What Do You Think Today?

[peter]

One too many jolly's last night eh Connor?




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What a ridiculous world we live in. A twelve year old girl is stabbed to death on the streets of Liverpool and all our papers can worry about is whether the new Covid variant, Omicron or some such nonsensical name, is going to mess up Christmas.

Little Ava White was on Thursday night, stabbed in an altercation in the City Center, shortly after the Christmas lights for the city had been switched on. Four teenage boys have been arrested: the young lass died shortly after arriving at hospital, from the catastrophic wounds she had received.

I'm sorry, but this seems to me, to be of immeasurably greater important than whether Christmas will be effected by this new bug (it won't be) and the media's histrionic response to it. This entire Covid thing is now so far out of control that it is unstoppable, but the immediacy of the deaths of youngsters on our streets is absolutely not, and no stone should be left unturned to get to the bottom of how and why such a tragedy could occur, the results of which will blight the lives of innumerable people for decades to come. Irrespective of what the 'new variant' (cue ghostly 'whooo' sound) decides to do for the festive season, I guarantee that there will be no Christmas in the White household.

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Shame on both Boris Johnson and President Macron of France who, even in the face of the tragedy of twenty seven lives being lost in the English Channel, cannot resist a continuance of their bickering politicising of every issue that comes before them. In response to Johnson's immature tweeting of comments and publication of what should have been a private letter to Macron, the French premier has responded with a torrent of sharp criticism and the barring of Home Secretary Priti Patel from a European meeting to discuss means of dealing with the migrant crisis devastating our borders.

Meanwhile, pictures have been released of the first victim of the recent tragedy, a rather sophisticated looking young lady called Baran Nouri Hamadami, who it is reported was coming to the UK to join her husband, and was before she left, we are told, "so excited to be going to Britain". My immediate response to the pictures of the elegant couple and of this tragic lady looking very svelte and well dressed, was "Why, why, why, would such a well appointed couple require that the young woman should embark upon such a risk fraught venture as an overland trek to the UK followed by placing her life into the hands of people smugglers, who would send her to her death in a flimsy dingy in the hazard ridden waters of the English Channel". It was like it was an exciting adventure of which she had no concept of the risks involved - and no real reason for her 'flight' to the UK other than her understandable desire to be with her husband.

But then I got to thinking; perhaps this was exactly what I was meant to think on seeing the story. Given our policy of not wanting to take these migrants into our custody, of wanting to discourage their attempts to gain our shores and justify our wanting to return them to their countries of origin (or at least the first port of arrival in the EU), would it have served purpose if the first named victim had shown evidence of poverty and suffering that would entirely explain their preparedness to undertake such a hazardous journey? I don't know; perhaps I'm reading too much into this. Perhaps it just is what it is. But I've become so distrusting of our media, of their ability to simply print a story for no other reason than to just tell it, that I can no longer see anything in print (or indeed hear it on TV or the radio), that I look for hidden intention, for subconscious nudges to influence our thinking this way or that. I don't know - I really don't know. Go out and look at the story and decide for yourself.

[peter]

The entire country has been thrown into chaos by the arrival of the new Covid variant (Omicron as it has been labelled) with the Prime Minister announcing a return to mandatory mask wearing, isolation and extended travel bans. Panicky headlines scream that Boris is desperately trying to "save Christmas", while reports hammer home that the mutated variant could be more transmissible than the previous variants we have encountered and could quite possibly by virtue of its differences, be less effectively combatted by the vaccines we are currently employing.

Once again people find their travel plans hanging under a cloud of uncertainty, and this just as people were regaining their confidence, beginning to think that it might be possible to start considering booking up for a holiday abroad. The body-blow of the new variant has appeared - some might say in rather timely fashion for the Government - as Covid rates were generally on the increase anyway across large areas of the continent, though less so in the UK where certain conditions such as the vaccination rates and existing levels of natural immunity seemed to be holding it at bay. Questions were already being asked as to whether the Government should begin to tighten up on restrictions in the face of this continental rise, pressure that the Government had hitherto resisted, but the arrival of Omicron seems to have settled the matter for them. Quite nice really, because it allows them to introduce restrictions without seeming to be going back on their word. As I say - timely.

I've always been aware that the emergence of Covid presents a very useful tool for Governments around the world to justify the sharp curtailment of mass international travel, so necessary for our fight against climate change, and it seems to me that there has been a sort of elision between the two. My betting is that in the next week or two we will be assured that we can go about our business domestically (masks and vaccines notwithstanding) pretty much as normal, but it will be in the area of international travel that the fight against the new variant will have to be concentrated. By keeping up the uncertainty around travelling, people are nudged toward deciding against booking holidays abroad and the climate change agenda as well as the Covid control one, is served.

