23rd – 24th May 2020
We are living in strange, scary times at the moment and there’s very little coming from 10 Downing Street to put many, if any, minds at rest. One minute we are being told to ‘stay home, protect the NHS and save lives’ and then it’s become ‘stay alert’ with all the confusion that has caused. Now it seems people think it’s nearly all over and off they go to enjoy the sunshine and drive for miles to find a beach. I was staggered last weekend to see a woman on TV complaining that the beach she was sat on was ‘busier than Tesco’s car-park; the last time she went shopping. Doh!!
Now we are reading that Dominic Cummings decided to drive over 250 miles to Durham to hide away with his parents – when he and his partner were both symptomatic with Covid-19 – at a time when his boss’s instruction was to stay at home. Don’t expect him to do the honourable thing and resign though, this man doesn’t do honour, and don’t expect Boris to do anything about it – it’s one rule for us and no rules for them I’m afraid. There are all sorts of claims and counter claims being bandied about but Downing Street is sticking to his defence and Ministers are being wheeled out to argue his corner which I find shameful. Government advice and indeed instruction was to stay at home and isolate, which almost all have done even though it meant people dying without loved ones by their sides and funerals with no mourners – so why does Cummings think it’s OK for him to ignore his bosses and why are Ministers compounding the gross error on his part? If Matt Hancock had any decency he’d be demanding Cummings’ head on a plate or resigning himself in protest.
Over the two days this has been brewing guess who has gone missing – again?
Yep – Boris! He’s the only part-time Prime Minister I’ve ever come across – just where does he hide away and what does he do with himself all day? I don’t see him being a hands on kind of a Dad, changing nappies, feeding and winding his new-born spawn and he leaves the evening briefings to whoever he spots creeping past his window so just what is it that he’s doing? Now love or loathe Nicola Sturgeon there’s one thing that can’t be denied – she is taking what’s going on in Scotland extremely seriously and recognises her role and the responsibilities that go with it. She stands up every afternoon to face the cameras and tell Scotland what’s going on and what’s coming next, unlike Boris, who all of a sudden seems camera shy – or should that really be he’s showing himself to be the thick, cowardly bastard he really is? Regular readers will know my view on this and I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusion. One thing is for sure – he hasn’t come rushing to defend his poisonous mate so lets see how this develops – he caved in to pressure from his own team about the NHS tax on foreign NHS workers and there’s a storm brewing about Cummings. How much more can this poxy Government survive?
PMQ’s aren’t showing him in a good light either. Kier Starmer has consistently had the better of him over the last three weeks, to such an extent that the Tories have brought more MP’s into the chamber to give Johnson an audience to preach to and get some vocal support. Jack-boot Reich Mutt is now also talking about bringing the House of Commons back after the Whitsun break, again to prop up their failing leader at PMQ’s. PMQ’s is now regular viewing in the Brookes household – BBC Parliament, 12:00 noon UK every Wednesday – I heartily recommend it to you all – except next week as they’re all off for a Whitsun holiday. Now you’d have thought that at a time like this and when most of them are working from home anyway maybe, just maybe they’d have put a few more hours in. Just wondering.
Jacob wants to experiment now by bringing back all the MP’s – many of whom are self-isolating or even ‘shielding’ (government imposed solitary confinement in all but name IMHO). This is even more experimenting on the part of the Tories, to follow on from all their other failed experiments whilst trying to tackle Covid-19.
Think about everything else they have tried:
‘Herd Immunity’ – where there was talk of letting the virus loose in the community, so generating a natural level of immunity – a Dominic Cummings plan I believe but reined in when people started talking of up to 500,000 deaths.
Testing in the community – until it became as obvious as the nose on Johnson’s lying face that the UK didn’t have the capacity to test those most vulnerable, never mind anyone else as a result of funding cutbacks for public health. A quick aside here – those countries that did ‘enjoy’ adequate testing, such as South Korea and Germany, had or have dangerous neighbours who pose(d) very real nuclear, biological and chemical warfare threats – historic Cold War preparedness proved extremely helpful whereas the UK couldn’t wait to cash in on the supposed economic benefits from the Berlin Wall tumbling.
