What Do You Think Today?

[peter]

Watching the evening news on the BBC this evening was a soul-destroying affair. They started with a report from Newcastle city center pub in which a desultory scattering of tables were occupied by a small number of sad looking drinkers - a soulless shadow of the vibrant buzz that would have previously pertained in this normally fizzing city. They then went on to say how fantastic it was for those who have been waiting to get married, that they are now allowed to do so, showing a church service with the bride sanitising her hands before walking alone up the aisle, a largely empty church hollow to the echoing sounds of the vicar trying to sound jolly in an obviously ruined wedding experience. Next we went on to Epsom, where the derby was run in front of empty stands and enclosures, where in the past men in tails and women dressed to the nines would have been celebrating a day out at one of our institutions.

It was all terribly sad and depressing; the beating heart has been torn out of our country and it will never be the same again. I am envious of those who are stoic in their acceptance of all of this - I can only rage, rage against the dying of the light - but to no useful end I'm aware. Somehow I must find a way to blank it all out. Somehow.......

[peter]

Boris Johnson stormed into (real) power at our last general election saying that he was determined to "level up" our country (presumably by which he meant, to bring the impoverished North into line with the more prosperous South). Now it would appear that failing this, he is happy to plain level it altogether, more in the fashion of the Luftwaffe bombs that rained down from the skies in the blitz.

He has reportedly said that if we can't get a good deal with the EU before the end of the transition period on December 31, then we can walk away "with a good Australia style deal" instead. This is a euphemism for no-deal. Let's be clear about this. Australia does not have a deal of any kind pertaining to trade with the EU. It is a measure of this Government's cynical approach toward its dealing with the people, it's lack of respect and belief in their intelligence, that they could think that by beginning to introduce this non-term into the political discourse that they could somehow hoodwink the people into seeing this type of exit as something other than disastrous, in some way shift the perspective on a cliff-edge crash out of the EU to render it more palatable.

I'm fed up with saying this because as a result of having to be said so often in respect of this Government's shenanigans it no longer has any force - but shame on them.

[Avatar]

Ah Peter, your expectations of government are clearly too high. It has been a long time since most governments have had much care for anything except retaining and expanding the power of government. (And politicians furthering their own careers.)

--A

[peter]

Av, I do believe there is a bit of the anarchist hidden deep within you somewhere!

Apropos my above fears about the risk of disorder and confrontation in holiday drinking hotspots such as Newquay and Blackpool, it appears that Saturday night's reopening was largely good-natured and without too much (reported) incident. I imagine that the inclement weather did not help (or did, depending on your viewpoint) in respect of the numbers turning out; that and the fact that people have simply gotten used to drinking (at a fraction of the cost) at home.

All that being said however, the BBC news yesterday morning led with pictures of large crowds of revellers in central London where any form of distancing, mitigated or otherwise, had gone out of the window. The Chief Constable of one of the police forces commented on social media "What is crystal clear from last night is that drunk people cannot or will not social distance."

What made me laugh was Andrew Marr and BBC Chief Political Correspondent Vicky Young sat on his show on Sunday morning, Marr saying how he thought that by and large people were being in the main very responsible and restrained. Young agreed; she had been out for a meal and been on public transport and there was no sign of people flagrantly disregarding the rules. Well, no - there wouldn't be; but I'm not sure that the vomit and beer swilled streets of our provincial tourist drinking hotspots quite equate to the West-End restaurants or Cotswold village pubs where you pair could be found.

[Edit; "Robespierre", on his YouTube posting, shows huge crowds of revellers jammed shoulder to shoulder in Soho something after ten PM on Saturday night. "It's more like New Year's Eve than Saturday night", he fumes, "why are the police doing nothing!"

Well, the answer to this is that there are thousands of pissed people with about ten coppers policing them and to attempt to disperse them would be about as possible as attempting to stop a herd of wildebeest sweeping across the plains of Africa by standing in front of it waving your arms. That and the fact that, despite all of it's exhortations to "be sensible" and whatnot, the Government has in effect given its tacit approval of such behaviour. Like so much of what has been done of late, this is just another example of a cynical lip-service approach in which they give out instructions that either cannot or will not be followed, in the knowledge that they allow for what must be done to be done, while effectively distancing themselves from any blame being focused in their direction when things inevitably go wrong. When the second spike occurs it will be the people who are to blame not them.]

