Day 17 of UK lockdown

Covid-19 continues to cause global devastation, both by the direct impact of the illness, and by the consequential societal disruption. Johnson is still in intensive care, and Britain is effectively leaderless. As the full impact of the government’s slow response to the unfolding pandemic becomes clearer, second under-donkey Gove adroitly heaps praise on the Civil Service for the fantastic job they’ve been doing in managing this crisis. Whether that is simply praise where it is truly due or cynically strategic stepping away from prospective blame is, as yet, unclear. 

What is clear however is the inappropriateness of the language of war and battle in describing our collective and individual engagement with the situation.  And of the constant focus, particularly by the British government & press, on how we’re doing compared to other countries. This is not a competition, let alone a war. This is an opportunistic virus which has spread rapidly though our globalised networks of trade and recreation, paying no heed to GDP or political persuasion. 

If anything, this is a time to be reflecting on the value of all the people who normally keep our systems working, not measured in terms of their salaries but in terms of their vital social function. Their value, not their worth. This is a time to recognise that we’re all in this together, not only in responding to a global pandemic, but even more importantly through the unavoidable interconnectedness of our entire global community.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/08/national-defence-corona-pandemic-fighter-jets

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/07/horror-coronavirus-real-imaginary-war-britain

Day 15 of UK lock down - designated survivor

Johnson remains in hospital. Probably almost everyone in the UK is wishing him a speedy recovery.

Day 14 of UK lockdown

Johnson & his cronies continue to work to the Brexit play book of jingoistic & dishonest sound bites, with help from the Titanic School of Risk Assessment.  Today the Queen is being wheeled out to add her praise of our plucky and world-leading Britishness, maybe because the incidence graph is now outstripping Italy’s much lamented performance at an equivalent stage of the viral spread.

However, the graph simply reflects tested cases,  & hospitalised deaths from within those cases. As a result of catastrophic mismanagement, the current rate of testing has only reached 0.03% of the UK population, so these statistics are virtually meaningless.

Day 11 of UK lockdown

Known global cases of Covid-19 nearing 1 million. Recorded deaths 44,000.

Continuing saturation coverage by the news media of rising numbers of confirmed cases and fatalities, of the day’s current version of what the newly re-respected experts are saying is the best way to manage the situation, and of the latest failures in the supply of essential protective & testing equipment. After all, it’s not as if pandemics have been recorded in history since the Plague of Athens in 430 BC, or that there’s been a recent cluster of zoonotic respiratory diseases to give us all a heads-up, otherwise we‘d have to conclude that all that expensive Eton & Oxford education in the current government is worth fuck-all in the real world.

With Prime Minister Winston de Pfeffel Johnson on a sickie, the daily parrot-of-spin slot has been passed to a sequence of swivelling underdonkeys - Raab, Govey, Sharma, to spout the current waffle about how all the zig-zagging and u-turns of Britain’s War Against Corona have been part of a meticulous forward-thinking strategy, just like the long term fragmentation and underfunding of the NHS & devaluing of essential service workers.

To put the fatality statistics into context, according to the World Health Organisation, 3.8 million premature deaths annually are attributed to ambient air pollution – mainly from the burning of fossil fuels, and 6 million children die of malnutrition each year. That’s not to diminish for one moment the catastrophe and tragedies unfolding around us but merely to reflect on the viral obliviousness to what lies behind our affluence in the so-called developed world.

Where were we ?

Free Atena - Free Speech in Iran

Atena Farghadani faces 12 years in prison after drawing members of the Iranian parliament as monkeys and cows.

http://www.amnesty.org.uk/iran-atena-farghadani-prison-cartoon-womens-rights-activist#.VX6ftflVhBc

#Draw4Atena

Climate complacency

A revealing chart on today's Independent news site:  http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/uk-and-us-main-barriers-to-addressing-climate-change-survey-finds-10303279.html - stepping over the also-revealing part of the web address "life-style/gadgets-and-tech" for a topic dealing with global meltdown.

Election Special Extra

Just in case, by some chance or unfortunate technical error, this doesn't make the mainstream news channels, all is not lost, even in London.......

http://www.presstv.com/Detail/2015/05/09/410239/Protesters--London-Conservatives

UK election & cognitive dissonance

Whilst the rest of Europe has been confronting the consequences of the 1939-45 world war with varying degrees of insight and self-awareness, Britain has been more focussed on its own current internal conflict, in a general election which has led to (at least) another 5 years of capitalist conservatism for the UK as a whole and, conversely, a massive victory for the progressive Scottish National Party. There are now more Trident nuclear submarines (4) based in Scotland than there are MPs who want them (3). And the same number of polar bears (3).

Cameron and his band of elitist greed-monkeys shouldn't feel too smug about their mandate though. Whilst 37% of voters (who were 65% of the electorate) did vote for them, that leaves 76% of the electorate who didn't. And just maybe maybe maybe, the forthcoming referendum about EU membership will lead to a similar political re-awakening in the rest of the UK as is happening in Scotland. 

UK general election May 2015

This is on Thursday. Probably not of great interest to anyone outside the UK, but it does seem to be heralding a real shake-up of the binary and pendular politics which have prevailed here for several hundred years. The catalyst for that change is Scotland, where a political renaissance and re-engagement has been growing steadily since the Scottish parliament was reconvened in 1999. Whilst being demonised and wilfully misrepresented by the two main UK political parties, and by most of the UK media, this "Scottish Spring" seems likely to spread. Here's hoping !