By Denis Sheehan, Publisher, H&C News
It is nigh on impossible to imagine the mental gymnastics required to pass a law banning something that harms millions of people and the same day bestow on a selected few, permission to arrogantly laugh at such a law behind closed curtains. The closed curtains in question being those of 10 Downing Street.
Yet, that is precisely what the Prime Minister managed on December 18, 2020.
The level of duplicity now required for such behaviour to be overlooked is staggering. The PM and his government seem to imagine they have donned a cloak of immunity to the electorate’s expectations of them possessing even a semblance of morality.
The hospitality and catering industry bore the brunt of economic impact from Covid-19 throughout 2020. The cost being the loss of good businesses, and the jobs and livelihoods of countless people.
As Christmas approached the PM forced hospitality and catering to close once more, during a period that traditionally made up much of a year’s profit, the profit to hopefully soldier on into 2021.
And while hospitality and catering businesses up and down the country closed their doors on December 18, 2020, guests were lining up outside 10 Downing Street for a Christmas party.
The level of hypocrisy enabled at 10 Downing Street that evening can only be matched by the intoxication of guest’s egos.
While you were closing your business, sending people who needed to work and earn money home unable to know where their next salary payment would come from, some were laughing and joking, eating Christmas nibbles and imbibing Christmas champagne.
The entire ensemble of organisers and guests that evening were rubbing more salt into the wounds of hospitality and catering businesses.
Today, we are expected to sit back and swallow a thinly veiled dismissal that such actions warrant investigation. Those meek hospitality and catering folk will once again just suck it all up.
Perhaps if any similar rules banning Christmas festivities within hospitality and catering are passed in the days and weeks ahead, the PM and his government’s actions in 2020 set a clear legal precedent they can be ignored?
News from the hospitality and catering industry is also being featured extensively in our Facebook and twitter social media accounts with the opportunity to engage with others in hospitality and share your views.
Hospitality & Catering News: Government sets clear legal precedent for hospitality to ignore closing for Christmas 2021. – 5 December 2021 – Government sets clear legal precedent for hospitality to ignore closing for Christmas 2021.
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