But one thing that we haven't heard much about in respect of the new variant is its virulence. Could be that we are flying into full emergency mode against a variant that, while more transmissible and evasive in terms of getting around the vaccine, is simultaneously much less dangerous in terms of its lethality or indeed likelihood to bring about hospitalisation. But again, the variant allows the Government to flex its authoritarian muscle, to keep up the momentum as it were, and ramp fear levels that were showing signs of going into decline, back up to their mid-pandemic levels of acuteness. One of the vaccine producers has already said that it can have vaccines ready to deal with the new variant in a short period of time, and the appearance of said variant will only add fuel to the arguments of those in favour of mandatory vaccination, of which there are a frighteningly large percentage of people in favour.

It's all very depressing really. Very depressing indeed.

[peter]

It was very interesting. Yesterday as his first guest, BBC political interviewer Andrew Marr spoke to the South African doctor who first suspected that there might be a new strain of Covid in the offing, and subsequently set the ball rolling which led to its identification.

Doctor Angelique Coetzee, a clinician working on the front line in Pretoria, began encountering patients, generally for other causes but who were reporting fatigue and a scratchy sore throat, a general feeling of malaise alongside the other reasons for their visit. These individuals were all testing positive for Covid and the doctor began to suspect that their symptoms were indicative of a strain of the virus, not previously encountered.

On alerting the relevent laboratories this indeed proved to be true, and Marr, asking the million dollar question in respect of the variant queried "How dangerous is this thing: should we be worried?" (or words to this effect). Dr Coetzee was clear in her response. "No. There is no reason for panic. The symptoms of this variant are mild - in fact I'd be surprised if it is not already in your country, unrecognised and unrecorded."

So much to the good.

The next guest, a lead researcher with the American pharmaceutical giant Moderna, who produce one of the vaccines currently used within the UK, said that his company were already in the process of developing a vaccine against the new variant which, with clear test results, should be available early in 2022, all things being equal. Marr put it to the scientist that the strain seemed to be pretty innocuous (relatively speaking, according to Dr Coetzee) and his reply - perfectly fairly - was that the South Africa was a demographically younger country and this alongside the prevalence of people with existing conditions predisposing them to increased vulnerability, made the situation somewhat different.

Next came Health Secretary Sajid Javid, who was clearly anxious to show that this time the Government had jumped too it (unlike in the initial outbreak when their complacency in the face of the risks caused them to be heavily criticized), and consequently he had immediately instigated a "proportionate and appropriate" tightening of restrictions, until more was known about the new variant. This included a return to mask wearing and restrictions on travel etc, while questions were answered in respect of how dangerous this new variant was and (critically in respect of the Government's reliance on the effectiveness of the vaccination program) whether it could bypass the vaccine types that people had already been given. It was, he told us, a variant of significant concern.

Today the press are as one screaming at us "Get vaccinated to beat Omicron!", seemingly unaware that the current vaccinations have not yet been established as being effective in their protection against Omicron - which seems anyway to be a pretty mild form of Covid in comparison with earlier strains we have encountered. This latter is what would normally be expected with emergent viruses, which generally tend toward lesser virulence as they, and their hosts, adapt to one another.

The interesting thing to me in this little saga is how, over the course of it, the sense of impending threat was gradually increased from the doctor who was relaxed about the impact of Omicron, through the vaccine researcher (whose company it need not be forgotten has a vested interest in the maintenance of the level of fear, both of Governments and of the people themselves), through to Javid himself who was clearly terrified that he would be accused of being caught napping if he didn't immediately spring into 'Plan B' and tell us how much he was doing a dozen times as he did it. Then the press finish off the job (because nothing sells like a hysterical headline), and deliberately, or simply because of the particular 'take' of the parties involved - how it impacts on them - the conditions are set for a histrionic response that knocks us back, not to square one, but certainly to a significant degree.

And the final irony to me is that what you are seeing here, in terms of the identification and subsequent investigation and development of prophylaxis, is simply the normal nuts and bolts of the scientific/medical community as it would function in respect of any virus deemed significant enough to be worthy of preparing a vaccine against. Any year, pandemic or otherwise, would see the flu causing viruses tracked and logged, investigated in respect of changes to their structure and the impact on the vaccines currently in production - it's just that in the prevailing circumstances, with the heightened degree of awareness and almost hysterical degree of attention being paid to it, this normal activity takes on a life of its own; becomes a source of impetus for the rollercoaster lurches of the media, from unbridled joy at having defeated the virus, to hysterical panic at the emergence of a new (and by any standards pretty innocuous) strain.