[Avatar]

Just saw this from Liverpool:

https://www.businessinsider.co.za/trend ... how-2020-7

--A

[peter]

Yeah, I think we crossed posts Av (I was adding the "edit" to mine). The Robespierre video I refer to is frightening; there are literally thousands of people all jammed in together.

Crazy!

[Kizza]

I heard on the radio coming out of the BBC that the London police made particular mention of Soho following the opening of pubs, and how they have realised that "drunk people are not able to socially distance themselves".
Based on a couple of shed parties, I think they're right.

[Avatar]

When the second spike occurs it will be the people who are to blame not them.]

Well, I mean, technically, that's true enough if people are behaving like that...

--A

[peter]

True Av - but as I say, the Government has given its tacit approval of that behaviour by telling people to go out and get stuck in; literally - Boris Johnson stood on a podium and told people to get out and fill their boots. Pictures of politicians from the PM down raising pints of beer in celebration. What were people going to do?

[Avatar]

Seems a bit irresponsible to me...

--A

[Kizza]

When the second spike occurs it will be the people who are to blame not them.]

Well, I mean, technically, that's true enough if people are behaving like that...

--A

That is the way it looks in Victoria right now.
The foolish minority.

[Avatar]

Always going to be some. Unfortunately here, usually the people not adhering sufficiently to the recommendations are doing so out of necessity / inability.

--A

[peter]

One of the few rays of sunshine that have pierced through the gloom of the Covid crisis for me occured the other day as I drove back from a visit to the local supermarket. A roundabout that the local council normally manicure to the point of virtual plasticity, like a Za Za Gabor facsimile of what youth and vibrancy is supposed to be like, had, due to the restrictions on local municipal function, rewilded itself into a glorious profusion of colour and nature. Tall grasses, green and yellow, blew in a riot of colour where the catwalk models of the flower world suddenly found themselves bare-footed and running free amongst the bushes and shrubs, hair grown long after months without a cut-back. Like a zoo of caged animals, suddenly set free amongst the natural companions of the unfettered wild, you could literally feel (in the most subtle of ways) the rightness of what you were seeing. The resurgence of the world as it was meant to be. An Eden that we rarely glimpse.

We should definitely up sticks and relocate to Mars, where we could start from scratch and build the kind of fake monstrosity world we seem to aspire to, and then we could fuck it up to our hearts content - poison it and abuse it to within an inch of it's faux life - create the world that we as a species seem to crave and deserve and best summed up by one contempt laden word that suits us like a well tailored insult, spat into the collective face of humanity - disposable! That way at least this wonderful awe inspiring miracle of a world could be left in peace to do it's thing without our benighted influence being brought to bear on it.

[Avatar]

Haha, "wild" in the UK doesn't mean the same as elsewhere...

Also, those zoo animals would quickly find themselves on the menu of their natural and unfettered companions.

That said, sounds good to me.

--A

[peter]

Yes, nature is not always pretty Av..... But it is always 'right'.

[Avatar]

There is no "right" or "wrong." There is only what is.

--A

[peter]

Yes - I put the word in inverted commas for a reason; let me phrase it differently. As Solzhenitsyn said "the line between good and evil runs through every human heart". Guilt does not exist beyond the confines of the human sphere - nor (as yet) the capacity to destroy at a level that we have achieved. It is a sad thing that our capacity for the latter always seems to run one step ahead of our equally unique capacity to create.

(Weird little coincidence though Av; odd how the universe somehow manages to throw up synchronicity. In the book Jerusalem I've been reading, Moore had written a section on how individuals good acts, as preserved in by plaques and statues, were not always reflective of the whole story of their being, nor did the presence of such statues mean that they actually deservedthem - and lo and behold, we went through that spell in the news of tearing down statues (in fact moore was even refering to the slavery issue in this very section of the book). Then in the case of the wilding, no sooner had I seen the roundabout I mention above, and remarked to my wife on how nature seems to be sitting there on the periphery, ready for it's opportunity when it comes to recreate the Eden of old, within two nights I was reading the same in the book (Moore uses the giant ferns and trees of Kew Gardens as his example) in an almost uncanny recreation of what I had been saying (though infinitely better put). I hardly dare read on! )

[peter]

Why is it always the case that the blindly obvious is ignored by Governments and media until it becomes so blindly obvious that it can be ignored no longer?