Then there’s the very real concern about older and more frail people being discharged from hospitals and back into Care Homes without being tested – even if they were symptomatic – as has been seen to be the case. Politicians are saying they wouldn’t have been discharged unless a clinician had said it was OK to do so. Clinicians are saying they were instructed by (government directed) policy. Who’s your money on? And here’s more irony, heaped on even more irony – Covid-19 was allowed to rip through Care Homes, we know that now and, given the fact that as independent businesses are responsible for buying and stocking their own PPE requirements, that PPE was in desperately short supply and prioritised for the NHS exacerbated conditions and increased the deaths experienced in Care Homes.
Another experiment gone wrong in my opinion. I’m not saying the government deliberately targeted the elderly and frail but I do wonder where the thinking came from. Think about it yourself for a while: discharged back into Homes, without being tested, before ‘lockdown’ was imposed, with inadequate PPE provision, with no instruction for Care workers to stop moving from client to client without PPE – need I carry on? Now, to make matters worse, the looney elements of the Conservative Party are advocating making the elderly retired population pay for Covid-19 by removing the State Pension triple-lock introduced by the coalition government of Cameron and Clegg to ensure they kept the self same oldies in the Tory fold. The truth is that the UK State Pension is probably the most miserly of any in Europe and the triple-lock has seen the value of it increase steadily although it is still less than even the Republic of Ireland. To now make pensioners pay for the effects of Covid-19 is a disgraceful tactic when big Tech corporations get away with paying next to nothing into the UK economy. I wonder if Johnson will have the cojones to upset the blue rinse Tory voters in the Home Counties? Let’s wait and see.
The next experiment was lockdown itself. On one hand advice was that the UK public wouldn’t go for it, then it looked like joe public was doing it anyway to try to stay safe so it was introduced (way too late IMHO) and then neo-cons started grumbling that the economy was struggling and it was time to get back to work. In my last blog I stated quite clearly that no death was worth an extra £1 profit for a million/billionaire and I stand by that but just look at what Johnson is now pressing on with:
It is proposed that children start back at school in June – yet we still don’t have a proven test, track and trace system in place, the people needed to do the leg work involved with contact tracing are yet to be properly trained or organised and parent and teacher concerns have yet to be fully addressed, never mind mitigated. We are expected to allow children back into school, risking parents at the start and end of the day, risking teachers and school staff all through the day and who knows who else as a result of loosening lockdown in such a cavalier fashion. The last government I’m aware of that treated children so shamelessly was that of Nazi Germany, where Josef Mengele conducted all sorts of experiments on children and adults at Auschwitz concentration camp.
We also have to think about how they expect people who can’t work from home actually get back to work. I’d hazard a guess that most will depend on public transport and in London that means, to all intents and purposes the tube although buses do play a large part. How can people respect the physical distancing being urged on a bus? We’ve all seen clips of rammed tube carriages – physical distancing doesn’t work there either so how are people expected to get too and from work safely? Now think back 70 years or so and wonder who used to cram as many people as possible into train wagons? Is it me or is there a theme coming through? Just asking, that’s all!
Now I don’t expect to make a comparison like that without upsetting some people – though hopefully none of my regular readers given we are generally of a like mind – but if I have, well tough shit! The current ultra right wing Conservative government and party are but one step away from Fascism, one step away from emulating everything that’s going on in places like Brazil, Hungary, Poland, China and yes the good ole’ US of A under their current leaders. You think I’m wrong? I was talking with my eldest son earlier this afternoon and he commented on a picture he’d seen of armed protestors – yes, armed to the teeth with assault rifles – on the steps of a Governors building in the US – a Democrat governor I hasten to add – protestors encouraged by the tangerine buffoon – and one of the protestors held a placard which read ‘work makes me free‘. Where have we seen that before? I’ve tried finding the picture, to no avail and not helped by Karen being concerned about the kind of website that might carry a shot like that and what cookies might deliver to my lap-top but the fact is that neo-fascist sentiments are still alive and kicking and need to be challenged at every step.
I’m sure there’s more coming about this and you can rest assured that I’ll have more to say on it but, until my next instalment, please
STAY HOME, PROTECT NHS AND CARE WORKERS AND SAVE LIVES
Failing that go get a Dominic Cummings face mask
https://www.funkybunky.co.uk/Item/Dominic-Cummings-mask
and do what the f##k you want!
Cheers
Jem