Day 49 of UK lock down: More Oliver Hardy than Winston Churchill

Stay alert – for what ?

For sub-microscopic infectious agents lurking in dark doorways ?

For more absurd hyperbole being used in an attempt to distract from the hypocrisy & failures ? (5 points for every use of fantastic, amazing or world-leading)

For Johnson and his mendacious crew of Brexit-monkeys giving back-door bailouts to the aviation industry in their rush to get back to planet-wrecking business as usual ?

For desperate trade agreements with the US being snuck in through the back door whilst nobody is looking ?

Day 41 of UK lock down: Just Stop Lying

The lock-down is giving a good opportunity to reflect and prepare for what comes next, but the uncertainties are so bewildering, that it’s difficult to focus.

 However, what seems as certain as night following day is that the UK’s Conservative government will continue to spin and lie in response to every challenge. Johnson’s track record of lying is thoroughly recorded, as is that of Gove , Raab, Patel,  and Hancock. Yet they keep going. The tactic, from the same dezinformatsiya black propaganda  & disinformation playbook that has worked for Trump, Putin, Bolsonaro,  seems to be to spout whatever bollox suits the narrative of the moment, in the hope that more people will believe it than not, before quietly withdrawing it later when attention is elsewhere.

The Tories did it about Brexit. They’re doing it about Coronavirus. And they’ll be doing it about the climate and ecological emergency when it’s back on the mainstream agenda.

Extinction Rebellion’s first demand is Tell the Truth. Not complicated but massively important. This is reality we need to confront, not some computer game.  If we allow lies and spin to become the norm of discourse, then we are simply, and comprehensively, screwed.

Day 39 of UK lock down: Smoke, Mirrors and Walpurgis Night

So far the UK government public response to Covid-19 has focused on vague concepts of Britishness, determination, wrestling, and a nice old chap who’s been walking up and down his garden. The motivation is probably two-fold, in part to deflect attention from the uncomfortable and scandalous behind-closed-doors underbelly of the real response, and partly to maintain the myth of British exceptionalism for when the headlong rush to a catastrophic hard Brexit re-emerges into the daylight from behind the pandemic.

Vagueness and lack of attention to the truth are characteristics of the politics of personality much used to prop up dominant conservative ideologies. As a conjuring trick, its success does rather depend on the charisma of the politician, which has evidentially been a problem for the charisma-free UK government during Prime Minister Johnson’s frequent absences from office. Johnson’s stooge Raab had all the conviction and charisma of a UPVC window salesperson at Prime Minister's Questions 29 April 2020, when confronted by a real grown-up politician in the form of Keir Starmer – who is one of the few silver linings in the political clouds currently sitting over Westminster.

Tonight is Walpurgis Night when pests, smoke, and useless politicians are traditionally chased away to clear the air. If only !

Read a detailed and precise account of the UK government's shameful pandemic response here

Day 36 of UK lock down: Johnson's return

Johnson, B is back in Downing Street, with a note from Matron to excuse him from answering any difficult questions about Cummings cherry-picking the scientific advice, about not treating the public like adults, about lying about herd immunity strategy, or about opportunistically accelerating towards a crash-out from the EU. And he’s to stay indoors at playtime, and restrict his public statements to occasional crowd-pleasing soliloquies about pluck, heroism and other uniquely British qualities, which have already created a patriotic flutter amongst much of the UK press, especially those outlets owned by billionaires and aristocrats. Young master Hancock is also very relieved.

Analysis of today's Johnson waffle here

Day 32 of UK lock down: Pinning the Tale on the Donkeys

In an attempt to deflect the tidal wave of blame looming over this inept and mendacious UK government, Dominic Raab boasted at PMQs yesterday: ”People said that we couldn’t build a hospital in this country at that kind of speed, and we’ve built several, with more to come.”

Unsurprisingly, he neglected to mention the 100,000 unfilled staff vacancies arising from 10 years of neglecting the NHS, which mean that there aren’t enough ICU staff for those new hospitals, and patients are being turned away (see report here). Not to mention the homicidal negligence shown by the government with regard to PPE procurement, so even if there were available staff, they’d be inadequately protected (See Philip Pullman's excellent essay on the subject here).

More proof, as if it were needed, that we can’t rely on Johnson & his cronies to lead the country anywhere other than a crashing out of the EU. (See analysis here) Except when it comes to keeping access to Europol databases, obvs (See report here)

One bit of good news is that the Labour party seem to have elected an effective leader of the opposition, capable of holding the complacent and useless bastards to account.

Day 27 of UK lock down: something else to clap for

To be fair, most countries were ill-prepared for the Corona pandemic. In Britain, the situation has been exacerbated by a government formed from insouciant, Brexit-fixated, exceptionalists who apparently felt that the dastardly virus would think twice before daring to arrive in the land of Horatio Nelson and Winston Churchill. And anyway, pouring vast amounts of money & effort into white elephant vanity projects like HS2 gave much more instant gratification in Downing Street than all that boring forward planning. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/17/hs2-white-elephant-coronavirus-recession-conservatives?

 Against this woeful background, something positive and important has just happened. Mercedes-AMGHPP have collaborated with mechanical engineers and clinicians from University College, London and, in less than 100 hours, developed an open-source, easily reproducible breathing aid for Corona patients.

As an example of collective and generous positive action this will be important to remember when the pandemic has passed and we are re-focussing on the technical obstacles to reducing GHG emissions as a matter of life-threatening urgency.

Day 25 of UK lock down: preparing to race to the bottom

There are several convincing economic forecasts that suggest we could be heading for a post-pandemic global recession as bad, if not worse, than that of the 1930s. We have also recently seen how lack of cooperation with the EU has led the UK to be even further behind in procuring adequate amounts of PPE for NHS and care workers.

Nevertheless, the cabal of fuckwits in Downing Street have concluded that, somehow, Covid-19 increases the case for avoiding regulatory alignment with the EU and for hastening down the path towards a no-deal Brexit, with all the additional economic damage that will bring.

Whether this is a true reflection of what they are pursuing, or just some mad and divisive negotiating stance designed to disorientate their EU counterparts, probably won’t be clear until Hogmanay, but neither option bodes well for the future.

https://www.newstatesman.com/covid19#update-324263