It is the dynamic of the interplay of the three players in this - Government with their desire to be seen to be doing something, big pharma with its need to maintain the demand for its products and the media with its hyperbolic language which sells - with the normal workaday activity of a fourth player, the scientific/medical research community, that is producing this upward spiral into the realm of unnecessary panic and the subsequent self-harm of restrictive impositions. Am I really the only person in the world that can see this?

[I'm Murrin]

I think it is pretty fair to say that the current vaccinations help, given that, last I heard, the vast majority of the hospitalisations related to Omicron were among unvaccinated, partially vaccinated, or immunocompromised people. Vaccinated people are having the mildest symptoms, as expected.

[peter]

Fair comment Murrin. Fingers crossed on this. Still lots of'unknowns' relating to Omicron though - transmissibility, immune escape and pathogenicity wise.


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Tiny little front page inclusion on the Telegraph the other day that made no splash, but in less extraordinary circumstances would (or at least could) have made big news. I've been waiting to see if it was picked up on before making comment, but as it seems for the present to have fizzled, I'll chuck it out as something that will probably reappear at some point in the future, to greater or lesser significance.

Some months ago in the heady days of the Harry and Meghan Oprah Winfrey interview, a claim was made by Meghan that a senior royal had speculated to either her or Prince Harry about the possible color of her shortly to be born baby. The speculation, in the form of a question, was widely presented as indicative of a racist mode of thinking by the asker, even if this was not overtly stated by the media at the time, and such was the gravity with which this was viewed that I heard it said that whoever had asked such a question, if the individual turned out to be either Prince Charles or Prince William, could never assume the throne because of it.

Prince Harry seemed ill at ease with the revelation, and there was some discrepancy between his account and Meghan's as to the asking of the question - but neither was prepared to say who it was who had asked what the colour of the unborn child was likely to be. Was it either William or Charles became the major question of the day - an assumption that it had to be one or the other seemed to be taken as read - but as time and news events moved on, the question slipped into the background.

There it has remained until a couple of days ago when, on that tiny square of print on the front of the Telegraph (or it might have been the Times - to be honest I forget), the putative culprit was revealed. "Division between the Royal Family and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex was sown when the Prince of Wales (that's Prince Charles for people who don't know our Royals well) inquired about the colour of their unborn baby a book has claimed" ran the piece - and that was it. Now I put the final 'disclaimer', for this is what it is, in italics for a reason. The paper is being clever in that it is disclosing this pretty significant piece of news, if proven to be true, while simultaneously distancing itself from any blame for it, in case there is any kickback from it from the Prince's office, or indeed it proves to be unfounded.

Now as I say, in less eventful times this little piece would likely have been seized upon and blown into the media story of the day, but as yet little has emerged. It is absolutely certain that as she (ie Meghan) or they (Meghan and Harry both - but one always gets the impression that he has less of a grudge weighing on his mind in this fight than she) continues her/their war of attrition against the Royal Family, sooner or later the putative source of the offending question will be revealed, but one is left to speculate as to whether the 'revelation' of the book cited by the newspaper has been the conduit for either the beginning of that revelation, or possibly the means via which the Sussex's will keep the issue fresh in the public mind. It could of course, be neither, being no more than an opportunistic author's teaser into getting people to buy a book that they might otherwise not bother with.

There are some inconsistencies in the books account of how this question was asked; it claims that it occurred during a hushed conversation between Charles and his wife Camilla, where in the Oprah interview Harry had stated that the question was asked directly of himself. Perhaps there were two questions; one that Charles asked of his wife in private overheard by 'the scource close to the Royals' - it'd have to pretty close to overhear a hushed conversation between Charles and Camilla - and one asked of Harry directly by some still as yet unidentified Royal.

But anyways, time will tell. Prince Harry will release his own (said to be explosive) memoir some time next year and perhaps will 'tell all' in that much anticipated account. I wonder how much of this situation is in some ways a throwback to the situation of his mother, her complex and often difficult relationship with the Royals - even to questions that have been imputed in respect of his own parentage by unprincipled commentators that must, like it or not, have filtered back to him and could only have hurt deeply? There is a sort of odd parallel between the rebellion he is engaged in now and that former rebellion prosecuted by his mother that ended so tragically in a Parisian underpass. Perhaps he will finish the job that she (quite possibly unintentionally) started; the end of the thousand year reign that has been the English monarchy? Again, would this be his intention or simply a byproduct of his fight - a vendetta of the sort that happens within the febrile tensions that permeate family feuds? Who can say.

