo and Janet Nobody might get a little bit of help but it’ll be the usual snouts getting their fill at the trough.

Anyway, where we? Ah yes! Government sponsored euthanasia, that’s where!

Given the age group of death victims perhaps that might be hitherto electorally suicidal policy a couple of months ago, but faced with a rapidly changing landscape might the previously unthinkable soon become not just thinkable but eminently sensible.

If the government works out the cost of a patient with certain ailments to the NHS, local authorities and social services et al., per year and then work out the life expectancy on average is for those affected, calculate the total cost to the public purse, then offer them a lump sum of 60% of the sum when their 80 and commit to die within two years. This figure would decrease by 3.5%% every year, so if you were 86 and finally came round to this, you’d get a lump sum of 39% of the average annual cost. That’d be the last age it would apply to. Everyone’s a winner, society, the government and the individual, given as how the average life expectancy for a UK national is 80.96 years. I haven’t yet worked out how this would be enforced but the idea’s sound.

You disagree? Oh grow up! How do you think life insurance companies work out their premiums? Or do you think actuaries are actors who perform Shakespearian tragedies? Why should the state have to pay to prevent nature taking its course? Why, given the challenges faced by the NHS don’t they implement an upper age limit beyond which any type of in-patient hospital care wouldn’t be allowed? Why is an old persons life as equal as a younger persons? Please explain it to me using words of four syllables or less, because this baffles me. The NHS is a resource like any other and like every other resource it isn’t finite.

If people did opt for government sponsored euthanasia it’d be the adult nappies, dementia and soft food years they’d be missing out on remember. Not a trip to Disneyland – the proper one mind, not the one in Paris. It would also put the nails in the coffin of the  suspicion that the Tory party have been unduly influenced by their membership, who tend to be old, male, white and comfortably off and not the overwhelming majority of people who voted for them, who are not.