The Coronavirus Diaries, 12th April 2022

J sent me a text today asking if I had given up blogging. No I haven’t, but I have been busy. Still it was a good nudge. Yes, I thought, I’ll try to blog this evening. There were a few things I thought I might write about. Then I saw that Boris Johnson, Prime minister of the United Kingdom, had been fined for breaking lockdown rules, had made an apology, but did not intend to resign. How dare he? I watched the news. I am outraged. I am insulted. I am ashamed.

One woman interviewed described Johnson’s behaviour as ‘a bit naughty’. Since when did we apply the expectations we have of toddlers to the Prime Minister and the Cabinet? Johnson said he offered his apology with ‘openness and humility’ and that he ‘fully respect(ed) the outcome of the police investigation’. Oh yeah? Openness and humility are clearly just words to Johnson. Words that could be cake or carpets in this scenario for all it would mean. Ditto respect. I’d quite like to hear someone interview Johnson about respect. I take that back: I don’t like seeing Johnson in any shape, interview or form. Still less do I want to hear more of his lies and prevarications. Life is too short.

Advertisement

The Coronavirus Diaries, 11th February 2022, parallel worlds

We’ve been living in strange times for quite a while now, but right now some things in the UK are really off the wall. We have a public school educated, billionaire chancellor who is in real terms cutting the poorest and most vulnerable families incomes so that hypothermia, starvation or a combination of the two may be their fate, and he doesn’t seem to think that more than just expressing passing sorrow for the hardship of their lives he needs to do anything. Lack of imagination, callousness, just another example of how many of us are simply expendable.He is also a front runner to take over when finally, if ever, Boris Johnson, is ousted from 10 Downing Street. The current leading alternative is Liz Truss. I can’t even bring myself to describe Liz Truss. He own party nicknamed her the human hand grenade.

Maybe it was looking at these two front runners which inspired someone, and I’m afraid I was too gobsmacked by the message to take in who it was, a politician, someone at number 10, I don’t know, to say that the Met had better think very carefully before fining the Prime Minister for breaking Covid rules on the grounds it might destabilise the country. WTF? In what parallel universe is it morally ok for a Prime Minister to break the rules over and over again he has himself set, and walk away unscathed while someone sitting on a park bench to eat a sandwich when those same rules applied to be fined?

The Coronavirus Diaries, 23rd January 2022, bleak times

Not sure I’ll complete this before I join Octavia for dinner, and afterwards I may just want to read my book, catch up on some television, or make tracks for bed.

I have had a pretty busy week, but in between working I kept looking at the newspaper to see what else was going on with this car crash of a government. The focus is all on the liar in chief, but you’d have to be deluded to believe if he went everything would suddenly be alright. The government is made up of MPs who voted for Johnson as party leader, who have consistently turned a blind eye to his failings, his dishonesty, his incompetence because of his voter appeal.* It’s only now when it looks like that appeal may have been irrevocably eroded that they want to ditch him. Note I say may have been. Johnson has a Teflon coating. Sleaze, lies, corruption slide off him. Yes they get stuck on someone else, in the same way what you clean off a Teflon coated pan does not disappear into thin air, but he has survived over and over again where others would have been forced to resign and live out their days in obscurity.

The Coronavirus Diaries, 15th September 2020

We had another (chipless) evening in the garden. Hartley is definitely bonding with J. The aloof fox came and ignored us. It’s been a hot day, and the evening is still very warm. MasterB is out. I am pleased, as when we go to das Boot tomorrow he’ll spend most of his time afloat. It gets dark so early now, and unless the light by the pontoon has been fixed – I’m not holding my breath – I am reluctant to step off the boat where I cannot see. It’s still going to be warm, but not as warm. I have put some bits and pieces in the car including the older great niece’s birthday presents as her parents are hoping to make a flying visit on Friday. I have bought her a range of art materials, and the not-plasticine-but-something-akin-to-it is very heavy. Too heavy to post in my opinion.

