Budget day today. Not the budget Rishi Sunak thought he was going to give, when he got the job a couple months’ ago, but a different one. This is the world’s first Coronavirus Budget. I think he’ll put a 20% tax increase on anyone getting the virus and then they’ll think twice before contracting it, or leave the country to avoid the tax hike. Either way its a win.

But for the first budget of a brand new government, with a massive majority in the House, we were waiting for the major ‘5 Year PLAN’ and the lofty projects and the HS2s and possibly 3s and then the 5G network, on the menu, just after the beef chop suey, and infrastructures and NHS and policing and all sorts of billions and billions. Instead we have plans for a virus.

Which is so BIG in our lives now, so absolutely MASSIVE a part of expectations, that it has taken over. So completely that they’ve done the unthinkable, the unimaginable, the impossibly NEVER! and cancelled a football match. Holy shit. That’s when you know its serious. Manchester City will NOT be playing Arsenal tonight because of Coronavirus. Sky TV must be thrilled. NHS Manchester must also be quite pleased and a bit relieved.

And all because Arsenal played Olympiakos recently and their owner has contracted the virus.

Which is the way it goes. The interconnectedness of people. A guy who plays tennis at my little club every Sunday (but THANK GOD not for a few months) has the virus. Got it in Italy. He’s a local dentist. His son went to a party on Saturday night, possibly not the brightest move, and oddly, there were quite a few people there. So yesterday a woman cancelled her appointment with my wife because her daughter was at that party and the woman is now ‘self-isolating’. A term we had never heard until one month ago and is now spoken 50 times a day.

The ‘seven degrees of separation’ never seemed so sinister. Kevin Bacon must be scared shitless. (That’s obscure but I’m sure it’ll mean something to someone).

So the budget has to plan now for unexpected billions on health. On helping businesses. On the crashing stock market. On mortgage relief.

And all for, basically, a cold.

Masks on, hand sanitisers at the ready, hands washed, its time to un-isolate.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx