Weekender 11: The Calm Before the Covid

Now I know how a hardboiled egg feels, not wanting to be dinged when the oaf peels off the shell.

Tentatively, with the subtlety of a racist sledgehammer, our Tory overlords peel back the protective layer over our lives. First to step outside, the proverbial canaries in the covid mines, are the kids and their teachers. Compelled by hegemony to enter workplaces with no guarantee of safety knowing full well children are the least likely to abide by social distancing.

This concept, important it may be, will be the excuse the Tories use when it all goes tits up. Hopefully, forlornly, it won't. But if it does then they get to blame us for not following the rules. Even though they didn't.

Meanwhile the R rate threatens danger. Inevitably, I believe, that will rise. By how much, that's the question. Tomorrow we step into a new world, the olrd world but with added risk. Tomorrow, which means today, which means people are already ignoring warnings because the message has been a clustertastrophe shepherded by people who don't care about the proverbial sheep. The dog trying to herd us around the Corona paddock also wants to bite us.

We are on our own from here on. There is, effectively, no effective government. Britain is a failed state. When you give air time to a special adviser who turns up late to an interview special advisers aren't allowed to give to lie through his teeth you know we are abandoned. They are laughing at us. Correction: they are profiting from us. That's all they want.

They are suggesting local lockdowns could work if outbreaks reappear. A completely unenforceable idea. Will there be checkpoints on the highways into town? Of course not, it's meaningless. People will just drive out and go elsewhere. They are doing that already, because the government has by coincidence or design allowed it. A failed state.

We are still counting deaths in the triple figures. Italy, now, is recording a third of the deaths we are still experiencing. Their approach is cautious. Ours is cavalier and self sabotaged.

Does this look cautious?

Weekender 11: Scenes Beneath A Burning Sun

Let's talk about the weather. The endless blazing sunshine that people have forgotten is in fact exacerbated by climate change. I believe this, though I cannot prove it. Yes it's (almost) summer, but even May isn't normally this warm. Scientists are predicting this will be, once again, the hottest year on record. At least in mundane terms!

It hasn't rained for a very long time. While it's pleasant to be dry and not surrounded by dull grey, it's unsettling. Rain is necessary even if it's not welcome.

The days blur now. Smudged together by this sunshine. Like time on a Dali clock. I don't know how we're going to get out of this. Our lives are like this now. I can't remember what it's like to sit on a bus or be somewhere else. There's an old Star Trek TNG episode where Dr Crusher gets caught in some spacewarp and throughout the episode the crew gradually disappears and the rest don't remember them, only her. That's what it's like now. An invisible wall has shrunk around us and everything beyond survives only in memory. There is no outside world.

Test and trace is shaping up to be another government debacle. Another misstep in the dance routine that feebly passes for a pandemic response. They are fooling no one, surely? It isn't even going to be ready until the end of June. By then an entire nation will have ignored lockdown - through the government's own example. One they refuse to disown. They had the chance, but instead chose to send out the message that it's ok to blow off the rules. And so they will, all through flaming June.

What then? When virus returns and a new peak threatens? Everyone is screaming, on social media, inside their heads. Do SOMETHING. Get a fucking grip. But we know they won't. Like that scene in Jaws where Brody is screaming at everyone to get off the newly-reopened beach. The sea is still full of teeth. Now it's the air. Full of teeth. They bite but you can't always see or feel a mark.

And so they will attempt another lockdown, but it's the story fo the Boris who Lied Wolf. No one will listen. This I fear; it will be the worst of our possible worlds to come. But they do not seem to care. They have lied throughout all of this, covering their backsides. From who? We can see what's happening. Yet they gaslight us daily, slowly silencing the voices of dissent. They are not 'voices' though. They are the bloody scientists!

Meanwhile, over the pond, Trump, the lobster in chief, oversees another murdered black man. An even so horrific in its banality now. As covid rages through streets he has chosen to open, he threatens those correctly responding with rage and fire with more bullets. The response of the American ruling class is yet again to do precisely nothing. America's institutionally racist police evolved from the slave catchers of old. Now they are deputised to protect the ruling class, much like our own (smae difference).

They are the problem; never the solution. Let people manage their own communities, we can do it. We don't need a badge that means nothing other than to hide racism under a veneer of bravery and dedication. It's a facade. The police are a virus bred in the wet markets of wall street and white house. They slowly spread throughout the land, like Yahweh's angel of death summoned by Moses. Except replace 'first born of Pharaoh' with skin colour. It's a crime to be of colour in white man's America. The only America that exists, having been colonised by ethnic cleanings. A nation born in racism.

Will it ever stop?

Where Do We Go From Here? 5: Trench Class Warfare

So where do we go? Lockdown is in tatters. Let's be honest. I cannot see how a) this can return given the disaster that is Dominic Cummings and b) we are likely going to face a second wave. Children will be our undoing. How creepy!

Not their fault, just the children in Parliament. The infantile spoilt cretins in charge obfuscate and bluster, befuddle and bumble. What other words for the shit show we are now bound inside. Our homes are not prisons, that is hyperbole, but we are letting these people turn them into that by virtue of their inability to deal with a crisis. They are afraid to take necessary action - to address the failings of capitalism in the wake of crisis - and so have trapped us. They have lead us up the Corona Creek and don't know how to get back.

It isn't them that will suffer though (I don't care that Boris had covid, I'm not even sure I believe that anymore).

I cannot say that I am happy at the thought our local school might open again anytime soon. That won't be until the 8th, but even so I do not know the plans of parents of staff. I imagine, like many, they will just do as they have been told. Hopefully I am wrong. I do not have children so I am not privy to what is planned. Since there is no testing system that I'm aware of planned for the school, or indeed any other, there is no way to assess the risk. I have no idea if local kids are carriers or if no one is. The Pissass Piper dePfeffel is playing a sorry tune hoping the kids will follow him back to the plague pit.

Let me stress how profoundly stupid this decision is. A few kids in a school for a few weeks before the summer holiday. Is it worth it? Of course not. But the purpose isn't education, it's so workers don't have an excuse to stay home. It's dangerous childcare to get people back into work. With of course no guarantee of their safety. This is high stakes Class War. The Tories are using your kids as a weapon. Labour are not fighting back. Who else is there? Or is it enough just to clap?

This is the weekend before the great push. From Tommy and Private Baldrick in the trenches diing on mustard gas and shellshock to the primary schools of today: what is the difference?

Where Do We Go From here? 4: Where DO We Go From Here?

Why does he do it?

What is the nature of their relationship? "Move on" grunts the PM. He doesn't want us to focus on the obvious. His special adviser stammered through a tissue of lies in front of the nation. Everyone can see it. The consequences are and will be profound. The message terrifying. What's the PM's answer?

"Move on"

A disastrous meeting with the liaison committee yesterday, one notable for him deigning to grace Parliament with his misbegotten presence. He had no answers, he twisted the advice the scientists have given, and he dismissed it all.

"Move on"

No. We cannot move on. Locally the infection rate exceeds the national average. The hospital isn't admitting new patients because of Covid. Are we facing a second wave? Why might this be happening here? Is it because everyone has been piling on to the beach, especially over the weekend?

I don't know, but I can reasonably - I think - say that the behaviour of this moron Johnson is covering for to the point of reality warp hasn't exactly helped. This situation will only get worse now that we are entering a period of unfettered sunshine. Summer is most definitely here, people are out. I see people picnicking and kids playing. Not in unsettling huge numbers, but it is definitely emblematic of a shift in perception. The problem is, should we get a rise in cases and a second wave, putting the public genie back in the bottle is going to be impossible. Especially in the summer time.

Coupled with the dangerous mixed message and contempt shown by the Tory cabinet, all of whom seem to be huddling together around their ideological Svengali, where are we? Where are we? We are being told to ignore the evidence of our eyes. To draw conclusions other than what is plainly logical. They are ideologically herding us into unsafety. To soften us up, to open us up. God knows, now, I want things to return to normality. But how can they when the likes of Waterstones are saying they are going to take books patrons have been browsing and 'quarantine' them for three days? Every other shop will of course have something similar? Will Tesco take food that has been handled but not purchased off the shelves? Fresh produce?

Meanwhile the test and trace debacle plods on. Our health is of course in the hands of privateers. The NHS isn't running this service, It's Serco (and possibly others) via a call centre. Doesn't that inspire confidence! NO!

How is this even meant to work? Forget their ridiculous app (everyone else will), how are they going to identify people if someone reports symptoms and says they were out reading books in Waterstones? The manager isn't going to know the identity of every customer that day? Are they going to check till receipts and mine credit card details? Will we need ID to shop? They even talked about a 'Corona Passport'. How can that possibly work? Yours will last until your sick, then you (hopefully) recover or come out of quarantine healthy and need a new one...until you get exposed again, and so forth. It's not like a school cycling proficiency test: one and done for life!