I was in the City and in Westminster this morning. Both were pretty quiet, though people started to emerge from their offices at lunchtime. I found a message on my ‘phone from B&J asking if I was going to the shops. I replied that having eaten my lunch I was thinking about the vegan Magnums I had seen but not bought in Morrison’s the other day. I ended up buying them for both of us. Yummy. Perfect on a hot afternoon.

The Coronavirus Diaries, 8th September 2020

It’s hard to think of the current incumbent of Number 10 and his coterie of chancers and liars as governing. Self-interest, self-aggrandisement, and a bloated sense of entitlement are their chief characteristics, while scapegoating, gaslighting and bullying are their chief tactics.

It is doubtless to draw attention away from their sorry record that they have decided to start EU bashing again. Johnson’s reaction to a well-briefed, well-prepared Starmer at PMQs has been to thrash around, dish out lies and insults and then tell his circle he wants them to dig for any dirt that can be found in Starmer’s record. Not exactly statesmanlike conduct. You don’t have to dig for dirt on Johnson. It clings to him, like layers of clothing. Digging for veracity and honour would be the hard task.

So today in Parliament a Tory MP, one Brandon Lewis, said that the government will break international law on the EU Withdrawal Deal but “only in a very specific and limited way”. Which however you read it still means breaking the law. Is this going to be the new formula for appeal for all those currently locked up in our over-crowded jails? “Yes, we have broken the law, but only in limited and specific ways, so therefore it doesn’t count”?

Of Ill Health, Tory Lies, Good Men and Women, and Democracy on a Knife Edge

I probably brought it upon myself by saying to Octavia that since I switched from being vegetarian to vegan I seem to shake of colds very quickly. The next evening, Monday, I was just taking my seat in the National Theatre for a performance of Brian Friel’s Translations (excellent btw) when I sneezed a couple of times. By the time I reached home I had a sore throat and a runny nose. The following day I didn’t feel great, but I confidently expected to be well by Wednesday, so it was a bit of shock when I woke to find my legs were like jelly.
That was a week ago. Since then I have got through eight boxes of paper hankies, quantities of paracetamol and half a bottle of Benylin, several boxes of throat sweets.

Democracy is Fragile and Needs Your Help

It’s an odd thing, but if you make up qualifications, cheat in exams, lie under oath in court, fiddle the evidence to suit your premise in a science experiment, take drugs to enhance your sporting prowess, when the truth is discovered, you will quickly be stripped of your qualifications, awards and medals, your professional reputation will be in tatters and you will be held up as an example of how cheating and lying does not pay.
I say it’s an odd thing, because the same rules do not seem to apply to our unesteemed Prime Minister, who I am starting to suspect is a pathological liar, by which I mean he really can’t help himself. To Johnson, lies seem to be so much more attractive than truth. He cheats too, wearing a discreet ear piece in a debate so he could be fed li(n)es, rather than rely, as Corbyn had to, on wit and memory. This last deception has had scant coverage in the news. Many of our newspaper editors almost equalling Johnson by writing about hm as though he is a political colossus.
He is also aided by the BBC news team which sees to have decided that a global reputation for fair reporting, professionalism and impartiality can be dispensed with. There are too many instances to list here, but a few stand out ones are the wreath laying ceremony at the cenotaph in Whitehall on Remembrance Sunday. The leaders of the political parties lined up holding their red wreaths. Johnson looked as though he had slept in his clothes after a thick night and had forgotten to brush his hair. He was seen stepping forward at the wrong time,laying the wreath upside down, shambling. The other party leaders performed the wreath laying with respect and reverence. The BBC radio news reported the leaders as bowing their heads, apart from Corbyn who inclined his head. Now bowing your head and inclining your head are the same thing, but a Twitter storm was unleashed accusing Corbyn of lack of respect and patriotism. Corbyn, having associated with some pretty unsavoury characters down the years, gets these accusations all the time. Bizarrely, Johnson, who is pally with an equal number of unsavoury characters now, does not. Anyway, the next day BBC news broadcast footage of Remembrance Sunday and included Johnson neatly dressed, hair brushed, laying a green wreath. That is footage from three years ago, which when it was spotted by viewers, was claimed by the BBC when it later apologised, to have been in the production room, and a mistake. Hmm. Maybe.

