Allison Pearson - Lockdown Meltdown

While our free and fearless press is experiencing cliff-edge falls in sales as a result of the lockdown, its roster of variously unappealing pundits has carried on very much as before, dispensing often questionable wisdom on a variety of subjects about which they often know very little, while continuing to trouser More And Bigger Paycheques For The Benefit Of Themselves Personally Now. But for one pundit, lockdown is taking its toll.

Aarghh! Jibber! JIBBER!!

To no surprise at all, the one pundit actually suffering as a result of seeing her bank balance benefit while she can stay at home and do even less than before is Allison Pearson, still considered employable by the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph. For Ms Pearson, lockdown is something from which she demands to be released. Because it is causing her to crack up. Her latest column says so.

“I don’t know about you, but I voted for a Conservative Government [serves you right then] which promised freedom, personal responsibility and economic competence [suckered you well and truly, then], not a draconian cabal paralysed by fear and secrecy”. Do go on.

“Confession time. On Saturday, I hit a wall. Uncontrollable crying jags, sadness rising like a flood within me, a bleak sense that the life I love was finished [Waitrose out of avocados again, are they?]. This was the wretched state that the mad, upside-down world we are now told is ours (it isn’t) had reduced me to”. Yes? Yes yes? Yes yes yes?

“And I live in a nice house with a garden, have rewarding work and people who care about me [not so sure about that, but carry on]. How do you suppose the millions who have none of those things are doing?” Not reading her columns, that’s what. But there is more.

“I had reached the end of my resilience [not so resilient, then], driven out of my wits by official obfuscation, a refusal to tell us the truth [you voted for this shower, don’t forget] … The only thing Mr Hancock is testing is our patience … I’m sick of it. Sick of the shroud-wavers warning that a ‘premature’ easing of the lockdown could see R go over 1”.

Yes, she’s sick of it. “Sick of young people, who are at no harm at all from the virus [no citation] being denied an education and the precious milestones of their youth [yeah, Eton not reopening till September, it’s a drag]. Sick of Tory-hating teaching unions saying schools aren’t safe enough [those rotten teachers not wanting to become martyrs, eh?]”.

And yet more sick. “Sick of the two-metre distancing rule which is a death sentence for tens of thousands of restaurants and pubs [which are all closed anyway]. Sick of a 14-day quarantine for airline passengers, starting next Monday, which is being introduced three months too late as if specifically to lay waste to a £200 billion aviation and tourism industry which provides work for four million men and women”. About whom she has not previously given a flying foxtrot. Look over there, I can’t go on holiday!

The real death toll from Covid-19 is most likely around 65,000 right now. It’s getting perilously close to exceeding the 67,000 civilian deaths across the UK during the entire duration of World War 2. And Allison Pearson is going wibble cos she can’t go on holiday.

Why won’t they think about the poor overpaid pundits? Who knows? And who cares?

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