(For any who are interested, Marie Claire ran a short article available online on the subject in which the title and author of the book in question, alongside other books pertinent to the tale are given, and which provides the background against which the tiny snippet I saw was published)

[Avatar]

Eh, denials aside, (and I see Charles has denied it too), my money is still on the late Phillip as the Royal most likely to be insensitive and out of touch enough to ask.

--A

[peter]

The trouble with the Johnson administration is every time the Covid pandemic slips from the headlines they find themselves in the shit over one thing or another.

The past X number of months has been a debacle of one thing following another - the empty shelves of the supply chain crisis, the energy firms collapse, the petrol queues - remember those? Then we had the failure of COP 26, the Owen Paterson affair, the stand-off with France over the NI Protocol, the honours for cash, the second jobs controversy, the migrant crisis and Priti Patel's banning from the EU meeting to deal with it. And those are just some of the main ones.

Not to put too fine a point on it (nor to suggest that there is a connection) - but the best thing that could happen for the Johnson Government is the emergence of a new variant; it's the only time they ever give the impression of having any kind of handle on events, if only minimal.

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Yesterday, driving into town with Mrs P, I saw that the Tate St Ives were advertising their new exhibition by a guest artist, whose works will sit alongside the permanent exhibition of pieces by the St Ives and Newlyn School, for a month or two. This time it will feature the Muslim artist from Kosovo Petrit Halilaj, who I have never heard of, but will no doubt be very good.

I make a point of going to see these guest exhibitions and really enjoy them. They invariably feature artists from different parts of the world whose works you would not ordinarily encounter, and over the years I've seen some truly amazing stuff. But - and there is a but - we never get to see a selection of the Tate's collection of famous works, despite large numbers being held in storage at any time and being easily available for transport and display at the smaller sister gallery to the main London ones.

I thought it would be a good idea to write to the Tate to suggest this - what a treat for art lovers in Cornwall it would be to have some of the older works, Pre-Raphaelite, impressionist, cubist etc, to view for a period - but then realized that such a letter could easily be misconstrued. "Is this from a racist - a carefully hidden criticism of the fact that we tend to show foreign artists from an eclectic selection of countries rather than the 'western art' with which most people are familiar." This is how I thought that the thinking would run on receipt of my letter, and so I thought it best not to pursue the idea any further.

Now don't get me wrong - I'm not one of those individuals who condemns the 'wokeism' of modern society; there are many and many things of the past that are far better consigned to the dustbin of history, and I'm glad to see them there. But does the vignette I outline above not illustrate a problem of where we are today? How can we get our ideas out in a free and thoughtful manner if we must constantly tiptoe on eggshells for fear of being misunderstood? This seems a real problem to me that will only serve to hold us back in its cumulative effect over decades.

But there you have it; I fully understand why the necessity for such care has come about - would not have things back the way they were for a moment - but I'd still like to see some of the Tate back-collection find it's way down to my neck of the woods, and I hope this doesn't make me a closet racist for so doing.

[Avatar]

It's hard to have a middle ground while the pendulum is actively swinging as it were.

Too much fear, uncertainty and doubt on the one hand, and fear, uncertainty and anger on the other.

--A

[peter]

Just to flip back a couple of posts Av, the Sussex's have said that the asker of the question was neither the Queen or Prince Phillip, so while I agree that he would have been a prime candidate for such a stupid and insensitive query, it seems to have been ruled out.


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I see that in today's press it has been revealed that President Macron of France thinks that Boris Johnson is a "clown in charge of a circus", and described him so to a group of his advisors last week in an outburst following the migrant debacle. Branding our PM a 'knuclehead', he complained that Johnson could be perfectly reasonable in a telephone conversation or meeting, but then present a totally different face to the public by sticking a knife in your back shortly thereafter. It was infuriating he said. Johnson, he continued, was using all kinds of such tricks to cover up to the British people the disaster that he knew brexit to be, and was destroying British-French relationships in the process.

Well welcome to the club if you have just realised that Emmanuel - we the UK public have been living with the clown for a couple of years now (God - is that all it is;it seems like forever) and are suffering the consequences every day it continues.

More seriously though, is the general breakdown in Anglo-French relationships post-Brexit, that have seen diplomatic communication soured across the board since our exit from the EU. A French diplomat recently described our situation as "the worst it has been since Waterloo", and while there is undoubtedly a degree of playing to the camera in the comment, it does signal a very steep decline in what should by rights be a close cooperation between the two neighboring countries. I have said in the past that I believe Brexit was the first step on a long road that would lead to the next European war; the stories emerging in today's press (particularly the latter one, reflecting a more broad hostility than just between the Johnson and Macron administrations) do nothing to allay those fears.

