Past the peak! Pass the port!
Not really much of a victory. If indeed a victory it is!
Johnson says the Uk has avoided an uncontrollable and catastrophic epidemic that could have caused 500,000 deaths.
But there's still everything to play for. Now do you want to take those 26,097 deaths - that's yours to keep (you evil Tory bastard), or do you want to gamble and go for the higher number. Remember, you don't want to spend money on helping the poor, or providing PPE to doctors and nurses.
Audience, what do YOU think he should do?
We will beat this with our resolve and ingenuity? Our? You mean the tireless work of scientists and researchers, many of whom are prisoners of the capitalist machine that will profit from their work and not provide it on the basis of basic human necessity? Yeah, I thought that's what you mean.
Not the brainless resolve of a Frankenstein's monster, animated by force and not wit. A pitiful thoughtless thing. It's like listening to Emily Bronte's football commentary. This spectacularly charmless oaf spouting in language whose colours the rest of us cannot see because we didn't benefit from a private education priced at and intended to mould the next generation of dogs.
Elsewhere I read that, despite 'assurances' to the contrary, people are being evicted, and with the aid of the cops. That's what police are folks: state enforcers. Law, like politics, isn't arbitrary. It's not decided democratically; that is neither you nor I get a say in what is and isn't legal. Capitalists do that. The ruling class has the monopoly on that, just like, through the cops, it has the monopoly on force. Without that people would be able to stand up to this kind of partisan bullying. Don't believe that, institutionally, the cops are your friend. Not when they are helping turf out into destitution NHS key workers and the like (anyone, really, it shouldn't matter).
Fuck these people. They are bullying those more likely to be paid less than the Real Living Wage and four times more likely to be on a sketchy, zero hour, contract. This is how the government treats those on the front line right now. Just as it has always treated the poor who fight for them, just ask any British Tommy. Or at least those not filled to the brim with right wing pro-state borderline fascist propaganda (don't believe me, go to any squaddie internet forum).
But we're past the peak. Unless you live or work in a care home. In which case you are literally in the Reaper's shadow. Thanks to a government so stupid it's own health minister actively cheers a media campaign from the Daily Mail that showed up his utter incompetence.
Not that I want to congratulate the Mail of course!
Thursday, 30 April 2020
Wednesday, 29 April 2020
Lockdown by Lazarus 3: Blue In Tooth & Claw
Boris had a baby.
Correction: Boris had another baby.
Are we being trolled by the Johnsons?
The government has refused to change the Universal Credit 'system', Not even to accommodate a global life threatening pandemic (hey do you remember the time when we could breathe safely?).
Let's think about that.
What that tells me isn't just that the Tories don't give a shiny copper fuck about the poor, now increasing in number, but that they cannot care. At all costs they must preserve their system. Perhaps they hope that a five week wait will somehow see off the virus. Gambling with people's lives. They claim it's due to costs. Bollocks, they can find money for what they need. Not what we need.
This is Class War. That's all there is right now. It isn't a battle against a virus, but against a hostile overclass. They must end. This decision WILL lead to infection and death.
The Tories are killing us. Believe!
In news of a "don't look over here" nature, inquests into Covid NHS deaths are told (no doubt by Dominic Cummings) not to examine the issue of PPE. Well well fucking well. How convenient. A bit like...oh I can't be bothered, you can all think of something equally absurd and vile :D
That's the capitalist class folks. You can see it for yourself. All around the world, the leaders of the imperial powers responding to the plaintive cries of dying and scared human beings in their care shrug their shoulders, harrumphing indignantly. "You only elected me, what the fuck more do you want?"
Your head. On a pike.
Aren't you sick of this yet? Are you angry enough that, when possible, you'll get out on the streets and start the desperately needed revolution. Don't waste your time with political parliamentary parties. That's a dead end. We have the power. We must use it, they are killing us. They are fighting a war against the whole damn world. Banks and plagues are their weapons of mass destruction; far worse than whatever they sold Saddam Hussein (and then washed their hands of).
Shock and awe, blue in tooth and claw. We can't afford them anymore.
Once the fighting's over, they will send us the bill.
Oh, and Brexit's still on the cards. Doesn't that just remind you of the Great Fire of London; a horrendous city wide conflagration to cure a plague! Nothing like shitting the bed after a napalm curry bender.
"Breathe in the air, don't be afraid to care"
Correction: Boris had another baby.
Are we being trolled by the Johnsons?
The government has refused to change the Universal Credit 'system', Not even to accommodate a global life threatening pandemic (hey do you remember the time when we could breathe safely?).
Let's think about that.
What that tells me isn't just that the Tories don't give a shiny copper fuck about the poor, now increasing in number, but that they cannot care. At all costs they must preserve their system. Perhaps they hope that a five week wait will somehow see off the virus. Gambling with people's lives. They claim it's due to costs. Bollocks, they can find money for what they need. Not what we need.
This is Class War. That's all there is right now. It isn't a battle against a virus, but against a hostile overclass. They must end. This decision WILL lead to infection and death.
The Tories are killing us. Believe!
In news of a "don't look over here" nature, inquests into Covid NHS deaths are told (no doubt by Dominic Cummings) not to examine the issue of PPE. Well well fucking well. How convenient. A bit like...oh I can't be bothered, you can all think of something equally absurd and vile :D
That's the capitalist class folks. You can see it for yourself. All around the world, the leaders of the imperial powers responding to the plaintive cries of dying and scared human beings in their care shrug their shoulders, harrumphing indignantly. "You only elected me, what the fuck more do you want?"
Your head. On a pike.
Aren't you sick of this yet? Are you angry enough that, when possible, you'll get out on the streets and start the desperately needed revolution. Don't waste your time with political parliamentary parties. That's a dead end. We have the power. We must use it, they are killing us. They are fighting a war against the whole damn world. Banks and plagues are their weapons of mass destruction; far worse than whatever they sold Saddam Hussein (and then washed their hands of).
Shock and awe, blue in tooth and claw. We can't afford them anymore.
Once the fighting's over, they will send us the bill.
Oh, and Brexit's still on the cards. Doesn't that just remind you of the Great Fire of London; a horrendous city wide conflagration to cure a plague! Nothing like shitting the bed after a napalm curry bender.
"Breathe in the air, don't be afraid to care"
Tuesday, 28 April 2020
Lockdown by Lazarus 2: Cause and Effect
Class War here.
Rain came down today. I guess the gardens need a drink.
It's leaving me too much time to think
Apparently, though I didn't watch it, Panorama did a good job of laying bare the government's horrendous failings. Not really failings: the obvious result of deliberate policy. The consequence of choice. Cause and effect.
Don't let them fool you. It's cause and effect. The Tories, like all capitalists, like to blame things on everything else. We can label this polyglot of causes, the winds of economic fortune. They blow, it's force majeure, don't you know? Who can be held responsible? Act of god!
No! Act of capital.
It's true to say that many capitalists don't really understand the system they operate under. Like sharks they don't know why they behave as they do; they act on instinct. Swim or die. Capitalists are like that: push down wages, drive workers harder, to produce more, or die. This is why they cry their tears in times like this: "oh we'd love to keep the staff/pay higher wages"
For many that's probably true: they don't understand how it works. Who has time for Marx? He's wrong, right? (Don't ask me, I'm no expert either.)
But that doesn't make it right. Capitalism isn't a system of morality. It's not a greedy fat cat rubbing his hands with knowing glee, though there are certainly many like that. It's an objective series of conditions that, cause and effect, produce results:
Profit comes from your labour. This is why I call capitalists vampires. They take a portion of your labour and, using propaganda (work hard comrade! Be a team player!), convince you that's the only way society can function.
Capitalists depend on private property rights to create the condition to generate profit. Ownership of the means of production. This too needs to be challenged and that stranglehold broken. They, the capitalists, are absentee owners. Like fatcat landlords owning territory in working class neighbourhoods.
Cause and effect. Good night.
Rain came down today. I guess the gardens need a drink.
It's leaving me too much time to think
Apparently, though I didn't watch it, Panorama did a good job of laying bare the government's horrendous failings. Not really failings: the obvious result of deliberate policy. The consequence of choice. Cause and effect.
Don't let them fool you. It's cause and effect. The Tories, like all capitalists, like to blame things on everything else. We can label this polyglot of causes, the winds of economic fortune. They blow, it's force majeure, don't you know? Who can be held responsible? Act of god!
No! Act of capital.
It's true to say that many capitalists don't really understand the system they operate under. Like sharks they don't know why they behave as they do; they act on instinct. Swim or die. Capitalists are like that: push down wages, drive workers harder, to produce more, or die. This is why they cry their tears in times like this: "oh we'd love to keep the staff/pay higher wages"
For many that's probably true: they don't understand how it works. Who has time for Marx? He's wrong, right? (Don't ask me, I'm no expert either.)
But that doesn't make it right. Capitalism isn't a system of morality. It's not a greedy fat cat rubbing his hands with knowing glee, though there are certainly many like that. It's an objective series of conditions that, cause and effect, produce results:
Profit comes from your labour. This is why I call capitalists vampires. They take a portion of your labour and, using propaganda (work hard comrade! Be a team player!), convince you that's the only way society can function.
Capitalists depend on private property rights to create the condition to generate profit. Ownership of the means of production. This too needs to be challenged and that stranglehold broken. They, the capitalists, are absentee owners. Like fatcat landlords owning territory in working class neighbourhoods.
Cause and effect. Good night.
Monday, 27 April 2020
Lockdown by Lazarus 1: He Is Returned!
Fire up the prayer engines! Prostrate yourselves before the idiot box! Sing Borisana!
He is returned!
For
Fuck's
Sake!
I mean read this shit! Is he talking about a different country and a different government? Dominic Raab has done a "terrific job"? By what standard? Is he being compared to a rabbit caught in the headlights? the guy is a buffoon. He and Patel have been a shitshow, what with her inability to count and her claiming that, during a lockdown a resultant drop in shoplifting is a victory!
The shops arne't open m'dear!
Johnson wants to thank us for our sheer grit and guts, like we're the audience at a gig. "Thanks for coming, now go home and don't breathe ever again!"
He knows it's tough...from his second home. No doubt attended by staff putting themselves at risk. Actually I've no idea how Chequers is run but I doubt the PM goes to Asda before retiring there to do a big shop for a weekend break. Bottle of port, a tub of fois gras, some vol au vonts (I'm not even going to look up the correct spelling), and a copy of the Telegraph. No I dont' have a club card, just the national debt. Will that do?
He likens the virus to a mugger. This is the extent of the Tory boy's imagination. They have to characterise it in such a way that it, a bacteria for god's sake, becomes a bogeyman. This is nationalism. Capital's desperate propagandist. Throw a flag at it, spray it with sweat from Churchill's testicles, sing along to Vera Lynn. That'll work. Don't cook it a chicken masala, a spagbol, don't read it the Quran. Those are bound to make it worse.
They call this bullshit 'Churchillian'. Only in the sense that it was spoken by a bullish racist toff and contains words in English. The only reason I can think of to get behind Johnson would be to stick the proverbial (and not actual, GHCQ, in case you're reading!) knife in.
Gawd help us. He has returned. No doubt tomorrow's screamsheets and broadrags will be full of praise for this standard issue ruling class drivel. Anthem for the elite. People that think we've got to work together to beat the evil mugger virus are ignorant of the reality: where was the 'blitz spirit' when the NHS first needed (and still needs) PPE? It's just empty rhetoric for empty heads. Skulls internally lit by a flickering neon sign reading "no blacks no dogs no Irish, no hope!"
Praise fucking be! Class War!
He is returned!
For
Fuck's
Sake!
I mean read this shit! Is he talking about a different country and a different government? Dominic Raab has done a "terrific job"? By what standard? Is he being compared to a rabbit caught in the headlights? the guy is a buffoon. He and Patel have been a shitshow, what with her inability to count and her claiming that, during a lockdown a resultant drop in shoplifting is a victory!
The shops arne't open m'dear!
Johnson wants to thank us for our sheer grit and guts, like we're the audience at a gig. "Thanks for coming, now go home and don't breathe ever again!"
He knows it's tough...from his second home. No doubt attended by staff putting themselves at risk. Actually I've no idea how Chequers is run but I doubt the PM goes to Asda before retiring there to do a big shop for a weekend break. Bottle of port, a tub of fois gras, some vol au vonts (I'm not even going to look up the correct spelling), and a copy of the Telegraph. No I dont' have a club card, just the national debt. Will that do?
He likens the virus to a mugger. This is the extent of the Tory boy's imagination. They have to characterise it in such a way that it, a bacteria for god's sake, becomes a bogeyman. This is nationalism. Capital's desperate propagandist. Throw a flag at it, spray it with sweat from Churchill's testicles, sing along to Vera Lynn. That'll work. Don't cook it a chicken masala, a spagbol, don't read it the Quran. Those are bound to make it worse.
They call this bullshit 'Churchillian'. Only in the sense that it was spoken by a bullish racist toff and contains words in English. The only reason I can think of to get behind Johnson would be to stick the proverbial (and not actual, GHCQ, in case you're reading!) knife in.
Gawd help us. He has returned. No doubt tomorrow's screamsheets and broadrags will be full of praise for this standard issue ruling class drivel. Anthem for the elite. People that think we've got to work together to beat the evil mugger virus are ignorant of the reality: where was the 'blitz spirit' when the NHS first needed (and still needs) PPE? It's just empty rhetoric for empty heads. Skulls internally lit by a flickering neon sign reading "no blacks no dogs no Irish, no hope!"
Praise fucking be! Class War!
Sunday, 26 April 2020
Weekender 6: Human Tetris
As I write this Twitter informs me that one of the initial volunteers for a proposed Corona vaccine has...died.
I mean, that's not good. Is it!
One can't help but be British about this; possessed of nonchalant fatalism. Of course in reality it's a sad tragedy for all concerned. Not least of all the family.
No one said a vaccine would be easy. So where do we go from here?
Increasingly lockdown will become untenable. It just will be. Subject to increasing psycho-social friction people will stop complying - and that's before dealing with the conspiracy idiots who think they are being arrested. Yes this is authoritarian (did you think society previous was otherwise?), but it's not jail. That's a fatuous comparison that trivialises the special reality we are in.
Ironically it's the rubbish weather, which is set to roll in this week, that will lead me to struggle. We had a few choices days the other week. Time has become a whirlpool of days so you'll forgive me for being vague. However it would be unreasonable to expect nice weather every day. Hopefully it will stay warm, but being locked down when it's raining only heightens the tension: you doubly can't go out. We will just have to manage.
I believe we have a fortnight remaining on this extension. What the government will do is anyone's guess. I suspect they might extend it, formally speaking, but with some measure of easing. But how can that work? Social distancing is already mostly ignored/impossible. Shopping at the local tesco is like playing human Tetris. Staff isolate themselves while stocking an aisle, which is frustrating. I think they could do that differently: open an hour later and use that time to stock up. Do the same at lucnh if need be. The place opens at 7am, I hardly think that's going to inconvenience us!
There's going to be a lot different in the retail sector following this. It cannot return to normality. Consider charity shops, for example. Are they going to be able to receive donations given that they could come from an infected house, even with the best of intentions it would be impossible to test. So they would have to err on the side of Covid caution. So that's the third sector decimated; foodbanks will (and are) going to struggle likewise, though many donations are made in supermarkets. Still not ideal, but then nothing is until we can permanently and properly deal with the disease.
Places like hair salons are going to really struggle. You could post up an official certificate, for example, saying "we're clean and open for business", but customers can't make that same guarantee. Hairdressing is a very tactile affair. Are they all going to be wearing masks and gloves? They'll have to, but at what cost?
I could go on. This is a very different world we will, at some point have to, enter. A lot of people are going to struggle, and of course many are right now. If only we had leaders...
I mean, that's not good. Is it!
One can't help but be British about this; possessed of nonchalant fatalism. Of course in reality it's a sad tragedy for all concerned. Not least of all the family.
No one said a vaccine would be easy. So where do we go from here?
Increasingly lockdown will become untenable. It just will be. Subject to increasing psycho-social friction people will stop complying - and that's before dealing with the conspiracy idiots who think they are being arrested. Yes this is authoritarian (did you think society previous was otherwise?), but it's not jail. That's a fatuous comparison that trivialises the special reality we are in.