So Mr Johnson, What did Mr Putin do for you in 2016?

We know social media, and in particular Facebook, was responsible for targeting voters in the 2016 referendum with false information. We know that the Leave Campaign has been found guilty of breaking the rules, though mysteriously this is still often referred to as an allegation, and was even denied by Fiona Bruce on Question Time last week.
For those of you still unconvinced, you can read about it here, not as reported in a newspaper with a particular view, but the Electoral Commission’s actual report.

Liars, Charlatans, and Democracy in Peril

The last few days in Parliament have seen some extraordinary scenes. Boris Johnson, a man who seems determined to drag the office of Prime Minister through the mire, has repeatedly used disrespectful and inflammatory language. He has dismissed the fears of MPs of the death threats, rape threats, arson threats they and their families have received. “Humbug”was Johnson’s response, apparently seeing this as some kind of joke. He even referenced Jo Cox, the MP murdered by a member of the Alt Right who shouted “Britain first” as he killed her, and said she would have wanted us to ‘get on’ with Brexit. BS.

Others have suggested riots if we do not leave the EU on 31st October. Suggested these riots almost as a threat, almost as a call for riots.

I have been on a number of pro EU marches since June 2016. They have been characterised by good humour, politeness, warmth. They had a family feel. There have been dogs and children, wheelchair users. They have made me proud to be British at a time when my country, which I love, has been tearing itself apart.

I stood at Trafalgar Square over a year ago and, as I waited for the friends I was hoping to join, struck up a conversation with a a French family visiting London. They were warm in their admiration of the way this huge crowd was behaving. I have been with Americans who have taken photograph after photograph, and then decided they wanted to join in, be part of this. These marches, these demonstrations, have fostered such good feeling, such warmth from foreigners who had wondered whether London was a safe place to visit in these febrile times.

There have been no arrests. At the largest march over one million people of all ages walked together, calm, courteous even when abuse was shouted by the odd Brexiteer who had turned up to jeer. Some people tried to engage with the Brexiteers, to speak to them. They were repaid with swearing and threats, not dialogue.

I have only witnessed a Brexiteer demonstration by accident. There were only a small number of demonstrators, but they were loudly aggressive, threatening. One wore a Donald trump mask while others sang “We love you Donald, oh yes we do.” As a Remainer, I would not have liked to challenge them. The outcome would almost certainly have been violent. More than one person has said that Brexit has become like a religion, a particularly fundamentalist religion, where questioning and discussion, let alone disagreement, is treated as blasphemy and quickly suppressed, the questioner demonised.

This is a dangerous development. Democracy is a delicate creature. Look at history and see how many times people who thought they were secure were forced to flee their homes with nothing when anti-democratic, often populist, movements silenced debate and demanded adherence to a particular ideology; when the people comes to mean only people who belong to a certain group.

Mind Our Language

They say if you learn one thing from a talk, or a visit to a museum or gallery, it is time, sometimes money, well spent. On those grounds the lectures and seminars on sociolinguistics I attended as part of my first degree represent a good investment.

I recall studying newspaper articles, noting how descriptors were used to steer the reader to  particular view, to mould our responses. It was quite shocking, and has made me a more critical reader, more of a fact checker. When I started flat hunting in the days before the internet I would collect details of properties for sale from estate agents. Apart from those being sold by Roy Brooks who believed in calling a spade a spade – “in frankly appalling condition throughout” is one phrase I remember – these invariably one bedroomed properties were described as spacious. Spacious for whom, I’d wonder. Lilliputians perhaps. I fast came to the conclusion that the best way to read these bits of puff was to block out the adjectives, erase the ‘spacious’s, the ‘stunning’s, the ‘desirable’s and the ‘sought after location’s.

Once, listening to the news on the BBC in the 80s, my antennae twitched when I heard a dictator, renowned for disregarding human rights and with a pronounced penchant for imprisoning opponents without trial and then torturing them, had been ‘forced’ to execute some ‘rebels’. Sure enough, a short time later our government quietly softened its stance towards this man, his barbarities would be ignored in the name of trade.