One of the most curious things about the death of Captain Tom Moore, is the enforced grief that is put upon us. I didn’t know Tom, but I will go with the benefit of the doubt and assume he was a nice chap. His laps around the garden caught the public eye and a lot of money was raised. That’s good, that is.

However, here are few of the things I heard regarding Tom Moore, yesterday.

“He bonded a nation in our darkest period”.

“He was the nation’s grandad”.

“He was literally the country’s heartbeat”.

“Tom was a hero in the true sense of the word”.

“The whole nation will be mourning the loss of Tom”.

To put this into perspective, Tom didn’t co-ordinate the little boats to undertake the Dunkirk evacuation. He walked around his garden, gained public attention, and raised £38 million. A remarkable achievement but telling the nation to go to their doorsteps and clap, was an awkward moment for a lot of people.

Enforced Mourning

To tell people whether they should be mourning someone they didn’t know, is, in my opinion, disingenuous. To then make those people feel bad if, in their own minds, clapping at their front door is not appropriate, smacks of grief fascism. It reminds me of when people get lambasted for not wearing poppies. This despite the Royal British Legion’s admiral efforts to tell anyone who can be bothered to listen, that wearing is a matter of choice in a democracy.

To make it even worse, politicians use it to their advantage, jumping on a nationalistic ‘We mourn as one Nation’ bandwagon. This in turn forces the issue with rival politicians who fear the wrath of The Daily Express if they don’t release their very own, “Alone, Tom faced down the power of the pandemic with Dunkirk spirit”, type speeches. They’ve seen what happened when Jeremy Corbyn’s glasses were a bit wonky at the cenotaph, so they dare not put a foot wrong. One false move and they are a commie dictator.

The Pandemic Parasites

Of course, for a government facing increasing intolerance with regards to its links with ‘pandemic parasites’, Tom’s death was timely. On a day when media outlets across the nation indulged in the death of Tom, Dido Harding was defending Serco Test & Trace.

Baroness Harding told Dawn Butler MP, that she currently spends £2.75 million of public money every day on private consultants. A bit of very basic number crunching calculates that Sir Tom walking around his garden will cover those costs for 15 days. Suddenly, nearly £40 million doesn’t seem that much.

Get the anti-Corruption Champion in!

As a show of respect to Tom, I think that the Conservative Party should investigate where all the money has gone. The Test & Trace system has been a disaster and the only excuse Harding can offer is that she didn’t see a mutation coming when everyone else did. Even her own MP, Greg Clarke, is saying the billions spent on Test & Trace was a business decision to avoid a second lockdown.  

So, with that in mind, it’s time to find out what has gone wrong. The only way to do this is to bring in the government’s appointed ‘Anti-Corruption Champion’, John Penrose MP. Penrose was appointed into this role in 2019 and is, you would think, the man for the job. He can even do it in a Covid safe environment in his own home. The home he shares with his wife, Dido Harding…you know, the lady who heads up Test & Trace.

What a strange coincidence!