Ironically it's the rubbish weather, which is set to roll in this week, that will lead me to struggle. We had a few choices days the other week. Time has become a whirlpool of days so you'll forgive me for being vague. However it would be unreasonable to expect nice weather every day. Hopefully it will stay warm, but being locked down when it's raining only heightens the tension: you doubly can't go out. We will just have to manage.
I believe we have a fortnight remaining on this extension. What the government will do is anyone's guess. I suspect they might extend it, formally speaking, but with some measure of easing. But how can that work? Social distancing is already mostly ignored/impossible. Shopping at the local tesco is like playing human Tetris. Staff isolate themselves while stocking an aisle, which is frustrating. I think they could do that differently: open an hour later and use that time to stock up. Do the same at lucnh if need be. The place opens at 7am, I hardly think that's going to inconvenience us!
There's going to be a lot different in the retail sector following this. It cannot return to normality. Consider charity shops, for example. Are they going to be able to receive donations given that they could come from an infected house, even with the best of intentions it would be impossible to test. So they would have to err on the side of Covid caution. So that's the third sector decimated; foodbanks will (and are) going to struggle likewise, though many donations are made in supermarkets. Still not ideal, but then nothing is until we can permanently and properly deal with the disease.
Places like hair salons are going to really struggle. You could post up an official certificate, for example, saying "we're clean and open for business", but customers can't make that same guarantee. Hairdressing is a very tactile affair. Are they all going to be wearing masks and gloves? They'll have to, but at what cost?
I could go on. This is a very different world we will, at some point have to, enter. A lot of people are going to struggle, and of course many are right now. If only we had leaders...
Saturday, 25 April 2020
Weekender 6: The Death of Choice
One aspect of lockdown that is frustrating is the curtailing of choice for consumers. Ideally it shouldn't matter; choice, in terms of the marketplace, is a capitalist confection. Capitalists need choice in order to compete where what we should have, with a planned economy of some kind, is the best of what's needed. Not a multiplicity of what isn't. How many different bars of choco-junk can we bear? How many varieties of monster energy drink?
Unfortunately this is the sort of situation where choice is necessary because it's the choice between paying a premium or finding a bargain; an empty shelf or a full shelf. So for example, if I shopped in town, at the Tesco supermarket, I'd have access to a greater range of produce. Items that are also cheaper as well (which I believe is because Tesco thinks Weston super Mare is a poorer place).
But I'm not bussing it into town. I'm having to shop locally, at the local Tesco Express. As most people know the Express shops are, bizarrely, slightly more expensive. Same produces, just dearer. They have never explained to me why this is and I suspect it's because of demographics. I think they perceive this to be a slightly more affluent area, which may or may not be true, and jack the price up accordingly. I have absolutely no idea how true this is, maybe not at all.
They also carry a more limited array of produce. This ultimately comes down to dietary dogma. For example, you'll see more low fat meat on sale. This is because we are mistakenly told low fat = healthy (it doesn't, but that's another discussion). So not only am I having to pay more, but I'm having my choice further limited by the dominant dietary orthodoxy.
You might think that, in the current crisis climate, they might be willing to show parity in their prices. They might throw the community a bone. But of course that's not how capitalism works. This is the take away (so to speak): Profit matters more to Tesco than whether I, or you, eat tonight. They won't be alone in that. These are also companies who, across their shops, make bold claims as to their responsibility to the community and how they, having forcibly inserted themselves, are part of it,
THat's really all there is to it. Good night!
Unfortunately this is the sort of situation where choice is necessary because it's the choice between paying a premium or finding a bargain; an empty shelf or a full shelf. So for example, if I shopped in town, at the Tesco supermarket, I'd have access to a greater range of produce. Items that are also cheaper as well (which I believe is because Tesco thinks Weston super Mare is a poorer place).
But I'm not bussing it into town. I'm having to shop locally, at the local Tesco Express. As most people know the Express shops are, bizarrely, slightly more expensive. Same produces, just dearer. They have never explained to me why this is and I suspect it's because of demographics. I think they perceive this to be a slightly more affluent area, which may or may not be true, and jack the price up accordingly. I have absolutely no idea how true this is, maybe not at all.
They also carry a more limited array of produce. This ultimately comes down to dietary dogma. For example, you'll see more low fat meat on sale. This is because we are mistakenly told low fat = healthy (it doesn't, but that's another discussion). So not only am I having to pay more, but I'm having my choice further limited by the dominant dietary orthodoxy.
You might think that, in the current crisis climate, they might be willing to show parity in their prices. They might throw the community a bone. But of course that's not how capitalism works. This is the take away (so to speak): Profit matters more to Tesco than whether I, or you, eat tonight. They won't be alone in that. These are also companies who, across their shops, make bold claims as to their responsibility to the community and how they, having forcibly inserted themselves, are part of it,
THat's really all there is to it. Good night!
Friday, 24 April 2020
Extra Time 5: On The Injection...of Bleach
Another day and the leader of the free world has said another stupid thing.
Can we inject ourselves with light and disinfectant?
No sir, we absolutely can't. And mustn't.
This moron is on the telly daily actually saying these things! He just speaks aloud what none of us ever dare to think. How does this happen? Easy: look around him. Look at the hangers on, the rich sycophants, the Good Old Boys who depend on him for their continued ability to manipulate and exploit.
Look at his thrice damned face! Look! This moron is on the telly daily and he wears a tan so bad he must have been bundled into a sunbed as a practical joke. A lobster out for revenge saw an opportunity and turned his flesh into human thermadore. Topped off with a wig so fake you have to believe it isn't.
How does someone this rich, this powerful, manage to come off looking like a broken silverback entered and failed a Pat Butcher dress-a-like contest! Does he own no mirrors? That'd be surprising if true given how narcissistic he is. Perhaps he's actually a vampire, kept safe from the daylight by a protective armour of KP Frazzles and straw.
Humanity's best is nothing of the sort. If enlightened beings from the fifth dimension, care of the Pleiades, ever manifest in our dimension this is who will represent us. They will come, atop Silver Ships of the Seventh Age, bearing vibrations of cosmic forgiveness. They will offer these freely wanting naught but for us to join the galactic circle and evolved futurity.
And they will say "fuck, no. See you in a millennium"
Oh well, back to the drawing board. NEXT!
Can we inject light and disinfectant? Can we actually cure Covid by injecting bleach into our veins?
These are questions asked by the most desperate junkies you'll ever meet. Sad souls whose lives are so broken they don't see the danger to self. We should pity these people, rehabilitate them. Not so with Trump. He is a lost cause and the world is going to be dragged down as he sinks further into enabled insanity.
Anyway, back here, over the pond, Sirkeer Starmer, despite many Parliamentarians to the contrary, wants to rule out UBI. Instead let's fiddle with UC; tweaking it a little like fine tuning a radio.so you get the latest Take That anthem in proper stereo (ugh). This isn't acceptable, but it isn't surprising.
This is where Labour is. Don't get sucked into this. I'll hear an argument for electoralism, but not for this Labour party. They are functionally no different. Just another, more palatable, shade of capitalism. He doesn't want change, just gussy up a horrendous intrinsically malevolent system so that the control over the working class is maintained. He doesn't want to give you power. Remember that.
And don't inject bleach.
Forgot to include Class War Daily. Here
Can we inject ourselves with light and disinfectant?
No sir, we absolutely can't. And mustn't.
This moron is on the telly daily actually saying these things! He just speaks aloud what none of us ever dare to think. How does this happen? Easy: look around him. Look at the hangers on, the rich sycophants, the Good Old Boys who depend on him for their continued ability to manipulate and exploit.
Look at his thrice damned face! Look! This moron is on the telly daily and he wears a tan so bad he must have been bundled into a sunbed as a practical joke. A lobster out for revenge saw an opportunity and turned his flesh into human thermadore. Topped off with a wig so fake you have to believe it isn't.
How does someone this rich, this powerful, manage to come off looking like a broken silverback entered and failed a Pat Butcher dress-a-like contest! Does he own no mirrors? That'd be surprising if true given how narcissistic he is. Perhaps he's actually a vampire, kept safe from the daylight by a protective armour of KP Frazzles and straw.
Humanity's best is nothing of the sort. If enlightened beings from the fifth dimension, care of the Pleiades, ever manifest in our dimension this is who will represent us. They will come, atop Silver Ships of the Seventh Age, bearing vibrations of cosmic forgiveness. They will offer these freely wanting naught but for us to join the galactic circle and evolved futurity.
And they will say "fuck, no. See you in a millennium"
Oh well, back to the drawing board. NEXT!
Can we inject light and disinfectant? Can we actually cure Covid by injecting bleach into our veins?
These are questions asked by the most desperate junkies you'll ever meet. Sad souls whose lives are so broken they don't see the danger to self. We should pity these people, rehabilitate them. Not so with Trump. He is a lost cause and the world is going to be dragged down as he sinks further into enabled insanity.
Anyway, back here, over the pond, Sirkeer Starmer, despite many Parliamentarians to the contrary, wants to rule out UBI. Instead let's fiddle with UC; tweaking it a little like fine tuning a radio.so you get the latest Take That anthem in proper stereo (ugh). This isn't acceptable, but it isn't surprising.
This is where Labour is. Don't get sucked into this. I'll hear an argument for electoralism, but not for this Labour party. They are functionally no different. Just another, more palatable, shade of capitalism. He doesn't want change, just gussy up a horrendous intrinsically malevolent system so that the control over the working class is maintained. He doesn't want to give you power. Remember that.
And don't inject bleach.
Forgot to include Class War Daily. Here
Thursday, 23 April 2020
Extra Time 4: Class War Never Ended
Today's Class War.
Everyday is class war.
Every single day. This crisis simply placed an unavoidable lens to the situation. Like someone moving the sun under microscope. Careful you'll blind yourself.
All people have to do now is...look! Of course that simple act probably isn't enough; people are so conditioned by the neoliberal years and the endless bottomless chatter of media and the online echo chamber. The Twittersphere where people talk haikus of bias and limericks of conformity to hide the reality: things. don't. work. we. are. dying.
People know this instinctively, it's just been misdirected. It's not the fault of people with actual power. Instead it's 'the left', 'the Jews' (while Jeremy Corbyn is a racist), them over there, those guys, women, gays, kids, students, unemployed people, employed people.
We aren't coming back from this. History is only ever moving in one direction and we've got to make sure it's the right direction, which is to say the left direction, which is to say the radical direction. You know we can't go back to what we had before. We can't let them try. Already capital is starting to get antsy; open up! Let me in or I'll blow down your house!
Capitalism's been blowing down your house for decades. That's what it does. It's crisis prone. It isn't just incapable of dealing with a crisis of this nature, a global pandemic. It staggers between boom and bust, like a drunk on his way home bouncing off the walls down his street. Deaf dumb and blind; the pinball economic system.
This is what angers me the most about Hitchens and the rest of the denial tribe. They protest and lament the freedom we never really had. Now you can see just how enslaved we are, or, hopefully, were. Corona has thrown that into the sharpest relief. At the cost of lives. How free were we when we have to sell ourselves to live because of the existence of a vampiric uberclass feeding off our efforts? Increasingly so.
But they offer no solutions. Hitchens son't call for socialism. Not once has he tweeted that we should have direct democratic control of our lives and the institutions within. That people should run things, not the elite. Pandemics, obviously, are problematic to deal with, but to allow the advocates of capitalism, whose only concern is maintaining profits, to govern during is a recipse for disaster.
One long in the making.
Everyday is class war.
Every single day. This crisis simply placed an unavoidable lens to the situation. Like someone moving the sun under microscope. Careful you'll blind yourself.
All people have to do now is...look! Of course that simple act probably isn't enough; people are so conditioned by the neoliberal years and the endless bottomless chatter of media and the online echo chamber. The Twittersphere where people talk haikus of bias and limericks of conformity to hide the reality: things. don't. work. we. are. dying.
People know this instinctively, it's just been misdirected. It's not the fault of people with actual power. Instead it's 'the left', 'the Jews' (while Jeremy Corbyn is a racist), them over there, those guys, women, gays, kids, students, unemployed people, employed people.
We aren't coming back from this. History is only ever moving in one direction and we've got to make sure it's the right direction, which is to say the left direction, which is to say the radical direction. You know we can't go back to what we had before. We can't let them try. Already capital is starting to get antsy; open up! Let me in or I'll blow down your house!
Capitalism's been blowing down your house for decades. That's what it does. It's crisis prone. It isn't just incapable of dealing with a crisis of this nature, a global pandemic. It staggers between boom and bust, like a drunk on his way home bouncing off the walls down his street. Deaf dumb and blind; the pinball economic system.
This is what angers me the most about Hitchens and the rest of the denial tribe. They protest and lament the freedom we never really had. Now you can see just how enslaved we are, or, hopefully, were. Corona has thrown that into the sharpest relief. At the cost of lives. How free were we when we have to sell ourselves to live because of the existence of a vampiric uberclass feeding off our efforts? Increasingly so.
But they offer no solutions. Hitchens son't call for socialism. Not once has he tweeted that we should have direct democratic control of our lives and the institutions within. That people should run things, not the elite. Pandemics, obviously, are problematic to deal with, but to allow the advocates of capitalism, whose only concern is maintaining profits, to govern during is a recipse for disaster.
One long in the making.
Wednesday, 22 April 2020
Extra Time 3: A Critical Time For Critical Thought
Disease Denialists, by which I mean thoughtless husks like Peter Hitchens, repeatedly make the claim that lockdown is worse than infection. Honestly, I'm tired of their default pro-capitalist rhetoric. Let's be clear: Hitchens - and you can follow a rightward outbound trajectory if you take him as your starting point - has no answers. None of them do. What frustrates is how they are making a virtue of "just asking questions". Well ain't that dandy!
Anyone can "just ask questions", answers are what we need. Why aren't these uncertainty purveyors fighting for better economics. Clearly we don't have that, and we won't until people fight for it. These people could help that cause.
It is not incorrect to point out lockdown is negative. Of course it is! The alternative, rather obviously, is increased spread of the virus. Also negative! Not solely in public health, but also to impact economic movement. There is no either/or. The virus is present; the Tories made damn sure of that. So we are at the new normal; one that could be permanent.
But no, let's provke the usual outrage with no answers. It's easy to bash the ruling class - and god knows they deserve it. But do so by empowering the working class; help them understand why they should be outraged. How they are being exploited.
They've been mugging off the working class since there has been a working class. Now things are different; this is the shape of things to come. But the denialists are only interested in peddling pseudo political faux libertarian bullshit? Intellectually bereft. Real change is hard and uncomfortable. They don't want that. Just look at the protesters in the US (some of whom have now died...of Covid19). They freak out because they have been raised to believe not just that capitalism is the great emancipator and enabler, but that any alternative - even talk - is a social cancer.
So they die to save themselves.
People on social media make conspiratorial noises about how lockdown is a plan from (insert your chosen flavour of New World Order) to control or even cull (because that makes sense in a capitalist system - kill your workforce) the people. As if the alternative, open the doors, has no negative consequences. These are people that believe Covid isn't serious, but cannot cite sources. If you want to make these claims, guys, you need to back them up.
This continued lack of evidence is what is most frustrating. Now we have homebrew militia, asserting their right to be exploited blocking hospital entrances in the US (where else?). Over here telecom engineers are getting spat (ffs) at because some cretins have gotten it into their vacant skulls that a virus can be created or transmitted by 5G technology. Do these clowns not think? At all?
I don't want to crush these idiots too heavily. They are a product of our capitalist society dying on its arse, threatening to drown us all in its digital death screams. The sound of a thousand empty cash registers snapping shut simultaneously. They are fed on a diet of endless biased rolling news, social media ideological disarray, and aggressive churnalism. Manufactured consent for the end of the world. The tragedy is the lack of independent though.
Critical thinking is a skill people should but don't cultivate. It isn't taught in schools and requires practice. It's not easy to step beyond the bubble of peer pressure and ideological conformity but, for their sake and ours, it must happen.
Class War Daily for today.
Anyone can "just ask questions", answers are what we need. Why aren't these uncertainty purveyors fighting for better economics. Clearly we don't have that, and we won't until people fight for it. These people could help that cause.
It is not incorrect to point out lockdown is negative. Of course it is! The alternative, rather obviously, is increased spread of the virus. Also negative! Not solely in public health, but also to impact economic movement. There is no either/or. The virus is present; the Tories made damn sure of that. So we are at the new normal; one that could be permanent.
But no, let's provke the usual outrage with no answers. It's easy to bash the ruling class - and god knows they deserve it. But do so by empowering the working class; help them understand why they should be outraged. How they are being exploited.
