JANET STREET-PORTER fears pub-bound Brits this weekend

What are your plans for so-called Super Saturday this weekend? If you’ve any sense, don’t leave home.

July 4th might spell freedom for some, but – based on recent displays of social distancing on the streets of Brixton, the beaches of Bournemouth and the swampy ponds on Hackney marshes – the partial reopening of pubs and restaurants will encourage huge crowds to gather, along with illegal music, freely available drugs, dangerous fireworks and an outnumbered police force trying and failing to contain the inevitable anti-social behaviour.

The end result will be mountains of litter, lakes of vomit, and plenty of poo as our public toilets remain firmly shut.

I value my health so I plan to be several miles from any pub or anyone holding a plastic beaker of piss-coloured liquid wearing a football shirt and baggy shorts.

I’m avoiding the so called ‘freedom fighters’ who are desperate to demonstrate what’s great about Britain by sinking 10 pints of lager and chanting footie songs.

This barmy army wants to ‘celebrate’ the end of lockdown – but it will be a false victory.

For the last 100 days the UK has soldiered on through the pandemic – first, we ‘stayed safe’ and then we tried to understand what ‘staying alert’ meant.

We tolerated being patronised as if we were kids in reception classes. Oldies have been made frightened, then cautious and now increasingly bored. We’ve worn masks, sprayed ourselves copiously with sanitiser, and tried not to hug. But we’re not ‘free’ of covid by a long way.

Ninety per cent of the population stuck to the confusing rules issued by those in charge of managing (some would say mis-managing) the UK’s response to coronavirus.

The other 10 per cent of the population (mostly under 30) couldn’t give a toss. If the sun was out, they were out loafing in their thousands. Meanwhile, 43,000 people have died – that’s 642 out of every million, the second worse rate of fatalities on the planet.

We’ve hardly ‘beaten’ the virus, to use a phrase much loved by our Prime Minister. It’s beaten us and we still have no vaccine.

Scientists say there is no end in the short term, and now a second spike in contagion has seen the city of Leicester become the first to reimpose a local lockdown.

By June Brits were fed up, but still compliant as covid deaths kept coming, albeit in reduced numbers. The peak seemed to have passed – so time for a sensible easing of restrictions?

Sadly, Britain doesn’t have Captain Sensible at the helm, but a buffoon who seeks to dominate the news with pranks and put downs. He’s a crowd-pleaser. But the people he wants to please are in business, not citizens on low incomes, people with no shares, no second homes and no savings. Boris has had to weigh up the nation’s health versus its ability to stay afloat financially.

Big Business threatened huge job losses if Britain didn’t go back to work. Then the travel industry started bleating, and the brewers joined in. Saving pubs and protecting the public’s right to a cheap air ticket became more important than saving lives.

We opened Primark before most primary schools. In the hands of the inept Gavin Williamson, who used to be in charge of a company who made casseroles, the Department for Education still can’t sort out how to get every school open until autumn so kids can grow up as employable citizens. But the government is quite happy to ignore the risks associated with re-opening places selling booze.

Tory toffs know that the plebs need to be kept happy over the coming weeks because huge redundancies are imminent, and furlough pay and mortgage holidays are coming to an end.

So how best to deliver some gorgeous good news? The man I wouldn’t trust to run my local corner shop has come up with hastily concocted plans to ‘save’ the leisure and brewing industries, probably while running with the dog around Buckingham Palace and demonstrating push-ups to an incredulous reporter.

Anxious to show he’s now recovered from his covid experience (made worse because he was chronically obese), Boris has tried to combine photo opportunities with ‘policy’ devised on the hoof.

He’s gone for a coffee in a deserted shopping mall on a Sunday and found the time to chat on a new radio station owned by The Times.

He’s emulating the nation’s lockdown gym bunny Joe Wicks, announcing a new obsession with health, advocating gastric bands on the NHS, and a national exercise regime.

Yes, the same man who opposed a sugar tax claims he’s now ‘fit as a butcher’s dog’. Even Labour’s Keir Starmer has risen to the bait to join in the macho-man posturing with a push-ups challenge.

And something for the ladies? Weddings can go ahead, as long as you don’t hug, only invite 30 socially-distanced guests and do a lot of sanitising.

Instead of obeying a lot of silly rules why not just get married on a crowded beach and pop down to the Dog and Duck and join in the drunken celebrations there?

This weekend, thousands of police have been placed on standby. A spokesman said: ‘British people basically can’t be trusted to go down the pub and have a drink without fighting… re-opening boozers on a day when there was televised football is a recipe for disaster’.

I haven’t found a single woman who reckons their life will be enriched by a trip to the pub this Saturday, getting drunk standing around for hours clutching warm beer and staring at a giant screen.

Opening the pubs on a hot Saturday in summer and pretending it’s a second VE day could only be dreamt up by a pig-headed male member of this species whose recovery plan basically boils down to ‘drink and be merry for tomorrow we may die’.

So enjoy it while you can. It’s going to be one hell of a hangover when the second wave hits.