The problem is that at present, there seems to be nothing to prevent this circus from running and running until there is little left of the country that would be worth saving. I saw a commentator saying a week or so ago, that behind the scenes, the Johnson administration was enacting some very hefty reform that cemented state powers to a frightening degree, and that these changes were barely being commented upon. An example he cited was changes to the Police Bill that gave them much broader powers of arrest and which, in combination with the current emergency powers (that show no sign of being rescinded) effectively meant that any Joe, alone with a placard bemoaning the Government, could be scooped up and arraigned before the courts for breaking the law.

This fellow (and he is a YouTube political pundit who has a good knowledge of politics and has proven pretty sound in his reasoning in the past) said he could not stress the importance of getting the Tories out of power at the next election enough. He acknowledged how ridiculous it sounded - and this he said was where the chief danger lay, in people's discounting it because of this very ridiculousness - to say that if the Tories won the next election then there was a significant possibility that it could be the last election we ever saw in the UK.......... but he genuinely felt this to be the case. That the UK could become the first right-wing dictatorship in Europe. It was not, he said, despite what people might think, an impossibility; it had happened before and no-one cared what other Governments were doing to their own people (as history had shown). Third countries only became concerned when a country became expansionist in its policies, but were insouciant to what happens internally up to this point. The Johnson administration, the fellow said, was behind the scenes moving inexorably toward a place where the possibility became a stark reality. There could be no complacency in getting the people of the UK to an understanding of the crucial importance of getting this administration out at the next election. This would absolutely require everybody not voting Tory to vote tactically - and it was crucial that they put aside their gripes with parties that were not their traditional choice of recipient of their vote, to concentrate on the removal of Tory MPs from the Commons.

Now I don't know if the fellow is on the money or not with his predictions of the much less than benevolent intentions of Johnson and his motley crew - but I absolutely concur with the need for the removal of the Tories from power and by the means by which he suggests it should be achieved. It is absolutely the case that Johnson has created the kind of personality cult on which such dictatorships can rest and that we are seeing a concentration of state power that should be ringing alarm bells with any person concerned with the health of the democracy which we have hitherto enjoyed.

So get out there and spread the message; start spreading it now so that by the time of the next election everybody understands what they must do.

Vote tactically: Vote tactically: Vote tactically!

[Avatar]

Just to flip back a couple of posts Av, the Sussex's have said that the asker of the question was neither the Queen or Prince Phillip, so while I agree that he would have been a prime candidate for such a stupid and insensitive query, it seems to have been ruled out.

Yes well, they would say that wouldn't they.

And yes, I saw some comment recently on the very broad powers the new Police Bill seems to confer, as well as concern that it was not really being addressed by media etc.

--A

[peter]

The phenomenon of the rude shop assistant - we've all experienced it haven't we.

You go into a shop, make a small request or take your purchase to the counter, and the individual behind the till barely bothers to hide their contempt for you, or delivers some 'jobsworth' excuse as to why they cannot do that which you want or need them to do.

I've experienced this from the other side of the counter and know something about what is behind it. The truth is that dealing with people is difficult. They can be - and often are - complete bastards. They are (sometimes) rude, arrogant, unthoughtful - you name it, you get it all and it has its effect. Most people (and I hope I'm one) take it in their stride as part of the job, soak it up and deny the tendancy for it to push itself into a broad hatred (not too strong a word) for any that have the temerity just to come in and require that they do their job. But there are those, and they are many, for whom the tendancy to exact revenge on all who come in front of them is simply too great to fight against. These are the individuals that you, as customers on the other side of the counter, notice. These individuals will do nothing to help you, will actively thwart your desire with some barely credible, thin excuse why they cannot do what it is that you need them to do. In so doing they get the frisson of revenge they need, exacted across all of the customer base in front of them, for the anger and hurt that simply dealing with the public can grow in you. They get, momentarily, the power to get a little bit of their own back.

Over the course of my time in retail I've come across numbers of these individuals who I've had work with as colleagues. They will do nothing that will give a bit of wiggle room, a bit of slack in the customers favour. A person comes in ten seconds ater the closing time; "Sorry - the tills are closed - I'm not allowed to serve you." It's bollocks, but they will not cut the customer any grace at all. There are a million ways you can be difficult with customers without breaking any rules, and they will never miss a trick to take them.

Now the point I'm making, far more serious than that of a contrary shop assistant, is that this tendency is encountered across the board in all professions, in all activities where people must interact with the public. And it is of little consequence in a shop assistant or bus driver - but what about in the nurse that is attending to you in hospital, the doctor in front of you in his surgery?