They've been mugging off the working class since there has been a working class. Now things are different; this is the shape of things to come. But the denialists are only interested in peddling pseudo political faux libertarian bullshit? Intellectually bereft. Real change is hard and uncomfortable. They don't want that. Just look at the protesters in the US (some of whom have now died...of Covid19). They freak out because they have been raised to believe not just that capitalism is the great emancipator and enabler, but that any alternative - even talk - is a social cancer.
So they die to save themselves.
People on social media make conspiratorial noises about how lockdown is a plan from (insert your chosen flavour of New World Order) to control or even cull (because that makes sense in a capitalist system - kill your workforce) the people. As if the alternative, open the doors, has no negative consequences. These are people that believe Covid isn't serious, but cannot cite sources. If you want to make these claims, guys, you need to back them up.
This continued lack of evidence is what is most frustrating. Now we have homebrew militia, asserting their right to be exploited blocking hospital entrances in the US (where else?). Over here telecom engineers are getting spat (ffs) at because some cretins have gotten it into their vacant skulls that a virus can be created or transmitted by 5G technology. Do these clowns not think? At all?
I don't want to crush these idiots too heavily. They are a product of our capitalist society dying on its arse, threatening to drown us all in its digital death screams. The sound of a thousand empty cash registers snapping shut simultaneously. They are fed on a diet of endless biased rolling news, social media ideological disarray, and aggressive churnalism. Manufactured consent for the end of the world. The tragedy is the lack of independent though.
Critical thinking is a skill people should but don't cultivate. It isn't taught in schools and requires practice. It's not easy to step beyond the bubble of peer pressure and ideological conformity but, for their sake and ours, it must happen.
Class War Daily for today.
Tuesday, 21 April 2020
Extra Time 2: Talk Talk, Not Not
Don't have an awful lot to say today (we'll see!), I've spent most of it trying to deal with the incomparably shit ISP known as Talk Talk.
They are shit, and in a time where internet access is more vital than ever they prove to be dismal and inadequate in the extreme.
It just goes to show how crap this system is that there is no impetus, either within the company or from beyond, that can compel them into providing anything approaching a decent service. They claim to be prioritising vulnerable customers, except that if you contact them on the phone all you hear is a recorded message saying "covid 19 blah blah blah we're busy" and then you get disconnected.
Not sure how they can be busy then if no one can get through.
Now look obviously there's a global pandemic happening (iknowrite!) and I don't want to be that guy. But if you think about it, they ought not be that busy. But of course given how crap their service is they will be. I accept they are short staffed, I'm just not entirely sure why: is it that social distancing means they have room for only half their staff in physical workplaces (I'm being serious)? Is that half their staff are all off sick? That seems unlikely. Anyway it is what it is.
So you can contact them online through their chat support service. Such as it is. Here you get connected to a user with a name that, at first, I assumed was representative of the culture they've outsourced the service to. However after four different attempts to sort the problem turned into four different agents I realised it wasn't it was just a random collision of letters. It had to be though I'm not sure why (either that or I sound massively racist).
Upshot is that in order to test your connection you need to be offline, while on an internet connection. They don't bother to tell you this at any point before you connect, but you're meant to connect via a mobile data service. That's great because all vulnerable/elderly customers have smartphone technology. I don't and neither does my mother (who is vulnerable). So they basically cannot help me. At all.
Their social media isn't any better. You can leave messages on their forum/twitter/facebook. They might reply. Or they might reply once or twice and then disappear. Who knows if they'll respond further, they haven't done so far.
Fortunately for now we can connect most of the time. But it isn't a sure thing. This is pretty crappy.
Anyway in other news, lockdown continues. Government has no clue. Apparently the virus hasn't been in the population very much due to some preliminary WHO findings here. Few people have developed antibodies so they srumise it hasn't spread as widely as some have asserted. I'm not entirely sure but it's so far not certain.
Oh and the idiot government has missed out on the chance to procure 16 million facemasks. So business as usual then.
Class War Daily here. I will try for something more substantive tomorrow. Internets permitting!
They are shit, and in a time where internet access is more vital than ever they prove to be dismal and inadequate in the extreme.
It just goes to show how crap this system is that there is no impetus, either within the company or from beyond, that can compel them into providing anything approaching a decent service. They claim to be prioritising vulnerable customers, except that if you contact them on the phone all you hear is a recorded message saying "covid 19 blah blah blah we're busy" and then you get disconnected.
Not sure how they can be busy then if no one can get through.
Now look obviously there's a global pandemic happening (iknowrite!) and I don't want to be that guy. But if you think about it, they ought not be that busy. But of course given how crap their service is they will be. I accept they are short staffed, I'm just not entirely sure why: is it that social distancing means they have room for only half their staff in physical workplaces (I'm being serious)? Is that half their staff are all off sick? That seems unlikely. Anyway it is what it is.
So you can contact them online through their chat support service. Such as it is. Here you get connected to a user with a name that, at first, I assumed was representative of the culture they've outsourced the service to. However after four different attempts to sort the problem turned into four different agents I realised it wasn't it was just a random collision of letters. It had to be though I'm not sure why (either that or I sound massively racist).
Upshot is that in order to test your connection you need to be offline, while on an internet connection. They don't bother to tell you this at any point before you connect, but you're meant to connect via a mobile data service. That's great because all vulnerable/elderly customers have smartphone technology. I don't and neither does my mother (who is vulnerable). So they basically cannot help me. At all.
Their social media isn't any better. You can leave messages on their forum/twitter/facebook. They might reply. Or they might reply once or twice and then disappear. Who knows if they'll respond further, they haven't done so far.
Fortunately for now we can connect most of the time. But it isn't a sure thing. This is pretty crappy.
Anyway in other news, lockdown continues. Government has no clue. Apparently the virus hasn't been in the population very much due to some preliminary WHO findings here. Few people have developed antibodies so they srumise it hasn't spread as widely as some have asserted. I'm not entirely sure but it's so far not certain.
Oh and the idiot government has missed out on the chance to procure 16 million facemasks. So business as usual then.
Class War Daily here. I will try for something more substantive tomorrow. Internets permitting!
Monday, 20 April 2020
Extra Time 1: The Quarantine Cross Code
So there's a tentative plan to ease us out of lockdown, apparently it meets the approval of the idiot in chief. No doubt belched out from his opulent sickbed in Chequers, like taking a dump in Harrods. (About the most exciting thing you can in that ridiculous place.)
The idea is there will be three stages: red, amber, and green.
In the "red phase" some shops will open and people will be able to visit friends and family. Not entirely sure what that means as travel is still discouraged. All that will mean is peole will just travel around under the pretext of visiting friends and family. The minute you relax restrictions on personal movement, you might as well give up surely?
Later, it says, we move to amber. At this point, idiots will ignore pedestrian crossings and just drive straight through. Oh wait, that's everyday life anyway. Herein people can go to restaurants that, like Sweden, manage to efecitvely police social distancing. That means they will only be able to cater for half their normal capacity and so what's the point? Public transport will become available for people who have masks, excpet there aren't any masks. In Taiwan families are given masks. Can't see that happening under this shower.
In the subsequent green phase churches pubs and gyms become available. But the vulnerable will still need to be sheltered, meaning everyone will still need to be sheltered.
Now, if I'm sounding cynical it's because it's perfectly clear this is all haphazard guesswork. Whether or not you agree with the need for a lockdown, and it seems thanks to governmental stupidity they left themselves out of options, there's no way back down from shit creek. At least not one without a shit covered ladder constructed from wishful thinking. We are in uncharted territory, sent there aboard a leaking boat crewed by people who don't understand starboard from port (except the liquid kind).
Unfortunately, while I admit to early scepticism about the lockdown, I think really there is no alternative. Even Sweden has restrictions it's just they so far appear to be sensible about it. But they are sheltering the vulnerable and broadly encouraging people not to go out and about. I have no idea if that would work over here, but then we've got nothing on the absolute disaster in parts of the US with morons calling social distancing "communism"!
Here's today's daily dose of sweary anarchism. In this case read it and weep, this is the reality for our carers. A word that's just a platitude for the safely isolated elite being subsidised to do so (now I read the Lords are getting in on the act, demanding money). Our system is bankrupt and bereft.
The idea is there will be three stages: red, amber, and green.
In the "red phase" some shops will open and people will be able to visit friends and family. Not entirely sure what that means as travel is still discouraged. All that will mean is peole will just travel around under the pretext of visiting friends and family. The minute you relax restrictions on personal movement, you might as well give up surely?
Later, it says, we move to amber. At this point, idiots will ignore pedestrian crossings and just drive straight through. Oh wait, that's everyday life anyway. Herein people can go to restaurants that, like Sweden, manage to efecitvely police social distancing. That means they will only be able to cater for half their normal capacity and so what's the point? Public transport will become available for people who have masks, excpet there aren't any masks. In Taiwan families are given masks. Can't see that happening under this shower.
In the subsequent green phase churches pubs and gyms become available. But the vulnerable will still need to be sheltered, meaning everyone will still need to be sheltered.
Now, if I'm sounding cynical it's because it's perfectly clear this is all haphazard guesswork. Whether or not you agree with the need for a lockdown, and it seems thanks to governmental stupidity they left themselves out of options, there's no way back down from shit creek. At least not one without a shit covered ladder constructed from wishful thinking. We are in uncharted territory, sent there aboard a leaking boat crewed by people who don't understand starboard from port (except the liquid kind).
Unfortunately, while I admit to early scepticism about the lockdown, I think really there is no alternative. Even Sweden has restrictions it's just they so far appear to be sensible about it. But they are sheltering the vulnerable and broadly encouraging people not to go out and about. I have no idea if that would work over here, but then we've got nothing on the absolute disaster in parts of the US with morons calling social distancing "communism"!
Here's today's daily dose of sweary anarchism. In this case read it and weep, this is the reality for our carers. A word that's just a platitude for the safely isolated elite being subsidised to do so (now I read the Lords are getting in on the act, demanding money). Our system is bankrupt and bereft.
Sunday, 19 April 2020
Weekender 5: Is It Sunday?
For a brief moment there I thought I'd stopped time. No, it's just lockdown temporal confusion. Is this what immortality feels like: a complete inability to perceive time.
I had read an anecdote from someone in a benefits/welfare Facebook group who claimed he had been called for a Work Capability Assessment, but to be carried out over the phone. I imagine this is true because I don't see the state wanting any reason to loosen its grip on the lives of the poor. That will never change no matter the external situation.
Quite how this will work, though, is another question. I have no idea; a physical examination would be completely of of the question. How would you verify your identity when attendance at an assessment centre requires severe proof of identity? A million other questions of course. So perhaps that wasn't true. But it wouldn't surprise me.
I had my first Work Focused Interview of the year back in January (or was it February?). The next is meant to be six months on. That would be end of summer. Who knows what shape the world will be in then, but I anticipate the Jobcentre opening for business as soon as possible. This would mandate attendance. There would be no falling back on 'corona safety' concerns; to the DWP it would be a case of 'if it weren't safe, we wouldn't be open'. Faulty logic of course.
But who can say what shape society will be in then? There is no doubt the virus will still be present. In the world, possibly in the country, possibly in the DWP. We can reasonably assume that it's presence within society, and thus our lives, will outlast any period of lockdown or curtailment of public services. I would have no choice but to attend.
What will a post-lockdown, pre-vaccine, interaction with the system be like? Given there has been an austerity-driven history of cuts to the DWP how will frontline services manage? If the virus remains actieve then there's a chance a small percentage of the workforce, at any given time, will be out of commission. Does that mean they'll also be claiming?
This is no way to run a society. But claimants will still be called on to meet conditionality during such a period because again: if there's no lockdown, there's no virus, right? But who's going to be hiring and how will you get to work if buses are running reduced services as they are now? Even key workers are struggling.
How many people will have to prove they aren't fit for work because of covid? Even if they fail the test, which as we know only tests what you can do., they will still be contagious. Unfortunately fit for work tests have no criteria for that. So it will be ignored.
This is how the world changes, friends.
I had read an anecdote from someone in a benefits/welfare Facebook group who claimed he had been called for a Work Capability Assessment, but to be carried out over the phone. I imagine this is true because I don't see the state wanting any reason to loosen its grip on the lives of the poor. That will never change no matter the external situation.
Quite how this will work, though, is another question. I have no idea; a physical examination would be completely of of the question. How would you verify your identity when attendance at an assessment centre requires severe proof of identity? A million other questions of course. So perhaps that wasn't true. But it wouldn't surprise me.
I had my first Work Focused Interview of the year back in January (or was it February?). The next is meant to be six months on. That would be end of summer. Who knows what shape the world will be in then, but I anticipate the Jobcentre opening for business as soon as possible. This would mandate attendance. There would be no falling back on 'corona safety' concerns; to the DWP it would be a case of 'if it weren't safe, we wouldn't be open'. Faulty logic of course.
But who can say what shape society will be in then? There is no doubt the virus will still be present. In the world, possibly in the country, possibly in the DWP. We can reasonably assume that it's presence within society, and thus our lives, will outlast any period of lockdown or curtailment of public services. I would have no choice but to attend.
What will a post-lockdown, pre-vaccine, interaction with the system be like? Given there has been an austerity-driven history of cuts to the DWP how will frontline services manage? If the virus remains actieve then there's a chance a small percentage of the workforce, at any given time, will be out of commission. Does that mean they'll also be claiming?
This is no way to run a society. But claimants will still be called on to meet conditionality during such a period because again: if there's no lockdown, there's no virus, right? But who's going to be hiring and how will you get to work if buses are running reduced services as they are now? Even key workers are struggling.
How many people will have to prove they aren't fit for work because of covid? Even if they fail the test, which as we know only tests what you can do., they will still be contagious. Unfortunately fit for work tests have no criteria for that. So it will be ignored.
This is how the world changes, friends.
Saturday, 18 April 2020
Weekender 5: Fight
Another Saturday Night.
In Lockdown town.
I went for a walk twice today. Felt like a dirty criminal. Felt like a gambler, betting on the chance I can breathe clean air twice in one day. Pandemic roulette.
It rained again. The ground betrayed me, it had been collecting water. Building little mirrors in the lane, reflecting a world of decreased possibility. A world slowly and inexorably funnelling us toward a point of conflict. War is coming. Class war.
Don't let the bastards win.
They've been winning for too long.
Labour are useless. What good is an opposition leader that refuses to call out a broken government? If now is not the time for a fundamental change then when?
Starmer and is cabinet of dust are just the safe hands capital will turn to when this ends. They will attempt to stifle our outrage; co-opt our voice. We are not your puppets within which you can throw your voice, sir.
There must be nothing less than the removal of this government - and a better world. If Starmer and his lazybones crew can't give that to us then they can fuck off too. The working class has only had one group to look after itself - the working class. They may have created the NHS and the welfare state byt they had to bribe a lot of privateers to get that done. No more. No magic money to grease the bottom lines of evicted capitalists.
Let them burn.
This situation is strained. We sit in our homes and suddenly they are no longer enough for us. Hearts are bursting. Lives are ending. But something is beginning. People will have questions after this. Why has this happened? Where were our leaders? Where was the moron we elected not three months prior? Answers must be forthcoming. People must be made to understand the truth of what has happened.
Don't be distracted by the apologists for capital and their "lockdown will ruin the economy" bullshit either. That's a distraction; it's intended to refocus your thinking away from justified anger. It's also a fallacious argument. It isn't lockdown or pandemic. It's both. Yes the economy will suffer. People will suffer. Both are happening. Both could have been avoided, across the world at every stage. At the very least, when Britain was placed in the crosshairs, more could have been done. That it wasn't was a conscious choice. A product of capitalist arrogance. Yes capitalism is at the rotten stagnant heart of this tragedy. If we do not fight we will pay the price, but with what? Austerity has taken the gas out of the tanks. This is endgame.
Fight or die. Don't argue for lockdown OR Covid. Fight for a better economic system and a stronger socdiety beucase that is the only armour against pandemic.
And fucking losers like this
In Lockdown town.
I went for a walk twice today. Felt like a dirty criminal. Felt like a gambler, betting on the chance I can breathe clean air twice in one day. Pandemic roulette.
It rained again. The ground betrayed me, it had been collecting water. Building little mirrors in the lane, reflecting a world of decreased possibility. A world slowly and inexorably funnelling us toward a point of conflict. War is coming. Class war.
