The Shite Before Christmas

Oh, hello. It's me and it's you, and we're back, just like the plague. The one that never disappeared. The one that's killed a thousand odd since 'Freedom Day'. The one that has now mutated, again, and reached new heights of infectiousness, thoroughly egged on by a lying incompetent murderer. Happy Christmas Britain, you've never been so totally gaslighted/gaslit.

What do you say at this point? How can this be leadership? There is no attempt, at all, to govern during this crisis. The only policy seems to be the herd immunity strategy from early on. The cranks have taken control. They like to blame everyone else for being 'lockdown fanatics', to quote Esther McVey (that well known epidemiologist). What they don't realise is that, by doing nothing when it's needed, stricter action is required later. They are the lockdown fanatics because their inaction necessitates it.

I don't know how we move on from this. Our government has condemned us to pandemic purgatory believing this is fine. We can all just get on with our lives, except that is still a vacuous statement. A thought terminating cliche to let the cranks off the hook. Without meaning or explanatory power it becomes utterly empty. People are getting on with their lives and the virus spreads off the back of that. Ironically it proves the only option left to their addled thinking and no one wants a lockdown. But they see only a binary and so assume that everyone else must therefore want the lockdown their inaction prompts. What should have happened and what I hope isn't too late to have happen is proper management of this situation. Unfortunately Boris is constrained by the forces he has unleashed and that will never happen. So we are doomed to ride a seemingly endless sea of viral tide with no end in sight. Capitalist thinking is short term and so can't see past the grey horizon of self and vested interest.

So here it is, crappy Christmas. What's to stop the same thing happening next year? The only hope seems to be that there will be a weakening of the virus and a movement to endemic status. But that could be years off. There's no guarantee covid will grow less mild. The data suggests that Omicron is milder, but the infection rate belies the problem and we are still in trouble if cases are allowed to surge, and they are, because Boris can't resolve anything. The Tories are ideologically and intellectually incapable of addressing this crisis. The chancellor, having been pulled back in the orbit of Britain by the gravity of the situation, offers meagre support, not even that. He thinks he's being generous: the kind hand of enlightened economics. The entrepreneurial Britannia he and the rest of the crank cabinet believe will save us. It will only doom us. Like the refugees they want to prosecute everyone from saving. In the end the cost of this support will come from the working class, sooner or later. That bell will toll.

A new year looms: threatens or dhere.elights. That remains to be seen. But if we don't do something about our paralysed government and its crooked ideological roots then nothing will change. This maybe how all our Noels sing out in the future.

In other, more delightful, news, I have more music here.

Thanks for listening

But the Tories ARE Scum

So Angela Rayner has been bought to heel, after calling Tories scum (correctly). This apparently is a far worse crime than the social murder and democide of tens of thousands due to covid intransigence. This of course comes off the back of the latest example of how far British politics has gone, following the stabbing of David Ames. We still don't know exactly why that happened, but you'd think from the reaction of his hysterical peers that Twitter was responsible. In fact you'd be forgiven for thinking that anyone who dares publicly call out a Tory was responsible. And of course they are using this to fuel their hypocritical attacks on freedoms, specifically to insulate themselves as much possible from the accountability they use as stolen valour. 

I don't think I want to live in a brutal society, exemplified by the freedom for anyone to brandish a knife and commit murder. I also don't think David Ames, as demonstrated by his voting record (access to which is something else the Tories want to restrict), was the cultural hero he's been made out to be. Obviously his Parliamentary friends will disagree, as will his family. They should be allowed the grieve because that's a human need best left undisturbed. Truth remains; there is nothing valorous in voting to keep people hungry and impoverish them. This he did.

So it's all the more sickening to see Labour play along with the accompanying Parliamentary charade. The pearl clutching of closeted, relatively well protected, MP's continuing to protect their increasing privilege, while presiding over a gap of equally increasing inequality and injustice. I don't see much from them when it's working class people that suffer. Instead they will just blame the culture.

What is most odious about all this is how Labour are just the same. This system is irredeemable and its touch indelibly and irreversibly corrupting. Of course Keir Starmer is going to be accompanying Boris Johnson to lay wreaths on Ames' doorstep. Even Corbyn would have had to play the game, though in doing so the papers would have found some means to criticise him: the colour of his shirt and shoes for example. In this performance it shows just how little difference stands between Starmer and the lying social murderer in charge. When it comes down to it, they side with each other, against the rest of us. That is the function of our political system and Labour play a willing part in that. So now we have Angela Rayner rolling back, after 'reflecting', her comments. Yet the obvious truth; the Tories are scum and it is not toxic to point this out, even if one of them has been murdered. It might not be proper to say that in the immediate wake of events (though Rayner's comments were unfortunately mistimed, not her fault as any honest actor would admit), but it is the truth and that is most important. No one is suggesting we crash Ames' funeral and blurt that out, but we cannot forget it.

And I'm not suggesting Starmer and the rest of lapdog Labour aren't sincere in their conduct, layiung wreaths and paying tributes. But that's the problem: that's why I say they are willing participants in this charade. No amount of wreath laying or performative eulogising will bring the man back, nor will it address the fundamental inequalities in our society that he willingly (I assume) enabled. What is needed is a functioning opposition, but we don't have that. Instead they would rather engage in the ritual than the issues. 

Creativity and Commerciality

And so we return to normal space. To a planet ostensibly azure and green that we call home. Only to realise it's still in a fucking mess. The plague hasn't gone away, it, like the society infected, has mutated. Problem is no one discusses the social mutation where now we are compelled to life as normal. That's impossible, we can't ignore that, from 'Freedom Day' to the end of 2021 another 25,000 or so people, in the UK alone (possible even just England) will die to Covid. That's excess mortality; deaths from a single cause alone. If that's normal you're either a Tory or you're not paying attention.

Meanwhile I have spent the last 9 months working on my music. Taking an opportunity afforded by this nightmare. Perhaps a once in a lifetime (perhaps already too late) chance to create something. In my opinion a life lived devoid of creativity isn't satisfying to me; you may be different and that's ok. 

The fruits of my labour have led to the creation of an actual album. A piece of work uploaded to Bandcamp linked below. You are invited to listen, what you do afterwards is for you to decide along with my thanks. 

But as I present to the world the first of what I hope will be many expressions, I must accept we live in a society that simply doesn't support creativity. All this, for whatever it may be worth, is on me; it is my work to own alone. My effort and the resulting quality, pr perhaps lack thereof, is down to me. I do not think it is too bad, but I do not own a vast recording studio nor a graphic design team to shroud it in acceptable presentation. Something that I'm sure works against me, however that's just how it is. We all have to start somewhere.

It is sad though; I'm one of probably thousands in this country alone. All of us doing the same thing, hoping to find favour with the greater community, eager to sell our work (to be crass) in order to survive and continue the work. We don't live in an age of artistic patronage. In fact we don't live in much of an artistic world at all, which is sad. It's not a lack of artistry or artists, it's a lack of systemic support. We have the tools, we have the technology, so why not provide services to people to share and, more importantly, to build communities of mutual support. That is what I lack: I am not part of a wider artistic community that can amplify our output. I do not have social worth; I lack the credentials to capitalise on. I don't' have a brand nor a name. All I can do is spam my work across forums and hope that, in doing so, I don't piss people off but win them over. It's an unfortunate world that capitalism has forged. All one can do is try.

Ka Bollocks

Somewhere sitting on a beach while the country you're meant to be looking after goes to shit. 

That could just as easily apply to Britain, under this government, as it could to the unfolding nightmare in Afghanistan. Subjected to two decades of imperialism it has not moved on at all. The only thing that has improved are the profits of the capitalists that have plundered that country, in the name of blood and treasure. Warhawks profit once again. 

Returning from his no doubt well earned holiday, Raab enjoys a joke in Parliament while ministers pretend to care. Of course it's a pretence; it's just a talking shop. No one says anything of worth, except as an emotional toilet. No policy will be made. Once again Parliament proves its worth. While people die or drown, as they inevitably will left to get to here, where they foolishly believed they would be helped in turn, our government does nothing. Except to turn right. 

The sad spectacle of crocodile tear shedding ministers alongside the ludicrously out of touch lunatics that comprise the modern Tory party is equal parts farce and tragedy. Ben Wallace crying his fat faced heart out on breakfast TV. If he genuinely cared about the less fortunate he wouldn't be a defence secretary for a party that has spent a decade smashing its own people. 

I don't wish to play divide and rule, and that is not my purpose, but it is surely true that, if the Tories can't help the people that recently voted for them in astonishing numbers, they aren't going to care about refugees. They've just spent the Summer raising the temperature against them; contributing to the background noise that leads to not just racism in the terraces, but stochastic terror in Plymouth. None of these awful things just happen. So I'll take no moral guidance from ex soldiers whose tears are only motivated by the warped values inculcated into them by the military; itself a highly partisan tool of the ruling class (remember when squaddies were caught using Corbyn's photo on a dartboard? That's the tip of the iceberg).

And note that the pigs all crowded into Parliament, barely a mask to a man. Meanwhile the pandemic hasn't gone away. We may have, through sheer luck, avoided the worst of the predictions, but the virus is spreading. Cases are orders of magnitude above what they were last year, just before it went to shit for the second time. We aren't even at that stage yet, with kids yet to fully return to school.

We remain a miserable small minded island, at least from the top down. There are many who care, just look at the heartening response to racist Farage's repugnant fearmongering about the RNLI. Yet he's at it again, fearmongering and lying about Afghan refugees. That's what we appear to be now: a country of those who bully the least in society. All while lying to parliament, knowing they can get away with anything. Incompetent as fuck.

