Keep your distance

I was bemused to read in the paper, yesterday, that Boris Johnson is blaming the obesity crisis on the Church of England, his reasoning being that people are over-eating because the Church is not providing sufficient spiritual sustenance. 

I mean, I don't have a huge amount of time for the Church of England - as with other Christian churches, they don't seem to spend much time performing particularly Christian acts - but I think it's a bit of a stretch by Boris as he looks around for someone to blame for his own appetites. I'm not even convinced that he goes to church.

Perhaps not immediately apparently related, I also read an article about the fact that so many people are off work with long term illness in Britain. Prior to Covid, we had the second highest work attendance in the G7, and now we're last. 

Your common or garden Tory has naturally put this down to their prejudice that people would rather live on benefits than work. This argument is somewhat undermined by the fact that other members of the G7, such as France and Germany, have more generous benefit systems. 

What does tie these two articles together, however, is Johnson, who didn't seem to care much for other people during Covid, only achieving some passing empathy when he himself was ill. Unrestrained by the church, he was too busy enjoying himself. 

My feeling, unsupported by research or statistics, is that people here were, for the most part, simply left to get on with it. And consequently, I wonder whether the effects of long Covid have been felt here more than in other countries?

Anyway, I saw that sign on my way to the pool, this morning, after which I spent the day in the office. And the evening was taken up with the drive to London as we're at conference tomorrow. 

We arrived at our hotel at around ten o'clock - the Tulse Hill Hotel (pub, really) - so we had time for a couple of beers in the rather nice bar.