Don't let the bastards win.
They've been winning for too long.
Labour are useless. What good is an opposition leader that refuses to call out a broken government? If now is not the time for a fundamental change then when?
Starmer and is cabinet of dust are just the safe hands capital will turn to when this ends. They will attempt to stifle our outrage; co-opt our voice. We are not your puppets within which you can throw your voice, sir.
There must be nothing less than the removal of this government - and a better world. If Starmer and his lazybones crew can't give that to us then they can fuck off too. The working class has only had one group to look after itself - the working class. They may have created the NHS and the welfare state byt they had to bribe a lot of privateers to get that done. No more. No magic money to grease the bottom lines of evicted capitalists.
Let them burn.
This situation is strained. We sit in our homes and suddenly they are no longer enough for us. Hearts are bursting. Lives are ending. But something is beginning. People will have questions after this. Why has this happened? Where were our leaders? Where was the moron we elected not three months prior? Answers must be forthcoming. People must be made to understand the truth of what has happened.
Don't be distracted by the apologists for capital and their "lockdown will ruin the economy" bullshit either. That's a distraction; it's intended to refocus your thinking away from justified anger. It's also a fallacious argument. It isn't lockdown or pandemic. It's both. Yes the economy will suffer. People will suffer. Both are happening. Both could have been avoided, across the world at every stage. At the very least, when Britain was placed in the crosshairs, more could have been done. That it wasn't was a conscious choice. A product of capitalist arrogance. Yes capitalism is at the rotten stagnant heart of this tragedy. If we do not fight we will pay the price, but with what? Austerity has taken the gas out of the tanks. This is endgame.
Fight or die. Don't argue for lockdown OR Covid. Fight for a better economic system and a stronger socdiety beucase that is the only armour against pandemic.
And fucking losers like this
Friday, 17 April 2020
Dangerous Days 5: Feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelings
Blessed rains have come.
I wouldn't really say blessed, though doubtless nature could do with a drink. During saner times I'm sure the word 'drought' would be floating around like a germ. In fact it's probably being floated now because our climate has been unduly influenced by industrial humanity. It hasn't rained in weeks.
Not that I haven't enjoyed the warm weather, given that, during this crisis, I'm lucky enough to be able to do so.
Rain changes my feelings though. Feelings, as we have learned from such great thinkers as Barry Manilow (probably), are all we have. Life is an experience, perceived and intuited by our emotional self.
Cursed rains have come
The lanes, behind my house, take months to clear. The winter weather turns them to mud and flood. I have to dress up like an astronaut, complete with spacefaring wellies, in order to go there. For several months they remain impassable otherwise. When the sun returns she heals the land, carefully laundering and nurturing. Then, I can kick my heels. Easy in casual clothes and daps. Life is free and simple at that time. Until the rains come again, like today.
Heard back from the Bristol Autism Spectrum Service regarding my (second) attempt to get a successful diagnosis. All appointments are being cancelled for at least three months. I had previously heard, about a fortnight ago, that thy weren't seeing me at this time so this comes as no surprise. Obviously this isn't a priority. I'm assuming that, even though it's a completely different subject, resources are being diverted to where they fear they will be needed. Fair enough, says I. I wasn't expecting to be seen anytime soon anyway, so I guess in three months time, if conditions change, they'll just restart the queue. We're all in this together, right?
It rained again this afternoon. It is what it is. Even the warmth has gone. What mother nature giveth, she taketh away all the same.
Here is your daily dose of Class War.
Finally for today, I notice on Twitter the clips of people crowding London Bridge to clap. I get that this was a pretty stupid thing to do (some of them had kids - although ironically kids seem to be the let vulnerable to the disease). But again, it's the class aspect that stands out. Look at the stupid proles, says the commentariat. You know the ones isolating in privilege compared to many working class shut up in tower blocks, stuck in shitty rental accommodation - the sort where their Tory landlords charge extra for the damp and the cold. They have to cope with increasingly onerous conditions. I'm not going to condone this gathering, but it was done in good faith. Don't sneer. That is all.
I wouldn't really say blessed, though doubtless nature could do with a drink. During saner times I'm sure the word 'drought' would be floating around like a germ. In fact it's probably being floated now because our climate has been unduly influenced by industrial humanity. It hasn't rained in weeks.
Not that I haven't enjoyed the warm weather, given that, during this crisis, I'm lucky enough to be able to do so.
Rain changes my feelings though. Feelings, as we have learned from such great thinkers as Barry Manilow (probably), are all we have. Life is an experience, perceived and intuited by our emotional self.
Cursed rains have come
The lanes, behind my house, take months to clear. The winter weather turns them to mud and flood. I have to dress up like an astronaut, complete with spacefaring wellies, in order to go there. For several months they remain impassable otherwise. When the sun returns she heals the land, carefully laundering and nurturing. Then, I can kick my heels. Easy in casual clothes and daps. Life is free and simple at that time. Until the rains come again, like today.
Heard back from the Bristol Autism Spectrum Service regarding my (second) attempt to get a successful diagnosis. All appointments are being cancelled for at least three months. I had previously heard, about a fortnight ago, that thy weren't seeing me at this time so this comes as no surprise. Obviously this isn't a priority. I'm assuming that, even though it's a completely different subject, resources are being diverted to where they fear they will be needed. Fair enough, says I. I wasn't expecting to be seen anytime soon anyway, so I guess in three months time, if conditions change, they'll just restart the queue. We're all in this together, right?
It rained again this afternoon. It is what it is. Even the warmth has gone. What mother nature giveth, she taketh away all the same.
Here is your daily dose of Class War.
Finally for today, I notice on Twitter the clips of people crowding London Bridge to clap. I get that this was a pretty stupid thing to do (some of them had kids - although ironically kids seem to be the let vulnerable to the disease). But again, it's the class aspect that stands out. Look at the stupid proles, says the commentariat. You know the ones isolating in privilege compared to many working class shut up in tower blocks, stuck in shitty rental accommodation - the sort where their Tory landlords charge extra for the damp and the cold. They have to cope with increasingly onerous conditions. I'm not going to condone this gathering, but it was done in good faith. Don't sneer. That is all.
Thursday, 16 April 2020
Dangerous Days 4: Another Post About Our Shit Government
It seems that the vibe from our Wonderful Government (TM) is that they are in fact massaging the death toll. Think about that. What more proof do you need that these bastards simply don't care about people?
By not including domestic/care home deaths (which I think the ONS is saying are an extra 15% - it's not going to be relatively enormous, though of course no less tragihorribad) the government gets to say "hey we did good!" when begging for a vote. That may come sooner rather than later, though electoral miracles are not worth the mana they are written with.
Twitter seems to think that showing Piers Morgan sticking it to (insert minister who draw the short straw for the day) is meaningful. Let's be clear: it isn't. Morgan is a self aggrandising eogmaniac who thinks virtue signalling, misrepresentation, and fallacy are a substitute for insightful questions. He doesn't help his case by never letting the interlocutor speak, even if they are a Tory liar. Piers doesn't care about the NHS except as a political football, "whatabouttheNHS?"
It's just two arseholes smashed together on screen. It's called churnalism. Anger journalism. Televised finger jabbing. It's shrill and pointless even though it's amusing to see wankers from WonderGov (TM) get vrebally dissected. It's polarising, because people will foolishly believe Piers is a working class advocate. He isn't. Tory boys will just whine that he's being 'unfair'.
Make no mistake when this 'ends' (by which I mean dies down enough to find a brief distraction, like Brexitapocalypse), they will be pushing Hancock for a peerage. Hail the conquering hero. The man who blames the NHS but doesn't provide resources.
In an act that may upset the more tactful of my readership :D, I'm going to start linking to this . Class War are not people I'm 100% behind. I think they do some stupid stuff, but you can't argue with this. A daily sheet they are putting out...daily...during this crisis. If nothing else it'll put a smile on your mush. Or you'll think it full of sweary old nonsense. In which case I'll have a smile on mine! :P
There's a petition calling for a public inquiry into this catastrophe. It's probably not the only one! Labour's losership will decry acting now, favouring procrastination, as will WonderGov (TM) apologists (ie murderers). Watch them whine, "now isn't the time" (will it ever be?), we have to push for this.
Don't get me wrong, change can only come from justifiable anger, which can only come with legitimacy from the working class whenever possible. Don't misunderstand me: these petitions are rarely effective. Sadly. But it's symbolic and doesn't ask much beyond a few clicks (and the dissemination of your personal details to yet another website!). It's no replacement for real activism and direct action, which, in time, will come - hopefully. Unfortuantely, right now for safety reasons to each other, that's not really an option. Just consider this, serving notice on the Tory bastards.
The real power, though, lies with us.
By not including domestic/care home deaths (which I think the ONS is saying are an extra 15% - it's not going to be relatively enormous, though of course no less tragihorribad) the government gets to say "hey we did good!" when begging for a vote. That may come sooner rather than later, though electoral miracles are not worth the mana they are written with.
Twitter seems to think that showing Piers Morgan sticking it to (insert minister who draw the short straw for the day) is meaningful. Let's be clear: it isn't. Morgan is a self aggrandising eogmaniac who thinks virtue signalling, misrepresentation, and fallacy are a substitute for insightful questions. He doesn't help his case by never letting the interlocutor speak, even if they are a Tory liar. Piers doesn't care about the NHS except as a political football, "whatabouttheNHS?"
It's just two arseholes smashed together on screen. It's called churnalism. Anger journalism. Televised finger jabbing. It's shrill and pointless even though it's amusing to see wankers from WonderGov (TM) get vrebally dissected. It's polarising, because people will foolishly believe Piers is a working class advocate. He isn't. Tory boys will just whine that he's being 'unfair'.
Make no mistake when this 'ends' (by which I mean dies down enough to find a brief distraction, like Brexitapocalypse), they will be pushing Hancock for a peerage. Hail the conquering hero. The man who blames the NHS but doesn't provide resources.
In an act that may upset the more tactful of my readership :D, I'm going to start linking to this . Class War are not people I'm 100% behind. I think they do some stupid stuff, but you can't argue with this. A daily sheet they are putting out...daily...during this crisis. If nothing else it'll put a smile on your mush. Or you'll think it full of sweary old nonsense. In which case I'll have a smile on mine! :P
There's a petition calling for a public inquiry into this catastrophe. It's probably not the only one! Labour's losership will decry acting now, favouring procrastination, as will WonderGov (TM) apologists (ie murderers). Watch them whine, "now isn't the time" (will it ever be?), we have to push for this.
Don't get me wrong, change can only come from justifiable anger, which can only come with legitimacy from the working class whenever possible. Don't misunderstand me: these petitions are rarely effective. Sadly. But it's symbolic and doesn't ask much beyond a few clicks (and the dissemination of your personal details to yet another website!). It's no replacement for real activism and direct action, which, in time, will come - hopefully. Unfortuantely, right now for safety reasons to each other, that's not really an option. Just consider this, serving notice on the Tory bastards.
The real power, though, lies with us.
Wednesday, 15 April 2020
Danger Days 3: A Beginners Guide To Covid Exploitation
Trump continues to destroy mankind's chances of ever making it out of the 21st century. Here he is throwing his toys out the pram; pouting that the WHO are to blame for his colossal failings and thus deciding not to fund them until they can be 'investigated'. Whatever that means.
This lunatic is more dangerous than Covid to human life.
But what is more dangerous is the capitalist class will - and are - using this crisis as a stalking horse for the continued destruction of the social fabric. Rights and progress repealed - China is already cutting back on environmental gains in order to kickstart the economy. This will happen throughout the capitalist world. In the US the black community (and doubtless other minorities) are being disproportionately affected by the crisis; they are over represented in the kind of underpaid work now deemed essential. Their exploitation puts them at greater risk of catching the virus or being exposed to greater viral load, making the disease harder to handle. No doubt when an individual, in somewhere like an Amazon gulag, gets sick he'll be cast aside: capital always has a reserve army of labour. It's an effective way to keep wages low.
Sooner or later this initial period of apparent welfare 'generosity' will give way to something much harsher. It will flip: people laid off will have fewer choices but to enter Moloch's den of 'essential' work, where, precisely because of the swollen reserve army, they can be just as easily exploited. Prices are likely to increase - I'm surprised that hasn't already happened (or that I haven't noticed).
When the curve flattens and enough of a sense of normality returns, this is what I believe will happen. We're living in the shadow of multiple crises. I have no idea when the Corona Crisis will lift. It may stay with us for a long time given we don't have a vaccine on the horizon (forget the papers telling you one's due in September that's psychedelic levels of optimism). The new normal is - if we're sure of nothing else - an opportunity the elite will take to increase exploitation. At the very least we know austerity will be ratcheted up or otherwise rebooted. As if it ever went away (it didn't).
Boris will cry his crocodile, Covid infused, tears as he sells off the NHS to some shoal of sharks, teeth freshly filed, from the US. Cuts will be made in the form of services 'streamlined' (removed) and users kicked off unless both they and the service they need are profitable. I'll bet my last shiny copper covid-free penny on it.
We are going to have one shot to survive this.
This lunatic is more dangerous than Covid to human life.
But what is more dangerous is the capitalist class will - and are - using this crisis as a stalking horse for the continued destruction of the social fabric. Rights and progress repealed - China is already cutting back on environmental gains in order to kickstart the economy. This will happen throughout the capitalist world. In the US the black community (and doubtless other minorities) are being disproportionately affected by the crisis; they are over represented in the kind of underpaid work now deemed essential. Their exploitation puts them at greater risk of catching the virus or being exposed to greater viral load, making the disease harder to handle. No doubt when an individual, in somewhere like an Amazon gulag, gets sick he'll be cast aside: capital always has a reserve army of labour. It's an effective way to keep wages low.
Sooner or later this initial period of apparent welfare 'generosity' will give way to something much harsher. It will flip: people laid off will have fewer choices but to enter Moloch's den of 'essential' work, where, precisely because of the swollen reserve army, they can be just as easily exploited. Prices are likely to increase - I'm surprised that hasn't already happened (or that I haven't noticed).
When the curve flattens and enough of a sense of normality returns, this is what I believe will happen. We're living in the shadow of multiple crises. I have no idea when the Corona Crisis will lift. It may stay with us for a long time given we don't have a vaccine on the horizon (forget the papers telling you one's due in September that's psychedelic levels of optimism). The new normal is - if we're sure of nothing else - an opportunity the elite will take to increase exploitation. At the very least we know austerity will be ratcheted up or otherwise rebooted. As if it ever went away (it didn't).
Boris will cry his crocodile, Covid infused, tears as he sells off the NHS to some shoal of sharks, teeth freshly filed, from the US. Cuts will be made in the form of services 'streamlined' (removed) and users kicked off unless both they and the service they need are profitable. I'll bet my last shiny copper covid-free penny on it.
We are going to have one shot to survive this.
Tuesday, 14 April 2020
Deadly Days 2: Trump Is A Biohazard
Bloody hell. I'd meant to do this every day and I forgot to post what I'd written yesterday. It was all there, I just didn't press the right button to post the entry. Oh will the Corona Gods forgive me I hope!
Anyway, you get two entries today. Small compensation. No refunds.
The weather really has gotten colder. I feel oddly betrayed by the blue skies as it's still pretty cold early on. Of course we've just been spoiled by nature showing us that it still cares, if only we'd stop behaving like arseholes to our world (and ourselves), by giving us an Easter heatwave.
So far I've managed to read two and a half novels, so I guess there are advantages to isolation! Malice by John Gwynne is a fairly traditional fantasy tale but no less enjoyable, and quite readable. Wild Cards volume 1 is a collection of stories edited by George RR Martin (the same) that take place within a shared 'realistic' superhero universe. I say realistic; about as much as any version of the USA when an alien bio weapon accidentally discharges in the sky over New York. It folds in real world events and is pretty good, if a bit repetitive. I'm currently working on Lifelik3 by Jay Kristoff which, as it turns out, is a Young Adult book (more or less, it follows the trope) about a teenage girl and her robot companions in the post apocalypse (though non-viral) cyber wastelands of America. So far so good.
I also joined Audible, which is owned by Amazon (what isn't?). For a monthly fee you get to download one or more audiobooks which are fully realised and unabridged. The books are read well but the cost is a bit excessive. Personally I would have preferred a subscription format, like Spotify: read as much as you like for £X a month. I guess it costs a lot to voice a full novel but still. I think it's one of those things wwhere the consumer cost cannot realistically match the production cost directly so you need to find a better model, hopefully relying on bulk sales.