I hate them all.

Freedom Dazed

So freedom day came and went. We haven't descended into the next circle of pandemic hell. Or have we? I'm not convinced the numbers are even accurate anymore. I'm not a conspiracy peddler, we know the government has form on manipulating data. Not least of all because last year it massaged its PPE figures by saying a pair of gloves, for example, was two sets of gear when, clearly, that's twisting the truth.

How can it be that, following a weekend where cases rose to 54 thousand a day, the subsequent week sees such a dramatic drop, that, by the next weekend, it's half that? Cases have then been hovering around that figure up to this day. Does the virus just stop now that everyone can go clubbing? There must be something else in play. After all we know the government is motivated to get everyone 'back in the office' rather than uphold sensible restrictions. They are after all a cabinet of cranks let loose by Brexit.

It could simply be that we are not testing enough, although I'm not entirely sure that's true. There is some question as to whether people are reporting covid properly. The symptoms are more emblematic of a cold if you're vaccinated so it's possible that a higher rate of infections is being shrugged off as something else. That isn't good, it means the virus is still spreading and present in communities. It doesn't matter if you're vaccinated because we want it to stop spreading, that's why we want herd immunity, but we certainly haven't reached that over the last couple of weeks. We'll be lucky to have reached 60% of the whole population.

Certainly it is a combination of these, and possibly other, factors. Again this comes back to the prevailing ideology, driven by the Tories: end furlough, business as usual. Why else are they trying to reframe the pandemic as a 'pingdemic'. Another stupid phrase designed to trivialise a dangerous situation that has led to many deaths. They don't care after all. If people switch off the app then the app can't tell them they are infected. If they ignore actual covid in favour of something more mundane then they won't get tested. But they can still be spreading the virus. 

We are in the twilight zone. I can't see how this situation is ever going to improve. The government aren't minded to institute public health measures if they can see 'acceptable' figures while everything is open. That is the acceptable collateral damage capitalism allows, just the same as structural unemployment is acceptable under capitalism because a reserve army of labour (i.e. the unemployed) is a price worth paying to keep wages low. Forced competition, never mind the human cost.

The uncertainty all this has caused is one of the most pernicious aspects of this entire debacle. yet throughout the Tories will continue to wage their stupid culture war. How many more kids will Boris force upon the latest of his brood mares? How many more kids will Patel deny because refugees are to be scorned and hated? I'm tired of the endless gaslighting.

Freedom Days 2

It is punishingly hot right here. I have a sofa dangerously close to solar orbit while he fabric tag tells me the wrong sort of information. I may become a statistic of heatwave, a puddle in the age of covid.

Do we really believe our esteemed leaders are self isolating. Only Darth Johnson could be so bold. Or so stupid as to advertise the insanity of his recklessness by risking he disease. His health minister proclaimed lifting restrictions would be good for the nations's health while proceeding to catch the virus, despite being vaccinated. Absolutely the worst possible way to start this period. So everyone else went clubbing. 

The disturbing aspect to all this is that he is enacting the herd immunity policy right wing crank tanks and dark moneymen have been pushing since day one. All in the name of profit. These people have clearly been part of the government thinking process for a long time. Now they have their way and capitalism is actively killing us. hey want an end to the so called pingdemic. Behind that cute piece of propaganda is the truth: out of sight, app of mind. If you can't get pinged then you must be ok for work. It is a terrible metaphor for the Work Capability Assessment: ignore the condition the person claims to have, in the name of highlighting what they apparently can do, and they don't get he benefit and are left to struggle. 

Same people, same ideology. They are not just class enemies, they will see any of us dead in the name of this herd immunity ideology. They claim this is a bitter pill best swallowed sooner rather than later. But they ignore all the mitigation that could be employed between now and later, such as completing the vaccine rollout. Now there is less of an incentive to get jabbed - you can go partying anyway. The truth is this period is really just the pre-lockdown period. We will achieve nothing as a result because, at 100,000 cases a day (a figure no one is now contesting, including the government), they will have to be another lockdown and so backwards we go.

Freedom Days 1

Oh, hello January, is that you again? I just had the weirdest dream. That it was July, six months in the future and in the middle of a heatwave. Our government had decided, against all reason and science, to abandon every restriction and plunge us all into herd immunity. Yes, s nightmares go it was pretty terrifying. What had happened was that a few months from now there was a massive outbreak in crowd urban India which bred aa variant that become known as Delta. This replaced the existing variant which become known as Alpha. 

Hang on, what day is it? 

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Yes.

The fools went and did the thing. It is now July the 19th, otherwise known as Freedom Day, because everyone likes to be freed from critical thinking and evidence. The date historians will come to remember as Fuck Up Day. It began well enough: midnight Monday morning and everyone piled into the nightclubs freshly able to open at the earliest possible opportunity.

Reason lost, folks. This isn't a triumph for anyone except the crank contingent of the Tory party. The ERG Brexit headbangers who drove Johnson, willingly of course, to kick the moderate voices out, whom we might well have needed (assuming they have any spine). This awful trajectory, beginning in 2016, has driven out common sense, maginalised the countryin the name oof xenophobia, and led to the repealing of essential restrictions at a time when ar re needed most. Now we have to hope people engage in what is risibly an patronisingly called personal responsibility.

The problem is that those making this argument are using personal responsibility as a stalking horse. There is no choice to be made in the wake of a pandemic any more than there is at a crossroads with traffic lights. Sure you could choose to ignore the lights and risk a major collision, but that's a fool's choice. If you need to choose to do the right thing then you are making the case for the oversight needed to keep society going. 

Really that is a childish argument. It is made by emotionally incompetent people who cry because their privilege is being threatened by circumstances. Welcome to the world, you aren't as special as you believed. You're just like the rest of us: vulnerable to the plague. Now these clowns are arguing to switch off their test and trace apps because the pinging is disruptive. Can't think why, as cases rage, it might be triggering so much. 

This is where we are. Six months from a somewhat recalcitrant PM contritely telling us that this time things will be different. That he'll listen tot he data and not be driven by dates. That there willbe only one direction of travel out of the pandemic. That lasted long. Now, as them, people's efforts and sacrifices are squandered, all to appease the most virulent element of the Tory party. The adult children who demand staff wear masks but scoff at the need (they voted for) to do likewise themselves. They are driving us all off a cliff because they are immature spoilt children.

Welcome to Freedom Day.

Our Government Is Trying To Kill Us! Send Help! Lawyers Guns and Money!

It's a thing!

They know what's happening. They just don't believe what's happening. Johnson isn't making the decisions because he doesn't do details. Let the bodies pile high isn't the claim - and I well believe he said it, that's his pathology - of someone who cares. He is an arrogant oaf; a deadly product of our class system. Born to privilege with the arrogance of exceptionalism. Ironically informed by his surviving infection. He wants power, he doesn't care how nor for any responsibility that comes with it.

Enter Sunak. Last year he invited covid cranks into the heart of government. Now Javid is on board as the new health secretary. Both neoliberals happy to push a failed economic notion at the expense of our lives. Javid is happy to tell us we might summer temperatures of 100,000 daily infections. He doesn't care because he believes the vaccine has done the job, now let time mop up the rest. This is false; the connection between infection and death has been weakened, yes. It has not been cut. Nadim Zahawi was forced to, crushingly, admit this on Sky News. Did it make a difference? Nope.

Yesterday's press conference was a dismal failure of covid capitulation and confusion. We now have the ridiculous spectacle of government ministers themselves saying they won't wear masks (Jenrick) while advising the rest of us do. This is criminally reckless and it's designed to let them wash their hands of it when it all goes wrong. They know people won't obey good sense. Along with the ending of restrictions, such as opening up nightclubs, it will be a free for all. That's all it takes. It doesn't matter if the majority do the right thing because covid is a phenomenon of super spreaders; individual instances that birth clusters of spreading infection. Delta is transmissible enough to make that a serious problem.

A fact that has left scientists incredulous, to the point where impromtu public meetings (via the interweb) have been called. Throughout the speakers have been scathing, Richard Horton (editor of the Lancet) in particular. Hundreds have signed a letter, one that will no doubt be filed under B for Bin. They try, it falls on deaf ears. We are in for what even the government recognises will be a difficult Summer. It could see the return of lockdown measures, almost certain if cases do indeed skyrocket as high as even the Tories predict. They just don't care to do anything about it. 

If nothing else there is a perfect storm brewing. With Covid at the heart there is still the madness of Brexit. Food shortages are a reality, supply chains are threatened. Sure I can do without Broccoli one week or Cauliflower the next. But I am regularly seeing empty stocks where there weren't any before. This is a problem without solution because, again, the Tories don't want one. 

On top of that the football has exposed the hypocrisy of the Tories. People now see their grandstanding as exacerbating bullshit. Performative nonsense by a home secretary happy to condemn racism after being happy to tolerate the conditions within which it grew. The bastard child of Tory ideology is coming home to roost. Reap the whirlwind and get gone Boris.

So Matt Happened

So that happened, Matt happened. An image forever seared into our minds, scan lines scarring our collective cortices like a video nasty. The arse grab that cost a career. Only it's not really a career; as it stands he remains an MP. That's his real job. The cabinet position is just that: a position. Sure they all aspire to it given the prestige power and pay packet, but the real decisions are made by the civil service. Sometimes they get made by the minister, but only if his ego demands that experts kowtow. Oh dear.

