Happy Monday? End Of Lockdown ISN’T

Once again, our free and fearless press has combined with spinners for alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson to create a predictably lethal cocktail of false hope. From rumours yesterday that the “Stay at home” mantra was to be dropped, the 24 hour news speculatron has been cranked to the max, with the result that readers are being told that the lockdown is more or less over. The problem is that it is not.

That has not deterred the Murdoch goons at the Super Soaraway Currant Bun from bawling “Lockdown Joy Next Week … HAPPY MONDAY … Go out to exercise all you like … Sit in park 2m from your pals … Pubs, cafes plan to open gardens” (the last of those is total crap). Oh, and new slimline Adele in a short dress. I mean, phwoarr!

The giveaway - that the lockdown isn’t really going to end - comes with a hint from the Daily Star as it shrieks “MAGIC MONDAY” before cautioning “Easing of lockdown could start in 4 days”. COULD, not WILL. And a different Adele in a short dress pic. Don’t dwell on the headline, because, well, phwoarr! So is the Mail on the same track?

It certainly is: the inmates of the Northcliffe House bunker have proclaimed “HURRAH! LOCKDOWN FREEDOM BECKONS … ‘Stay home’ slogan and once-a-day exercise rule scrapped … Picnics, part trips and countryside outings back on”. And an even bigger photo of new slimline Adele in a short dress. Ignore the spin, cos, well, phwoarr!

Only when the detail is studied do we see that the substance of the stories does not support the headline - as so often with the Fourth Estate. Rules “will start to be eased”. Bozo will “outline proposals”. Only the Mirror shows how far there is to go, and that this is likely to be a “Staggered easing plan” lasting “From Monday till October”.

That there will be little initial change is the conclusion of former DfE advisor Sam Freedman: “As far as I can tell from piecing together the briefings to different papers we're not actually going to see much of a reduction in lockdown for the rest of May. The only real change will be greater permission to be outside to some degree or another”.

There is more. “This seems consistent with the evidence base we have so far that outside transmission is rare” [see HERE] … "Beyond that little will change because we don't yet have the test/trace/isolate infrastructure in place; though it should be by mid-May. At least in terms of testing and human contact tracers. There seem to be issues with the tracing app [my emphasis]”. So why the screaming headlines?

“What Govt comms people are doing are treating it like a fairly shit set of budget announcements and pre-briefing the small bits of additional freedom; which the press then magnify to hyperbolic extremes … Needless to say this is an extremely bad comms strategy for a major health crisis where the primary need is absolute clarity and transparency. But it's how Governments know to do comms sadly. (And it's possible the papers got over-excited + went further than briefers intended)”. Sounds about right.

For the vast majority of us, there will be little change, unless you want to exercise twice a day instead of once, or get your arse wet sitting down in the park. That’s the reality.

No normal until October at the earliest. With or without Adele’s makeover. The end.

Enjoy your visit to Zelo Street? You can help this truly independent blog carry on talking truth to power, while retaining its sense of humour, by adding to its Just Giving page at

https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/zelostreet6