He then threatened me again before driving off. He may be correct that it was a sarky remark, but one made in a conversation with Daisy who helps with papers on Saturday, not said to his face, so he should not eavesdrop. If he had just said he was exempt I would have acknowledge with ‘cool’, I did not see any reason to apologise as my statement is correct – numbers are creeping up here, and in other places. basically a very rude man, and I do not like being physically threatened, he chose to make the remark about himself – not me, and he chose to be aggressive, if he had ignored us and gone on by we would not have referred to him at all, he was not part of the conversation.
But more concerning to me is how someone at 7.25am can become so angry so quickly. He also blamed ‘people like me’ for the continued lockdown – a conclusion he has come to after hearing one sentence of our 10 minute conversation. I feel sad that people can react in such a violent (fir verbal) manner. There really was no excuse for the verbal abuse and bad language in front of a 15 year old girl.
And the figures are going up in North Somerset from 36 per 100000 on the 14th March to 42 today, and Cornwall up from 12 to 17. Small increases I know but still increases. I do not envy the politicians at this point who have to decide the balance between the medical, the social, the mental health and the economic. My thoughts are that it would be good to wait before opening pubs, etc. but if we are waiting for numbers to go down more I suspect that is not going to happen. So vaccinate as many as possible by end of May and then make sure test and trace is actually working at 98% efficiency. The virus will be around so outbreaks will need to be contained. I suspect a vaccine passport will become essential so I hope the government has sorted this by now. The EU (which has been dire on vaccination) seem to have a sensible ‘passport’ type process that is not too invasive on personal freedom. The government has set a bench mark of 10 years for damaging a statue, so we could expect at least this for endangering public health by falsifying information?
Seriously it will need some radical improvements in the government relationships with some BAME groups to ensure they feel included in society.