So where's the failure? Where's the ownership of responsibility? He done a wrong thing and, all the Tories interviewed thus far say, "Matt's apologised for it". They try and brush it off by making him look almost like the victim (not two, now broken, families). That's what this government does; it wrecks lives without consequence. He's notched up 128 thousand others so what's one more eh?

All we have to show for it is the putty faced visage of an arse grabbing sleazebag. Thanks to our friend, Rupert Murdoch. Who knows if there was some secret agenda, maybe the government distancing itself from an increasingly toxic health secretary wanting to purify its reputation in the font of vaccine success. 

To be replaced by a banker. A money man. That position was no accident. He will know the value of the NHS, in it's brightest hour, to sell to the private secretary as the Tories have always intended, and have spent the last decade accomplishing. Make no mistake, once the crisis is over there will be only crocodile tears. Why give people you intend to sacrifice a pay rise? If the Tories relent to a better deal ift will only be vanity. It's our fight to lose.

No News Is GB News

I thought better of Andrew Neil. Not in the sense that I think he's a decent human being with good politics. But denuded of the mantle of the BBC and the prestige attached with being its flagship political journalist we see him for what he really is. Another reactionary in a shaky studio desperate for relevance engaging in an inverse relationship with the truth. Happy to peddle cancel culture bullshit and use the term 'woke' to hide an increasingly unhinged agenda as the world sails on by. Society evolves and the reactionaries need this as their war totem, afraid of losing every piece of privilege. They call the need to justify that privilege the 'woke' culture they are increasingly fighting. Real issues are abandoned.

So now, hiding behind investment from questionable non domicile sources, Andrew Neil is flanked by a cohort of tired old boys from the BBC, a Sun hack with a shtick that's part Milo Yanoupolis and part Tucker Carlson, and a winner/loser (possibly both simultaneously) from the Apprentice. Their inaugural event was patronised by a bizarre call in from Alan Sugar himself, from what looked like a curry house. He didn't know what to make of it either (GBN, not the curry house).

Neil, for his part, sits at a tiny desk in a studio that looks like a home furnishings catalogue set. It is both drab and hilariously kitsch, like ash kitchenware from the eighties, or your first microwave. He's reduced himself to moaning about the latest in the never ending flow of 'woke' stories. The latest involve a teacher who said the N word while trying to discuss the difference between it, as a term of abuse, and the country Niger. Apparently he did so clumsily and a pupil got upset.

So what? People make mistakes all the time. Should they not have to explain themselves? That doesn't mean he has to or will lose his job. It means that, in a mature society (the kind these reactionaries don't want), an understanding will be found after looking into the matter, and an accord reached. Maybe he behaved badly, maybe he's actually a racist, or maybe some poor kid just misunderstood. It's not a story except for those desperate enough to consult the tarot of political correctness gone maaad, and divine some extra insight into our degrading culture. These people don't care about kids, if they did the likes of Neill wouldn't be supporting politics that starves them. Twice. During a plague.

This station will fail because its own ideology cannot stand. They've already had a discussion in which some insane aristocrat made excuses for - inexplicably - Jeffrey Epstein. This sort of thing will happen more often and the minute they challenge it their values will be exposed. Free speech absolutism is childish nonsense. Defending scumbags makes you a scumbag. But of course anyone that points this out just gets smeared with the word 'woke'. It's the new bogeyman, a term that's malleable enough to apply to anyone or anything inconvenient. Actual news be damned.

Delta Farce

Here we are again. In the endless misery go round that is pandemic Britain.

Boris was warned about the Delta variant but imported it anyway. This in turn, with our lax attitude to border biosecurity, means we could also be exporting it. This should be a resignation matter. It won't be because he's a pathological self serving liar who will say whatever is needed, greased up through the compliant media, to abrogate all responsibility. His health secretary, the same.

The Delta variant is ripping through the population. Cases were plateauing throughout late spring precisely because of its mitigating effect on falling cases. Growth is such that it has now outstripped that and we have seen cases virtually double (at least) within a week. All of this happening under current restrictions. I say restrictions, truth is there are few left. As those restrictions ease the inertial builds. Coupled with the clement weather it means people are more likely to push those restrictions. Venues less likely to be strict. How widespread that is, I have no way of knowing.

We do know that schools have been a major driver for the spread of the variant. Public Health England has not been as forthcoming with the facts as it should. This after a year of schools in shellshock. No support for staff, and, crucially, kids. The government's own advisors walk out when protects, which will no doubt start from a position of insufficiency, are short changed. Gavin Williamson doesn't care about your children unless they elect democratically, through debate, to remove posters of the Queen from their spaces. The Tories would rather stoke the culture war, the only means of real support they can count on given their dismal policy failings.

So it would appear a fait accompli that the vaunted, and facile, freedom day is going to be postponed. A measly four weeks. A drop in the ocean; as if that will negatively impact anything when they've already removed the requirement for children to universally mask up in schools, for example. But the problem is that the variant has spread in the context of where we are now, never mind where we'l be in four weeks. 

How many people do they think they can vaccinate in four weeks? I calculate we've managed 2% a week. About 45% have been vaccinated (two doses) thus far. That's taken six months. As such it could mean the initial cohort may well be coming to the end of their protection. We won't know, I guess, until such people start showing up sick, despite being vaccinated. The NHS has done their best, despite the government pelting them with rocks simultaneously, but this is a huge undertaking. Half the country in six months would have been fine if it weren't for the Tories ignoring sensible bio security border controls during a pandemic. That people are still going abroad for their holidays blows my mind.

All this means that we will need to see a roll back in restrictions. The one thing Boris assured us wouldn't happen. But then we all know what his promises are worth (except perhaps his wives). I can't see how this can be avoided. It's in the community now. That has always been the danger. Once it slips containment, thanks to our dreadful test and trace and quarantining policies of which Hancock says improvement = gaming the system (go figure), we risk further lockdowns. That's the only way to contain it. Current restrictions clearly won't, because they aren't, stop it.

July is also closer to the Autumn, and thus the time of year when people are less inclined to be outdoors. This is the worst time for the virus. Even if we contain Delta by then (it took 3 months over Winter during a strict lockdown to contain the Kent variant) what's to stop the next variant? Certainly not the Tories.

Modern Britain

I suppose we should talk about the imminent third wave. It is already building. In the last week or so cases have risen considerably. Despite this, Public Health England are lying about the state of schools were, despite their misrepresentation, it is spreading. Once again schools are a vector of transmission. It is clear that we have opened up much too soon and, despite the inevitable, we ought postpone the full easing of restrictions in two weeks.

But again it is dither and delay. At this point, it is negligence bordering on murder. Every day of inaction is a day the virus spreads. The government are encouraging that. I don't see anything changing. We should have acted at the outset of the pandemic. We should have had systems in place; an infrastructure. We still don't. Instead half our parliament are infected with the disease of ignorance masquerading as freedom. Sweaty lunatics pour forth from the Tory benches, feverishly railing against restrictions they aren't remotely inhibited by. Yet offering nothing for people that have to isolate. Still.

Now, fifteen months in, it is too late. We are stuck in permanent reaction. The virus will come and go in waves, the intensity of which we cannot know. That then is used as an excuse to dither, creating a terrible feedback loop. Nothing will change. Our government will never understand or adapt to this. It is correct to say we have to learn to live with this, but they only know to impose lockdowns. If that becomes necessary once again then it will be their fault for leaving us with no alternative. It is an ongoing disaster because the pandemic won't end in Britain alone.

Variants will come and go because we will have imported strains into the Union Jack petri dish. Maybe they will evolve to become less dangerous, maybe they will become vaccine resistant. At which point what a huge waste of time it's all been so far. How will they manage boosters every year or so? We are still only 40%, roughly, fully vaccinated. Still a lot of people vulnerable to Delta.

I don't see much of a future on plague island. Still, if the virus doesn't finish us, the food shortages caused by Brexit will

You Ought To Be Ashamed!

Here's a fun if brief little anecdote. Today as I want a-walking I noticed some people knocking on doors. Turns out they were the local Conservative party. I think the MP, John "useless" Penrose, was with them. You'd think, as the anti-corruption champion (if not formerly), he'd be busy with other people. Of course not! That's just a title that means nothing.

So I confronted one of his underlings (he was busy on another doorstep at the time). 

"You with the Tory party? You ought to be ashamed of yourselves."

And so it went. Understandably this fellow was defensive, but that's as charitable as it goes. If you're going to be out canvassing on the tail end (hopefully) of a pandemic, the scale of which is on you, then you can damn well take some heat. Anyway it wasn't like I was right up in his grill throwing fists. This was a socially distanced dressing down.

He had nothing. 128 thousand dead. Brexit leaving the economy on its arse. Corruption and lies on top of ten years of austerity, and so on. No answer. He asked me who I voted for. I could have told him that I'm a proud socialist but there's no way he could have coped with that. I'm pretty sure he'd have invoked the 'spectre of Stalin', shook his head, and walked away. I told him his lot were in government, I wasn't going to let him distract or deflect. 

He tried appealing to the vaccine rollout. A poor argument given that the vaccine rollout is necessary because of the scale of the disaster they have caused. Like when confused American Christians energy from the rubble of their Tornado-stricken home and thank god they didn't die in the storm he, presumably, caused or allowed (as per their beliefs). Obviously a vaccine is necessary per se and obviously not all deaths are attributable (and people are still dying of covid) to the Tories, but the majority are as is the scale of it. We have one of the worst outcomes globally. So when you ask me about the vaccine...

