Sometime last month, I went to hire a van.
When I entered the rental office, there were about six people crammed in a small space and only the customer was wearing a mask.
Not a single one of the staff had on a mask.
I introduced myself and informed them that I had a reservation.
They asked me to sit, but I refused preferring to stand outside.
When they were processing my reservation, I was asked to go in and produce my license and proof of address.
I did and promptly went outside.
After a few minutes, the gentleman processing my reservation came outside to me and asked me a series of questions I thought were unusual for a vehicle rental place.
A few minutes later, his manager came and asked me those same questions.
I informed him that I had already provided the answers to his colleague.
He said if I refuse to answer him, he was going to cancel my reservation.
At first, I thought they were suspicious of me because of my colour.
However, in the course of our discussion, he said I was acting strange.
It then hit me.
Because I refused to sit in the crammed office with six of them without mask in the middle of a pandemic, I was the one acting strange.
Out of curiosity, when I returned the van, I asked one of them why he was not putting on a mask, he said because he wore glasses.
When he wears a mask, his glasses gets steamed up.
He obviously did not read the memo that stated that purpose of mask was to save his live, the lives of his love ones and the lives of others.
Boris Johnson is not Churchill…He is Peter Pan
In part one of this article series, I wrote about Boris Johnson behaving like an irresponsible parent.
The guys in the vehicle rental officer were not evil people intended on infecting me with coronavirus.
They are simply ignorant.
Brain Tracy once said, the first few years of our lives, our parents spend their time preventing us from killing ourselves.
Every parent knows exactly what he is talking about.
Boris Johnson is the father of the UK.
Instead of spending his time preventing people like the ones from the hire place from killing themselves, he is behaving like Peter Pan.
The only reason Mr. Johnson does not want to impose strict restriction on the UK is this, being Peter Pan, he knows he himself will not have the disciple to stick to whatever restriction he imposed.
It has nothing to do with his revulsion at dictatorship.
It simply has to do with disciple.
What About Terrorist?
There are lots of British citizens languishing in refugee camps in Syria.
I have never heard Mr. Johnson talking about bringing them home.
Rightly so, because they pose threat to the nation.
So, why is he now using his love for freedom as an excuse for not imposing the restrictions necessary to save lives?
It simply a matter of popularity.
He chose popularity over the lives of people.
It’s A Question of Framing
My father always told me.
“Romeo, where your rights stops, is where another person’s right begins”
What he was trying to tell me was, I have rights but I also have responsibilities.
The big problem we have in society today is, we all want right without responsibility.
Politicians keep preaching about the mental health impact of lockdown on people.
What they fail to acknowledge are the lives that are being saved because of the lockdown.
Yes, the lockdown is disrupting people’s lives, but it is also saving lives.
We cannot continue to live in a society where we only speak about rights without responsibility.
It is that type of attitude that is causing the level of death in the US.
Where people keep claiming they have right not to wear mask.
Unfortunately, they have a leader in the sharp of Boris Johnson’s pal another Peter Pan who is encouraging it.
Who was the wise person that said charity begins at home?
We can frame the restrictions as our individual charitable contribution to society or we can frame it as a punishment.
For once in our lives, we need to move away from the ‘me’ attitude to the ‘us’ attitude.
People are talking about climate change emergency, when hundreds of thousands of people are dying from pandemic.
The Case For Cancelling Christmas
Mr. Johnson aka Peter Pan under pressure from the medical community has reduced the Christmas restrictions to a single day.
It that enough?
Only if he told me he received intel that coronavirus plans to take the day off on Christmas day.
As long as the virus is still around, limiting gathering to a day is simply not good enough.
There are times in live when we need to do what is necessary not what is comfortable.
This is one of those times.
I recently watched a comedy by British-Iranian comedian Omid Djalili, in which he described the Brits attitude to decision making.
During the gig, Mr. Djalili compared the British decision making to that of a parachuting student who told his instructor that his parachute refuses to open.
When the instructor told him to use the emergency parachute, he said no, he has made his decision.
Use your imagination to conclude how that ended.
Mr. Peter Pan Johnson refused to listen to reason when he was first advised to cancel Christmas.
With pressure mounting, he decided just enough restriction was enough.
But it’s not enough.
We are at war with the virus.
Nothing but absolute decision will do.
Where the hell is Churchill when the British REALLY needs him.
An epidemiologist was asked if she thought cancelling Christmas was the right thing to do. Her respond was. this year should be a time of reflection not celebration.
I am saying to anyone angry about the concept of cancelling Christmas, with close to a million of our fellow human being dead, you might want to use Christmas day to reflect instead of celebrating.
There is a little boy or girl who is not going to have their parents to celebrate this Christmas with.
Reflect on that.
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