And this is why I'm finding the lead story on the front page of the Sunday Times today so concerning. Doctors Anger as Unjabbed Fill Beds runs the headline. The article goes on to relate the "frustration and anger" of doctors and nurses at not being able to treat other patients in need because hospital beds are being taken up by those who have "chosen not to be vaccinated". One woman, the Chairperson of the British Association of Critical Care Nurses, is quoted as saying, "All nurses understand that they have to provide non-judgemental care, but what we find difficult is giving care to patients who have chosen to be unvacinated."

God, how dangerous is this attitude, and that it should be expressed openly on the front page of a major newspaper simply beggars belief. It virtually gives the green light to the type of attitude I've outlined above - or if not this, will be used as cover by many nurses and doctors who actually do hold the kind of generalised grudges I outline above, and it will cost lives amongst those they are meant to be 'non-judgementally' caring for.

And what about other categories of patients; the ones injured in rock-climbing accidents. "These people have chosen to be here." Smokers and the fat. "These people have chosen to be here." Such an attitude once justified never ends and simply feeds into the kind of resentment I outline in shop assistants above.

Let alone the implications that the story has in terms of its being the beginning of a process of demonisation of the unvaccinated, the creation of the group on which all of this can be blamed on (as were the Jews so demonized in Germany in the nineteen-thirties.) That's another story that I'm not going to go into here, but will be keeping a beady eye on in the weeks and months ahead, I promise!

This front page story is abhorrent and should be called out as such.

[Avatar]

Sadly, in SA, the "rude assistant" is more frequently prevalent in government and similar bureaucratic positions (including healthcare) than in retail ones, although of course they occur there too.

Now me, sensible of how painful most of the public is, I try and make a point of being extra nice, patient and polite to those "serving" me. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn't, but I trust most public-facing people appreciate it at least.

--A

[peter]

The question is, what are we missing while our attention is diverted to an almost single-track obsession with the Covid situation and its ramifications in respect of our day to day lives?

Well, as might be expected with the Johnson regime, most of the important stuff that they really do not want scrutinized, but would rather slip into law without too much fanfare or public notice being drawn toward.

Lets just outline a couple of things that we should be discussing - and that our media, were it functioning properly in putting the activities of our political masters under the microscope, would be all over like a cheap suit.

Firstly there's the police and crimes bill going through the House of Lords as we speak. This bill, when it passes, will effectively criminalise all protest that the Government chooses to. It means that, in the extreme any activity critical of the Government that you take - standing in your town centre with a placard, on a soap-box in Hyde Park - could see you scooped up and carted off in a police van. Refusal to accompany a police officer becomes a crime off itself: the advice that was given post the tragic murder of Sarah Everard by police officer Wayne Cousins, that if concerned by a police officer's request to get into a police car, you should refuse and request another (or different) officer/s to be present, will then put you on the wrong side of the law simply off itself.

Then we have moves, currently underway by the Johnson administration, to place the sovereignty of Parliament above that of the Judiciary. You may remember during the brexit shenanigans, prior to our departure, several high profile cases were brought against the Government, by the activist and anti-brexit campaigner Gina Miller, in particular the one that saw the illegal prorogation of Parliament by Johnson and Rees-Mogg overturned. Well Johnson has ordered deputy PM Dominic Raab to investigate ways to reduce judges powers in such circumstances and limit powers of the Courts to overrule Ministers via the process of judicial review. Dull stuff I realize - far less important than whether we "save Christmas" or not.

And then we have the one that Johnson has been happy to shout about - his intention to take us back to the days of harsh penalties and a zero-tolerance approach to minor recreational drug possession/use. Gone will be the warning and slap on the wrist for possession of a few grams of cannabis - back will be the court appearance and the three strikes and down you go. This one of course will play well to his older voting base (hence the reason he is crowing about it), but the truth is that behind the populist measures he is shouting about, will be teams of strong-arm policemen breaking down doors and carting people away in cars. And this is something we'd better get used to seeing, because if this administration keeps going the way we are allowing them to, I have the feeling we are going to be seeing a lot more of it.

Neil Oliver recently gave a lecture where he referred to the shortly before Armistice Day celebrations of Remembrance Sunday. This was a time he said, for reflection on the promises we have made to those who sacrificed their lives for us. He said, and I agree, that we could do no better than reflect on the lines from Humbert Wolfe's poem Requiem for a Soldier in which the silent words of two young soldiers, walking down a lane close to the battlefield in which they had both fallen, are briefly heard on the wind;

They are speaking together of what they loved in vain here,
But the air is too thin to carry what they say.
They were young and golden, but they came on pain here,
And their youth is age now, their gold is grey.