My Doctor Who rewatch continues apace. I set myself the not-too-challenging (mostly) goal of re-watching the entirety of the Peter Davison (happy birthday!) canon. So far I'm almost at the end of his second of three seasons, about to complete the Black Guardian trilogy with the highly evocative and wonderful Enlightenment, featuring a game played by galactic super beings. Peter's performance as the Doctor is warm, pleasant faced (:D), but also breathless and exasperating - or is that Tegan's fault? If none of this makes sense to you it's because you are a heathen and I shall bid you good day! :D
And to conclude the trivia portion of the show, although i've spent the last couple of years building up my CD collection (I love prog!), I find myself listening to more electronic stuff on Spotify or Youtube. I just need relaxing sounds, and ambient electronica hits the spot way more than rock or metal, no matter how progressive. I hope, i and when things normalise, that changes. So here's today's current favourite: Silver, by Thom Brennan.
So in the morning I find myself watching clips from American media sources (the Majority Report with Sam Seder and Brian Tyler Cohen are about the best). I think their situation is comparable enough to ours to be teachable, while distant enough not to be too harrowing as a viewer. Also the "DVD extra" of Trump continuously melt down is hilarious - and horrific. This narcissist is in charge of what is proving to be the largest sickening petri dish in the world. Yet he cannot, fundamentally (perhaps genetically), accept any responsibility.
It's extraordinary to watch how this situation has slowly but surely started to break him. I can only hope that it breaks him - more importantly the spell of him - sufficiently that his mind spangled banner of idiot supporters wake the fuck up. Unfortunately they seem to be ignoring reality - and hygiene - by going en masse to church and hoping against hope (and science) that chapter and verse will immunise them from the virus their god, presumably, sent (or was it the other guy; the one that lives in the basement?).
This is the best example of Trump "losing it". How long can this continue?
This maybe his best interview ever! The sheer arrogance! "How dare you question me! Don't you know who I am?"
Yes, you're the liar in chief
We all do. You're a fake president and you're presiding over the biggest Covid disaster on Earth. You can probably see it from orbit. Stay in the ISS guys, it's not safe yet. You're probably safer floating in a tin can.
Anyway, you get two entries today. Small compensation. No refunds.
The weather really has gotten colder. I feel oddly betrayed by the blue skies as it's still pretty cold early on. Of course we've just been spoiled by nature showing us that it still cares, if only we'd stop behaving like arseholes to our world (and ourselves), by giving us an Easter heatwave.
So far I've managed to read two and a half novels, so I guess there are advantages to isolation! Malice by John Gwynne is a fairly traditional fantasy tale but no less enjoyable, and quite readable. Wild Cards volume 1 is a collection of stories edited by George RR Martin (the same) that take place within a shared 'realistic' superhero universe. I say realistic; about as much as any version of the USA when an alien bio weapon accidentally discharges in the sky over New York. It folds in real world events and is pretty good, if a bit repetitive. I'm currently working on Lifelik3 by Jay Kristoff which, as it turns out, is a Young Adult book (more or less, it follows the trope) about a teenage girl and her robot companions in the post apocalypse (though non-viral) cyber wastelands of America. So far so good.
I also joined Audible, which is owned by Amazon (what isn't?). For a monthly fee you get to download one or more audiobooks which are fully realised and unabridged. The books are read well but the cost is a bit excessive. Personally I would have preferred a subscription format, like Spotify: read as much as you like for £X a month. I guess it costs a lot to voice a full novel but still. I think it's one of those things wwhere the consumer cost cannot realistically match the production cost directly so you need to find a better model, hopefully relying on bulk sales.
My Doctor Who rewatch continues apace. I set myself the not-too-challenging (mostly) goal of re-watching the entirety of the Peter Davison (happy birthday!) canon. So far I'm almost at the end of his second of three seasons, about to complete the Black Guardian trilogy with the highly evocative and wonderful Enlightenment, featuring a game played by galactic super beings. Peter's performance as the Doctor is warm, pleasant faced (:D), but also breathless and exasperating - or is that Tegan's fault? If none of this makes sense to you it's because you are a heathen and I shall bid you good day! :D
And to conclude the trivia portion of the show, although i've spent the last couple of years building up my CD collection (I love prog!), I find myself listening to more electronic stuff on Spotify or Youtube. I just need relaxing sounds, and ambient electronica hits the spot way more than rock or metal, no matter how progressive. I hope, i and when things normalise, that changes. So here's today's current favourite: Silver, by Thom Brennan.
So in the morning I find myself watching clips from American media sources (the Majority Report with Sam Seder and Brian Tyler Cohen are about the best). I think their situation is comparable enough to ours to be teachable, while distant enough not to be too harrowing as a viewer. Also the "DVD extra" of Trump continuously melt down is hilarious - and horrific. This narcissist is in charge of what is proving to be the largest sickening petri dish in the world. Yet he cannot, fundamentally (perhaps genetically), accept any responsibility.
It's extraordinary to watch how this situation has slowly but surely started to break him. I can only hope that it breaks him - more importantly the spell of him - sufficiently that his mind spangled banner of idiot supporters wake the fuck up. Unfortunately they seem to be ignoring reality - and hygiene - by going en masse to church and hoping against hope (and science) that chapter and verse will immunise them from the virus their god, presumably, sent (or was it the other guy; the one that lives in the basement?).
This is the best example of Trump "losing it". How long can this continue?
This maybe his best interview ever! The sheer arrogance! "How dare you question me! Don't you know who I am?"
Yes, you're the liar in chief
We all do. You're a fake president and you're presiding over the biggest Covid disaster on Earth. You can probably see it from orbit. Stay in the ISS guys, it's not safe yet. You're probably safer floating in a tin can.
Deadly Days 1 (a bit late because I forgot to press Update after editing): New Labour, Same Bullshit
I heard two aircraft passing overhead yesterday while out reading. Odd really, I couldn't see them so they weren't from Bristol airport. Normally I wouldn't notice; you get used to the constant (and it's surprising how constant that is) noise. The airport is only about 7 miles away which is no distance at all.
Today the sky, blue after a cloudy and colder morning, is split by a solitary pair of vapour trails, quickly erased in isolation. This appears to be a new normal we could well do with continuing, though of course an end to all air travel forever more is a primitivist pipe dream. No matter how damaging it is we can't completely go back to before the Wright Brothers had a bright idea.
Although that would help in not giving viruses a lift around the world.
So Labour has not only inducted a new and frankly vapid leader, it's managed to leak some pretty grotty behind the scenes behaviour under Jeremy Corbyn. The usual suspects getting up to a litany of shabby tricks instead of, you know, supporting their twice democratically elected leader. Let them not forget that Labour's membership rose during that period. That won't now increase. Whether it will diminish considerably is of no concern to me, but it will diminish.
What is a problem is that the Labour leadership won't care. The Blairite rump won't care. Remember; they don't want power. They want control. They want Labour to be their party, not popular and not in government unless it can be pure. This is berserk politics. It is utterly irrational. But these are not socialists. They are avowedly anti socialist, as the behaviour reported shows. They'll sabotage what you would assume would be obvious self interest. This makes no sense to the average voter and it just demonstrates how broken the Westminster system is.
The reality is that these people have power. They might not be in government, but, honestly, I suspet most of them would rather remain in opposition. They get to be in Parliament, enjoy a comfortable gig, but not have the pressure of government. Either way, they are still in Parliament. They are still MP's. They would rather keep that than risk it for a spin of the wheel in the name of what is right - pursuing a much more positive social agenda.
Of course their social agenda isn't sufficiently different from that of the Tories. This is why they won't oppose this government's dreadful Corona-inspired incompetence. You'll hear the dead eyed refain of "now is not the time". Which means "now is never the time". It's pathetic. If not now, when? This won't be going anytime soon and if you want to be a leader, Sir Keir, you need to step the fuck up.
But he won't. That's not his job. He's just another capitalist. He doesn't want real change. Just to tinker here and there. Make capitalism a little more palatable when it needs to be (and that could well be soon), but it's not change enough. It's not remotely radical and as such he's a waste of space. There is literally no point to the Labour party right now. Their time is over; they will diminish and calcify into another voice for establishment politics and interests.
Today the sky, blue after a cloudy and colder morning, is split by a solitary pair of vapour trails, quickly erased in isolation. This appears to be a new normal we could well do with continuing, though of course an end to all air travel forever more is a primitivist pipe dream. No matter how damaging it is we can't completely go back to before the Wright Brothers had a bright idea.
Although that would help in not giving viruses a lift around the world.
So Labour has not only inducted a new and frankly vapid leader, it's managed to leak some pretty grotty behind the scenes behaviour under Jeremy Corbyn. The usual suspects getting up to a litany of shabby tricks instead of, you know, supporting their twice democratically elected leader. Let them not forget that Labour's membership rose during that period. That won't now increase. Whether it will diminish considerably is of no concern to me, but it will diminish.
What is a problem is that the Labour leadership won't care. The Blairite rump won't care. Remember; they don't want power. They want control. They want Labour to be their party, not popular and not in government unless it can be pure. This is berserk politics. It is utterly irrational. But these are not socialists. They are avowedly anti socialist, as the behaviour reported shows. They'll sabotage what you would assume would be obvious self interest. This makes no sense to the average voter and it just demonstrates how broken the Westminster system is.
The reality is that these people have power. They might not be in government, but, honestly, I suspet most of them would rather remain in opposition. They get to be in Parliament, enjoy a comfortable gig, but not have the pressure of government. Either way, they are still in Parliament. They are still MP's. They would rather keep that than risk it for a spin of the wheel in the name of what is right - pursuing a much more positive social agenda.
Of course their social agenda isn't sufficiently different from that of the Tories. This is why they won't oppose this government's dreadful Corona-inspired incompetence. You'll hear the dead eyed refain of "now is not the time". Which means "now is never the time". It's pathetic. If not now, when? This won't be going anytime soon and if you want to be a leader, Sir Keir, you need to step the fuck up.
But he won't. That's not his job. He's just another capitalist. He doesn't want real change. Just to tinker here and there. Make capitalism a little more palatable when it needs to be (and that could well be soon), but it's not change enough. It's not remotely radical and as such he's a waste of space. There is literally no point to the Labour party right now. Their time is over; they will diminish and calcify into another voice for establishment politics and interests.
Sunday, 12 April 2020
Weekender 4: The New Magic Thinking
Easter Sunday and, as predicted, he has risen. Boris the buffoon is now enjoying the tax payer funded recuperative luxury of Chequers. A privilege enjoyed by every other Prime Minister in the country.
Of course the media will now align behind him, as if he can personally deliver the knockout blow to the great enemy. Because of course a mere non-partisan non-sapient virus is the modern day Hitler.
There's always got to be an enemy. It's how we define ourselves. I suppose we should be thankful the virus didn't begin in the depths of the EU. I think the collective gammon of Brexiteers would burst like an angry suppurating balloon of bigotry.
So begins the phase of (more) magic thinking. Check this grotesque bullshit out. Dying of a disease that even the PM doesn't care enough about to ensure his own health? Pull up your bootstraps pleb!
No doubt this bollocks will come ever more to the fore to fill the gaping void left by the government's complete abrogation of duty during this crisis. All of which will be willingly amplified by the usual suspects (not least of all the Daily Fail). Perhaps we'll be lucky and the Sun (Scum) will be too busy begging for readers on Twitter.
Watching the parade of increasingly uncomfortable and inept Cabinet ministers unfold the daily report from the front line is a bit like watching a Russian doll get unpacked. As each wooden clone diminishes in size, so too does our self serving and entitled brigade of buffoonery shrink in stature and competence. Finally ending, for this week at least, with a display of disconcerting addition by Priti Patel. Had this been Dianne Abbot (former shadow home sec) failing to count...well we know what would have happened because we've seen it happen.
Let us also not forget that IPSA has deigned to give our poor ailing politicians a ten grand bonus to help them continue their vital work in this difficult period.
Thought that might put a smile on your face :D
This is what Boris and his Mugs Parade really think of you - and the NHS, more importantly. Remember that when they come to sell it off, no doubt through crocodile tears, to pay for a crisis their incompetence engineered. "Tough choices" is what they'll.
They have to go. No ifs no buts. Revolution is the ONLY way to save this society, after we've saved the lives.
Of course the media will now align behind him, as if he can personally deliver the knockout blow to the great enemy. Because of course a mere non-partisan non-sapient virus is the modern day Hitler.
There's always got to be an enemy. It's how we define ourselves. I suppose we should be thankful the virus didn't begin in the depths of the EU. I think the collective gammon of Brexiteers would burst like an angry suppurating balloon of bigotry.
So begins the phase of (more) magic thinking. Check this grotesque bullshit out. Dying of a disease that even the PM doesn't care enough about to ensure his own health? Pull up your bootstraps pleb!
No doubt this bollocks will come ever more to the fore to fill the gaping void left by the government's complete abrogation of duty during this crisis. All of which will be willingly amplified by the usual suspects (not least of all the Daily Fail). Perhaps we'll be lucky and the Sun (Scum) will be too busy begging for readers on Twitter.
Watching the parade of increasingly uncomfortable and inept Cabinet ministers unfold the daily report from the front line is a bit like watching a Russian doll get unpacked. As each wooden clone diminishes in size, so too does our self serving and entitled brigade of buffoonery shrink in stature and competence. Finally ending, for this week at least, with a display of disconcerting addition by Priti Patel. Had this been Dianne Abbot (former shadow home sec) failing to count...well we know what would have happened because we've seen it happen.
Let us also not forget that IPSA has deigned to give our poor ailing politicians a ten grand bonus to help them continue their vital work in this difficult period.
Thought that might put a smile on your face :D
This is what Boris and his Mugs Parade really think of you - and the NHS, more importantly. Remember that when they come to sell it off, no doubt through crocodile tears, to pay for a crisis their incompetence engineered. "Tough choices" is what they'll.
They have to go. No ifs no buts. Revolution is the ONLY way to save this society, after we've saved the lives.
Saturday, 11 April 2020
Weekender 4: Dairy Dairy Quite Contrary
There was a twitter (why do I do this to myself) hashtag trending last evening. From the vegan community who, observing the struggles of the dairy industry, exacerbated by the crisis, who want it to die. I don't want the dairy industry to die. Dairy is a wonderful source of nutrition. Certainly there are issues with animal agriculture and you'd be a fool to ignore this. In fact adopting a better economic system, if not already proven by the current crisis, is the best solution. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism because everything - and everyone - is subject to exploitation.
Food is something that has become very important to me over the last few years. Which on reflection seems like an odd statement as food is important to everyone (unless they have a secret they'd like to share with the class). I say this because I used to have real problems with my blood sugar which led toa vicious cycle of ill health and junk food. I switched to a low carb high fat diet and it has been transformative. While I have no problem with people making their own choices, I can't recommend this approach highly enough.
Moreover, as someone who follows this way of eating (it's not a diet per se), I have become aware of a number of Corona related health claims. Specifically that if you're obese or diabetic then the virus is considerably more likely to do greater harm. This does not appear to be a controversial claim; it's well established that, for people with poor health and underlying conditions, this virus is much more of a problem.
So I find it deeply troubling for certain vegan activists to push this kind of agenda at this time. I get their reasons. That's fine; it's a principled position. It isn't one, obviously that I share. But this to me seems an incredibly counter productive and anti social approach. By all means let's reform the dairy industry, all the yes! But given people are already facing unemployment and the loss of business (particularly the dairy industry which has long struggled under capitalism), this just seems to be an opportunity gladly taken to stick the boot in.
I worry that these are people happy to sacrifice everyone else's health on the altar of personal principle. Again, I get it. But there is no way the whole world is going to go vegan, and certainly not in the middle of a pandemic. If businesses are shutting down, then now is hardly going to be appropriate for starting them up (in the form of growing plants or whatever the alternative is).
Eat what you want, be happy and health. We can all agree that chomping on corporate junk, sugar laden cereals marketed to kids, and energy drinks with more ferocity than a supernova is absolutely not the way to go. Especially now. But let's not throw people under the bus because they drink milk and eat cheese.
In fact this is a topic I've avoided delving into because I really don't want to upset people. I genuinely have no problem with people choosing a vegan diet. You don't need to eat meat to go low carb either; there are plenty who follow a vegan low carb diet. Good luck to them, there's enough to go around. We shouldn't be at each other's throats while the capitalist class dances on our grave (and will subsequently send us the bill). Please look after yourselves, regardless of what you eat.
