SO ITS all change for all of us for our Christmas plans.

It gets over the months beyond comprehension why ever in the first place Boris Johnson took to declaring in November we could all relax and mix over Christmas.

Thumbs up to Jeff Williams making all these points in the lead letter in the Bournemouth Echo on Saturday.

And this in the starkest contrast to our MPs Burns, Syms, Elwood, and Chope, the past weeks chorusing as one voice “Open up open up”.

I find it very depressing that these MPs refuse to follow the science. Or simply do not understand cause and effect science.

We are not in the home straight until this virus is defeated. As it is, as we now know, a new strain has evolved with even higher infection rate transmissions.

That the infection rate was coming down in BCP and Dorset at the end of November was clearly because we had had three weeks of lockdown. That was not remotely a signal to open up again as our MPs were calling for.

In the contest between “Christmas disappointment” and huge losses for business, as against keeping us safe from this killer virus, the only option has to be keeping us safe.

And that means lockdowns with then minimum risk to everyone. No different to air-raid shelters in World War Two, except now we have to bunker down until the virus is defeated.

We are indeed in a world war and that is the only way to view the whole issue. As in any warfare analysis it was catastrophically wrong for the prime minister to think government could “predict” a month ahead.

All the more so when I week ago he was mocking the leader of the Labour party who was urging repeatedly not to open up for Christmas.

I then ask all in our towns, especially MPs and councillors, how then does the performance of this government for ten months, dealing with Covid, test and trace, and all else, bode for the future of Brexit management?

On the track record of this Johnson bluff and high stakes gambling government it is beyond me how can anyone think that Brexit, after four years bitter contention, can possibly have a good outcome.

If there was a way forward, not shot through with multiple contradictions, it would have been found many months ago, if not two years ago.

GERALD HETHERINGTON Portalington Road, Westbourne