Yet their hearts are not changed, and they cry to one another,
"What have they done with the lives we laid aside?
Are they young with our youth, gold with our gold my brother?
Do they smile in the face of death because we died?"

These are the questions we must ask ourselves as we don our masks once more, place our liberties in the kind hands of Boris Johnson, Priti Patel and the like, and stare saucer-eyed into the smoke and mirrors sideshow of the media legerdemain while our democracy and freedoms are dismantled wholesale behind our backs.

This Government shows no sign of rescinding the 'emergency powers' it took to itself 'temporarily' by various acts of legislation early on in the pandemic - it was never going to. Behind the scenes it is cementing those powers and augmenting its authority with further acts that give it more control over our lives than any other administration in our recent history. That this is causing concern to those on both the right and the left of our political spectrum should of itself give us food for thought.

[Avatar]

And then we have the one that Johnson has been happy to shout about - his intention to take us back to the days of harsh penalties and a zero-tolerance approach to minor recreational drug possession/use.

I saw an amusing piece saying that the same day he made his speech about this, they found significant traces of cocaine in the toilets in parliament.

Privilege huh? Derived from "private law."

--A

[peter]

I saw that one as well Av. What made it all the more hilarious was Government spokespersons later in the day, putting on their most shocked acts for the cameras and saying that no stone would be left unturned in the rooting our of the culprits and the tightening up of rules regarding such behaviour. I said to the Mrs that it would cost them a fortune changing all of the mirrors from the horizontal to the vertical.


-------------------------------------------0-------------------------------------

The MP for New Forrest West, Dominic Swayne in conversation with Julia Hartley-Brewer earlier, told us that he had asked Health Secretary Sajid Javid how many people tested positive for the Omicron variant were actually sick with it. After some beating about the bush Javid conceded that the answer was none. The virus as it stands represents less of a threat to the elderly and vulnerable than the ordinary cold viruses they encounter every day - certainly far less than a typical flu virus - and yet the country is going into melt-down because of it.

Earlier on, the BBC spent over half of the six o clock news program concentrating on the virus, never once mentioning its low grade pathogenicity. Daily the reports are coming in of the effects that the pandemic response has had on the normal workaday activity of the NHS - increased waiting lists, treatments and assessments missed, referrals not being made and people failing to come forward - and the toll on lives over the course of the coming decades can only be imagined. Yet still we are going on, deciding if more restrictions, more lockdowns, more of the same failed medicines are to be utilized once again. It's as if the lunatics have truly taken over the asylum.

[peter]

Oops!

I'd like to have been a fly on the wall when Boris Johnson first saw the footage of former Downing Street Press Secretary Allegra Stratton joking about the party held in the PM's offices, which Number 10 have been denying ever happened all week.

Stratton, practicing for a press conference she was planning on taking, was asked a question by one of her colleagues about the party held four days earlier, during the period when such social gatherings were strictly out of bounds (and punishable by a ten thousand pound fine which numbers were subjected to). Stratton laughingly replies, "I went home," following up by saying it was a business meeting with wine and cheese - and no social distancing.

No doubt it all seemed very funny at the time - except that on that day over six hundred people died of Covid and numbers of people were prevented from being with their loved ones as they died alone in hospitals, by virtue of the rules that Johnson's office were so casually breaking.

So how important is this stuff? Well, not that much really; it isn't going to change anything, it only confirms what everyone with a pair of eyes to see with knew anyway - that behind the scenes, despite all of the rules and restrictions being placed on the rest of us, those in the top strata of our society were carrying on as if it were business as usual. That they saw no reason to obey rules that were not meant for them, that they were not subject to the effects of the fear-mongering propoganda that was being shovelled out to the masses, that they were above it all. One Westminster MP said, "I will never be able to take anything that the PM says seriously again." Really? Are you trying to tell us that you took anything he said seriously before this egregious proof of his duplicity? Have you been going around with toilet paper stuffed into your ears for the past three years?

The tactics of Number 10 in dealing with this highly embarrassing airing of the Stratton footage are interesting. They are simply treating it as if it doesn't exist. Last night the statement came out. "Downing Street has not altered its position - there was no party at Number 10; no rules were broken." They are following the dictum of absolute denial even in the face of overwhelming proof to the contrary - and sticking to that line until by simple attrition, they wear the scandal down into nothingness; that if they keep repeating the answer often enough, with conviction enough, in the end it becomes true. In the upside down, Trumpian world of our altered reality, such things are possible. Stalin knew this half a century ago and it remains the case today.