Food is something that has become very important to me over the last few years. Which on reflection seems like an odd statement as food is important to everyone (unless they have a secret they'd like to share with the class). I say this because I used to have real problems with my blood sugar which led toa vicious cycle of ill health and junk food. I switched to a low carb high fat diet and it has been transformative. While I have no problem with people making their own choices, I can't recommend this approach highly enough.
Moreover, as someone who follows this way of eating (it's not a diet per se), I have become aware of a number of Corona related health claims. Specifically that if you're obese or diabetic then the virus is considerably more likely to do greater harm. This does not appear to be a controversial claim; it's well established that, for people with poor health and underlying conditions, this virus is much more of a problem.
So I find it deeply troubling for certain vegan activists to push this kind of agenda at this time. I get their reasons. That's fine; it's a principled position. It isn't one, obviously that I share. But this to me seems an incredibly counter productive and anti social approach. By all means let's reform the dairy industry, all the yes! But given people are already facing unemployment and the loss of business (particularly the dairy industry which has long struggled under capitalism), this just seems to be an opportunity gladly taken to stick the boot in.
I worry that these are people happy to sacrifice everyone else's health on the altar of personal principle. Again, I get it. But there is no way the whole world is going to go vegan, and certainly not in the middle of a pandemic. If businesses are shutting down, then now is hardly going to be appropriate for starting them up (in the form of growing plants or whatever the alternative is).
Eat what you want, be happy and health. We can all agree that chomping on corporate junk, sugar laden cereals marketed to kids, and energy drinks with more ferocity than a supernova is absolutely not the way to go. Especially now. But let's not throw people under the bus because they drink milk and eat cheese.
In fact this is a topic I've avoided delving into because I really don't want to upset people. I genuinely have no problem with people choosing a vegan diet. You don't need to eat meat to go low carb either; there are plenty who follow a vegan low carb diet. Good luck to them, there's enough to go around. We shouldn't be at each other's throats while the capitalist class dances on our grave (and will subsequently send us the bill). Please look after yourselves, regardless of what you eat.
Friday, 10 April 2020
Home Straight? Nope, Straight Home
It appears, predictably, that lockdown will continue past three weeks which, if I'm correct, ends with the end of this Easter bank holiday. This is accompanied by the frankly patronising (again if correct) claim from the Health Secretary that outdoor exercise will be banned if people don't behave. Look, people ought to be doing that but it's pretty obvious that there will always be - as there will in any situation - a cohort that cocks a snook at the request. All this petty threat will do, if realised, is make the whole experience for everyone even more stressful.
Not that Tories care. All this does is punish the many for the inevitable intransigence of a silly minority. This is childish thinking - not least of all because it's unenforceable. It will also have a minority (perhaps more) that will disobey. I will be one of them. I have the privilege of relatively open countryside at hand that I can avail myself of while observing social distancing. Fuck being nannied by - of all people - this government! I don't object to sensible guidance (anarchism isn't the rejection of authority per se, but the question of and the demand that authority be justified), but this kind of schoolmarm top down nonsense is as counter productive as it is useless.
So it's looking like May will be the next point of review. That's about another three weeks of lockdown. I hope at least the weather holds (as well as an end to this virus). I have no idea when the peak will arrive and, crucially, pass. But that isn't an end to this crisis; the virus will still persist.
If they call time on this lockdown you just know half the country will go crazy: straight down the boozer, partying and mass socialising. This could well be disastrous so it would require proper management. Something sadly lacking from the Covid Crew currently in charge and whichever hand sanitised corporate tool they wheel out this week to lie without scrutiny.
This is Easter 2020 folks. Normally a time I actually enjoy, despite the chocolate and psalms (neither of which I care for). In fact I prefer Easter to Christmas; even as an atheist I respect the more introspective tone. This combines with a signal that, at last, summertime is here (except when it bloody snows). Certainly today it has arrived, almost on the backs of Serpahim wielding flaming-swords. Ready to purge Eden of its stupid virus - and covid! Is this global warming unfettered, staring us in the face like the red sun of Krypton while we're forced to watch from inside?
What an extraordinary and depressing world we have wrought my friends.
Not that Tories care. All this does is punish the many for the inevitable intransigence of a silly minority. This is childish thinking - not least of all because it's unenforceable. It will also have a minority (perhaps more) that will disobey. I will be one of them. I have the privilege of relatively open countryside at hand that I can avail myself of while observing social distancing. Fuck being nannied by - of all people - this government! I don't object to sensible guidance (anarchism isn't the rejection of authority per se, but the question of and the demand that authority be justified), but this kind of schoolmarm top down nonsense is as counter productive as it is useless.
So it's looking like May will be the next point of review. That's about another three weeks of lockdown. I hope at least the weather holds (as well as an end to this virus). I have no idea when the peak will arrive and, crucially, pass. But that isn't an end to this crisis; the virus will still persist.
If they call time on this lockdown you just know half the country will go crazy: straight down the boozer, partying and mass socialising. This could well be disastrous so it would require proper management. Something sadly lacking from the Covid Crew currently in charge and whichever hand sanitised corporate tool they wheel out this week to lie without scrutiny.
This is Easter 2020 folks. Normally a time I actually enjoy, despite the chocolate and psalms (neither of which I care for). In fact I prefer Easter to Christmas; even as an atheist I respect the more introspective tone. This combines with a signal that, at last, summertime is here (except when it bloody snows). Certainly today it has arrived, almost on the backs of Serpahim wielding flaming-swords. Ready to purge Eden of its stupid virus - and covid! Is this global warming unfettered, staring us in the face like the red sun of Krypton while we're forced to watch from inside?
What an extraordinary and depressing world we have wrought my friends.
Thursday, 9 April 2020
Home Straight? Nice Day For An Idiot To Be In Charge
The blossom on the trees is like warm snow, cast against a misty blue sky, awash with light. Everywhere green threatens. Maybe it will overwhelm us by the time we finally step out of our caves and out of the shadowplay we have become.
Slowly the day settles, like coming down from a rush of blood. At first there is tension, biting at the edge of waking. It lays out all the upcoming hours, an calendar blow to the skull made heavy by the empty dates. What will I do today. In that void there stokes existential fear: will I catch Corona at 3pm? Is it safe to buy green bell peppers from the shop? Will I get bored? Is there something new for me to do?
Fully waking provides an end to this. I compartmentalise the dread, inevitably into my subconscious knowing that, when I sleep tonight it will play out. A puppet show dreaming of terrible things in strange shapes, all manipulated out of sight by an invisible yet familiar hand.
Tomorrow is Easter, beginning with Good Friday and ending in chocolate (no virus will stop the diabetes industry it seems). I fear - which might sound cruel - the consequences of a resurgent non-virulent Boris Johnson, should he rise on the third day. He will become (more) insufferable. Already dangerously nonchalant, his arrogant behaviour showed contempt for even basic non-pandemic hygiene standards. Never mind where it's landed him.
It won't matter to the swivel eyed that hang on his every word. The unquestioning mindless prole-drones that don't question even how we've ended up in lock down. Yet they'll chafe at it all the same.
No, they will look at him like Jesus Lazarus Johnson, taking up from his sick bed. An inspiration to us all! If he, a bona fide hero (a word drained of all meaning these days), can undertake the responsibility of PM while bravely not dying of a self inflicted virus he had a good chance of not dying from then there's no excuse for non privileged exploited workers to continue slaving for their state mandated pittance. Just don't look up at the cracks in the ceiling as the plaster of our economy crashes down around us. Clap for him! Pray for him!
Fuck no. The last thing I want to see is this idiot gurning and pretending thanks for the medical reosurces his stupidity have removed from those not dumb enough to make themselves ill while they fail to handle a pandemic, at least 4 months in the making.
Enough. Time for you to go Boris. Pick a method, just stop being PM and take your grotesque liars parade with you.
The blossom on the trees is like warm snow, cast against a misty blue sky, awash with light.
Slowly the day settles, like coming down from a rush of blood. At first there is tension, biting at the edge of waking. It lays out all the upcoming hours, an calendar blow to the skull made heavy by the empty dates. What will I do today. In that void there stokes existential fear: will I catch Corona at 3pm? Is it safe to buy green bell peppers from the shop? Will I get bored? Is there something new for me to do?
Fully waking provides an end to this. I compartmentalise the dread, inevitably into my subconscious knowing that, when I sleep tonight it will play out. A puppet show dreaming of terrible things in strange shapes, all manipulated out of sight by an invisible yet familiar hand.
Tomorrow is Easter, beginning with Good Friday and ending in chocolate (no virus will stop the diabetes industry it seems). I fear - which might sound cruel - the consequences of a resurgent non-virulent Boris Johnson, should he rise on the third day. He will become (more) insufferable. Already dangerously nonchalant, his arrogant behaviour showed contempt for even basic non-pandemic hygiene standards. Never mind where it's landed him.
It won't matter to the swivel eyed that hang on his every word. The unquestioning mindless prole-drones that don't question even how we've ended up in lock down. Yet they'll chafe at it all the same.
No, they will look at him like Jesus Lazarus Johnson, taking up from his sick bed. An inspiration to us all! If he, a bona fide hero (a word drained of all meaning these days), can undertake the responsibility of PM while bravely not dying of a self inflicted virus he had a good chance of not dying from then there's no excuse for non privileged exploited workers to continue slaving for their state mandated pittance. Just don't look up at the cracks in the ceiling as the plaster of our economy crashes down around us. Clap for him! Pray for him!
Fuck no. The last thing I want to see is this idiot gurning and pretending thanks for the medical reosurces his stupidity have removed from those not dumb enough to make themselves ill while they fail to handle a pandemic, at least 4 months in the making.
Enough. Time for you to go Boris. Pick a method, just stop being PM and take your grotesque liars parade with you.
The blossom on the trees is like warm snow, cast against a misty blue sky, awash with light.
Wednesday, 8 April 2020
Home Straight? Hemorrhoids?
Sure is nice today, as I run around doing the retail dance. Today's forecast: eggs, mild to some. Flour: fair mainly none. Pasta: slim chance of twists. Not for me. Apart from eggs which, like the rest of the world it sseems, I'm eating like a fiend. But then I have been for some years as eggs are immensely nutritious. You can keep the flour and pasta. That was for mother dearest. As long as everyone else eats conventionally I should remain untroubled. Bell peppers on the other hand are oddly absent, unlike most veg.
Well anyway, isn't that interesting. Hard to be mad at the ruins of society when it's this pleasant outside. Maybe the absence of people and their torrid bland activities has brought out a lovelier side to nature! I don't have to listen to 22 screaming blokey blokes playing little league football at the weekend, effing and blinding like a pub car park. The roads aren't filled with lunatics driving at stupid miles per hour, blaring the worst music possible (the louder the car stereo, the shittier the taste in music, am I right?). The purity of nature shines through. I kind of wish I had a camera to capture it really. Maybe next pandemic.
All in all it's been, touching all the wood, a fairly pleasant day. Albeit one living in the sunny shadow of the current crisis. That, as I've been attempting to portray over the last few weeks, is what makes this period so strange, in terms of feel. I'm not referring to the virus itself of course.
This sublime halcyon ennui (good lord!) is bookended by the waking of my subconscious at night. Where the compartmentalised realisation of where we are manifests. It can be strained: disruptive and sleep shirking. To quote Bohemian Rhapsody (as one does often during pandemics) "is this the real world?". Tis a bit like the life of the Eloy in HG Wells' Time Machine; a society of pleasant ennui (twice in one paragraph!) haunted at either end by the other aspect of future mutant humanity; the dire Morlocks. One it seems cannot exist without the other.
As things change, we must remember how normality feels. But also how that normality is being viewed: through the lens of crisis. If and when things do return, they won't be, and perhaps shouldn't be, as they were. Security and peace (of mind) are essential, but not indolence and laconic reverie. Pining for a world that existed up until a few weeks ago that wears much of the skin of the world of right now. The world of crisis. A world that needed desperately to change.
This is why I look to nature. A simple beautiful template for renewal. A simple effective world that has evolved to take care of itself without part of it straining against it. That's us. Straining to the point of becoming nature's own hemorrhoids (yes I went there).
You know I'm going to bid you good night on that terrifying image. That and the notion that, if Boris the Clown, survives the virus he frivolously earned, he will become insufferable. The hero who survived the plague ready to deliver us all. Fucking spare me!
Bye!
Well anyway, isn't that interesting. Hard to be mad at the ruins of society when it's this pleasant outside. Maybe the absence of people and their torrid bland activities has brought out a lovelier side to nature! I don't have to listen to 22 screaming blokey blokes playing little league football at the weekend, effing and blinding like a pub car park. The roads aren't filled with lunatics driving at stupid miles per hour, blaring the worst music possible (the louder the car stereo, the shittier the taste in music, am I right?). The purity of nature shines through. I kind of wish I had a camera to capture it really. Maybe next pandemic.
All in all it's been, touching all the wood, a fairly pleasant day. Albeit one living in the sunny shadow of the current crisis. That, as I've been attempting to portray over the last few weeks, is what makes this period so strange, in terms of feel. I'm not referring to the virus itself of course.
This sublime halcyon ennui (good lord!) is bookended by the waking of my subconscious at night. Where the compartmentalised realisation of where we are manifests. It can be strained: disruptive and sleep shirking. To quote Bohemian Rhapsody (as one does often during pandemics) "is this the real world?". Tis a bit like the life of the Eloy in HG Wells' Time Machine; a society of pleasant ennui (twice in one paragraph!) haunted at either end by the other aspect of future mutant humanity; the dire Morlocks. One it seems cannot exist without the other.
As things change, we must remember how normality feels. But also how that normality is being viewed: through the lens of crisis. If and when things do return, they won't be, and perhaps shouldn't be, as they were. Security and peace (of mind) are essential, but not indolence and laconic reverie. Pining for a world that existed up until a few weeks ago that wears much of the skin of the world of right now. The world of crisis. A world that needed desperately to change.
This is why I look to nature. A simple beautiful template for renewal. A simple effective world that has evolved to take care of itself without part of it straining against it. That's us. Straining to the point of becoming nature's own hemorrhoids (yes I went there).
You know I'm going to bid you good night on that terrifying image. That and the notion that, if Boris the Clown, survives the virus he frivolously earned, he will become insufferable. The hero who survived the plague ready to deliver us all. Fucking spare me!
Bye!
Tuesday, 7 April 2020
Home Straight? Clapped Out Leadership?
Some bright sparks think we ought be clapping for our ailing leader. A man who publicly said it was OK to behave irresponsibly. He did so himself, bragging on the tellybox about it, and now is paying the price. That he's sick is unfortunate; I'd rather no one was sick and this virus didn't exist. But it does and it's through his arrogance and bravado that it is. He doesn't care about us and I certainly won't be clapping for him - as if the mashing of my palms into percussive praise will effect any healing. Thoughts and prayers anyone?
Still, I don't want to write his epitaph too soon. I just think it's tragic that so many others are paying, and have paid, the price for incompetence at his and his party's hands. He didn't care about the deaths of the working class when voting to strip them of healthcare and welfare. None of them did. So you'll forgive me for refusing to join in a pity party for a member of the elite who, by deign of privilege, won't want for a ventilator or ICU bed the way others will. He'll get the best of care, probably privately, no question. After all he's the PM, right? We need the PM?
Even if I grant that, and I don't, we don't need him - or any single individual - to be it.
So who gets to lead if Boris heads off to the great clown car in the sky? I would assume it's the experts' friend: Gove. What a turn up for the books that would be? The last man standing gets to fulfill his ambition. How very Tory!
Perhaps it will be that buffoon Domic Raab; the Brexit secretary who didn't know what ports were. Probably overqualified then. What about his co-author (Britannia Unchained; a handbook for the truly demented), lung cancer's best friend, Priti Patel? She's probably too busy shouting and throwing things at her civil servants. She's been conspicuously (and thankfully) absent during all this - as if being home secretary during a national crisis is not a big deal. Probably flogging Johnson's medical secrets to the Israelis.
There really isn't much hope with any of them. Each will stand like a haunted painting behind a lectern which itself conveys more leadership. We know things will really get serious when the guys stop wearing ties and just opt for a shirt and jacket. A cross between Nigel Havers and the Andromeda Strain.