I probably should have said that, but instead I said it was down to the NHS. That gnarly old socialist monolith. They have rolled this out. Everything the government has done, including retaining the services of Mrs Penrose, directly has been a failure (i'm talking about the private sector it has thrown money at). The government didn't create the vaccine either. All of the success, as far as it has been sso, that has come from vaccination has been in spite of this government. They don't take credit for it just because they are in charge. Matt Hancock knows no more about creating and distributing vaccines than I or Jeremy Corbyn do. But he is an expert in arrogance and lies.

Left with nothing my desperate interlocutor could only splutter.

"If we're so bad why do people keep voting for us then?"

This is a question that is going to require the kind of analysis that can't really come in a street exchange. Years of conditioning, essentially. People being told and taught by an all encompassing economic system, social model, and the culture that inculcates that there is no alternative. That's why I didn't engage with him on socialism. You can't unpack that in this context. People need to survive, they need an income because that's the system we're in, so invariably they accept its conditions while swallowing lies about any alternative. Despite everything collapsing all around them. Furthermore all of that is reinforced constantly by a willing media in whose interests the Tories serve: Robert Jenrick was quite happy to launder Richard 'dirty' Desmond's tax burden. Desmond is a Tory donor who owns the Express. 

I told the Tory apologist that the media supports what they do. He then retorted some nonsense about the BBC. Views on the BBC are simplistic and polarised; left wingers believe they are right wing and vice versa. However the former is more true when it comes to that aspect most pertinent. The political wing of the BBC. Its journalists are too close to government, they have to be, meanwhile presenters like Andrew Neil are/were right wing attack dogs. Political panels are subtly biased and left wing/alternative positions are rarely given air time. After all how many times was Farage given air time. Right wing lies are rarely challenged. 

It's not quite that simple though, the BBC is more than just politics which is why right wingers believe it's liberal lefty. This is because of the long standing cliche that the arts is the abode of the left wing. Of 'cultural Marxists' (an antisemitic trope he fortunately didn't bring up). Despite that right wingers, like Portillo or the awful Melanie Phillips, are happy to appear in its output.

At this point the exchange had run its course. His response to my claim that the BBC isn't left wing, which I didn't put forward with enough nuance anyway, was to call my mental health into question. 

"Keep taking the medication" he said walking off.

Says it all really. Tories happy to invoke bigotry, even soft bigotry, to avoid taking responsibility. Good job he didn't say anything about cultural Marxism. 

Riots and Violence

A few nights ago in a Swansea street there was a massive riot. It got ugly, very ugly. Apparently a local lad had died. I don't know how, but there was a vigil that went south when, I'm reliably informed, the cops got involved. The community's reaction was depressing and predictable. I don't condone it, sat in the comfort of my own privilege. I'm not even sure I understand it, and I can only shake my head that in stead of a more productive approach we again perpetuate a cycle of violence. All with the help of the state. 

It's decidedly depressing that this is the only choice the state, with all its power privilege and resources, is prepared to make. But, given who our home secretary is, it remains no surprise. Nothing will break the cycle of violence otherwise. Unfortunately, thanks to years of media demonstration, attempts to reach out and help this community will be met with rabid cynicism. We've all seen the disgusting stories, intended to keep the poor in their place and scapegoat them. The kid who, after murdering his entire family, was 'rewarded' with a holiday etc. Of course that's just one side of the story. But facts are a currency capitalism doesn't afford its adherents. Better to trade in outrage and provide no answers. 

It is this same cycle of violence that is being played out in Israel. The most disingenuous aspect is how the media chooses to intervene. It's vituperative when it's Hamas ill-advisedly firing ineffectual rockets (relatively speaking). But when it's Israel stealing land, bulldozing homes, and slaughtering children, they have nothing to say. You don't see the cycle of violence unless you can see the whole picture. But the media, biased to one side, will not show you. So it is or will be with the Mayhill rioters. You will see the pictures of burning cars and smashed windows. You will hear the spluttering outrage of the police. You might even hear the understandable fear of the rest of the community innocently caught up in this. There are no winners in this, when the community turns on itself, but we can choose to make things better. These impoverished communities could receive investment. The kids could be taught real self worth and not forced to look for it in the expensive mirrors of capitalist aspiration. 

But it's more likely that anger will win the day. Seeing no alternative, because the media stifles that discussion, people will give in to their anger and not think a bit more about the situation. I understand the fear and the anger; if it was my property being smashed and torched I'd want resolution, but does that only come from retribution? That's all the cops can offer. Locking up impoverished kids from deprived communities just costs the taxpayer while destroying their lives, and for what? If we cannot answer that, then we have no business doing it. We must turn things around.

Israel

 And so the clock ticks again. The doomsday clock set to permanently spell genocide for those poor fuckers in the world's most infamous open prison. Gaza. Every so often the cage of the Israeli state is rattled and it has to flex its considerable, if foreign funded, muscles. In response those same foreign actors tub thump the same apocalyptic rhetoric. We must support Israel because otherwise it is the end of all things. Never mind that Israel are the aggressors because they are, in the lopsided relationship between prisoner and jailer, the most powerful of the two participants. 

The dismal 'all lives matter' style response is tone deaf. Like its hashtag namesake it pretends to an equality that in reality dismisses the lived experience that defines the relationship. Yes Palestine lives and Israeli lives matter. In practice however only one side is allowed that privilege. No matter what Hamas does the fact they are an occupied people is ignored. So yes, all things being equal, they ought not be firing their feeble rockets. But all things aren't equal, and what would you do if armed fanatics kicked you out of your house, bulldozed it, and left you crying in the rubble? 

This madness has dragged on for seventy years. That's just since the Naqba thereafter those evicted have no right of return. Meanwhile Jewish settlers are entitled to come to Israel regardless of their personal tie to the region. How is that not provocation? Never mind the full scale military assault and the continued genocidal bigotry of the warmongers in Tel Aviv and beyond. 

Whatever happens, the US will be on hand to clear up the mess. The Israeli state is a spoilt brat of the absolute worst kind. It has become a monster. I have no problem with Jewish identity culture or self determination. But the illegal occupations, genocide and torture, including of children, is unjustifiable. Unfortunately it will not end until the US does. Even now, with yet another withered old white wall stree apologist at the helm, nothing will change. Biden shows his true colours with sickening inevitability.

All I have are words. Insufficient and inefficient. They will not save lives nor end a brutal bloody occuptation. I offer them as cautiously and carefully as I can. But I will not be cowed by the machinery of the Israeli state. It's apartheid racist politics have infected our own for too long. There must be an end to this.

Bad Bye Election

The British like the idea of a working class politician. This is why Boris Johnson has tried to present himself as a man of the people, as absurd as it may sound. Labour, consequently, has been completely routed and wrong footed. Their wounds will bleed for sometime because that was the only thing they knew how to do. It's what got Blair elected. Even if both men, Blair and Bozo, are practiced spivs and liars with the media on their side. Despite his attempts to bring the party back under control, Starmer hasn't achieved that. Maybe in time Murdoch will give him his dark blessing. Until then, while he remains intent on fighting the Tories on their own ideological turf, he has no chance.

All I can say is that Starmer's Labour doesn't offer anything I want to vote for. He's just a naive authoritarian. The only reason to vote Labour is tactical, which is an indictment of this rubbish system. We are forced to playing the game because the alternative is worse. Those who argue voting changes nothing are only right insofar as it keeps the game going, but wrong in that even minor changes are better than nothing. It's an uncomfortable choice and what people need to learn is that, stripped away of the propaganda that comes with voting, participation doesn't equal endorsement. That would be like arguing because my local shop sells cigarettes and because I use my local shop it follows that I support cigarette smoking. It doesn't.

Labour will continue to twist itself up in knots because they will be in no hurry to replace Starmer, and if so with whom? Who is left (or right) at this point? Who cares, they are all the same. There is no vision, no platform and no policy. Being technically correct at PMQ's is meaningless in a world dominated by the right wing media. The Overton window has to be pulled back and they aren't even trying to do that, just assuming that people will listen. Yet people still don't trust Labour: a failure of ten years of refusing to stand up for even anything they have achieved. The crash happened, the coalition got voted in (the Tories didn't even get a majority back then) and Labour facilitated the current Tory majority by rolling over and agreeing with being scapegoated - as if a global financial banking meltdown was somehow in the power of a single national political entity or government. It didn't even begin in Britain.

The idea that 'we spent all the money' is such nonsense. It's as vacuous and depressingly malleable as "Corbyn isn't electable" or "woke culture ruined x". The discourse is now choked with this ideological detritus; these thought terminating cliches. Electability is a function of the Overton window. When I hear centrist cunts like James O Brien crying into his bank account, whining furiously on the radio, I wonder who he actually voted for because I'm willing to bet it wasn't Labour. He bemoaned Corbyn the day after the election, calling for his immediate departure even before a replacement was found. An act of the most egregious concern trolling. Yet his defence will be oh I'd love to be able to vote Labour but they won't let me because Corbyn isn't electable. It's a dishonest argument: he's electable if you vote for him. Given the abject failure of Johnson over the last year it is painfully obvious Corbyn would have been better. 

