WFH will bust businesses and make people lonely. What’s the point?

We are sitting in a bar, the four of us, having a business meeting. The table is small, as is the wont of bars. We’re not wearing face masks. We can sit here for hours, until the place closes, if we wish. Lest you think we’re irresponsible, as it happens we’re all triple-jabbed. But even so, it’s absurd that Boris Johnson would prefer we did not get together in an office, in an airy boardroom, sitting further apart. In the corner, a man is tapping away at his laptop – this is his work environment. Likewise, others around us, judging by the notebooks and papers on display, are holding what are clearly business, not social, meetings. There are more folks, too, huddled over their laptops and tablets.

This is the lunacy of the Prime Minister’s rushed and ill-thought through proposed measures to combat the new Covid variant. In the past we were instructed to stay out of pubs and bars unless it was a business meeting. Now, we’re told to keep away from our offices, so people are holding their business meetings in pubs and bars.

This, despite many workplaces having taken steps, at considerable expense, to render their premises Covid-safe. They’ve installed Perspex screens, sanitiser stands, moved desks to be more than two metres apart and educated their employees in all the protocols. And guess what? Their staff want to be there, especially the younger ones who share flats and do not have space in which to work at home and who enjoy and want the face-to-face company of their colleagues.

They’d got used to returning to work, life was back to normal, firms were seeing their staff again, a buzz was redeveloping – then, bang, it’s back to square one.

Not only for them, but also for the myriad businesses that depend upon offices being occupied and functioning – all the sandwich bars, florists, taxi services, couriers, cleaners, dry cleaners, the list goes on. And the shops, too, that rely upon bustling streets, full of workers on lunch breaks or on their way to and from their homes. And the theatres and cinemas, and yes the bars and restaurants, that look to office workers for their custom. At a stroke, the Prime Minister has consigned them to desolation and misery.

Of course, there is a danger in commuters crowding on to trains, buses and in London, the underground. But everywhere, there are signs imploring travellers to wear masks, there are repeated PA announcements voicing the same. There is sanitiser aplenty. Apparently, this is not enough – WFH is the order. Which makes a mockery of masks and sanitiser and all the other socially distanced rules in place at stations and on public transport. What are they for? Boris and his scientific advisers say forget them, and work from home.

When Covid first hit, we did not have the masks and the measures. Now we have, and the majority of people abide by them. I ask again, what are they for?

What we’ve got here is fudge, a government that is listening to the science and at the same time is reluctant to impose full sanctions. What we’ve got, in effect, is neither one thing nor the other. Confusion and chaos reign.

Even putting aside the fact that the vaccinated are having to do their utmost to protect those who choose not to be vaccinated (there are the vulnerable who cannot be jabbed, but they’re in the minority and they should be shielded), this seems a crazily haphazard approach. Try as I might to resist it, the image posited by Dominic Cummings of Johnson pushing a trolley and lurching from side to side in a supermarket aisle, only hardens by the day.

It ignores as well that while the NHS must be maintained at all costs, the health service itself is not fit for purpose and was conceived when our population was smaller, lived short lives and there was not available expensive technology and treatments. But in the private polling the political parties conduct regularly, one subject comes top as gripping the British electorate. The NHS is far ahead of anything else. It must be preserved at all costs, in aspic if needs be. It must not be allowed to fail.

What sort of healthcare are we left with, however, when the backlog of vital consultations and procedures grows and grows, when cancer patients cannot get the therapies they so urgently require, and all because our hospital beds may soon be full with those who chose not to be vaccinated? It’s a system, too, that pays little heed to the mental health and wellbeing of the thousands now pushed into loneliness, forbidden from going into work, which provided them with social stimulation.

While this is playing out, our town and city centres resemble ghost towns. Our subsidised public transport systems, too, become eerily abandoned. I live right by a railway line in South West London. During previous lockdowns we were treated to the sight of trains going up and down the track, with just a handful of passengers, often several carriages were completely empty.

I can get the rationale for much of what is occurring. WFH, though, is baffling. It really does not make sense.