EVERYONE’S new normal is different. For some it means working from home or queuing to get into the supermarket. For Sunday politics shows it involves spending the time before the lockdown review speculating about what might happen in the lockdown review.
The next review is due this Thursday. The Scottish and UK governments have already made it clear they see no major change to the current rules, so you may wonder what room there is for speculation. Acres and acres of it is the answer. With very little else on the news agenda other than coronavirus all those broadcasting hours must be filled somehow.
The Sunday papers helped with the speculation game by sending lots of hares running about what life might be like once restrictions are lifted. For a start, there are likely to be lots more queues, this time to get on a bus or train.
As it turned out, the Minister for the Sunday shows was Grant Shapps, UK Transport Secretary and a man best placed to talk about such matters. Or so you might think.
There are certain rules in the speculation game to which all players must adhere. On journalists’ part this involves beginning a question by saying you don’t expect AN Other minister to give a precise answer, then asking them to do just that. A questioner might say, for example. “I know you can’t tell us if schools are going to be back in June, but are schools going to be back in June?”
Since there is only so much of this a viewer can tolerate, the Sunday shows broadened their offerings by talking to a wider range of guests than in previous weeks.
The Andrew Marr Show has always dipped its toes in the arts as well as politics, and yesterday the presenter spoke to former Python turned world traveller Michael Palin, and the actor Eddie Marsan, about life during lockdown.
Michael Palin is among the contributors to a new book, Dear NHS. Adam Kay, author of This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor, had the idea of asking famous names to write a letter of thanks to the NHS, with money from sales going to charity.
The former Python said being in lockdown felt like “enforced retirement” and he was rather enjoying having an empty diary.
Marr asked how travel might change for everyone in a post-virus world.
“You can travel less and travel better,” said Palin. “If we have to be confined to travelling the UK it is not a bad place to travel. Go to places and learn more about them, enjoy them more. Find out more about your own country.
“It is going to be very difficult for people right across the world to travel again as they did before. Until they find a vaccine nobody is going to pack people into aeroplanes. There’s going to be no cheap and cheerful flights around the world.”
Palin was also asked about the possibility of people over 70 being told to stay in lockdown longer than younger groups.
“It’s a difficult call every time but you’ve got to be more selective here, because there are a great deal, a great number, of people in their 70s who are very active, very thoughtful, who’ve got lots of ideas, can contribute to our recovery.
“To treat them all as people who have to be sort of kept out of sight is going to be very difficult and very wrong and very unfair on a lot of people who want to help.”
On Ridge on Sunday, Ros Altmann, the former pensions minister, was similarly critical of “age discrimination” against the over 70s.
“It’s not OK to discriminate on grounds of gender, or obesity, or colour of skin, but everybody is saying, let’s think about somehow discriminating on the basis of age,” she said.
“This idea that just because someone is old that they are frail, they’re vulnerable, they are not fit or they are not worthy of the same treatment as other age groups is utterly wrong.”
The travel industry is not the only business going through major changes, as Marr’s interview with actor Eddie Marsan showed.
The star of Happy-Go-Lucky and 21 Grams can be seen on television later this week in one of ITV’s “Isolation Stories”, a series of short, 15-minute dramas filmed in actors’ own homes by their families. The idea came from Jeff Pope, the writer of Philomena and Stan & Ollie.
“The whole premise is to tell stories about what’s happening in everyday people’s lives but within the context of isolation and the difficulties that that brings,” said Marsan. His story, showing on Thursday, is about a man on a “garden visit” to his grandsons.
Marsan has worked with many directors, including Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg. This time, it was his wife Janine behind the camera.
“She was fantastic,” said the actor. “She really took it on. She was moving the cameras, moving the lights, doing the sounds, cooking the lunches, everything.” All that and home schooling four children. Give that woman an Oscar.
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