Just so with the bullshit about the nation's finances. Aren't we meant to spend all the money? Government acquires money through taxation (mainly) which we pay in. It's our money they are meant to redistribute for the common good: healthcare, roads, maintenance, etc. We all want those things. So why wouldn't we want them to spend everything we give them on those things? That's its job! To then make this, criminally unchallenged, claim (never mind on the basis of a stupid joke letter) is again nonsensical: it implies everyone has no more money to pay in taxes. Everyone's skint somehow. So there's no more money; the money just stopped! Of course it didn't, never mind that we can print our own or that borrowing has never been cheaper. The counter is always that we should save up for a rainy day. But that again implies the household budget analogy holds. It doesn't. Besides those things we want government to pay for are the rainy day investments! That's what healthcare and roads, etc, are! Now we're living through the rainy day and the government that used this canard to persuade voters isn't just further in debt (debt per se isn't the problem), but that it's refusing to use that money for the rainy day and is instead selling off that infrastructure. The most egregious hypocrisy.

All of which Labour doesn't challenge. Instead it finds ever more grey and bland suit wearing shells. More uninspiring performing seals to offer nothing. What were the people in Hartlepool to think? What were they to vote for? The Tories hold all the cards so Labour needs to cut through, it just assumed it could. This will continue. There is no hope for them because their politics are incapable of recognising a real alternative. The only place you'll find that alternative is on the streets with the real working class. The ones they've ignored for years and years, to their cost.

Goodbye Election

Tomorrow some people will go and vote. Not me, the only election held here is for the Police and Crime Comissioner. Since cops are cunts and the role is a made up non-job I tore up my voting card. I'm also going to have my second jab so fuck you capitalist state controllers.

Labour wants to pretend that Starmer is going to hold Hartlepool. Maybe he will, but doesn't deserve to. Not because the Tories are deserving. They are not. They are malevolent incompetent sleazy scum. But Starmer is a naive bland voiceless fool. His supporters will, and in fact already are, blaming Corbyn and his supporters, whom thye insultingly call Corbynistas while whining about how Corbynistas call them names. This is nothing if not ironic: they have spent five years publicly smashing their own party just to get rid of the twice elected leader. To the point they publicly called for people to vote against them. 

Starmer is already sharpening his excuses in anticipation of the electoral bloodbath by declaring that Labour's 'reconstruction' will take a long time. Yes it will, thanks to your naivete and desire to throw the left under a bus. Anyway I don't care. The Labour party is a capitalist tool. It has willingly complied with austerity, as is happening under the useless Marvin Rees in Bristol. Sadly he will likely win. If not it'll be a Tory. Who can tell the difference these days?

Labour are going to be in the wilderness for a very long time, just when opposition couldn't be more vital. Unfortunately they will never have the vital epiphany they need to smarten themselves up. Now is the time for something different. Lurching ever further to the right is pointless, you can't out-Tory the Tories. Their chums in the media won't stand for it, even if capital finds Starmer - for now - to be a safe pair of hands. Compared to Johnson and his brexpocalypse that is certainly true, but the reality is that.

This is late stage capitalism. A shoring up of ideological positions, a polarisation. The centre cannot hold. There is no actual centre; the idea of a neutral position, politically equidistant from left and right is a myth. Starmer isn't a centrist, that's something people that think themselves reasonable (as opposed to radical) tell themselves. We don't want reasonable, we want change. A better world. It will happen, the inertial makes sure of that. Too many people can see through the curtain now. They just need some help building confidence that fighting for the radical is the only option. Everything else is self destruction.

Fedcap Fails

Today was the day I had what I had assumed would be my latest Work Focused Interview. I don't think it was however. Instead, and to cut a long story short, Fedcap Employment, who had failed to respond to 4 messages, decided to contact the DWP over 'concerns' I had withdrawn from their scheme. I have already discussed that scheme, suffice to say that a combination of it being lacking, the advisers failing to connect, and the pandemic situation, wer ebehind my decision to quit.

This has annoyed me. Not least of all because, in my view, this is a breach of trust. I asked them, at least twice at the outset, whether or not, if I chose to quit, there would be consequences. I don't know what they told the DWP and the caller did 'assure' me that I wasn't in any trouble. But we all know how they operate. Anything that can look bad can be a problem. I was told that, having self referred, that it was my decision and there would be no consequences. However they since chose to ignore all communication and go to the DWP. If they were genuinely concerned (as opposed to concerns over their funding, which does come from the DWP) they should have replied to one of the four messages I set. I know they received at least one of them because it was to cancel what would have been my last appointment. Given that they didn't call me for that appointment they must have read the email. But they didn't respond.

This is frustrating. Trust is the most important aspect in all of this. If you don't feel that you can trust these organisations, when they are ostensibly there to help, then how can they help? We all know the DWP isn't even a neutral organisation. It doesn't have people's best interests at heart. While there may be many well intentioned staff, the overall timbre of the organisation is to ensure people get as little as possible. That's just how they operate. We all know this. Therefore anything that can mark your card is problematic. But wht does it say about a duty of care that one of their customer support partners ignores messages and goes behind the customer's back? That's obviously what happened. They made no effort to contact me, but, perhaps concerned abotu payments generated by my presence as a client, went to the DWP instead. As if the DWP is set up to properly help people in distress (if that was their concern). I don't buy it.

I remain happy to work with organisations like this going forward. Something I have always said and have always proven; after all it wasn't the DWP that referred me to Fedcap. I did that myself. However I will be guarded in the future. These organisations have to earn my trust. I do not provide that simply because they think they deserve it because of who they are and what they do. Too often that is abused. Especially when the climate for the unemployed is such that it won't be the claimant that's trusted, it will be the organisation. By quitting the course you are seen, in the context of this dreadful striver/skiver dichotomy, as being lazy. We all know the consequence once that's how they see you.

Of course the concern now is that, if that wasn't a proper Work Focused Interview, I could get a letter tomorrow telling me I've got another call. No thanks.

Cranks On Parade

 Some people argue that the anti science conspiracy crank marches are a voice for the poverty stricken working class. The same bullshit was said about Brexit. I don't believe it's true now anymore than it was then. The people marching yesterday were doing so against a backdrop of a worsening situation globally; tens of thousands dying in India while the ignorant have their day out. They insult masked shoppers on Oxford Street demanding of others what they refuse to tolerate themselves. It's pitiful.

While I don't want to engage in class division, I doubt many of these (I'm guessing, I wasn't there and don't intend to be) aren't the working poor. They are people travelling down to London, enjoying a nice meal outside a cafe in the sunshine, while going on to regurgitate their Facebook provided bigotry. Fash lurk in the background.

In conclusion I'm not going to support this kind of fucking arrant stupidity. These people are dangerous. That's all there is to it. Probably petit bourgeois at best. I'm sure there are many working poor/working class who do share in their ignorance. They need to be reached. But they can't be coddled.

It's pretty obvious that, behind the scenes, there are nefarious interests at work here. Aside from the usual post Pizzagate/Qanon crankery. How else do you explain how some b actor bozo running for London Mayor? Who is paying for his campaign and his double decker bus? What does he do to support his endless appearances at these nonsense events? Is he actually doing any acting work right now? It's not like he's dressed in rags bumming change in Covent Garden while ranting about the Great Reset.

Make no mistake these people are dangerous. That is the most important fact. I have every sympathy with confused working class people. God knows we're in a period of the most intense gaslighting, and tryin to make sense of it all is a Herculean effort. But that cannot be an excuse for this toxicity. When you have high profile political wannabes saying, and I fucking quote, "healthy people don't need vaccinations", you have a problem. The rest of the world is dying. We're in the eye of the storm (potentially - who knows what the next few months will bring). This isn't over until it's over everywhere.

Like Brexit we should have rejected this narrative. It's anti working class: it's divisive conspiracy rubbish peddled by bigots and cranks.

Bad Cop, Bad Cop

So while our government of spoilt truth twisting brats continues to behave as such, a victim of racist policing is sent down in the States.

I have no doubt Derek Chauvin is guilty. He publicly murdered a man by stepping on his neck for ten minutes. What I mean is that somewhere along the line it didn't occur to him that was a killing move. It didn't occur because at no point in his training or any aspect of the institution of policing in America (and beyond) was he told that doing such a thing could kill. Not only that but the institution bred out of him, as it does every cop, the possibility to question that tactic. So he did it because that's what cops do. It just also happens to be a racially motivated act. So yes, Derek Chauvin is a racially motivated murderer. The tragedy for him is that he doesn't understand this.

Therefore nothing will change and Chauvin will be a sacrificial lamb to ease tensions. But the fundamental problem that causes those tensions to exist, the racist capitalist American cultural hegemony, will remain. Certainly Biden won't do anything. In fact, while I reject the ageist politics his opponents used against him during the election, I have no doubt he is, ultimately, a fossil. He speaks with no fire, no passion. He's just another rich old white dude.

Is that fair? probably not. Is it nice? Probably not. It is true, though. 

The police exists to protect the laws that protect capitalism. They have the monopoly on force to do this. Racism feeds into this because of long standing ignorance and the structural inequalities that exist betwen communities of colour (including white, the dominant). George Floyd was pronounced guilty straight away. The only way the cops can deal with him is to sit on his neck. It is more important to them to subdue him than stand up and let him breathe. Of course he's going to complain he can't breathe, because that's what all guilty people would say. It's no different than saying I'm innocent! Yeah, of course you are. Except he is, because nothing he was alleged to have done warranted his murder, yet the conditioning that American cops receive prevented any other outcome.

If you want change, then not only do the cops need defunding, but the whole institution they exist to protect needs to go. Remove the need for them. They don't exist to fight crime, except on a very trivial level. If that were actually true then they'd need to go just because they suck at fighting it.

