IN 1960 the national debt was less than £100 billion.

For eight of the last ten years, the British government has had a deficit — that is to say, it has incurred more costs than its income.

The debt, estimated in March this year to be £1.84 trillion, about 20 times the figure of 60 years ago — and that does not include any provision for pensions accruing year on year.

The 2020 deficit works out at about £28,000 per head of the population, so we are not in a great state to bear the costs of coronavirus.

If only we had mended the roof while the sun was shining!

This is partly due to profligate politicians (who call spending money we haven’t got, austerity), but as much due to the voters, who tend to vote out any government who tries to improve the situation.

Well, that’s all water under the bridge. We have to start from where we are, not where we’d like to be.

Sadly, we don’t even know where we are because we know so little about this plague. We don’t know whether catching it gives immunity, or whether there will be a second wave.

The first wave is only being held in check by lockdown, and without experimenting with it, we cannot be sure the end of lockdown won’t let it rip.

The performance of the government has not filled us with confidence.

When Boris Johnson was enacting the two-metre rule and warning about shaking hands, he was seen to be ignoring both, with Dominic Cummings’s reasons for his trip north not finding public acceptance.

After Boris was stricken by Covid-19, the Cabinet seemed to be paralysed until he recovered. That can’t be right!

Other nations’ health services seem to have been more organised than ours, so I am resigned to the fact any suggestion the NHS is less than perfect will cause howls for criticising our doctors and nurses.

When the dust settles, there will be a post-mortem on our government’s decisions, medical strategies and preparedness, compared with those of other countries.

There has been no government comment on the ‘Cygnus’ war-gaming, which apparently showed the UK as badly unprepared.

When the government became aware of this new plague, it’s first strategy was to largely let it run its course — the hope being we would build up a ‘herd’ immunity.

When the severity and the infectiousness of coronavirus became known, it was clear the NHS would be overwhelmed, as the sufferers needing artificial ventilation far outnumbered the ventilators available.

There would have to be rationing and hard choices made, with talk of encouraging older victims to opt out of resuscitation, partly because it is much less successful with older people (my age group) — an intrusive process.

So the government changed tack and instituted the lockdown, at huge cost, for which our grandchildren will be paying.

Perhaps it was the wrong choice? Who was it who wrote: “An event has happened, upon which it is difficult to speak and impossible to remain silent.”

In my previous article, I asked who wrote: “The good ended happily — that is what fiction means.” which was by Oscar Wilde.