Recently, I mentioned that when the face mask rules were due to be scrapped on 19 July, I hadn’t yet decided how I was likely to proceed.
Since writing that, I did decide how I was going to proceed based on one of my pupils coming down with COVID, and three others having to isolate, all in the space of a few days. I have been making it clear to all of mine that I will still expect them to wear face masks.
On my last lesson today, after relating all this to a pupil, I explained that me wearing a mask gives him at least a very small amount of extra protection if I am carrying the virus, and him wearing one gives me the same small amount of extra protection if he is. And any extra protection is better than none at all. He wholeheartedly agreed, as have all the others – even the one whose mother is a complete nutjob anti-vaxxer.
But when I got home and checked the latest news, I saw that face masks will still be advised in indoor settings and enclosed spaces in a U-turn by the government.
There are quite a few driving instructors out there who are as intelligent as a Gumby, and who have spent the whole of the last 15 months or so assuming the pose in the picture above and boasting that they’re working during lockdown, not wearing masks, not asking pupils to wear masks, and doing bad sums along the lines of half an orange plus three quarters of a lemon is equal to six onions (because they saw it on a nutjob channel on YouTube or Facebook and liked the sound of it). The previous news that face mask rules would be lifted provided them with an opportunity to go all Gumby, and tell everyone pointlessly yet again that they’d never worn them.
So I guess they will still continue to break the rules and show how unprofessional (and stupid) they are.
The same Gumbys are also on a rant right now about how car parks at many DVSA test centres have alternate bays coned off as part of social distancing measures. Does that mean cars can catch COVID, they ask, as they push the warped agenda they’ve tried to disseminate for the last year.
The spacing is so that those getting into and out of the cars remain distanced from each other. You have to be really stupid not to realise that. But as I say, these are driving instructors with issues we’re dealing with.