The Knightsbridge Strain (stain?). Get your COVID19 Harrods hamper. Blue veined cheese, Bollinger, and face mask that could have gone to a front line doctor. He could at least have had the decency to pay (WE pay) for private healthcare and not take up a slot needed by one of the proles his intransigent response has condemned.
Like I said; I don't want anyone to die. I wouldn't pull the "murder the PM" lever, but I certainly won't be (and didn't) clapping for him. Not until he stands down or leaves office. If he does survive the working class lose further since he will become a hero in the media: the Christ Johnson who saved (note the presumptive past tense). The Corona Churchill who fought the socialist virus and won from his sick bed. He fought the poor but the poor didn't win.
But the spectacle of Tories clapping - appropriating a heartfelt grassroots sentiment of solidarity with those on the frontline of his bio engineered apocalypse - sickens me. How fucking dare they.
That may well be sooner than expected. Won't be in a ditch though; it'll be in an NHS hospital bed as the arogant author of his own misfortune, taking the rest of us down with him.
Still, I don't want to write his epitaph too soon. I just think it's tragic that so many others are paying, and have paid, the price for incompetence at his and his party's hands. He didn't care about the deaths of the working class when voting to strip them of healthcare and welfare. None of them did. So you'll forgive me for refusing to join in a pity party for a member of the elite who, by deign of privilege, won't want for a ventilator or ICU bed the way others will. He'll get the best of care, probably privately, no question. After all he's the PM, right? We need the PM?
Even if I grant that, and I don't, we don't need him - or any single individual - to be it.
So who gets to lead if Boris heads off to the great clown car in the sky? I would assume it's the experts' friend: Gove. What a turn up for the books that would be? The last man standing gets to fulfill his ambition. How very Tory!
Perhaps it will be that buffoon Domic Raab; the Brexit secretary who didn't know what ports were. Probably overqualified then. What about his co-author (Britannia Unchained; a handbook for the truly demented), lung cancer's best friend, Priti Patel? She's probably too busy shouting and throwing things at her civil servants. She's been conspicuously (and thankfully) absent during all this - as if being home secretary during a national crisis is not a big deal. Probably flogging Johnson's medical secrets to the Israelis.
There really isn't much hope with any of them. Each will stand like a haunted painting behind a lectern which itself conveys more leadership. We know things will really get serious when the guys stop wearing ties and just opt for a shirt and jacket. A cross between Nigel Havers and the Andromeda Strain.
The Knightsbridge Strain (stain?). Get your COVID19 Harrods hamper. Blue veined cheese, Bollinger, and face mask that could have gone to a front line doctor. He could at least have had the decency to pay (WE pay) for private healthcare and not take up a slot needed by one of the proles his intransigent response has condemned.
Like I said; I don't want anyone to die. I wouldn't pull the "murder the PM" lever, but I certainly won't be (and didn't) clapping for him. Not until he stands down or leaves office. If he does survive the working class lose further since he will become a hero in the media: the Christ Johnson who saved (note the presumptive past tense). The Corona Churchill who fought the socialist virus and won from his sick bed. He fought the poor but the poor didn't win.
But the spectacle of Tories clapping - appropriating a heartfelt grassroots sentiment of solidarity with those on the frontline of his bio engineered apocalypse - sickens me. How fucking dare they.
That may well be sooner than expected. Won't be in a ditch though; it'll be in an NHS hospital bed as the arogant author of his own misfortune, taking the rest of us down with him.
Monday, 6 April 2020
Home Straight? How Much Longer?
An audacious title. I am presumptuous: the initial plan was fot a 3 week lockdown. Whether that will happen is entirely in the hands of the Germ Gods. However the guy leading the government's virus modelling effort thinks we have snookered ourselves. I say "we", I mean "them": the idiots in charge who may well now, in the case of the Idiot In Chief, be on the way out. Literally! :O
So where we go from here....is anyone's guess!
It rained last night. I heard it of course, waking up a couple of times as sleep is thin in this new atmosphere. I had been checking the forecasts and none was predicted. Perhaps the world needed a cleanse. Perhaps the heavens just got angry and wanted to express themselves. I can't help looking at this in so human a fashion. It is supposed to get warmer over the next few days. We mustn't forget how broken our climate still is, even while we hide ourselves away from it and the outside world. Nothing about the world these days is normal.
I keep mentally likening this period to Christmas. Not because children receive gifts from a strange old man who lies about his mythological helpers, but because it's one time of the year you can be as lazy as you like without having to worry about consequences. Whether that's a good thing is a separate matter; at least for Christmas it's a temporary and usually non life-threatening period.
As I sit at home I find myself living a similarly sanctioned lifestyle. Though I would welcome normality (if only to affirm an end to all this misery). we cannot be sure that calling time on the lockdown will mean the virus is done. I'm sure many will make that fallacious leap. Given that, it makes the lack of exit strategy, on the part of our hapless government, all the more uncertain. If lockdown ends I foresee everyone bursting outdoors and gathering en mass like a mass exhalation. The amount of social contact might well be inadvisable. Are we therefore now committed to a slow path of socioeconomic destruction?
While I welcome an end to capitalism, there is no question a new world will have considerable birthing pains.
And now I read that our PM is in Intensive Care! I'm sure I'm not alone in finding that oddly shocking. It shouldn't be any more shocking than anyone else so afflicted. After all he isn't the first (and probably not the last), but given who he is and perhaps what he is, it is more shocking.
These are the strangest of times. Somehow I don't see lockdown ending after the planned three week period (which would be next, Easter, Monday) if he doesn't make it! Can you?
So where we go from here....is anyone's guess!
It rained last night. I heard it of course, waking up a couple of times as sleep is thin in this new atmosphere. I had been checking the forecasts and none was predicted. Perhaps the world needed a cleanse. Perhaps the heavens just got angry and wanted to express themselves. I can't help looking at this in so human a fashion. It is supposed to get warmer over the next few days. We mustn't forget how broken our climate still is, even while we hide ourselves away from it and the outside world. Nothing about the world these days is normal.
I keep mentally likening this period to Christmas. Not because children receive gifts from a strange old man who lies about his mythological helpers, but because it's one time of the year you can be as lazy as you like without having to worry about consequences. Whether that's a good thing is a separate matter; at least for Christmas it's a temporary and usually non life-threatening period.
As I sit at home I find myself living a similarly sanctioned lifestyle. Though I would welcome normality (if only to affirm an end to all this misery). we cannot be sure that calling time on the lockdown will mean the virus is done. I'm sure many will make that fallacious leap. Given that, it makes the lack of exit strategy, on the part of our hapless government, all the more uncertain. If lockdown ends I foresee everyone bursting outdoors and gathering en mass like a mass exhalation. The amount of social contact might well be inadvisable. Are we therefore now committed to a slow path of socioeconomic destruction?
While I welcome an end to capitalism, there is no question a new world will have considerable birthing pains.
And now I read that our PM is in Intensive Care! I'm sure I'm not alone in finding that oddly shocking. It shouldn't be any more shocking than anyone else so afflicted. After all he isn't the first (and probably not the last), but given who he is and perhaps what he is, it is more shocking.
These are the strangest of times. Somehow I don't see lockdown ending after the planned three week period (which would be next, Easter, Monday) if he doesn't make it! Can you?
Sunday, 5 April 2020
Weekender: Day vs Night
The days seem oddly laconic. I think it's Sunday. Throughout all my life the experience of each day coalesced uniquely. A bouquet of planetary rotation; sun and moon. Each had its own hue and I could always sense them. I suspect that is the same for everyone. It's not a superpower. It's not even a power.
But that mode has been thrown out of whack as never before. A global shift. Now it's all the same. Perhaps it is fortunate we are passing into warmer weather and longer, hopefully better, days. Whether that experience will coalesce again is likely, but it will take time to build the scar tissue. It will also not be the same I imagine.
Maybe that's why my sleep is disrupted. While the days are a comfortable if idle liquid, the nights are strange perturbed. Dreaming is intense. I wake more than usual. Somewhere the stress is being quietly stored during the day. Taken around the back, when its quiet or when I'm distracted with a book or typing some pretentious waffle online, and given a good kicking my sense of the every day is then crow-barred into my subconsciousness. I pay the price at night. The Covid succubus straddles my chest like Morpheus' own parking inspector. My mind is parked on double yellow, but there are no other spots and Boris Johnson is ahead painting those lines everywhere else.
Ok, that's perhaps a bit too phantasmagorical :D
Then I read that Matt Hancock, presumably now recovered, is threatening to take veryone's suntan lotion away by locking up all the parks and fields. People are flouting the government's lockdown in entirely predictable fashion. That is why I say this is not sustainable - that and the fact they have so completely mishandled all this that lockdown shouldn't have been necessary. But I guess it's a little late for that. I read the other day that people are still able to fly in from New York without being quarantined (one hopes they are choosing to do so, if true). Breathtaking; on one hand they threaten banning people from taking exercise (as if that will work) on the other....
While I would urge people to show some self responsibility and not make it easy for the authoritarian Tories to do what they do best (as opposed to looking after us), I did go for a second walk this afternoon. A brief half hour sojourn into the fields. It's the nicest day of the year so far, and the days are only going to improve. Get a grip Johnson and stop blaming people for doing what they would normally do while you yourself got the fucking disease from ignoring all safety protocols!
Still that's no excuse. Fortunately there lanes were clear (had they been full of people I'd have avoided it). The odd cyclist or walker and that's it. I have no excuse. But I wonder are people going to be banned from gardening? Exercising in their yard? Mowing the lawn? I heard plenty of that going on. This is unnatural, whether or not it's the correct course of action. I want to believe otherwise, not because I'm an arsehole (though evidence may suggest otherwise) but because I simply want this nightmare to end. Preferably with less or, if possible, no more covid deaths.
And now the PM is in hospital because he hasn't recovered. What a time to be alive, with the Queen rousing the nation (according to twitterphantic lickspittles). Who doesn't feel inspired to here a privileged elite appeal to cliches from the rarefied battlements of stolen land and a castle ensconced in safety and plenty.
But that mode has been thrown out of whack as never before. A global shift. Now it's all the same. Perhaps it is fortunate we are passing into warmer weather and longer, hopefully better, days. Whether that experience will coalesce again is likely, but it will take time to build the scar tissue. It will also not be the same I imagine.
Maybe that's why my sleep is disrupted. While the days are a comfortable if idle liquid, the nights are strange perturbed. Dreaming is intense. I wake more than usual. Somewhere the stress is being quietly stored during the day. Taken around the back, when its quiet or when I'm distracted with a book or typing some pretentious waffle online, and given a good kicking my sense of the every day is then crow-barred into my subconsciousness. I pay the price at night. The Covid succubus straddles my chest like Morpheus' own parking inspector. My mind is parked on double yellow, but there are no other spots and Boris Johnson is ahead painting those lines everywhere else.
Ok, that's perhaps a bit too phantasmagorical :D
Then I read that Matt Hancock, presumably now recovered, is threatening to take veryone's suntan lotion away by locking up all the parks and fields. People are flouting the government's lockdown in entirely predictable fashion. That is why I say this is not sustainable - that and the fact they have so completely mishandled all this that lockdown shouldn't have been necessary. But I guess it's a little late for that. I read the other day that people are still able to fly in from New York without being quarantined (one hopes they are choosing to do so, if true). Breathtaking; on one hand they threaten banning people from taking exercise (as if that will work) on the other....
While I would urge people to show some self responsibility and not make it easy for the authoritarian Tories to do what they do best (as opposed to looking after us), I did go for a second walk this afternoon. A brief half hour sojourn into the fields. It's the nicest day of the year so far, and the days are only going to improve. Get a grip Johnson and stop blaming people for doing what they would normally do while you yourself got the fucking disease from ignoring all safety protocols!
Still that's no excuse. Fortunately there lanes were clear (had they been full of people I'd have avoided it). The odd cyclist or walker and that's it. I have no excuse. But I wonder are people going to be banned from gardening? Exercising in their yard? Mowing the lawn? I heard plenty of that going on. This is unnatural, whether or not it's the correct course of action. I want to believe otherwise, not because I'm an arsehole (though evidence may suggest otherwise) but because I simply want this nightmare to end. Preferably with less or, if possible, no more covid deaths.
And now the PM is in hospital because he hasn't recovered. What a time to be alive, with the Queen rousing the nation (according to twitterphantic lickspittles). Who doesn't feel inspired to here a privileged elite appeal to cliches from the rarefied battlements of stolen land and a castle ensconced in safety and plenty.
Saturday, 4 April 2020
Weekender 3: New Balls Please
Drowning in irrelevance, in the midst of a pandemic, the Labour party crown another centrist to the position of leader. Big woop.
They are walking the path toward oblivion. The centrist Blairite rump will be pleased, a chance to sweep away the Corbyn anomaly. This was inevitable. In truth Labour are a capitalist party. All they have to offer is to soft soap the capitalist mode of production with all its ills. Even Corbyn, as a Labour politician, was no different. A nice guy for sure, and with good ideas. But as a politician he was happy appeasing big business. That was his job as leader. There is no escaping that.
Now that job will be done with someone who, while they may proffer the hand of compromise and reconciliation, won't really mean it. Backed up by those whose disdain for left wing politics is naked and bare toothed. This will cost them the membership that enjoyed a honeymoon surge under the Corbyn anomaly. Ultimately they will align softly, once again, with capital. They will offer nothing more than a slightly less acidic alternative, but in reality it will be no alternative at all.
We don't need a government of national unity. We don't need platitudes. We don't need piss poor apologetics for austerity. We need to end capitalism. Nothing more nothing less. That may be a big ask, but in reality it's the only ask. Look at the world right now. Don't forget that, while nature hides a resurgent flourishing (perhaps all too briefly) under the human crisis, the climate is still aching. Capitalism cannot fix that problem; it can only create it.
Perhaps Labour will try for that government of national unity foolishly believing this will play well. That we must put aside politics, ignoring that politics is at the heart of this crisis. It was deliberate decisions made over ten years, austerity not least of all, all based on long standing ideology. These are the choices the Tories must be left to own - unless sir Keir Starmer personally knows how to provide medical equipment.
I don't say do nothing. I'm not even saying let the Tories dig their own grave (as well as those of the working class right now). But do not make yourself a willing partner in the crimes of the ruling class. But then he's got his knighthood, that makes him fully a part of that class. He is not our friend and never will be. Knights don't exist anymore; gone are the days of Lancelot and King Arthur. Knighthoods are just offered for services rendered.
The only ones that can help us survive this and any crisis are the working class. Us. The lie that politicians spread most perniciously of all is that we need them. In truth it is the reverse.
They are walking the path toward oblivion. The centrist Blairite rump will be pleased, a chance to sweep away the Corbyn anomaly. This was inevitable. In truth Labour are a capitalist party. All they have to offer is to soft soap the capitalist mode of production with all its ills. Even Corbyn, as a Labour politician, was no different. A nice guy for sure, and with good ideas. But as a politician he was happy appeasing big business. That was his job as leader. There is no escaping that.
Now that job will be done with someone who, while they may proffer the hand of compromise and reconciliation, won't really mean it. Backed up by those whose disdain for left wing politics is naked and bare toothed. This will cost them the membership that enjoyed a honeymoon surge under the Corbyn anomaly. Ultimately they will align softly, once again, with capital. They will offer nothing more than a slightly less acidic alternative, but in reality it will be no alternative at all.
We don't need a government of national unity. We don't need platitudes. We don't need piss poor apologetics for austerity. We need to end capitalism. Nothing more nothing less. That may be a big ask, but in reality it's the only ask. Look at the world right now. Don't forget that, while nature hides a resurgent flourishing (perhaps all too briefly) under the human crisis, the climate is still aching. Capitalism cannot fix that problem; it can only create it.
Perhaps Labour will try for that government of national unity foolishly believing this will play well. That we must put aside politics, ignoring that politics is at the heart of this crisis. It was deliberate decisions made over ten years, austerity not least of all, all based on long standing ideology. These are the choices the Tories must be left to own - unless sir Keir Starmer personally knows how to provide medical equipment.
I don't say do nothing. I'm not even saying let the Tories dig their own grave (as well as those of the working class right now). But do not make yourself a willing partner in the crimes of the ruling class. But then he's got his knighthood, that makes him fully a part of that class. He is not our friend and never will be. Knights don't exist anymore; gone are the days of Lancelot and King Arthur. Knighthoods are just offered for services rendered.