All the while they continue to gaslight us. Mocking us at every turn. Either we lock up in our increasingly arid and boiling domiciles, or we risk death in the sun from the invisible killer the government is ignoring while it defends its own.

Fuck this.


Class War

Where Do We Go From Here? 3: And the Beat Goes On

I'm considering ending my participaton in the weekly Clap. At first it felt organic; a genuine message of solidarity. Sure we can't directly pay the nurses more and sort out the NHS (though we could, that's called revolution), but we can at least show a grassroots groundswell of support. That at the very least, fwiw, serves the Tories notice that further erosion of the public good is unacceptable.

Of course they will just ignore that. Why wouldn't they?

If we don't move on from clapping, as we seem to be from lockdown (or rather we're moved on), then it will just become rote, perfunctory. At this point that's the danger. It's become a habit and I don't want to see it lose all meaning. People now need to learn the lesson: we cannot let the NHS fail. We care, that's why we're clapping, so now we need to make sure it too gets better.

And if you are or have been clapping then the very least you could also be doing is NOT partying on the beach. Keep your distances social, don't be a dick.

Nobody does though. I'm not sure we as a species can. Most of where I go it's impossible anyway. The shops be too small. They could perhaps institute a traffic light policy but until they do, what can you do?

I could ask how people can support the Tories, specifically during this period. But this isn't a matter that can be reasoned out. It isn't logical. It is post-lgical. Facts are irrelevant; how else can Boris Johnsmoron continue to get away with this industrial scale gaslighting? It's tribal. This is ideology. We are divided. This is why I use the phrase: Class War. We have to start understanding that's what's happening when someone like Michael Gove says he too drives around to verify whether or not he can actually see!

As if that wasn't bonkers enough, he said something even more insidious on LBC (Liars Broadcast Cunts). He finished his interview with the appalling Nick Ferrari by saying that he doesn't think it appropriate to comment on such matters because he lacks skill as a driver, having failed to pass the driving test many times.

This is ridiculous: if I drove blind drunk full speed around a school playground during breaktime you would be correct in calling me a terrible driver. What experience of controlling a vehicle and what knowledge of the Highway Code is required to have such a blindingly obvious opinion?

This is class war in action. He doesn't want to answer the quesiotn, He knows he can't answer without incriminating himself and so he gaslights us. Something he excels at. This is wht they are doing when they speak to you like this. It's a sign of their contempt. They will not answer a straight question even during a period where lives depend on it. They twist the advice they are given while claiming to be guided by it.

This has to end before we do.

It is abundantly clear Dominic Cummings simply doesn't care. By flouting the rules so simply and easily he has undermined everything that has happened thus far - and, more importantly, the Prime Minister and his cabinet cabal do not care. Attempts to wrench the teuth out of these people is like pulling teeth made worse by their refusal to grant you the justification in doing so. You are wrong for questioning this. Be quiet, be productive: do as we say but not as we do.

The old ones are still the classics

Where Do We Go From Here? 2: Aftermath of the Sociopath

So that happened.

An unelected man broke the rules to explain to the press, and by extension us, that he didn't break the rules. Or, that if he did, it didn't matter anyway because the rules didn't apply to him, his wife, their kid, their family, or anyone else with an invisible Don't Even Go To Jail To Begin With card. You know the kind, the ones minted in swiss gold, delivered by angels in first class, and wafted down from the exalted heights of the refined elite stratosphere. The place that hosts their Panopticon from where everyday is a cocaine fuelled disco festival. The only plebs that are invited are the hookers and the cleaners.

Ahem.

He even smirked as he walked off. Fortunately screen capped by the Twitters:

He’s just taking the piss ...watch him smirk after exiting his little stage managed press conference #DominicCummnings pic.twitter.com/DOITHaP6KG

— OneTenTwelve (@OneTenTwelve) May 25, 2020

We have been colossally mugged off. Gaslighting isn't governance, it's fucking sociopathy. One of the concerns of lockdown is the effect on the victims of domestic abuse. We are in lockdown with emotionally abusive masters. It's a shame so few can see it. Others, like the slippery Michael Gove, will ideologically shape shift like one of David Icke's worst nightmares (the ones that aren't racist), in conversation with the media. The guy is an evasive political eel. How is this kind of excuse ballet acceptable. This is a direct quote from his TV interview this morning:

"It was confirmed, he confirmed it for himself"

Highest rates of confirmed deaths in the world and these idiots have put themselves in the position where they have to go around all the TV studios defending driving 30 miles with your kid in the car as a fucking eye exam pic.twitter.com/iPliEYFhtj

— James Felton (@JimMFelton) May 26, 2020

This is in relation to Mr Cumming's bizarre ability to combine the Highway Code with and Eye Chart. A satnav is now a qualified optician.

"Take the next left, then read the top line for me."

Can we make a claim for abuse? Asking for 60 million friends!

Class War!

Where Do We Go From Here? 1: One Man Went To Sow, Went To Sow A Virus

A storm is brewing. A bit like that scene at the end of Terminator where, pregnant with the saviour of mankind, a former waitress stands at a lonely gas station and sees black clouds in the distance.

Fortunately I'm not pregnant. But if I was I'd like to think it would be with the child of a future revolution who will emancipate us from mechanical slavery and genocide under a computer tyranny.

None of which has any relevance to the case of Dominic Cummings; he of the bulbous head. A noggin chock full of creepy ideas, not terribly distant from the sort of amoral fantasies an artificial intelligence might devise. Except to say that the storm, largely already here, isn't going away anytime soon. Nor should it.

Do as I say, not as I do has ever been the mantra of the ruling elite. Tories, in particular. However this time - surely - they have gone too far. After several weeks of anguished lockdown faced by people in similar situations, to brazenly and incorrectly claim he is innocent - and that he acted with integrity - will not wash. Nor should it.

And now, several hours later, coming back to this piece, I am fucking raging! I can't pretend surprise because no one can be that naive, but by god! This is serious: for two months under this shambolic government this government, people have struggled with obeying rules. The fundamental aspect they could turn to, for comfort, is knowing we're all in this together.

Except, as ever, with the Tories - promulgators of this ridiculous lie, that isn't true. You're in it, not us. You're in the shit, I'm off for a drive, I might have a debilitating viral infection and my eyesight has gone wonky. Yeah yeah yeah. No.

This is too grave. This can't be forgiven or forgotten. It speaks to deeply of the current crisis and the abysmal handling by a contemptuous government. We cannot allow them to get away with this because, if a second wave appears, there will be no credibility for another stay at home message. This is like the boy who cried wolf, only instead of a boy we have a privileged selfish arsehole. This is a dangerous and irresponsible thing to have done and to endorse it, never mind to not punish it, sends a dreadfully counter productive (to put it mildly) message.

Meanwhile Boris Fuckoff has decided that pretty much the entire retail sector can reopen on the 15th of June. This will not work with a virus still present (it is). All that will happen is that town centres, such as Broadmead in Bristol, will revert to being a free for all. Footfall will need to be as it was prior in order for shops to be viable. Social distancing will fail under the weight of social inertia: people will want to get out, they will do so en masse, and so a brand new petri dish of shit will risk breeding.

So today's message: FUCKING CLASS WAR!

Weekender 10: Is it Still The Weekend?

How can people ignore the presence of a virus in the ideological environment, if not the actual environment?

Antiloxxers want to argue that the curve has been sufficiently flattened (an assumption) and thus we can open up again. The room's clean, open the doors. But this fundamentally, and perhaps (likely) deliberately, ignores the reality. The virus is still here; it's in the community at large. We've already had damn near 60,000 deaths from it. That was when we, and during, the lockdown.

What is the most reasonable outcome that can occur following a cessation of lockdown given that reality? Obviously, a second wave.

Furthermore, the idea that flattening the curve was simply to protect the NHS is false. The only say this, by the way, as a sop. They don't really care about the NHS. Regardless, protection of the NHS was a consequence, not the goal. It is a (vital) consequence of a policy intended to stem the spread. That benefits everyone, not just the health workers. But again the denial brigade want to ignore that.

Their reality is a fiction.

The price of freedom, apparently, is the death of thousands. If this isn't an ideology that sounds like it belongs in the most lurid misrepresentations of Stalin and Mao then what does?. McCarthy-like fever dreams invoked by rampant capitalists. And yet it is the consequence of people who want to take your power away from you.

Like our bad friend Dominic Cummings. Now under the aegis of Eton's finest. Protected because of...? Does he know where the bodies are buried? Almost certainly. This is a terrifying gamble, keeping this creature on parliamentary life support. It sends a terrible message, reinforcing what I have just said:

It's ok to break lockdown.