So no, nothing will come of this: Johnson will ride it out and will issue his diktats and regulations in the weeks ahead as if nothing has happened, without shame or contrition for his demonstrable bad faith, because it doesn't matter. He's not in the business of giving a flying fuck about what we think - he's in the business of pushing it as far down the 'road of whatever he can get away with' as he can, and this one comes way inside that line. So put up, shut up and get the fuck out of my face - that's the message coming out of Downing Street today, and you can like it or shove it up your arse.

[peter]

Mmm....... Where to begin?

It was an interesting day yesterday, beginning with Boris Johnson's taking the dispatch box in the House of Commons and launching straight into an apology for the damning video of his aides laughing and joking about a rule breaking party at Number 10.

His first damage limitation strategy was launched almost immediately, with his assurance of the week before that there "was no party held at Downing Street" suddenly becoming "I have been repeatedly assured that no party was held at Downing Street but.....". The change was subtle, but didn't get past Kier Stamer who pulled him up on it in a bruising question time in which even the leader of the opposition's normally piss-thin questions were able to hit their mark. Johnson followed his apology with an assurance that an investigation would be held, and if an offence was discovered to have been committed then disciplinary action would follow (though laughingly, later in the day it could not be established that Simon Case, the current Cabinet Secretary who will lead the investigation, was not at the party himself).

Johnson's next tactic was a diversionary 'dead cat bounce'. He announced that that afternoon he would be meeting with cabinet prior to making a statement on the instigation of 'Plan B' regulation tightening later in the evening. Tory MPs, already incensed by the PM's hypocrisy and clearly disingenuous stance on the putative party, immediately called him out for using the introductions to deflect attention away from the Downing Street debacle, and there were a number of calls, either for his resignation, or of members saying that if it could be demonstrated that he had mislead the House, then his resignation would be inevitable.

During the said evening statement, Johnson continued the diversionary strategy with the subtle introduction of the subject of mandatory vaccination. He said that it was "time for a discussion" on how to go forward, and that the country could not continue to be stop-started because of a small number of people who would not get vaccinated. This story has been taken up by the Telegraph this morning (on an interesting front page that has nothing other than Covid related stories), no doubt in order to get the debate started and to begin the attention shifting process.

So now we have it; the naked use of Covid for political purposes - for the getting the PM and Downing Street off the hook - with firstly the early instigation of Plan B, and second (and more significantly) with the beginning of the process of introducing mandatory vaccination.

I still don't believe that this will bring Johnson down, though there is little doubt that he is in trouble over the affair. His MPs are up in arms and the public are pissed. The stories of people denied the ability to be with their dying loved ones while Downing Street partied - and then to have their noses rubbed in it by the laughing video - this has hit home hard and Johnson knows it. No wonder that he said in the Commons that he too was "furious" when he saw the video. I bet he was - but not for the same reason that the rest of us were furious. There is nothing like a poor poll showing to get the backbenchers up in arms and one released today says that upward of half the population believe that Johnson should resign. His backbenchers will not ignore these kinds of ratings and the PM has some serious work to do in order to ride this out.

The PM's teflon coating is starting to wear thin; I think he'll survive, but it's going to be tough and I think it is definitely the beginning of the end for him, though how long that end takes in coming will have to be seen.

Edit: Just one other question that has been niggling away at me, and one that I haven't yet seen being asked anywhere in the press (though I bet the PM has been asking himself); how did this presumably private bit of film of an internal practice session of the PM's top team actually find its way into the hands of the ITN news programmers? It has to have been leaked by someone right in the heart of Johnson's internal staff, and I'm betting that no effort is being spared to find out who the culprit is. There was a noticeable absence of Ministers prepared to face the media yesterday morning (Sajid Javid cancelled a previously arranged appearance on breakfast television as just one example) and a rallying of support around the PM was noticeable by its absence. Rumors of a rift between Johnson and Chancellor Rishi Sunak over the instigation of Plan B are mentioned on this morning's front pages and foreign secretary Liz Truss is also said to be unhappy with the situation. It is inevitable that the ambitious members of the Government will see Johnson's travails as an opportunity for the advancement of their own agendas, but the discontent at the upper levels of Government seem to be more widespread even than this. Behind the scenes much manoeuvring will be taking place and the whispering campaign gathering pace. At this point it is not the opposition that Johnson has to be worried about - it is the cloak and dagger machinations of his own team that represent the bigger threat.

[Avatar]

Ah, politics. When are the next elections due?

--A

[I'm Murrin]

I think legally they have to hold one by 2024, but they can call it whenever they feel like they have a good chance of winning.

[Avatar]

Thanks. I would like to say "no time soon then" but these days, who the hell knows...

--A