Summer Beckons

And so at last the seasons turn. The weather grows warm, inexorably so. Finally is time to put winter behind us. For a time. It will come again, that is unavoidable. Perhaps too another wave of the pandemic. It will, in some form, always be with us. Our government is not interested in adopting a zero covid strategy, and thus neither is the world. We shall limp through this crisis with the benefit of only time. There will be no support. If another wave happens, as is distinctly possible, I think the country might explode. 

Meanwhile the summer beckons. At worst this will be a brief respite, if things get worse subsequently. I guess it all depends how quickly they open everything up. Believing that we can open everything up however is a fool's errand. The presence of the virus clearly indicates that, somewhere along the line, there is a limit. One that is not commensurate with what the government would like, and no amount of profiteering will change that. You can't buy off a virus.

Maybe the vaccine will help. It's bound to, in some form. But it is uncharted science. A first attempt at a reaction to a novel virus. We have no idea how long the vaccine will be effective. So far it doesn't appear to be aversely affecting people. If, as is likely, boosters are required, perhaps every autumn/winter, how long will it take to administer those to the population? It will take, at least, the best part of six months, to give everyone their first treatment. We don't even know if that will induce herd immunity. 

There are variants to consider. There will always be variants. This virus is too prevalent in the world for that to be avoided. So many unknowns. What we do know is that international travel will trump virus safety. Government can pay lip service to border controls, ironically, but it's meaningless if they don't actually enforce them. This virus only requires a few people to be super spreaders. It doesn't need a large regular cohort moving across the globe. One or two people bringing the virus can cause an outbreak. The Tories won't care though.

Bury The Past

So, today's the day we bury a racist. One less in that vile institution. It will go on, of course, there's enough money and blood in the royal family to keep it going for decades still. Way past the point reform is required. It cannot be reformed; an affront to democracy and the lives of ordinary people. Everyone else, that is. Those not lucky enough to be born with blue blood.

The many will fawn over their television screens, abasing themselves before these gaudy clowns. Ready to forgive them their endless indiscretions and perverse dysfunction. They are not servants, we are. Yet somehow that is how they have been rehabilitated. The commoners led to believe they are serving us, with their untold privilege and wealth. Sure, they may have to greet a few dignitaries, but that's nothing compared to never having to worry about where your next meal is going to come from, or if the economy around you forces you into poverty.

What a sick society this is. Everywhere. All around us. The story about deaths in detention, home office persecution and institutional racism leading to fatality pales in comparison to the funerary arrangements of a wealthy old man who died at a ripe old age of natural causes. As if he was somehow taken from us, his immortal breath stolen by cruel father time. This is the most natural thing in the world, while state murder in the guise of xenophobia is relegated to a by line. Something is very wrong. There are even fears a new variant, the 'double mutant' virus from India, could wreak havoc with our recovery from covid, but that doesn't get top billing. Instead the press comments that the nation observed a minute's silence. I certainly didn't. Why should I? Ridiculous.

We should have used this period as an opportunity for change. While I certainly don't enjoy pandemics, I don't want to go back to normal either. What is that? Continued state oppression, corruption, toxic masculinity, divide and rule, strivers and skivers etc. All these toxic narratives that should be excised, like draining a boil. I suppose the nature of this crisis, precluding people meeting properly, makes that difficult. As things begin to open, people yearn for the comfort of familiarity, and the familiarity of comfort. Now we step into another period of enforced austerity, belt tightening, and all the commensurate misery. With even less of an opposition. It's down to us. 

Observer Effect

Received a letter from the DWP a couple of days ago; I have another Work Focused Interview. Another pointless phone call - and fortunately it is via telephone - in the midst of this crisis. Again I have no idea what they think we can discuss and even less of a desire to talk to them. I don't want their help, I don't like the company they keep. 

Last time they recommended that I work with Fedcap Employment. I tried that, it proved to be a complete waste of time. I have no doubt that, were the DWP to ask them (though it has nothing to do with them since I self referred), they would say I wasn't cooperative. Or some such bullshit. It's how these organisations operate, sadly. Since I cut ties with them it of course looks bad on my part. I guess we'll find out how that goes. If they ask me what I've been doing I'll either tell them about it or I won't. Either way isn't going to go well for me. It's ridiculous that this is how it goes, but that's the nature of our relationship. It's toxic. It counts for nothing that I self referred, attended every appointment (admittedly that wasn't hard) and engaged with them, telling them what I wanted to do. But again, it counts for nothing because it falls outside of the perception of what's acceptable. Despite having a growing portfolio of credible work, the notion of wanting to do music is treated as a childish fantasy. Like wanting to race cars or ride the rodeo.

This is how a first world country treats people out of work. There's a whole raft of possibilities. They have money. This government can squander billions on nonsense and dodgy deals to inflate the wealth of the already wealthy. But when it comes to even sparing a few quid to help people without realise a few simple dreams, crickets. There's no guarantee I'm going to make a living off of the music I write. The odds make that unlikely, but there's as good a chance for me as anyone else. The tragedy is the observer effect, after a fashion. The idea that the outcome is affected by the observation. In this case, if the DWP/state does nothing to help when, essentially, it could, then it's just causing the outcome of failure. Consequently that's used as a stick to beat the subject, often leading to curtailment of the already meagre support they do offer. It's this paucity of imagination on the part of the state that bothers me the most. I'm not doing nothing, I could just use some real support. Help promoting what I'm doing, giving it a platform, etc. A few quid for better gear wouldn't go amiss but it's not vital. After all we live in a world where tech gets replaced and discarded all the time. The government, for instance, drags its heels to provide locked down kids with laptops so they can participate in distanced learning, when there are thousands of computers that get recycled or just thrown out by offices and business nationwide after being upgraded. Using those solves not just the problem of provision, but of dealing with waste. How backward we are.

Went into Bristol earlier. Needed some stuff. The bus was rammed on the way in. People sat with masks around their chins chatting. People constantly pulling them down to do so. They seem to think it's ok as long as you pay lip service to the notion of wearing a mask, but not actually wearing one. It's hopeless. I feel like I'm the only sane one in the room, so to speak, and I want to tell these people off. That would end up with me getting laughed at or worse. That's what gaslighting feels like and this government has had a year to normalise the necessary job of wearing a mask.

The city was very busy. It felt more like a traditional Saturday afternoon. Honestly they should have waited until after the school holidays before opening everything up. People everywhere. I thought it would be nice to go out, into town, for the first time this year. But instead it was exhausting. I got what I needed and came home. I don't want to be doing that on a regular basis. I will not be remotely surprised if this leads to a rise in the virus.

Week of Madness

And as the weather turns from crap to slightly less crap we enter a week of insanity. Just when you think this sick society cannot get any worse we have a week until the funeral for an old establishment racist during which the gaslighting has reached new heights. Meanwhile our government, which now has to rank among the most corrupt in the developed world, is embroiled in another scandal. The former PM, Cameron the pigfucker, has been caught with a scheme that fiddles the pensions of nurses. Or something. I don't even pretend to understand it. It's like looking directly at the sun; the sheer weight of their unending unapologetic greed. It's not even as if he needs the money. The irony is that, if it were someone who did, like Arthur Fowler, they'd have no chance. Cameron on the other hand will receive, at best, a slight telling off. Once again, the only real crime for these scum is in getting caught. We, the plebs, aren't meant to know about their indiscretions.

Meanwhile Northern Ireland burns. A tinderbox of austerity incompetence and sectarianism. The Tories have had no interest in keeping things under control. No interest in the well being of the people over there. Endless austerity and anti social policies threaten to violently tear the lid off the peace process. A hard won effort they treat with nothing short of contempt. It certianly won't impress the skeleton in chief at the Whitehouse.

Still none of this matters to the great British public. Easily swayed by shop windows they will flock back like desperate starved magpies spending like there's no tomorrow. Just as the system wants. Dnce to its toxic tune. Spend what you have, borrow for what you don't. That will be the message. Capitalism is nothing if not myopic. If you're in debt by Christmas, who cares - at least you'll be alive. Unless you aren't because Covid hasn't gone away yet,. How quickly we forget.

An Old Man Died

An old man dies of natural causes.

This isn't news.

He's a member of an unjustifiable institution upon whose existence every social crime rests. It's unearned privilege props up institutional prejudice and social division. What else can excuse the abhorrent notion of chasing animals through streets on horses, terrifying local communities, trespassing on land, assaulting opposition, and smearing the blood of those animals, having torn them apart, on their faces. That's what orcs in Mordor do ffs.

No, because of the perceived virtue of this man's blood we have to put the nation on hold while many of it's occupants, including those struggling to get by, twist themselves up in emotional knots. This man grieved no one jot when your loved ones died. Yet, despite never having known this guy, we are expected to abase ourselves, further demonstrating our pitiful place in this sick society to our so called betters.

Wall to wall coverage of the very ordinary death of a very old human replaces reason. A good day to bury bad news, and it certainly will.

Are we that infantile as a species, still? Why on earth do we submit this: it must be out of a sense of reassurance. The same thing that religion provides. A framework of irrational certainty in a vast universe where things happen we don't understand endlessly threatening the perceived order. Philip was neither a good nor evil man, like most people he was a product of his society. A product of the institution. Of course he said (plenty or) racist things. That's what these ignorant overstuffed inbred caricatures do. That's why it needs to stop. I've no desire to gloat over a man's passing, but I'm sure as shit not going to lionise him in a vast telethonic eulogy; a contest of grief that makes the state enforced lamentations of the Kim Jon dictator dynasty seem reasonable. By all means feel sad if, for some reason, you feel the monarchy validates part of your existence, but please examine why that is. Philip and the rest of them, with his wife soon to follow I'm sure, are not public servants, they do not engage in any real 'duty'. It's a lifestyle of unimagined wealth and if that means having to talk to some annoying colonial or shake hands with a nativeperson then oh dear.