That's the tacit message thousands will hear and take up. They will do the Tories' dirty work for them and undermine their own safety just so the Tories can argue there is no way lockdown can continue. They don't want it to. They want you back to work. Schools will reopen to give working class parents no choice through dangerous child care, never mind the risk to teachers.

We must hold our nerve. They will divide us.

Weekender 10: A Day Late, A Dominic Short

Oh look, Dominic Cummings has been caught out flouting the lockdown.

Apparently this was when he had the virus. It's entirely possible he could have spread the virus; it's highly transmissible. I don't care about his excuses. I really don't. The government's own rules are for all or none. I've been defending this and I hate the Tories. But the reality is that the virus is abroad. As usual it's one rule for them and another for everyone else.

Now these scumbags, these utter scumbags, are making excuses. After Dr Ferguson was demonised in the right wing press. After the secretary of state for Health (or should that be Wealth) was apparently left speechless, endorsed his resignation and even said the cops ought be involved. When it comes to their ideological overlord, someone that they can't throw under the bus so easily. The scumbag who put them into power. Now it's a different tune.

This is disgusting. He has to go. Go. Go. Fucking go.

I'd like to think this was a key moment in the life of this shambolic government, but the very fact they are in power tells me they will survive this. Of course the media will be on their side. Excuses will be made, appeals to emotion, and the ruling class pulling together (maybe a few token dissenters).

Michael Walker from Novara Media I think explains it very well. Which is handy because I don't really know what else to say today. I'm still recovering from all the industrial scale gaslighting I mentioned yesterday. Watch and enjoy.

Interlude 2: Industrial Corona Gaslighting

“I have spent my whole day wearing PPE – I am both emotionally and physically exhausted.”

“Today I’ve witnessed three patients die [of COVID-19] and had to tell two families they couldn’t visit as they were symptomatic.”

“I get home, turn on the TV and see crowds on people on Bournemouth Beach – it frustrates me when we are trying so hard to protect the public.”

“I beg you. Stay at home as much as you can.” (source)

A break now to discuss this. I am feeling very gaslit (?) by the prevalence and ignorance of the anti-lockdown brigade. They are vocal, amplified by the ruling class and its media. They are waging class war. This is because a) they are taking the choice away from the working class, b) risking an increase of infections and subsequently death, and c) enforcing the 'discipline' of work. Specifically "work or else" - regardless of the cost. Intentionally or not, this squashes revolutionary thought.

None of these options are acceptable. We must be allowed to decide for ourselves.

Second fact: these views are propagated by people who are either unwilling or incapable of recognising the wider context. Corona isn't occurring in a neutral context. It isn't the choice between 'gulag lockdown' and 'free society'. It's a choice between the freedom to wander about with no concern while a highly transmissible and economically devastating (that's one of the traits of a pandemic) virus spreads, and economic devastation with hopefully a flatter curve of viral mobility.

The context I refer to is, of course, our capitalist economy and its supporting culture. This is not neutral, it exists in the interests of the ruling class to the detriment (ie exploitation) of the working class (that's you and I, whether you like it or not). The key point here is this:

All the problems the antiloxxers are pointing to as a consequence of lockdown already exist as a direct consequence or feature of capitalism.

It is a crisis prone system and it is incapable of handling things like pandemics. That should be clear to anyone by now. How many people suffered mental health stress as a result of the last banking crisis - about which many experts still argue we haven't fully recovered from. How many people live isolated and lonely lives as a result of an economic situation over which they have no control?

I say to the anitloxxers: your problem isn't with lockdown. It's with capitalism.

Except it isn't. This is because they aren't opposed to capitalism. They are incapable of rationalising the reality we all face and so side with it. What makes them so toxic is that to resolve this cognitive dissonance one must disregard the human cost. Even then they still perpetrate flawed thinking: they argue that one must still isolate the elderly (a shared class interest: many elderly folk are baby boomers and, crudely, Tory voters) - except that is impossible if everyone else is allowed not to. How do you think covid breached care homes? From outside obviously.

So the antiloxxers are willing to sacrifice each other to perpetuate a demonstrable failed ideology. They will do so aggressively and carelessly and we do not stand to benefit from this. Look at how teachers are being variously offered the chance to be "heroes" (aren't they already? Their work benefits the reproduction of labour) and then shamed for being intransigent pseudo revolutionaries with shades of the Seventies thrown in for good measure.

This, quite simply, is Industrial Corona Gaslighting.

Or, to put it even more simply, Class War.

Week of the Dig For Britain You Plebs Part 4: Dig For Britain You Plebs!

So the government's Dig For Victory, I mean Farming Jobs, went live. As you might expect 'Pick For Britain' is a shitshow. For a start it just hosts recruitment agency websites - not unlike the government's own regular employment website. Expect no actual vacancies or information about them. For that you'll have to contact the agencies themselves who also see fit not ot actually advertise jobs. Also, hilariously, things like this:

Notice where this company is almost entirely based? The architects of Brexit can't ignore this reality while telling the plebs to dig for (their) victory. I wonder how many farms signing up to all this are owned by Tories or the beneficiaries thereof?

So again, this isn't about helping people find work in tough times, and it certainly isn't about bigging up Britain. That's the desperate voice of spent nationalism. Hollow and cocksure. This is about the bosses and the businesses. How, for example, does the kind of person that would end up doing this (and there's no shame doing so) relocate for a couple of months. If they are renting they have to give up their tenancy, relocate to the farm (possibly, to be fair), pay for the privilege (losing about an hour's pay daily), and then come back to...? Where are they going to find new accommodation in Coronoa Britain?

This is just a bosses charter, draped in patriotic zeal. You won't see Tory scions doing this and that tells me everything.

Meanwhile as Britain heads to the seaside for cockles and covid, deckchairs and disease, social distancing is exposed for the lie that it is. Now, hold your horses! What I mean is that the government has so weakened this vital tactic as to become meaningless. Essentially the play is this: get everyone back to work by saying social distancing is important all the while knowing that nobody will actually follow it. The inertia of social movement and the desire to get out will erode any compulsion to caustion. This is coupled with the push to reduce the actual distance involved. Odious Duncan Smith has come out (and he won't be alone in this) and said the two metre rule (ha!) should be relaxed.

Class allies in the business sector say the same. One guy, the owner of a culturally-appropriating east Asian 'themed' restaurant chain, said it should also be 1m. Aside from increasing the risk of transmission in an enclosed environment, reducing it would allow more people to patronise his business. That's his point of course. The problem is that such an increase will cause a critical mass of social interaction that would render practical application of distance impossible and unworkable. It just won't happen, people will forget, not care, get drunk, tell staff (those on minimum wage, desperate to pay for a mask themselves, trying to survive) to piss off. You get the picture.

Social distancing is important, but, knowing that people won't follow it, allows the government to use it to 'guarantee' the safety of their workplaces. It's a lie.

Some good news, finally; it appears the government has changed its mind on charging migrant NHS staff. It's an important and welcome concession, but what they giveth with one hand...

Warning! Class War today contains toxic levels of Mogg!

Week of the £11 Spam Actualizer part 3: Your POTUS is a POS

Meet the man. He's become human spam. A real life 'my friend, the crown prince of Nigeria'. A thatch haired lobster faced narcissist born of penis enhancement surgery and Viagra junkmail. A human heart attack. Corona coronary. I don't know where this paragraph is going...

That's right. It's Trump. The Art of the Deal. A handshake snakebite sat in the Shitehouse, now lying readily to benefit the sales of an unpronounceable medication to benefit himself. Let me be (finally) clear: he's selling a drug that isn't designed for Covid, has not been cleared for Covid, and, the last time he tried this, cost people their lives (or almost, I forget which...I bet those concerned won't).

There aren't words. At least not ones that his shark lawyers or Blogspot wouldn't find defamatory.

The leader of the free world is hawking a drug that isn't designed for the thing he thinks it prevents. His body language smacks of defensive, in other words "don't blame me if you die, I only told you that the entire medical profession thinks its great, plus I'm not dead!". What is this shit? Studies have debunked this bullshit but he knows full well that his coterie of sycophants will, in between deliberately infecting themselves in the name of freedom, follow his advice. Likes others. And fucking die. It's a shitstorm in a petri dish.

Let's see what's happening in Westminster. Maybe our lot can out do him. Come on you lads!

Oh dear. It seems Boris Johnstwat is happy to stiff the very people that saved his fucking worthless fathead life. Migrant workers in the NHS, those on the frontline, are being made to pay for their healthcare. When they need it the most - when they are doing the most. Clap for that you Tory voting muppets! Just hope none of them need to help you, better get your wallets out and make sure they can.