The only ones that can help us survive this and any crisis are the working class. Us. The lie that politicians spread most perniciously of all is that we need them. In truth it is the reverse.
Friday, 3 April 2020
Weekender 3: The Chance We Must Take
Looks like it's going to be nice for the weekend.
I broke the rules though. I went for an 'extra' walk today (and yesterday, although that was for provisions). Living in the countryside has its pros and cons: one benefit is it's easier to get fresh air and keep social distance. There's a lot of distance, just no much social! When you do see people, you can tell they think the same. People hunger for freedom and oxygen.
It's peculiar. A slight on the ordinary as though being outside is false. Normally I walk early in the morning; right after getting up because I know how quiet that period is. You get the odd early bird of course. Popping out for fifteen-twenty minutes after lunch, however, feels like absconding. Doing something normally familiar has a breathless touch of the forbidden. Like skipping school to come home early: being in a familiar place at the 'wrong' time,
Until the school rings up and asks why you skipped PE. I got more exercise riding home on my bike, and besides PE is (or certainly was) a giant waste of time!
I think the sunlight is going to provide the defining factor for this lockdown (that and the virus!). It's going to compel people into the outdoors. Certainly locally where we have the blessing of open countryside. I feel for people stuck in towns or tower blocks that don't have this luxury.
This situation is a mixture of things, making it a very alien time. On one hand there is the terror of an incurable plague over which our inept leaders have no control. But on the other there is an opportunity to take stock (where possible). Where behaviours can change. I hope that's an attitude I can carry forward, along with my newfound appreciation for taking a bath (instead of a shower). Suddenly old habits are thrown into sharp relief; somethings just aren't so important anymore.
Coming out of this, eventually (and hopefully properly), I sense the potential for a new outlook. Maybe others will feel the same. Beyond the deadly importance of politics and right through society. A shot in the arm of the social body We're forced to witness a brief renewal of the outside world; a taste of victory in the coming climate crisis - perhaps the next big struggle.
Where once planet earth shrank at our touch, now its the reverse. As we recoil, locking ourselves away from the microbial rampage, nature has the chance to out itself. The virus is nature, and it's a fight we can't win on its terms. We must find better measures, in the process learn a little humility. We cannot return to coughing up our lungs and spewing dirt and misery over sky and sea. Precious, this world is. A jewel in mute self renewal.
This could be, when all is said and done, the best chance in our lifetimes for real change. It won't be easy of course. There is no doubt the economic shock to the capitalist system will affect many, quite deeply. The capitalists will revert to type; they will impose heavy asuerity and cuts but we must resist. They will demand a heavy toll; but there must be no levy on our right to survive. The puppet master has been exposed. We see how the trick is done and you've been found wanting.
Our time will come soon. It may never come again.
I broke the rules though. I went for an 'extra' walk today (and yesterday, although that was for provisions). Living in the countryside has its pros and cons: one benefit is it's easier to get fresh air and keep social distance. There's a lot of distance, just no much social! When you do see people, you can tell they think the same. People hunger for freedom and oxygen.
It's peculiar. A slight on the ordinary as though being outside is false. Normally I walk early in the morning; right after getting up because I know how quiet that period is. You get the odd early bird of course. Popping out for fifteen-twenty minutes after lunch, however, feels like absconding. Doing something normally familiar has a breathless touch of the forbidden. Like skipping school to come home early: being in a familiar place at the 'wrong' time,
Until the school rings up and asks why you skipped PE. I got more exercise riding home on my bike, and besides PE is (or certainly was) a giant waste of time!
I think the sunlight is going to provide the defining factor for this lockdown (that and the virus!). It's going to compel people into the outdoors. Certainly locally where we have the blessing of open countryside. I feel for people stuck in towns or tower blocks that don't have this luxury.
This situation is a mixture of things, making it a very alien time. On one hand there is the terror of an incurable plague over which our inept leaders have no control. But on the other there is an opportunity to take stock (where possible). Where behaviours can change. I hope that's an attitude I can carry forward, along with my newfound appreciation for taking a bath (instead of a shower). Suddenly old habits are thrown into sharp relief; somethings just aren't so important anymore.
Coming out of this, eventually (and hopefully properly), I sense the potential for a new outlook. Maybe others will feel the same. Beyond the deadly importance of politics and right through society. A shot in the arm of the social body We're forced to witness a brief renewal of the outside world; a taste of victory in the coming climate crisis - perhaps the next big struggle.
Where once planet earth shrank at our touch, now its the reverse. As we recoil, locking ourselves away from the microbial rampage, nature has the chance to out itself. The virus is nature, and it's a fight we can't win on its terms. We must find better measures, in the process learn a little humility. We cannot return to coughing up our lungs and spewing dirt and misery over sky and sea. Precious, this world is. A jewel in mute self renewal.
This could be, when all is said and done, the best chance in our lifetimes for real change. It won't be easy of course. There is no doubt the economic shock to the capitalist system will affect many, quite deeply. The capitalists will revert to type; they will impose heavy asuerity and cuts but we must resist. They will demand a heavy toll; but there must be no levy on our right to survive. The puppet master has been exposed. We see how the trick is done and you've been found wanting.
Our time will come soon. It may never come again.
Thursday, 2 April 2020
Lockdown Tales: Toilet Rolls Will Be Our Epitaph
Praise the clockwork precision of an impersonal universe, Tesco seems to be restocked!
Or maybe I just got lucky this morning, before the crazy people arrived. Still the toilet roll supply is diminished. Will this nonsense never end? What is wrong with people (other than perhaps diarrhea) - there is no reason (other than perhaps diarrhea) for people to do this?
Here lies humanity, death by dearth of bog roll.
Some alien foreman in the Vogon Construction HQ, planning to build that hyperspace bypass through our pale blue dot, will gloss over that in the Galactic Obituaries section of the Interstellar Echo newspaper.
Toilet paper.
Flushed civilisation.
Tesco also doesn't seem to smell of disinfectant, but I may have visited between cleaning cycles. Staff still wear gloves. I still wear gloves, it's still bloody cold in the mornings. Still food appears to be on the shelves. As it should be - as it must be. There is no rationale for panic buying except fear. Sadly people are frightened. It's understandable. It's just not sustainable.
Now them, who's clapping?
I've never seen something so fundamental and so moving that ordinary people do, right on their doorstep. This is a message with real depth expressed so simply and yet so sharply. People care, Mr Johnson. But they don't care about you.
This expression cannot be corrupted or co opted, I feel. Don't dare to try and do so either, Tories, you will not win. This is real. It's not a confection; a manufactured sentiment like a greetings card. Every clap is a real expression of real human sentiment. That cannot be anything other than authentic. It cannot be faked.
The genie is out of the bottle now; the emperor's clothes are a canard. The days for this government must be numbered. They cannot endure this and we must make sure they don't. As was said upon the oh-so tragic demise of Maggie Thatcher (the milk snatcher):
Tramp. The. Dirt. Down.
Clap for support. Clap for life. Life will out.
Or maybe I just got lucky this morning, before the crazy people arrived. Still the toilet roll supply is diminished. Will this nonsense never end? What is wrong with people (other than perhaps diarrhea) - there is no reason (other than perhaps diarrhea) for people to do this?
Here lies humanity, death by dearth of bog roll.
Some alien foreman in the Vogon Construction HQ, planning to build that hyperspace bypass through our pale blue dot, will gloss over that in the Galactic Obituaries section of the Interstellar Echo newspaper.
Toilet paper.
Flushed civilisation.
Tesco also doesn't seem to smell of disinfectant, but I may have visited between cleaning cycles. Staff still wear gloves. I still wear gloves, it's still bloody cold in the mornings. Still food appears to be on the shelves. As it should be - as it must be. There is no rationale for panic buying except fear. Sadly people are frightened. It's understandable. It's just not sustainable.
Now them, who's clapping?
I've never seen something so fundamental and so moving that ordinary people do, right on their doorstep. This is a message with real depth expressed so simply and yet so sharply. People care, Mr Johnson. But they don't care about you.
This expression cannot be corrupted or co opted, I feel. Don't dare to try and do so either, Tories, you will not win. This is real. It's not a confection; a manufactured sentiment like a greetings card. Every clap is a real expression of real human sentiment. That cannot be anything other than authentic. It cannot be faked.
The genie is out of the bottle now; the emperor's clothes are a canard. The days for this government must be numbered. They cannot endure this and we must make sure they don't. As was said upon the oh-so tragic demise of Maggie Thatcher (the milk snatcher):
Tramp. The. Dirt. Down.
Clap for support. Clap for life. Life will out.
Wednesday, 1 April 2020
Lockdown Tales: Workers Charter (c/o the Socialist Party of England and Wales)
Today's entry features the Workers Charter, authored by the Socialist Party of England and Wales. I fully agree with these demands. We must settle for nothing less because if we don't capitalism and its adherents will proliferate like weeds, returning to try and claim what they think is theirs. They will scapegoat whomever they can for this crisis. Unlike the banking crisis they cannot blame Labour. The Tories are alone here, but with the aid of the vile media (complicit in much of their conduct) they will seek to scapegoat the working class: people walking their dogs, people working in 'non essential' services, even doctors (for daring to call out the Tories - you watch).
There is nowhere for them to turn, they are caught in a hall of mirrors now and must be kept there. Facing their own shame and ineptitude, exposing this wretched system for what it has done - and would do again. Already we see business and capitalists seeking to exploit the situation: look at Amazon. While covid ferments (I've no doubt) in the pressure cooker warehouse environments, workers will be exploited as consumer society turns to Amazon to provide for them. They know this and so we must show solidarity with workers. Get what you need if you must, there's no shame in that (I'm going to have to), but be aware of how Amazon wants to benefit from this. Crisis is capitalism and crisis is opportunity in capitalism. That's part of hte shock doctrine of course.
Labour crowns its new leader this weekend, assuming anyone remembers the leadership contest. It's likely that Keir Starmer will win. A dyed in the wool centrist and man of the establishment. His politics offer nothing. Meanwhile his opponent, Rebecca Long Bailey is seen as the Corbyn candidate. But she has very little to offer. Labour are irrelevant now. It's up to us. It doesn't matter which of them wins, they will become marginalised, small, and ultimately inconsequential. More importantly they will become ineffective. Whatever happens, the Corbyn supporters will become increasingly disillusioned and leave. A husk will remain, compliant to the needs of the state, only with a softer glove than the iron fist of the Tories.
What this means for the working class is an ipportunity to meet crisis-riddled capitalism with a vigorous new, or reinvigorated, movement. The chance for the angry exploited working class, currently locked down or struggling (or both) to express that anger en masse. As it should be, on the streets.
National Health Service
There is nowhere for them to turn, they are caught in a hall of mirrors now and must be kept there. Facing their own shame and ineptitude, exposing this wretched system for what it has done - and would do again. Already we see business and capitalists seeking to exploit the situation: look at Amazon. While covid ferments (I've no doubt) in the pressure cooker warehouse environments, workers will be exploited as consumer society turns to Amazon to provide for them. They know this and so we must show solidarity with workers. Get what you need if you must, there's no shame in that (I'm going to have to), but be aware of how Amazon wants to benefit from this. Crisis is capitalism and crisis is opportunity in capitalism. That's part of hte shock doctrine of course.
Labour crowns its new leader this weekend, assuming anyone remembers the leadership contest. It's likely that Keir Starmer will win. A dyed in the wool centrist and man of the establishment. His politics offer nothing. Meanwhile his opponent, Rebecca Long Bailey is seen as the Corbyn candidate. But she has very little to offer. Labour are irrelevant now. It's up to us. It doesn't matter which of them wins, they will become marginalised, small, and ultimately inconsequential. More importantly they will become ineffective. Whatever happens, the Corbyn supporters will become increasingly disillusioned and leave. A husk will remain, compliant to the needs of the state, only with a softer glove than the iron fist of the Tories.
What this means for the working class is an ipportunity to meet crisis-riddled capitalism with a vigorous new, or reinvigorated, movement. The chance for the angry exploited working class, currently locked down or struggling (or both) to express that anger en masse. As it should be, on the streets.
National Health Service
- Emergency increase in funding for the NHS and for social care
- Adequate protection for all front-line workers
- NHS to take over private healthcare facilities and staff, and any other private facilities necessary for care, quarantine, and supplies. No compensation to the private fat cats
- Emergency training of NHS staff to deal with the coronavirus crisis
- Resources to be mobilised from government and big-business sources so that anyone with flu or cold-like symptoms has the right to a free coronavirus test with results available within hours, as has been the case in South Korea and some other countries. Requisition private testing and analysis facilities
- Increase production to meet the urgent need for more protective and medical equipment, including ventilators and virus testing. Convert production where necessary, under the democratic control of workers in those industries and in the wider workforce
- Reverse privatisation in the NHS, remove the privateers and cancel all the estimated £50 billion annual PFI payments
- Nationalise the big pharmaceutical companies to guarantee research, production and supply of medicines, vaccines and treatments
- Suspend fees for overseas NHS patients - treat all patients for free without the need to register to control the spread. Scrap prescription charges
Pay and benefits
- Work or full pay. Workers, especially those on low pay, can’t afford to lose 20% of their income. Any worker who has to self-isolate or cannot go to work should receive full pay from day one and not be forced to take annual leave. Pay should be paid directly to the worker not via the employer
- Increase benefits to the level of the national minimum wage. No delay in the payment of benefits
- Increase the minimum wage immediately to at least £12 an hour, £15 in London
- Workers who follow health advice to be absent from work to avoid potential spread should be excluded from any attendance-management procedures
- Open the books of any company threatening redundancies or closure, to inspection by the workforce and trade unions
- To defend workers' jobs and incomes, industries should be nationalised under democratic workers' control and management with compensation only on the basis of proven need
Public services and housing
- Emergency funding to take on more workers in essential services. Resources to protect workers, patients, and service users
- Councils to coordinate a local response. Scrap existing cuts budgets. Councils to use reserves and borrowing powers to fund necessary jobs and services
- 24 hour helpline for vulnerable and elderly people forced to self-isolate. Community and trade union control over local distribution of food, medicines and other supplies
- Workload demands must be reduced and time made available to prioritise protecting the health, safety and welfare of staff and service users. Workers asked to work from home must be supplied with adequate equipment and performance monitoring should be scrapped
- No school to be expected to remain open unless they have staffing levels and sufficient cleaning, testing and hand-washing provision to control the spread of infection. No to any removal of statutory class size limits
- If schools close, all staff must receive full pay. Quality childcare for vulnerable families and children of essential workers must be organised under the democratic control of education and care workers, with adequate protection for all. Emergency local authority provision of meals to children normally in receipt of free school meals under community and trade union control
- Nobody should lose their home because of coronavirus. Mortgage and rent payments should be suspended. Government funds for democratically controlled local authority hardship funds for landlords in genuine need
- Councils to take over empty homes to house the homeless and those in inadequate housing. Hotels to be used to provide emergency accommodation
- Funding for 24 hour helplines and emergency accommodation for victims of domestic violence
- No action to be taken for non-payment of utilities. Free broadband for all
Trade union and workers' action
- Trade unions to establish an all-union health and safety committee in every workplace to agree joint actions required to guarantee safety
- For the Trade Union Congress and the unions, the biggest voluntary national organisation with over six million members across the country, to prepare to lead national coordinated strike action to protect people should necessary health and safety measures not be taken
- Democratic trade union oversight over any government or private sector emergency measures taken to contain the virus, such as restrictions on public assemblies or strikes and supermarket supply rationing
- No profiteering. Prices to be controlled by democratically elected committees of workers and consumers
- No erosion of workers' right to organise, including the democratic functioning of trade unions and parties
- No trust in the Tories and other pro-capitalist politicians who are responsible for the crisis in the NHS and other public services to deal with the coronavirus crisis. For a mass workers' party, drawing together workers, young people, socialists and activists from workplaces and community, environmental, anti-racist and anti-cuts campaigns, to provide a fighting political alternative to the pro-big business parties
- The resources are there to deal with the crisis. Introduce an immediate 50% levy on the hoarded £750 billion lying idle in the bank accounts of big business
- The capitalist market system that prioritises profit and is based on competition cannot keep society safe. We need a democratic socialist plan of production and distribution to meet the needs of the majority in society. Take into public ownership the banks, financial institutions and the top 150 companies that dominate the British economy and run them under the democratic control and management of working-class people so that we can make the decisions about what is needed. Compensation to be paid only on the basis of proven need.
- For international socialist cooperation
(source here)
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