The best way to mourn the passing of a 99 year old who lived with none of the cares for existential security you or I have is to consign this ridiculous anachronism to the permanent dustbin of history. Let it remain in a museum for the children of tomorrow to point at with all the wisdom we can give them. 

Bugged

Today I'm feeling ill. Achy. I don't think it's covid. Or if it is don't worry, we're separated by pixels. But these aren't covid symptoms. I had this a few months ago, and again at the start of last year. I don't really understand how, while wearing masks, social distancing, and washing hands at the door of each shop, I still get a bug. I guess it just goes to show how easy it is to pick these things up - and that would include Covid.

In fact I'm feeling incredibly miserable. So far throughout this pandemic I have endured. I have not lost my shit nor my mind, but I'd be lying if I said it hadn't taken a toll. I suspect I'm not alone. In fact I think this psychic cost is going to be apparent in the coming months, particularly if we all experience another lockdown. The government has many chickens that are yet to return to roost. They have failed in their duty of care. So much more even on a mundane level they could have done, but didn't. Now I'm feeling a distinct lack of possibilities and opportunities at this time. I hope this passes with whatever malady I'm experiencing, but there is a lingering and gnawing emptiness and it scares me.

This situation isn't going to change much over the coming months, though perhaps I'll be wrong. The virus is here. All it needs is breathing room. As things are flung open by a government caring only about the profit they risk giving the virus oxygen. They will never understand and, should cases start rising again, they will respond slowly and disastrously. The only approach is to go for zero covd with proper test and trace systems and the funding for self isolation because if we have to live with this virus, people are going to be needing the care and support this government doesn't have a clue about and isn't interested in providing. 

There is no moving forward without addressing the toll all this has taken, but the Tories have long since stopped caring about mental health support. Look around, where is it? Nothing here. Services got cut. My own recent experience with Fedcap employment, who claim to offer mental health support, ended in dismal failure. I have still yet to hear back from them after asking them to call it quits. I didn't want to have to do that, but what choice is left if you can't even communicate? Again, this is a company that claims to offer mental health support. We are isolated and alone, we are not waving but drowning

I Know What You Covid This Summer

The fundamental flaw of the government's 'response' to covid is simply ignoring the need to support people. This will ever be their undoing. It's ironic that Mogg can tweet how he thinks it's not cricket for firms to practice 'fire and rehire' policies. But he won't vote to support people, or to not starve children. Is he cynical or stupid? More likely it is the ignorance born of privilege, patriotism, and class propaganda. A massive blind spot that isn't explained away through moral failing or simple wealth. It is why we must dismantle the class system, before it kills (more of) us.

There is an article in the Guardian reporting on modelling done by the Sage scientists. They say that imminent changes, the opening of shops and, sigh, gyms (zoos and museums offend me less), are highly unlikely to cause a problem. However they do say that, come summer, with the totality of changes planned we will see a significant and serious third wave. Of course this is speculative. The tragedy of the anti lockdown thinking is that it dismisses the only tool we have in a novel pandemic: modelling. We can't know how a novel virus will affect the population without letting it run rampant, and we can't do that. It's disingenuous and stupid. But the reality is this is what happened last year; in the end too much was flung open while the virus was still present. It's likely to be present, somewhere somehow, come the Summer. They aren't terribly optimistic about the efficacy of herd immunity, the effect of nationwide mass vaccination. This all boils down to my first point: our government is simply unwilling to do what is necessary to address this crisis.

Still at least the weather will be nice....hopefully. Right now it's April and freezing cold. I knew it would be. We aren't so lucky as to have two nice Spring seasons consecutively. Besides we've fucked the environment and so these weather patterns, polar air coming further south, will be the norm. Well done us.

Finally, has there been a day gone by, since he flounced out like a child, where Piers fucking Morgan has not been milking it publicly? Now he's been interviewed by, sigh, Tucker Carlson. The fascist's friend. No doubt warmly received to further this tired trope about cancel culture. This whole thing is just disgusting. As if Morgan is the victim when he chose to walk out after a colleague, a person of colour, called him out on his bullshit. They don't like it up 'em! Alex wasn't rude to him, didn't 'disrespect' him, though Morgan isn't the least deserving of any, but now he's the bad guy? That's racism, rigt there.

Long Drop

The weather threatens winter again. Why am I not surprised? We had a pleasant, in terms of weather, April last year, could it really be so again? Next week is set to be wind chilltastic. Freezing time again. Honestly, it's exhausting. 

A week later the shops will be opening up again. Roused from their slumber by the desperate state of capitalism. We have done well to reduce the cases of covid, but it's always going to be with us. The question is how much can we open before a new wave begins. If it does, how long before the government takes action? A subsequent wave, like the others, will likely take on an impetus of its own before those idiots do what's necessary. But the time they do it they'll be forced to take the action they procrastinated on anyway. It's lose lose.

What does this retail resurgence mean for society, gong forward? I fully expect the shops to be rammed when things open again. People are foolish, they will vomit forth demanding to be able to go anywhere and do anything. We know that if you give people a little, they will seek to take as much as they can, pushing the boundary of what is safe.

My concern is the lack of support going forward. People will be expected to work, expected to shop, and expected to behave as normal. As if an entire year of death and disaster hadn't happened. By all means keep washing your hands and wearing your mask, but don't expect any help if transitioning back to what they deem as normal will be made easier. Help, specifically of the financial kind, will be withdrawn as quickly as possible. Best grab hold of those bootstraps folks, it's going to be a long drop.

Solidarity with those protesting today. However....don't be a dick. Smashing yoru way into the cop shop isn't going to achieve anything. You'll likely have the cops harass you for the rest of your life in exchange for, well what exactly? Protest has to be smart, it has to be productive. I don't care if that means torching vans - or not, as the case may be - I care that the Tories are oppressing us and that we have to stop it.

Meanwhile the Racist Government Remains Racist

Look, I'll be glad when this madness ends, but this is going to require a healthy transition. Something born of this nightmare has been born inside my subconscious. Even though I've not had it as bad as many (too many) others the pandemic - or rather our society's failed reaction to it - has had an effect. It isn't about the virus as much as it's about how our state and our systems have abandoned us. Even though I am not at the front of the queue, so to speak, and shouldn't be, it'd be wrong to say I could have used some help. But not even the DWP's services are up to snuff. That's not surprising really. There's so much the government could have done for so many of us. Even just little things that would have made all the difference, but they couldn't even pay the full wages of people already getting the lowest wage (and lower). What does that say about the millionaires that have have taken control of our lives and our resources. Remember, they are meant to be servants. Not custodians or keepers; it's not their money after all.

Money they have spent to produce a report intended solely to reassure their new friends (chumps?) in the Red Wall. Don't worry, says our paid advisers, we aren't racist, and therefore neither are you. Not like that nasty Jeremy Corbyn - and by extension everyone else that's on the left! The authors of this questionable bullshit are already prejudiced against the notion of institutional racism. But you can't disagree with them because their BAME, but you can't use BAME because it's bad or something. By the way, don't play identity politics!

The gaslighting never, fucking, ends. This is so obviously a whitewash (pun...intended?). A complete dismissal of the lived experience of people of colour, particularly working class people of colour. Since the Tories reject any kind of class based analysis - while using it to wage class war - they can easily dismiss this. All suitably reinforced by a willing press, all too eager to seize on this bullshit. Of course had the outcome been different (which never would have happened) the papers would have cried foul and said it was all the work of commies, or something. It's just endless exhausting gaslighting.

Start of Summertime

Today is a nice day. You can tell as much as the incessant breeze isn't as annoyingly cold on your skin, particularly around the neck. What a blessed relief.

Winter is a difficult period at the best of times. Even more so at the worst. Our leaders don't care of course, insulated in their ivory towers they pass the time by burning money and generating energy from laughing at us. What's the latest scandal? The scarlet woman! And she's American, too! Tory voters won't blame Boris, despite philandering and financial irregularity being his MO, they will, through ingrained cultural misogyny, blame her. She led him astray, a married man! The hussy! I have no doubt that will be the narrative played out. A man who wanted, then, to be PM with such a lack of self control he cheated on his wife and paid thousands to keep the mistress sweet. We're back to the days of Tory sleaze once again. Last time it was the PM shagging that Currie creature, now it's Boris' turn. These people are repellent in every way. 

But the Tories stand by each other. It's nothing virtuous; birds of a feather and all that. They only do it to keep in power, a lesson Labour hasn't learned. They won't, we have the dismal, repeated spectacle of Jess Philips bemoaning the state of the nation (correctly) under this government, yet shockingly oblivious to her part in it, as someone who's spent four years carving away at her own leadership. Publicly siding with the enemy to air her hatred, actual hatred, for Jeremy Corbyn. No wonder Mogg thought it was amusing, the sad part is that she clearly doesn't recognise the class warfare being perpetrated. She can't possibly have thought she was winning them over. They ain't your friend Jess, and they never will be. Labour are massively tanking and will do disastrously in the elections. Then, wither Starmer?