Crissakes, it just gets worse. All over the world capitalism reveals its ugly self amid this crisis. Workers rights trampled everywhere as Corona throws a pale spotlight of greed over everything.

And don't forget while all this is happening there is still Brexit. Like the bones of grandpa sitting restless in the closet. A good time to bury bad deals. Sell everything off to the pusher in the Oval Office while we recover from one economic crisis to lurch headlong into another. How long can this madness continue? They are letting it happen. They want it to happen. They don't want a deal. But they do want you to pick fruit and veg. I do, bought some mushrooms yesterday. That do ya, Mr Useless Eustice?

The government is still bullying schools. Their guidance for opening schools is laughable. The unions have five reasonable tests. The Tories care about none of them. Just wash your hands if you've had contact with a kid you don't know might be infected because we still still aren't testing properly. Don't be fooled, your kids' education isn't the government's priority. They want you back to work and if your kid's at school, you've got no excuse to risk your health for Daddy Profit.

Meanwhile at the beach...

It's a socially distanced swim! Deckchairs and Mr Whippy will save us!

All the fuck's sakes.

Class War 

Week of the £11 Hand Sanitiser part 2: the Looking Glass World

The term unskilled is threatening incoherence; it's becoming meaningless. Like the word 'hero' which is now a media trigger, the purpose of which is to silence criticism of the subject or its kind. Are shop workers, binpersons, carers, etc, unskilled? Some, almost certainly. But that isn't derisory nor should it be. Caring shouldn't require years of cloistered study, access to which demands privilege. It should be a basic tenet of community life and humanity; something we are all capable of, if required. Otherwise what are we?

Now: are they essential? Hell yes. Do they deserve dignity and respect? Hell yes. Do they currently get that, through wage and public perception?...You tell me!

Anti lockdownists (ie, the bosses) claim we must un-lockdown immediately because of its deleterious effect on mental health. I don't disagree, but where were you during capitalism? It's still here! Loneliness isolation poverty induced stress and anxiety didn't just begin the moment Boris told us to shut the front door!

No answer. Revealing

The absolute denial of these people is both exhausting and terrifying. Whose 'freedom' do they think they are fighting for: yours or the viruses? What do they think freedom is while they blather on about "independent thought" or "just asking questions". Peter Hitchens claims he's performing some civic duty. In reality he's just peddling reactionary talking points, the purpose of which is, essentially, to deny the working class their power. Freedom under capitalism: the ability to be exploited (willingly it seems) isn't what I'd call freedom. But these maniacs argue that because you can choose your exploiter that capitalism isn't exploitative. A boss is still a boss. Profit is still profit, boyo.

We've living in a looking glass world. I don't recall even 911 being this crazy. An event that still has its share of conspiracy peddlers (just look at Alex Jones, the disgrace). Now we've entered what seems to be (though probably isn't since we can always outdo ourselves) peak antiscience. Don't trust experts they're all corrupt. Don't listen to any authority no matter how justified. By the way that is emphatically not anarchism. It's ignorance. We can all freely inquire, that's fine, but sooner or later some faith is required. What we do need is justification and a lack of hierarchical power with which these authorities can abuse their position. That's the definition of privilege.

But no, let's have a modern day witch hunt. A bonfire of scientists on an increasingly flat earth it seems.

Look at how Neil Ferguson has been thrown under the bus. His (not just his, but he's the fall guy). Sure his breaking lockdown was a stupid faux pas. Though it is ironic that people that are anti lockdown use that as leverage to criticise him; just shows their dishonesty. But the initial forecast, the quarter of a million figure, was based on early data and on the notion that we do nothing. That changed when the government changed (thankfully) its approach.

Let's not forget this is an ever changing and novel situation. Exacerbated by an unprepared government. It would be unscientific to expect no update or change to the science and the forecasts in the climate of that.

Ugh I'm so tired of hwo this is playing out. It's no longer about health, it's about the ugly dirty politics of the bosses and their lackeys - both willing (the media and the government) and unwilling (goofballs on twitter). Take for example the smears against Dr Ferguson - and to be clear I carry no torch for the guy except in the interest of honest discourse - it was put out by Lord Lawson's science denial apologists. Can you really tell me they are trustworthy? All the fuck no.

Class War!

Week of the £11 Hand Sanitiser part 1

It's just capitalism yo!

Marks and Sparks, not coincedentally a struggling retailer (it's just capitalism yo!), selling bottles of Hand Sanitiser for £11. This is as surprising as it is disgusting. It's funny really (nope), a year or so ago I started carrying what were then innocusous little containers of hand gel, a quid a pop from £land, because I got sick of getting sick over the winter from all the crud I seemed to pick up on public transport. My theory at least.

Now they are the soap equivalent of Faberge eggs. Black Friday in a plastic bottle. Oddly it's seems to only be hand sanitiser that's gone right up in demand, not regular soap. Portability presumably. I don't see the point of carrying any around myself even though I have quite a bit left from the bottle i bought over the winter. But then I'm not out and about as much.

I've noticed price increases in my local Coop. Never the cheapest of places; a middle class emporium if ever there was one. The word organic si deployed within as if it were sales napalm. I don't buy it, literally. I think they have put their prices up since the crisis started, which is proper cheeky. You might be forgiven for thinking we're all meant to be mutually aiding; looking out for one another. However as lockdown has faded, I'm sure people have found they can just get on with things more or less as normal. But then I don't live in the urban sprawl.

People defend these price hikes all the time. It's just "supply and demand" they say. Do they say it now? Have they learned that is a poor way to run a society. We're not cave dwellers at the mercy of the elements. The winds of economic fortune are man made and man-controllable. Why do we let this be an excuse. Why don't we plan our economy? Oh that's right, only commies talk that way. Except capitalists like to praise good business sense. What is that if it isn't planning? What is commie talk fi not saying something as ideological as "the dignity of labour". Imagine what the Tories would say if Unle Josef came out with that one? Or comrade Corbyn?

We seem to be ok living in a world where the more popular a commodity is the more expensive it should be!

People are still dying by the way. While the gullible clamour for their return to the place of their exploitation, the virus is still doing it's deadly dirty work. At what point did lives stop mattering to people? We know they mattered never to the Tories. Even kids aren't spared their tender mercies. Gove claims schools can reopen with classes half the size, to accommodate social distancing. How can that work; you'd need twice the teaching capacity. Hiring more public sector employees seems to be the one thing the Tories have refused to do over the last ten years. Instead throwing them on thee bonfire of ideological austerity. Their abuse goes on. I noticed that turd, Lord Ashcroft, haunting twitter. This is a guy that paraded his stolen valour on daytime TV with David "cheap as chips" Dickinson. Remember him?

Sadly yes. Along with Lord fucking Ashcroft, broadcasting his largese from the pirate havens of Belize. Safe from the virus, unlike his staff, I shouldn't wonder.

Wankers all. I wouldn't trust Gove to tell me the time. Slimy little man; an ideological shapeshifter, happy to wear any obsequious mask to hide his double standards. He is grotesque, in every way.

Class War returns for another week of swearing at the Tories.

Weekender 9: Covid Killed the Stay At Home Star

Made the mistake of going to Tesco this afternoon. Normally I go early in the morning, and certaonly will stick with that from now on. It's not so much the shop, though it is busier which means they have a doorman enforcing a social distancing queue. Something that's promptly ignored by everyone when they step inside.

It was passing through the village to get to the shop that did my head in. It's a nice afternoon so, naturally, everybody wants to be outside. And so they are. Them and their kids, all over the fields, and the play areas which were closed off. The plastic tape has been torn down from around the climbing frames and the swings and replaces with the children of people that clearly think they know better.

The tragedy of it is that these people are probably fine, but that isn't how this works. The majority of us will be ok and safe to interact with; it's just that no one knows for sure. You have to act as if everyone has the virus. We aren't testing people (still) so maintaining social distancing shouldn't be an imposition. In fact the only imposition is that I'm the muppet stepping aside for everyone. Some people say thanks, appreciated. But there's no give and take. Whole families are abroad, people are using the local sport amenities and, as I say, the play areas are wide open. People are picnicking, meeting and greeting. All the things one is meant to do on a nice Spring afternoon.

It's just we can't. This isn't about who tells us we shouldn't. In fact the people that ought to be aren't. That's why things have now, in my opinion, collapsed. Lockdown will be unenforceable now. This has an inertia of its own. No Jack is going to happily be put back in his box. Or, to put it another way, Johnson has well and truly fucked it.

This is a crisis wherein the government has been exposed for mendacity that will likely be obscure in the fog of aftermath thanks to a willing media. Heroes will quickly turn to enemies as the nurses and doctors, should respite occur, will be painted as stalinists or trots. The papers will attempt to shame them, much as it is currently doing with the teaching profession. Even the uncharacteristically measure (ie cautious) language of the moment isn't enough to disguise the fact. They will become agitators or "fallen heroes". People we may quickly find we cannot afford when the new austerity begins to bite.

