Day 45 of UK lock down: Dead cat day

32,000 people in the UK have so far died as a result of the virus – putting the country at the top of the league table of deaths in Europe. Dominic Raab predictably brought his

junior barrister’s mind into gear to point out that the positioning on the league table is just speculative and not to be taken literally. Fair enough Dom, but 32,000 deaths juxtaposed onto the UK government’s slow and inept handling of the crisis is not speculative and should be taken very seriously indeed, regardless of how we compare to Italy.

Similarly, the sensitive Matt Hancock has reportedly been left speechless by the news, smeared all over the British press, that one of the government’s top scientific advisors contravened the lockdown guidance and had a social visit from a friend. By implication, and comparison, Mr Hancock must be a man of great integrity, which makes what he has been up to when not sweating in front of the daily bulletin cameras all the more breathtaking – steadily transferring large chunks of our heroic NHS to the private sector in the midst of this crisis. That’s the same NHS that we’ve been told to save and applaud, whilst trying not to think about its woeful lack of funding.

#hypocrisy  #LedByDonkeys  #disastercapitalism

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 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

Day 24 of UK lock down: truth in the time of Covid-19

According to Felipe Fernández-Armesto, the pursuit of truth is "the quest for language that can match reality." He identifies four key methods of determining the truth - what we feel, what we are told, what we figure out, and what we observe. Applying the correspondence theory of truth, favoured by Socrates, Plato & Aristotle, to those methods, if a message corresponds to the actual state of affairs, then it is true.

Yet, each new day of the pandemic brings more politicians making public statements which are either so vague that they have no tangible content, or so demonstrably disconnected to reality that it makes your head spin.  

It’s probably fair to say that waffling and lying are not new human character traits, but now we can all do our own fact checking from the saturation media coverage. When Matt Hancock denies the initial UK strategy of herd immunity, or when Trump claims to have taken the pandemic seriously since January, it’s easy to find proof that they are talking bollox. What’s more worrying is the question of why they think they can get away with it.