28 Apr 2021 Did Prime Minister Boris Johnson say – or did he not say – that he would ‘rather let the bodies pile high in their thousands’ than order yet another lockdown? Johnson has denied it. Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Michael Gove is saying that he ‘never heard’ Johnson saying it and that ‘the idea that he would say any such thing I find incredible.’ Other anonymous Westminster insiders are swearing blind that Johnson did say it. But frankly who cares? The fact that this question is currently the main topic of debate in British newspapers speaks volumes about just how debased our political and media culture has become; and also, worse, about the degree to which it is now dominated by the kind of headbanger who would happily keep the entire country masked, locked down, socially isolated and quarantined for all eternity rather than countenance a return to the ‘Old Normal’ most of us surely so sorely miss.