By then Brexit will have resolved (sort of, not really). We will, as per the wishes of Johnson and his perfidious loonspud advisers, have crashed out. No deal, no deals. Our economy will suffer further hardship and brexit divisions will exacerbate the class struggle.

This is our future. The only ones that can change it are the working class. We know Johnson is an oafish bully that, along with Rees Mogg (who now currently seems to be straining to get out of his box again), look to profit from this. They have no plan but will sell us plastic populism and union jacks to wave ourselves off a cliff. Making hay while the poison sun shines.

We know they're shit. They know we knew they're shit. But nobody in the media will stand up and be counted. We're facing two enemies and weapons called facts these days don't seem to be sufficient.

Weekender 9: lockdown was lockdown

What shape will society take moving forward, as inexorably we must? More importantly who gets to decide that? Right now - well, last Sunday, actually - the Tories are deciding that. Their stupid 'stay alert' mission change has had the effect of shifting the onus onto the rest of us.

While personal responsibility is obviously important and we must make sure to take care of ourselves and each other (because god knows the Tories won't), this is an abrogation of statutory responsibility. I feel it's deliberate; it's typical of the Tories. They tell everyone else how to behave while shirking any responsibility themselves. Given they are the government it seems irresponsible to do this. The obvious consequences will be legal; the ability for bosses and landlords to compel the rest of us into unsafe work and life conditions from which they alone benefit.

This isn't about morals or character (eg the Chancellor's bullshittery regarding the "dignity of labour"). It's about the ruling class using its power to abrogate its duty of care. This means a lss of rights vital for essential workers to survive at this time. The only legitimate claim a government can make is this duty of care: that it will take care of people. Of course that has long gone. The NHS (no top down...) reforms of 2012 removed from the secretary of state the very same. We are cast ever more adrift.

I think lockdown at this point has been so watered down, partly intentionally and partly through Johnstwat's wiff waff mental meanderings. People are out and about now, Pandora's box of covid has been opened and it can't be closed again. Once there's a slight whiff of normality, the masses will be drawn out likes moths to a flame. Inertial will build and with it people forgetting or casting aside the idea of social distancing.

I don't say that to be dismissive or arrogant. It's just a fact: people will get a sniff of normality and understandably old habits will kick in. It wont' just be idiots crowding out pubs, but real people craving, even if subconsciously, the human contact of The Time Before. This is natural. With the government, thanks also to the media, stepping aside, what will happen? Chaos wearing a summer dress, sipping a cool drink on a hot day.

When is a lockdown not a lockdown? When it's a Tory lockdown

Lockdown is Lockdown 5: We Don't Need No Education

We must decide when lockdown ends. Not them! Don't let them decide what's healthy for us!

It looks like schools will be the next line of attack in this phase of Class War. Now the BMA are supporting the teaching unions correctly opposing this lockdown. Is it reasonable to assume schools will be safe? What is the point of opening for a month and a half anyway; wouldn't' it be best to just write off thsi school year full stop? Kids aren't going to social distance and we can't really turn schools into some chemical prison, which is what they will be. Teachers and Dinner Ladies wrapped in masks and gloves serving socially distanced maths and deep cleaned pie and mash? Can you imagine a school kitchen run without PPE?

What a joke. No, we must support these unions on principle. This isn't just about the issue of school hygiene, important though it obviously is. It's about standing in solidarity with those from the working class caught in the prison spotlight, trying to escape to safety. We have the likes of rancid toff "journalist", Isabel Oakeshott (i don't even care how it's spelt) exhorting them to 'be brave like the nurses' and the Daily Heil calling on them to 'be heroes' (though I note their tone is less abrasive than usual, interesting!). They are already heroes; they do a difficult often thankless job (no thanks to the likes of the Fail) wherein they are treated like shit by the government. Remember when Gove called them 'the blob'? What a tosser that man is. Supercilious smarmy deceitful little toerag.

The question is which is more damaging: a year off school (which doesn't mean a year off learning either, nor does it mean teachers aren't working, either), or Covid? Not a trick question!

Actually it is. The correct answer is class war; the most important message your kids will ever learn until we overthrow this monstrous system. When the ruling class thinks your kid's safety is less a priority than the profit of privatised academies run by its mates in the city and abroad, there is only one answer. Struggle and fight.

The teachers are now the proverbial canaries in the coalmine: if they give in (for which no shame must be attached) then where does that leave anyone else the bosses demand on the frontline? It's not even just teachers, it's all the staff necessary to run the schools: cleaners, caterers, suppliers, along with their families. Society is interconnected. Why else do they practice divide and rule?

We must also not fall for the propaganda. Rishi Sunak, a former city slicker, would have us believe in the "dignity of labour". What a crock. There's no dignity in breaking your back for someone else to profit. No one in their right mind would accept that if they really grokked that's how they lived. Problem is they don't - because they fall for this nonsense. "A child's education is precious", well so's it's life - and a few months disruption from the official curriculum (the quality of which merits another discussion entirely!) won't destroy their life chances. If it did what does that say about the system? Kids are learning right now what real dignified work is: the essential stuff. That's why it's so gratifying seeing their homemade raimbows and "I heart the NHS" posters. Those are worth more than all the GCSE's in the world!

First they came for the teachers...after they left the elderly and frail to die in nursing homes...after they abandoned the nurses and doctors to the petri dish they'd concocted...you get the picture.

Lockdown is Lockdown 4: Right Turn Clyde

This must rank amongst the most intense examples of peak Conservorona stupidity. In a week kicked off by the self contradictory jibber jabber of our Mainstream Media Prime Minister, the Tories have no decided that estate agents perform essential work. What the actual fuck. There is nothing essential about them; they are vampires. Why couldn't people organise their own house sales and cut out the middle men, and do you want strangers tramping around your house during a pandemic?

Thought not.

But honestly, I think lockdown is on its last legs, and I don't see that with glee. Anything but. I think people are just giving up. This is an idea that would need constant encouragement. A supportive arm but instead we have a confused clown show motivated by its own need to push profit. This is how the crisis will transform, and I fear it will get ugly. I fear it will manifest into a sharp hard right challenge.

I'm referring to the fringe proto and neo fascists who are on the front line of fighting lockdown. Willing idiots for the capitalists. We know that in times of austerity fascism rises. Capitalism now faces an unprecedented crisis and so the shadow of austerity looms again. There are already protests threatened over here (much like the peacock displays of hostile desperation in the US). The police are responding likewise and this will get ugly. As the crisis evolves, mutating like its own virus, there is a strong chance it will turn into an ideological civil war. One that could further devolve, and all against a backdrop of Brexit. A country haunted by a flag.

This will need to be challenged on all fronts. We must not let ignorance take root. Not just the usual conspiracy peddlers; they are mundane by virtue of their ubiquity. Where there's a crisis, there's a confused and divisive interpretation of facts, seen through a filter of oppression. We are oppressed, but we must not let them divide us. Not along these petulant lines. Capitalism thrives on division. Socialism isn't a dirty word: it's a necessary condition for a free and fair society, and as things progress/worsen, authoritarianism will bring that increasingly into focus.

Now more than ever we must reject the trite hateful narrative of fascism. We are in lockdown, but in spirit we must remain international. Not globalist. You have more in common with a Syrian refugee, a North African migrant, or a Romanian cleaner than you do with the people they end up working for. You have more in common with them than you ever will with Boris Johnson, preening while he claps. His applause wont' pay your wages, it'll steal your votes so he can take more.

End this.

Lockdown is Lockdown 3: In Which I Find Conspiracy Wanting

I think it's fair to say
My contribution yesterday
Was a little bit lackluster
But in truth it's hard to muster
Daily wit to produce something great
Which is why I might be late
In citing something that's truly new
To provide value to the likes of you :D

Ok that's one paragraph. What next? Got to be honest, I'm struggling a bit keeping up with this. Fear not, I shall endeavour. I mean people are dying ffs, talking bollocks on a blog is hardly comparable!

I have spent far too much time over the last couple of days reading tweets from people who want lockdown to end. Their reasoning seems pure speculation, which is ironic considering their criticism is based on the same accusation only levelled at the proponents of lockdown. Yes, all of this is speculative. We won't know for sure until (if) it ends. But surely to god it stands to reason that curtailing social movement will curtail, to one degree or another, transmission. Thus the drive to flatten the curve. Surely that's a reasonable inference?

