Mwalimu-G
Elder Lister
Stephen Collinson and Caitlin Hu
'Once you’re through the door, there’s no more Covid'
Restaurants have been shuttered since last year and France has plunged into another lockdown amid a fresh Covid surge, leaving gastronomes slumming it at home. The thought that those with means can buck the system is too much to bear. But if government ministers are involved, it will be a true scandal.
It also wouldn’t be the first time that those in power who lay down the lockdown law have effectively said do as I say, not as I do.
In the United States, the Democratic mayor of Austin, Texas, Steve Adler, flew to a Mexican beach resort after telling residents to stay home. Republican Sen. Ted Cruz lambasted Adler, but that didn’t stop him later flitting off to Mexico himself — while his constituents were in the dark after power outages caused by a freak snowstorm. California Governor Gavin Newsom often slapped restrictions on a state ravaged by the pandemic. But he was caught in a posh restaurant chowing down with lobbyists in November. Of course, the king of all rule breakers was Donald Trump — who disastrously undermined his own government’s response to the worst public health crisis in 100 years by mocking masks and holding super spreader rallies.
But perhaps the most celebrated show of hypocrisy was when Dominic Cummings — an ex-adviser to British PM Boris Johnson — drove more than 250 miles with his family to the northern town of Barnard Castle, as the Downing Street operation he ran with an iron fist told Britons to stay indoors.
It doesn’t take much to get the French on the streets. So if new details blow the lid off the scandal we might see the hoi polloi gathering outside the underground restaurants demanding their own helpings of lobster and foie gras. To which the retort might come from within: Let them eat cake
