It’s crept in, unannounced and stares us in the face. Have you noticed?
Ministers, facing the cameras, from their offices, kitchens and cupboards under the stairs, have all acquired a Union flag in the background.
Look closely, they still have the creases in them… folded up in the post.
A Brexit thing? Wrapping yourself in the flag might make you impervious to Covid? Dunno…
This contrived display of patriotism occurred at the same time as the arrival of Allegra Stratton, as No10, press secretary. Perhaps she has a cousin with a flag factory, or a Boudicca complex or just run out of gimmicks? She isn’t doing the daily press briefings we were promised.
Nadhim Zahawi, the Minister for Jabs, broadcasts with a flag leaning against Mrs Zahawi’s dining room, onyx curtains. It’s not a good look.
Note, the Minister for Jabs’ flag is to his left, on the right of our screens. Everyone else has them the other way around… is it a signal? What is he trying to tell us? We need a vexillologist.
The Minister for Jabs is not the world’s greatest communicator. He looks spectacularly frightening on my telly.
Most of what he says is wrapped in effusive admiration for the NHS front-line and he’s picked up some management phrases, such as ‘line-of-sight’.
He speaks a lot but doesn’t say very much… which is a skill. Annoying, but a skill.
What he should be saying is;
‘… this is a very complex task, the biggest our nation has ever attempted, it’s going well. Yes, there are still some 90 year olds who haven’t had a jab… but we are getting to them.’
It was left to the snide, BBC Today Programme, to spring on Jabs, a GP who got emotional about not having enough vaccines.
The answer is; ‘Get a grip, there’s a lorry-load heading down your street.’
The BBC’s funereal, Hugh Pym seemed genuinely disappointed not be able to find fault with the vaccine roll-out.
The NHS is managing 140 jabs a minute, that’s about two for every heartbeat. Someone, somewhere will run out of jab-juice or get ahead of the game and have to hold-back until the rest catch up. Otherwise, some parts of the country will be vaccinating new-born whilst others are still hunting down yer granny.
Give it time, it will equalise.
Forget the Pfizer stuff, it’s too complicated to store and fiddle about with. The Oxford-AZ stuff is just like a flu-vaccine and what the NHS is used to delivering.
Vaccines aren’t easy to make, you have to, sort of, grow them, under specific conditions and within the purview of a regulator, not known for being nimble. Give it time, the flow will ramp-up.
We are in a critical phase of ridding our lives of Covid.
The law and the legal bits are in place; lockdown, travel restrictions and all the rest.
The technical bit is sorted; we are better at modelling and forecasting.
The pharma bit is done; we have three vaccines and the supply-side will get more robust.
Now, it’s all about attitude.
Our attitude to the legal bits, that’s called compliance.
Our attitude to forecasting, accepting it may not always be right-on-the-money but the central drift can’t be ignored and...
Our attitude to vaccine supply… we are putting together a supply-chain bigger than the supermarkets, with more outlets.
Attitude, the basis of everything in our lives; how we react when things go wrong, our ability to learn and grow, overcome adversity and how we react to our fellow citizens, is all… attitude.
It’s the NHS that’s rolling out vaccine delivery and the NHS has a very good attitude.
Unlike the furtive DH, glory hunting Number 10, private contractors working at mates-rates or a jigsaw of interfaces, set to trip us up.
It’s not even Minister Jabs… his job is to keep out of the way.
It’s attitude, at the beginning of a tricky task that, more than anything else impacts success.
The time has come for us all, the press, the nit-pickers and the naysayers to take responsibility for our attitudes and recognise, good people are doing a great job, busting a gut to make this happen, and it will.
I'm hearing - No 18, is going to Cornwall for his summer holidays and says: "I think we are going to have a great British summer". Let's hope he's right.
I'm hearing - Four million vaccine doses have been delivered.