• THE concept of key workers has become a respected and necessary term in this fight against Covid-19.

It is a term used for those people essential to our health and lives, health workers, food shop workers, food delivery people etc.

So it is distasteful to see the council debasing this term by calling its road workers “key workers”, in particular its road workers in Brunswick Square.

The leader of the council knows full well, from a stormy meeting in the Town Hall, that this expensive, unnecessary, and crass modernisation of the historic Brunswick Square, which will disadvantage older and disabled people and increase pollution, is locally hated.

In an ill-judged attempt to lend legitimacy to this unpopular project they are now making the workers wear “key worker” jackets.

I asked one of them if they worked for the health service. But no, just doing road works for the council.

Abusing this term, which has almost hallowed status in this time of pandemic, is a shabby and unconvincing public relations trick. And incidentally these workers were not wearing key worker jackets until just recently.

How come they suddenly became “key”? Or maybe some council spin doctor suddenly came up with this not-so-bright idea?

NICKY COATES
Co-Chair, Bloomsbury Residents’ Action Group