The other basis for the scepticism is the notion that Covid is being 'over prescribed' that doctors are, for reasons unknown, assigning covid as causal even in cases where it isn't. But they cannot cite numbers. It doesn't make sense. I have no idea whether this actually true and I've not had much luck finding out. The ONS doesn't appear to think it's a problem. They say that government numbers do not include deaths outside of hospitals of which there are certainly more than none.

But why would doctors do this? Have these highly trained capable individuals all taken leave of rational thought? Is it all a giant gag? If anything the reverse would be true: that the government would want the virus to be under reported. It makes no sense for a capitalist govenrment that wants to appear, to coin a phrase, strong and stable, to increase the death rate even falsely. That's absurd! But it's part of a long standing 'New World Order' conspiracy narrative: that they want to kill off, qutie literally, a portion of the population. I presume they think that would make it easier to manage the rest of us when we're consigned to the gulags and made to sing the Internationale.

Honestly though it doesn't bear out and in the absence of evidence it's unhelpful reactionary (these people are never left wing, let's be honest) conspiranoia.

No one has argued that lockdown is easy or economically beneficial. No one advocating it or supporting it thinks it's fun fun fun till daddy takes my T-bird away! But you will note none of these irrational thinkers advocates different economics. That, to me, is the giveaway. They are doing capital's work for them: everyone back to work, regardless of the risk. This is the working class lacking the awareness of its own exploitation. The government doesn't care about you, it certainly doesn't want to pay you. So why believe it supports lockdown? It's allies in the gutter press all want it to end.

Yet, it cannot. Even if we want it to, how can it? We have no idea how to combat this virus and simply appealing to 'social distancing' (as if these reactionaries are going to be its strictest adherents) seems vain at best. In many places it will be impossible and so the economy will still be affected.

We must not let them dictate the course of things. The working class must be allowed to decide for itself when and if we open and return to normality. Not people with a limited grasp of the reality of the situation.

I don't like picking on such low hanging fruit but we need critical thinking. Not mere speculation. There's always a kernel of truth in conspiracy thinking we are at the mercy of corporate capitalists and their ruling class stooges in Parliament. But the answer is to understand how taht works, not believe the unbelievable or the incoherent.

It is erroneous, in my opinion, to argue that because lockdown is economically damaging we should abandon it. This implies the alternative isn't, never mind the likelihood of increasing the infection rate, which will certainly impact the economy. What happens if essential shops, like supermarkets, have to be shutdown as a result? Doesn't bear thinking about.

The bottom line: we need testing. We should have had testing. We are STILL not testing anywhere near enough. The claims to victory made from the government are arrogant boasts. We are not testing 100,000 people a day. This government didn't even lockdown airports and now wants schools to open.

We are our only hope. (I'm going to record that and programme it into my droid and send him off into space...help us Obi Wan, it's all gone to shit!)

Today's forecast is...Class War!

Lockdown is Lockdown 2: I Forgot a Title!

No summer holiday. No change there then, I haven't been on one for decades. :D

Hope everyone gets a refund from Thomas Cook - oh wait.

Another day in Capitaland.

Today is International Nurses Day (Florence Nightingale's birthday, apparently - you learn all sorts listening to Radio 4 in the morning, including that Mishal Hussein should never talk about eating nobs). I can't imagine many of these good people (I won't use the word 'hero', it's lost all value) ever imagined we'd be in this situation.

This blogger, for all it's worth and to any that may be reading, I say thank you and stay strong.

Anyway

I fully support this campaign:

Angry parents plan a boycott of schools reopening on June 1.

United with teachers and healthworkers in condemning the decision, they are launching action to keep children home.

Meeting Thursday, 8:15pm https://t.co/g2RBbvr15s #FiveTests #BoycottSchools pic.twitter.com/PMAWkFIqRs

— Reel News (@ReelNewsLondon) May 11, 2020

 Meanwhile, the Tories crack on with taking back control

For a party that claims to be big on responsibility and control, they have managed to do neither. Surrendering to everything from plague to presidents, from Corona to Morona.

This isn't a planned economy, it's a mismanaged disaster

Lockdown is Lockdown 1: Postmortem for a Plan

Never in the field of human endeavour has so much been required of so few so lacking in ability.

Rining in the ears of the likes of Alexander DeWaffle is the tinnitus of self importance; the roaring eardrum-tide of privilege. These people are their own victims; goading themselves on to take over everything. All must be theirs. The common weal; the land; our rights; our incomes. Everything.

All we ask (other than everything) is that you not fuck up when there's plague's abroad.

They couldn't even do that. Johnson is a slave to our toxic billionaire-poisoned media. They have set this agenda. Through the MAGA-Mekon that is Dominic Cummings they spread their divisive message. It's take back control, again. A meaningless thought - nay, life - terminating cliche. As vapid as it is all encompassing.

These are our leaders and their stature is represented only by how distant it measures from that which is required. They are defined by how far short they come up. You must be this tall to ride the roller coaster. You can't handle it Mr Johnson. It's not for you. Go back to your mistress of the moment. Piss off to your regatta club. Wear your boater, pretend to be Billy Bunter where you can do no harm. Tuck off!

Around the world, cases don't seem to be falling. Even in the places where action has been more effective and decisive. Some moron in South Korea decided to go to all the clubs in Seoul. You can guess the rest. Now the city's nightlife is in indefinite lockdown. This is South Korea where they have a proper response from government and not an irresponsible cretin at the helm. Without that kind of leadership over here....well you can guess the rest.

This morning I went to Tesco wearing, for the first time, a mask. Homemade of course, and thus probably as effective as a chocolate teapot. I felt pretty silly wearing it, it's not my colour. But this seems to be the way forward. I can't help thinking that, between now and 24 hours earlier, things have gotten worse once again. Another shift. Just like in March. The world changes around us in a heartbeat. Like a palpitation in the core of reality. It's unsettling and made worse by the fact this appears to be a one way journey. You can look behind you but objects in the rear view mirror always appear closer. Distance drives familiarity further away and into discomfort.

This now is the brave new brave new world

Class War is back!

Weekender 8: From Lockdown to Eternity

Ooh it's like Christmas. Insofar as a fat oaf, reliant on the exploited work of a mythical underclass, will bestow us a gift this evening. As I write this first par it's 9:29 in the am. Everything to play for

So it wasn't good enough that the Tories - no! Boris! BORIS! AGAIN!

It wasn't good enough that he decided the country over Brexit (arguing for both positions as and when it suited him). Now he's doing the SAME THING over lockdown. The country is now split over whether to stay in lockdown or not. How has this happened?

Here's how to tell someone they are a duly elected twat while maintaining sensible social distancing:

It's !4:19pm now. Still no word from the aforementioned duly elected twat as to what he plans to do. So far he's managed to muddy his already mixed messaging by changing 'Stay At Home' to a vague 'Stay Alert'. Once again he's anthropomorphised the virus. This is all he's got; he's out of ammo. A spent farce (not a spelling error). "If it was a physical assailant" and "stay alert". Covid isn't a human being one can observe from the safety of one's crenellations while listening to one's Vera Lynn wax disc. They are not equipped to understand what is happening, nor help the people - and the people put this duly elected twat into duly elected power!

Control the Virus! I'm not the fucking X-Men!

And the weather's turning shitty again. Ominous much?

Here's the nexus of arrogance ego and ignorance, in human (although...) form:

Stay alert? I've been clapping for the NHS since Thursday evening. pic.twitter.com/cb1hH0Fivo

— Mark ne-Francois-pas MP (@MarkFrancois12) May 10, 2020

His brave applause is worth more than actual wages, ppe, or professional support!

I'm sure you'll agree. Although I'm not entirely convinced Mark Francois isn't some deep cover satire project.

17:16pm now...apparently duly elected twat will take to the stage to cough up our futures at 7pm. I can hardly wait.

Well that was underwhelming. Essentially the Brexit messaging again; going with what works! Take back control!

So to hilariously summarise: people who work in construction should go to work, but they should not take public transport, except if they have to take public transport in which case they should.
We might reopen schools before the end of the school year, but we might not. (Even though teachers are still working of course.)
You can take unlimited exercise (in other words go out and do what you like, because you can bet that's how it will be interpreted) but you can't play sport except with your family.
You must observe social distancing and we'll increase the fine if you don't although how that will be enforced is beyond me, it's impossible to keep 2m apart near me when everyone's out cycling or jogging or walking because the lanes ain't that wide.

All this rubbish was sauteed in the lard of privilege and nationalism. Hooray for you and all you do, Britain, except we, your government, have done fuck all. We're going to continue doing fuck all (except join in with the applause despite having literally no right to do so). The vacuous sound of Tory exceptionalism; the silent invocation of the rotting racist corpse of Churchill, the sanitised spirit of the Blitz, all rolled into one thunderball. It's the Brexit messaging service all over again: take back control.