Repeatedly we have been told over the years that we are all living longer and this in turn means that we will have to work for longer due to our increased longevity. Now a study has "revealed" that because we live longer, it does not by necessity mean that we remain fit for work any longer. Further more the same study has concluded {and I thank the Lord there are people out there capable of such deep thinking and insights} that the type of work one is engaged in has significant bearing on ones likely capabilities in terms of continuing to work well into ones seventh or indeed eighth decade. The study goes on to reveal what would be crystal clear to anyone with an intelligence above that of the average chimpanzee, that the more physical the work you do, the less likely you are to be able to continue much above sixty five [and even that's pushing it] - and that people who do sit-down jobs might be able to continue a bit longer.

Did it really need a study to conclude this? Was a bit of common-sense truly insufficient grounds to come to these staggering revelations?

Similarly today the UK Prime Minister has said that there will be no more lockdowns in response to the Corona virus; he qualifies this with a 'probably' type phrase - but what he means is definitely, beyond all shadow of a cast iron, dyed in the wool, bang-to-rights doubt..........because everybody with half a brain can see that to do so would not simply 'damage our economy further' - it would blast it back into the frikkin' medieval; we'd all be spinning wool on looms and living on deer poached off the King's estates before it recovered.

So again, the freakin' obvious has to wait until it is literally shoved up the arse of our 'movers and shakers' before they will come out and acknowledge it. This is becoming ever the pattern in our modern and highly-sophisticated age, but I for one am ready for a return to a bit of good old fashioned common-sense in the statements of our politicians, the media and the 'revelatory studies' they commission to support them.

[I'm Murrin]

...because everybody with half a brain can see that to do so would not simply 'damage our economy further' - it would blast it back into the frikkin' medieval; we'd all be spinning wool on looms and living on deer poached off the King's estates before it recovered.

(Because the government isn't willing to give the support necessary to to workers and businesses that would allow us to get through such a thing without massive economic harm, something the government is in fact absolutely capable of doing if it chose to.)

[peter]

I am not an anti-vaxxer. I think anyone who does not vaccinate their children with the MMR vaccine is likely being very unwise. I think Bill and Melinda Gates are not trying to take over the world but are simply trying, with their Health Foundation, to give a little back. I think that vaccine programs n both the developed and even more importantly the third world, have saved countless lives and avoided suffering on a scale almost too huge to contemplate.

But I notice that there is a trend toward labeling those of us who, I think, have a reasonable scepticism about the speed with which a Covid vaccine is being rushed to market, amongst this group, and I don't like it.

Under normal circumstances, before vaccines or drugs reach the point of mass rollout, they undergo rigorous trials for safety that take years to complete and cover every angle of the potential consequence of their administration. They undergo peer review in the countless journals with which the scientific/medical community communicates with itself, the rollout itself is staggered in order to detect any lingering potential defect that may have slipped through the net, and finally, after many moons in development, they are released onto the general market.

In the case of Covid, due to the borderline hysteria surrounding the virus and the ensuing hyperbolic response of Governments the world over, these carefully tried and tested practices have been thrown to the winds and (scenting profits of epic proportions to be made - the incentive for all the activities they carry out - pharmaceutical companies the world over have rushed, together with the universities, to enter a race to be the first to get a product to market that scrapes or ducks it's way past the legislation that usually ensures compliance with the safety protocols, and following on from this, the safety of those to whom the product is administered.

Under these circumstances is it unreasonable to employ a healthy degree of scepticism about any product that is by suave marketing -and with jittery Governments wiping their near-panicked brows at being able to offer this fig-leaf of a safety net to their demanding publics - thrust before us in the near future. I don't think so and I resent being lumped in with the tub-thumping "God will save us" anti-vaxxer groupings because I do so.