Lockdown restrictions somewhat ease today. Meaningless really, how many working class even have access to affordable or free outdoor facilities? I guess it's ok if you're a wealthy enough to pay for access to a tennis court. Besides which, people have been meeting outdoors throughout; this is meaningless. Kids hang around together constantly. No one stops them. People regularly hang around outside the cafe getting their takeouts. All this is just performative. Still it generates some prime middle class copy for the likes of the Guardian. Those struggling with no support continue to get ignored.

End of Wintertime

Aka the start of Summertime. Born in cold wind and rain. I guess the same as it ever was. Now with a backdrop of desperation as police, hapless, turn to violence. As ever. Directed by the state hiding the legislation they fear they need under the hood of pandemic control. Insidious, this forces those of us who care about the health of the community, to question the idea of necessary measures. But the truth is governments always use crises to slip through policies they know to be unpopular. So it is now. 

This isn't just unpopular legislation, it's the means of an increasingly desperate government to retain control in the coming period. Things are falling apart. We've seen them turn to jingoism, an invisible war based around waving the most flag. They compete with each other while slowly dripping this nationalist poison into the public psyche where it will find willing purchase in the minds of their loyal subjects. If only the protesters had a sense of national pride they'd be happy with an authoritarian policing bill preventing dissent. Protesting the right way becomes the wrong way. Then there is no right way.

Just a thought.

Weekender of the Second Year

So far, our vaccine rollout has been stellar. No credit to the government of course, since it's the NHS that is in charge here. Not the dodgy private sector whose pockets the government lined throughout 2020. However have we overreached ourselves? We know the vaccine, the full treatment, requires 2 does. Have we sacrificed the future for short term gain? The EU seems to think so and is, perhaps chillingly, warning we will struggle to make up that shortfall. I hope that's not a threat, but it could just be the stark reality. After all Boris is myopic; looking for popularity in the now.

It feels more and more as if we're on a knife edge. There will be covid present in the community for a long time to come. A live spark always waiting to catch light. The so-called freedom lovers in the anti lockdown movement won't like that truth, because ignoring it is what incites it. Then we have to lockdown, again. This seems to be our only strategy. Bump from pillar to post in the covid pinball machine, like a drunk trying to walk home. No one seems to want to adopt policy to deal with this. As more things threaten to open it is inevitable the spark will flame somewhat. 

Our society is simply incompatible with pandemics. I would certainly agree endless lockdowns aren't the answer. Even the experts agree on that. Lockdown was never meant to be the default. But the government, through its actions, seems to disagree. The fundamental crisis revealed by covid can only be resolved through the removal of the capitalist mode of production and its class system. We need power over our lives at a time like this, but instead we're told greed is good. This is the voice of desperation. A party with no ideas resorting to nationalism and jingoistic dick waving. It's pathetic; the paucity of ideas from the monied elite. 

This crisis isn't going away anytime soon, and certainly not with the heat.

Year 2, Where We Are

With even a small, relatively speaking, amount of Covid in the country any amount of unlocking is going to be problematic. The question is how much can the Tories get away with versus how much they'd like to. We know, from experience last year, that there is a tangible point that comprises "too much". Can that be reached before sufficient people are vaccinated? There is no doubt going to be a ton of pressure from the cranks to unlock as much as possible.

What of the vaccine? Do we know how long it lasts or its efficacy in stemming transmission? Unfortunately the only way to find out is in the grand social petri dish. Finding out the hard way, but that may well end up being too late. But eventually we will vaccine everyone, hopefully. Then it's a case of how long will the vaccine last? It seems agreed that boosters will be needed regularly, applying those will likely take as long as the vaccine initially. That's an assumption, but everyone will have to go through getting a shot again. That is, as we've seen, quite the task. This means those initially protected will find they become vulnerable again, and so it could be a rolling, endless, task of vaccinating people. Can we really keep the virus suppressed in the meantime.

The problem with that is if you give people an inch they will, as the saying goes, take a mile. We know that, as soon as restrictions lift, people will go out en masse, like a violent exhalation. We also know that means an increased number of people not obeying the rules. I've seen it on the bus in the period before this lockdown; people closing the windows because it was cold (not an issue now), taking masks off to scoff, etc.  All of this will happen, no matter how uncomfortable it makes us feel.

Year 2

Another night with protest in Bristol. One has to ask: if not for the presence of the police would there have been trouble? I think not. The only time there has been trouble was in their presence, because of their presence. This isn't the 'thin blue line', protecting us from a great scourge. Keeping us safe in our beds and production units. It's enforcing the will of an increasingly tyrannical state. Yet its defenders are those who appeal to the one thing we stand to lose as the means to show our approval. They also seem to think that, once we've 'had our say', we need to obey. This is sinister. Firstly politicians are meant to be public servants. No one really believes this of course. But they aren't put there to rule us. So if we don't want our rights taken from us, who are they to do so?

There is no mutual concept of rights. These things we call rights are only ever taken. We aren't 'given' them by a government. They sometimes lend them to us, repealing them when it sees fit with no accountability. This is why there is struggle. Rights that secured the means for the one taking them away right now to vote to do so. The real problem is the media and its process off what Chomsky calls manufacturing consent. They even seek to co-opt the protest to this end: "these riots prove exactly why we need the legislation". Why does no one question so transparent a lie? There are already laws to stop smashing windows and punching cops (assuming that happened). If there weren't what then would the problem be? This bill doesn't seek to address that, it just seeks to criminalise protest entirely, leaving it at the whim of a racist institution to decide what working class people can and can't do in their own streets and communities. 

This summer will be decisive. The government pledged to roll back the lockdown; that the direction of travel would be one way. But something has changed in recent days. Not just the heavy handed provocations of the police, but to the virus. Europe faces a serious third wave and where Europe begins, Britain ends. So it is likely that it will strike here, led by a variant created through our government's mishandling of the virus. Turns out it wasn't China that weaponised a world wide plague; it was Britain on Plague Island. Through our own clownish arrogant leaders. Whether or not the vaccine will make a difference is the great unknown, but we stand on a knife edge. Johnson's tone of recent days seems to hint at the inevitability of this third wave. But will he dare to open too much up? Of course he will. THe problem is, whilst the virus is still present - and it is - there will always be the threat of too much. Schools seem for now to be ok, but add to that shops and hospitality, indoor meetings and sports etc. Somewhere along that line there will have to be a limit. What that is only time will tell, but there is no doubt we aren't ready for everything.

The End

I'm not observing a minute's silence today. Or rather, I didn't. Not because I din't care about the dead, but because the government doesn't. This is just a top down authoritarian attempt to divert people's anger which no doubt will be rising at this time, like a possible third wave. A year of corruption, incompetence, and ultimately death. All of which the government will respond to by saying "now isn't the time". That's why I won't be silenced. The best way to mourn is the make sure there aren't more.

The world has changed. There is no return to normality. This is the new normal. Some people struggle to adjust, blaming scientists because...reasons. They are all evil/in the pay of that nefarious mastermind, Bill Gates. He's a billionaire so he's evil - but don't you dare criticise capitalism, the system that put him where he is. That is the real enemy. It's what allows people to gain cruel power over others. Making excuses for that system by blaming individuals (incorrectly, as it happens) is no different than being told to observe the silence, for the same reasons I just gave.

Who knows when this will end. It's highly likely covid19 will remain for a long time in the world. Of course it doesn't have to be that way. A concerted - socialist - effort could address it, but the world's powers are afraid of that. Certainly the US won't. It's legislature is a lost cause; they'd rather have a broken health care system and the freedom to believe masks are antithetical, and so they die.

Our leaders continue to abuse and exploit us. Interviews do not hold them to account, but instead soft soap and fawn while they parade their sickly credentials in the form of flags. Increasingly it has become performative. Meaningless, given their actions clearly belie the values they, erroneously, ascribe to the flag. Values that every self described patriot, in every nation, identifies with such that it becomes meaningless. We aren't special, we are a small, fading, island increasingly ruled by tax despots, cranks, and tyrants. A broken piggy bank, hammered apart by the drug addicted parent. It can only get worse. There is only one direction Brexit can take us, so we will double down on the authoritarianism, the jingoism, and the bigotry. A tiny pathetic little island permanently stuck in some haughty past that was far from ideal. Especially if you aren't a member of its racist sexist elite.

I don't know how we can win the argument. I think it just comes down to numbers, and we'd better hpe ether are more of us than there are of them. Arguments fail in the light of social media which allows people to simply walk away rather than address the failings of their position, Try and explain to people that the riots don't make the case for the policing bill they were intended to fight and they simply double down. Yet there are already laws that deal with smashing windows and assault (if that's what happened). These people, complaining, don't realise that the means by which they'd prefer protest be conducted are threatened by the bill itself. If you fall for the Tories narrative then the only thing left will be illegal means.

Last year a racist's effigy got dunked. It's time the rest of them got a soaking. We cannot let these Tories ruin us, and they will. Democracy means nothing to them, Parliament isn't democratic anyway. It's a giant book of spells; rituals to confound the common will. What else is the House of Lords if an abuse of power. Unelected unaccountable and highly manipulated - just stuff it full of cronies, rewarding them for services rendered. A few of those sitting in power now, making awful decisions, will no doubt end their days within. The rest will want to.

This is the future that awaits us, under the guise of emergency legislation. I have no time for the cranks and their tedious anti scientific nonsense. Backward thinking that only divides. Emergencies such as this may require exceptional measures, but not from sources that we have no power over. Whatever means are put in place must be able to be repealed. Not used as an excuse to assault women for example. 

We have a long road ahead of us and it has just started with 365 steps. Thank you for reading.