From a bloody bacteria!

Weekender 8: Scenes From An Apocalypse

Everywhere, photographs of the end of humanity. A collage of failed social distancing as patriotism triumphs.

 Penny for your thoughts Mr Reporter?

How unlucky do you have to be to get caught, on a baking hot day, in your car at a time when there is legitimately no traffic nor call for much? Gridlock fears no plague. Here I am, sitting in a tin can!

Waving, singing, self destructing...this tweet says it all. Words are but a pale ghost.

First nation on earth to Vera Lynn ourselves to death pic.twitter.com/e5qaTnnYYa

— James Felton (@JimMFelton) May 9, 2020

This is what the working class has been reduced to. These people are victims of the stupidity they demonstrate. Yes it's easy to sneer. I don't like that. But for god's sake. This is YOUR mess Boris; the blood is on YOUR hands! Patriotism isn't chosen, it's inflicted. These are all of us. I do not believe it's right for the ruling class, with their vast privilege and ill gotten gains (stolen from the working class) to use their power to bully others.

However in this case we have another example of the divide within the ruling class; just as it exists with Brexit, it exists here. Those who want to kickstart their profits anew and those who want to, in the case of VE Day and the like, end lockdown because...freedom. A nebulous concept propagated by scumbag press barons to provoke their readers. It's commercialised outrage. It's what Peter Hitchens does when he provides no evidence and appeals to outliers. We all want lockdown to end, but we cannot forget why it's here there's a virus and the government responded badly to it.

Don't use these images to sniff and sneer at people who have less or little, certainly compared to the ruling elite. Apportion blame correctly. Scapegoat the right people. These are images of misguided and potentially dangerous behaviour, but the people involved are not responsible for being in that thought space. They should be told, respectfully and from a position of class awareness (IMO), what they are doing is counter productive.

We none of us are perfect, especially in these unprecedented crisis-addled times.

Virus In Europe Days 5: Save Us Vera!

Is it lockdown, is it unlocking?

What a mess this all is. A uniquely Tory mess. Meanwhile they call out the working class for being lazy - again. When will people realise: that's what they think of us. We are chattel. Never has this been more apparent.

The sun continues to shine (for now) but what is normal anymore? Everything is different, but also the same. We do the same things - shop, talk, walk, sleep, jog (so very many joggers!) and yet we are different for it. As if we're dressed differently. A disquieting invisible attire that is uncomfortable.

I wonder if I have become strangely used to this. Stockholm Syndrome, or Stay at holm Syndrome, perhaps. With the prospect of the doors being slightly opened I scurry away from the notion of light. It burns, it burns, precious! I don't do change very well. So when the change happened I was uncomfortable; I started reading tweets by cranks like Peter Hitchems. What if their reading of the situation, despite being rooted in confirmation bias, was correct? Alas no. We can all point to some outlier doctor that thinks Corona is no big deal and that lockdown is unnecessary, but that proves nothing sans evidence.

These people have none.

So I got used to it, over these past 7 weeks. It feels like it has never been any different now. Panic buying - more or less - seems under control (touching ALL THE WOOD). I can go and buy what I need, even though it's markedly more expensive. The stuff I can't get (socks or a haircut) aren't pressing issues...for now. So here I am, comfortably numb or comfortably dumb. It's cold outside, keep the door shut!

As I type this, I hear fireworks going off. In a lockdown. Crank out the Vera Lynn you plebs. It's like a prayer; a votive offering to the gods of patriotism. Save us, yoru bestest country, from the horrible things you sent us!

"We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when...!"

Who knew she had prophesied the state of Brexit. Hardly surprising, she's become inducted into that canon; the pantheon of British exceptionalism. Invoked with a flag and a singsong. Get the bunting out; order it from Amazon. Socially distance the little triangles. I saw some that had clearly been professionally made for this event, with the number 75 printed. How did they get that? Who's job is it to drive around delivering that? Poor fucker.

Someone else had a "Help for Heroes" shirt on. Remember them? The armed forces charity that whitewashes imperialist warmongering and its exploitation of the poor and the young (often both are the same) by calling those sent by the king's coin to kill others. Nope, that's the government's job. Don't use a natural sense of humanitarianism to disguise the reality and give the state a pass.

Always remember you have more in common with the people you're bombing than the people ordering you to drop the bombs.

Virus In Europe Days 4: A Convidfusing Mess

I read the other day that Professor Neil Ferguson, who has gotten much of the blame for...everything, quit after he didn't properly lock his lockdown down. (source).

Now, I won't say he acted properly. But to say he "undermined lockdown"? That's pure propaganda. I don't want to entertain conspiracy theories but this smacks of being made the fall guy. The government knew he wasn't popular and, in my honest opinion, I think they're looking to blame anyone but themselves. In the firing line will be scientists.

What happened: his missus visited him while in lockdown. Now, if he's the only person in Britain to have behaved that way I'll be very surprised! Yes it was 'ill advised' but I hardly think it's any worse than any of the things we've heard politicians doing (like shaking hands with covid patents).

The article is clearly partisan. It even quotes Scotland Yard as if to suggest the possibility he broke the law. They are painting the guy as a real villain here! Fallen professor is the man responsible for all your dead grandparents! Come the fuck on. This is classic political chicanery.

Why him? Well he's held up as responsible for lockdown, essentially. That if we didn't up to a quarter of a million could die. The devil is in the detail obviously and I haven't read his modelling. It doesn't alter the point. What I'm saying is that lockdown is clearly unpopular amongst the capitalist class, so let's use this to scapegoat the guy. Let's smear him. Dirty deeds done dirt cheap.

So with him out the picture the government can find scientific advice from people more amenable to the needs of capital. Which may be, if I haven't completely lost the plot (I'm not so sure), why we're now teetering on the edge of unlocking the lockdown.

What a mess we are in. It's as if we've been led right up the creek and then left without a paddle. "See ya!" says Field Marshal Johnstwat before opening the door to let the wild dogs in and then fucking off to Chequers for a gay old time. This is madness; you cannot institute a lockdown and then, when things get a bit tough for capital, decide that it's ok. It won't be because people are going to equate easing with the end of the virus. That clearly hasn't happened and isn't going to anytime soon, menwhile hundreds are still dying and the infection is still present.

Are people even going to want to consume and spend? If not then what is the point?

I've come through these past many weeks and now I'm oddly used to it. Changing things again without any certainty - and without any confidence (at least not from me) - is crazy.

Welcome to crazy!

And what a giant confused mess that all is!

Meanwhile in the Class War...

Virus In Europe Days 3: An English Tar!

Have you noticed how America always has to have an enemy? An external its ruling class tirelessly work to align the working class behind. A distraction, oviously - and lordy does Trumplestillshit need one now. How about....China! After all they deliberately infected us all (including themselves) with a man made (not man made) virus-disease.

Which isn't to say the super-secretive communist/capitalist (delete as applicable) regime handled it well, in terms of the human race. Still, as far as I know, they weren't selling off PPE to the highest bidder overseas. Because fuck humanity.

They're still holding their boots against the throats of Iran. No doubt sanctions have not helped their efforts to avoid a plague.

Are we any better? Boris Johnsoff thinks that if the virus was a mugger/physical assailant (delete as terrifying) we could ball our collective fists and assert ourselves like a British Tar

"His nose should pant and his lip should curl
His cheeks should flame and his brow should furl
His bosom should heave and his heart should glow
And his fist be ever ready for a knock down blow"

And when he shake hands in a pandemic, his health will go...

There has to be an enemy. We even need to anthropomorphise a plague. This, it seems to me, doesn't inspire the correct approach. It is a problem of biology, not nationalism and flag waving. Wipe down your surfaces with a union jack.

Fuck flags. All they ever do is symbolise division. They are the fashion of separation and segregation. Why would you advertise that? Some people claim they want to "reclaim" the flag? Why? Let the fucking thing die, or burn. Others say that it should be a benign or positive thing - then why does it so easily align with and become a tool of fascism? Coincidence? It has never made any sense to me for people to hang their national flag out the window/on their car/over their beer belly etc. It's bizarre to me to wave around the flag of the country you are quite comfortably living in. That's just pure provocation to me. It's clearly a statement of intent: are you British enough mate? You don't look it!

Finally, they say they are going to ease some lockdown restrictions. His highness, Sir Boris of Shitshow, is going to allow more time outside. Well that's nice, but let's be honest there is fuck all social distancing happening - never mind that, in local shops, it's impossible. But people just walk jog and cycle close by anyway. Nobody seems to obey then and they all hang around in groups.

