Being the eldest of three boys, I often got the blame for things that went wrong, both in the house and in the garden.
Apparently, it was my fault that my middle brother tried to eat a snail from the garden as I had told him that French people ate them in restaurants. To say my mother was not amused was an understatement, as she immediately washed his mouth out with diluted Dettol.
It was not until I left school that I realised that you could blame things as well as people. In 1970 Johnny Johnson and The Bandwagon had a top 10 hit with (Blame It) On The Pony Express and the chorus of the song was: ‘There's nothin' I can do if it don't get through, just blame it on the Pony Express.
There's nothin' I can say if it goes astray, blame it on the Pony Express.’ Blame, as described in the Cambridge Dictionary, is ‘to say or think that someone or something did something wrong or is responsible for something bad happening’. I have noted in later life that people are very reticent to accept the blame for anything, preferring instead to blame someone or something else.
Personal responsibility is a thing of the past, perhaps? I quote from the newspaper article where James Anderson, during the recent second test in the Ashes series before the match was over, stated: ‘Don't blame the bowlers for England’s Ashes disaster’.
Although not recorded as such, blame is now a convenient word for not responsible, so it is hardly surprising that Coronavirus has been used and blamed for many actions. You will all remember the first lockdown commencing in March 2020.
In late January/early February of 2020, Chinese companies that had offices in Hong Kong restricted or banned movement between the mainland and Hong Kong. This, as you may remember, was about the time that two coachloads of people were being returned to the UK after a skiing holiday to be sent to isolate, all wearing face masks, with Public Health England in full protective clothing. If you examine the photographs in the press, you will notice that neither of the coach drivers had any personal protective clothing, otherwise known as PPE, and when questioned it was stated that wearing PPE and driving a coach was not advisable.
So to the point…well sort of. I'm just going to list some of the ridiculous and outrageous excuses I've been given blamed on COVID: ‘Sorry sir, you cannot have a double expresso with breakfast because the espresso machine is in the bar area and only bar staff are allowed behind the bar and they do not commence work until midday’; ‘Sorry sir, we no longer serve nibbles with drinks due to COVID and we no longer serve draught beer due to COVID!’; ‘Sorry sir, we no longer take cash due to COVID!’ - this, by the way, is against the law as cash is still legal tender.
So, recently, if any of you, like me, have travelled within the UK for business or pleasure you will have found that check-in times in hotels seem to have moved from around 14:00 hrs to anything between 15:00 and 16:00 hrs. Extra cleaning for COVID and special hygiene measures are blamed for this and the main reason is due to a severe shortage of housekeeping staff. This is a problem that will not be solved anytime soon, so until then we'll just have to keep playing the ‘blame game’.
About the contributor

Stan Atkins
CEO
BICSc