"Picnics, sunbathing (?) and unlimited rambles" will be allowed. Who was policing the "limited" rambling? I could walk around all day and no one would know. The only problem would be all the bloody cyclists and joggers who ignore social distancing anyway. The whole thing just seems like a confused mess. presumably because it is a confused mess. Watch what happens if the infection rate goes up, which is entirely possible since everyone will just pile on outside and...

This is weird though:

"Chair of the Conservative backbench 1922 committee, Graham Brady, has called for the lifting of “arbitrary rules and limitations on freedom as quickly as possible” and suggested the public had been “a little too willing to stay at home”."

The Tories, who want a compliant state, now don't like too much compliance? Wait until he gets the Brexit he wants at the end of the year! See how compliant people are then. But the guy's a grubby capitalist, he wants the slaves out working to make him money. That's all the likes of Brady care about. Certainly not your health.

Class war here.

Virus In Europe Days 2: The Disease That Gets Under Your Skin

I think, if I'm honest, it's starting to get to me a bit. I'm wondering if I'm at the point where I, speaking for no one else, need a way out of this. I know that normality, going forward, will be something new, but I also feel that, irrespective of its necessity, lockdown needs to be a finite proposition. I have no idea whether that will be the case in the foreseeable, but I'm starting to pack my bags, thinking of heading to the reception desk (that's not a dark metaphor, btw). Room service is nice but I need the real thing.

I get through the day easily enough; a routine has found me and it ins't unpleasant. But there are needs I'm starting to find can't be met locally and the ease with which I used to be able to fulfil them is pressing on my sensibility. I need some new socks for one thing; these old things (wiggles toes) are starting to come apart! Mundane things I could easily buy in town that are now hopelessly out of reach.

It's the collision of two worlds: the overlay of biohazard onto the everyday. The world looks the same, but the invisible has changed. Something isn't quite right. I go through the same fields, to the same shops, much the same as they always were (more or less - social distancing is heavily advertised), but, simultaneously, it's all vitally different.

This is hard to reconcile. Two worlds that really don't belong. I think they try to coalesce at night. I do not sleep well. Dreams are intense and pounding. They feel so real that upon waking I am uncertain as to what is real. It is tiring in its own way. But as the day pours itself over me, and I wake earlier with the early dawn, the travails of the subconscious dissipate. However I suspect they are not forgotten, merely suppressed. That is why I believe, for myself, this cannot continue overlong, though I recognise that it may have to.

It's like the Tories are dunking our collective heads in the toilet. What a pleasant metaphor.

There is no fix for this. On the radio this morning they were talking about how people with schizophrenia were regressing; lockdown's pressures were increasing the voices some were hearing. A house has become a cage, even if it isn't a prison - and calling it such is trite. These pressures will not be easily unwound. What happens afterwards when people need to unwind? Will they be called back to work without a care? Will their benefits be stopped if they do not immediately follow the edicts of work advisers, many of whom will also be stressed?

How far down the rabbit hole can we go? How far can we twist the world? It's the disease that gets under your skin.

On the other hand, safely crack open the soapwashed champagne, we have the highest death toll in Europe. Still there's everything to play for if we want to beat the US' own murder rate. Hip hip, our giverment is shit. Hooray. :(

It's not funny is it.

Class war for today

Virus In Europe Days 1: Street Party?

Class War is back

Everywhere there are, inexplicably, posters exhorting us to participate in a "stay at home street party" on behalf of the 75th anniversary of VE day. This, I am to believe, is a celebration. I don't really understand that. I can't relate to it any any meaningful level.

Of course on the simplistic level that most, unfortunately (yes, I am that arrogant), will indulge, I do understand. We beat the Germans! Like in the football twenty years later. We beat the Germans! We bombed their chip shops! Great. I hate fascism too - might be a tad trite to point out that not all Germans were Nazis! Yet here we are at a time when fascism has never been more of a threat and authoritarianism is ascendant. Our own leaders dress up in Reich party gear and crowds of misguided working class issue forth Nazi salutes, prostrating before Youtube reactionaries while voting for their own demise in a deceitful referendum.

Celebrate? Commiserate more like. I want nothing to do with some state led, and thus sanitised event mired in a selective remembrance. I feel much the same every November.

Our first clue: this is top down. It's a state led affair. Not some grassroots affair. I cannot see the working class wanting to organise something so vapid when there's more pressing affairs. So of course it's also a distraction. Focus on the flag, make everything great again. Put your faith in the channel of power that exists in this rotten state. Meanwhile our betters are abrogating their responsibilities to the rest of us. I will not be distracted.

It's state sanctioned imperialism. It exists, from the state, in the context of a country beggaring itself in the name of a shibboleth called Brexit. Isn't this just insulting? We spent four years being hectored by the lunatic fringe of the Tory party embarrassing themselves with ugly displays of nationalism and exceptionalism, belittling the likes of Germany. So now let's celebrate the 'ultimate victory' over them even though that was 75 years ago and the Germans of today are as repulsed by the Nazi regime as we are. Don't believe this is to celebrate freedom. It's to assert nationalism and patriotism. It's jingoism (of course there will always be well intended exceptions).

I hate all this stuff. It's not that I don't care about beating fascists, it's just that's not what this is celebrating. It isn't a sombre reflection on the end of a dark period. It's an excuse to wave a fucking flag. The most provocative thing any community can do. Grow the fuck up England! Anyway the modern military is just a political tool. Remember the story about squaddies using Jeremy Corbyn's face on a poster as target practice? What stupidity; it just shows what they are really about. The hired guns of the state kept servile by propaganda. Corbyn is dedicated to peace, but that's not profitable so literally shoot bullets at his face! Get them while they are young - like the tobacco industry.

In this context I won't be celebrating. None of this should be celebrated. Yes, spare a thought for those lost in state initiated violence as well as those who died serving with noble intentions. Reflect always on the ultimate futility of wars, but never believe the lies when they come from the state. The Ministry of Defence is a chamber of horrors and a lifestyle for the fat-cat generals and politicians.

And yes I mean futility: 75 years of peace (except when it wasn't) thrown down the drain by Brexit and its money making exploiters. A society ripped apart with growing seeds of neo fascism - the roots of which have always been there, eagerly fanned by authoritarians across the country. Now they have reasserted their dominance.

This isn't celebrating the end of war; it's celebrating victory. There's a difference

Tommy can you hear me?

Weekender 7: Seven Bloody Weeks?!?

What a grey smudge the sky is. Like smearing your thumb on a pencil drawing. April was nice, perhaps by accident (a smog related accident), but that was yestermonth, back when we were all stuck indoors, taunted by nature for our own ignorance (by ours, I mean theirs: the Tories). Remember those days? Oh we thought they'd never end...!

One day we'll look back and laugh. Because the alternative is tears.

One day.

For now though, the pattern weaves ever one. Cast across a one trick loom. Woven out of myopic desperation by people incapable of a different pattern. The conventional wisdom, for economic sluggishness has always recommended spending. But the government refuses to give people helicopter money. With every utterance and edict the Tory ruling elite demonstrates it's ideological inflexibility and inability to process reality. "People want to get back to work". 

We are dying to live. We may end up living to die. 

Schools out...wellnotsomuch. Apparently they are opening for Year Six kids (I've no idea what age that is) on the first of June. Seems pointless to me, you've probably learned all you need to know about life in this past period: that politicians are scum, that the ruling class exploits the poor (you), and people should practice mutual aid. Not really sure how this helps. It just puts stress on 
teachers. Kids, depending on age, aren't known for their hygiene and while they are considered a less susceptible group they do live with people who might not be. I'm sure teachers aren't thrilled about being put on the viral frontline like this.

But as I've said, the capitalist class wants normality (by which I mean profit). As the days pass, and the hair cuts of politicians in public grow, they will become ever more restless. Well too fucking bad. These would also be the schools the Tories have underfunded for a decade, along with the NHS. Is that the normality they want? Is it what we want? I say no.

There's a growing sense that, given Dominic Cummings is at the helm, this is increasingly becoming an exercise in eugenics. The Hateful geek Mekon in charge of blurting out the unthinkable on behalf of the unconscionable. He's probably a fan of those old Nazi propaganda posters (yes I went there). They cared little for the 'useless' in society: the infirm the alien and the elderly. How convenient then that we have a virus in society capable of weeding them out. Let the strong survive. This is a theme that, knowingly or not, is threaded throughout the conspiracy thinking on htis subject. That it isn't serious: "only the old/sick die". Sorry chuckles, these people matter. Is this the world we want to inherit when we come out of this? More on this here.

I guess now would be a bad time for the Martians to invade, so there's that. But our current masters are just as inscrutable and evil.

This is the seventh weekend I've been doing this. Apropos of nothing. Just thought I'd mention it. I'm sure we'd all appreciate an end to this just so I can go back to being lazy on this blog again :D

Oh, and here's the cunt of the day (yes I went there too).