Good lord it's cold today. The worst kind too; sharp cold wind as well as generally being cold. I don't care for weather like this. I don't even like going out in it. This is tough, I find. I don't like being stuck indoors all day. I need to stretch my legs, it's good to do so, but I sure as shit do not like being outside in this cold. This awful period has only reinforced in me my discomfort with Winter. I shall be glad when it, and the rest of this, is over. Who won't be?
So much could have been done to help people, especially during a difficult time like the Winter. Not just the obvious, like making sure people have enough to eat and a place to live etc. You know, the basics. But in ten months the government has seen fit to do nothing. Are there not things they could have done? Maybe just little things to help people get through this. Not simply a matter of giving people money, though that would certainly help. How about, just off the top of my head, getting people to have access to free media content - reduced costs for things like the BBC license fee. Archives of stuff people can access. Or just making sure everyone who can can stay connected during this period. But no, that would compromise profits. It's broadband communism.
So let people struggle then. What a surprise.
It is very difficult right now keeping track of what's happening. At the start of this month we were staring down 60,000 cases a day. That has now at least halved, somewhat reliably. But the concern I think is whether this levels out to a stubbornly high number in the 20,000's. We need the infection rate to be way lower, but will that happen without further action from our useless government? Unless they start properly helping people and ensuring they can work from home, rather than trap then somewhere between guilt trip (with their new adverts) and refusing to help them deal with an unwilling employer, nothing will improve. But are they prepared to cross the necessary threshold to truly reduce the infection rate, if that happens. It may not, hopefully it won't, but I think there is a background level of interference, supported tacitly through our government's approach, that means we will struggle to reduce this far enough. Certainly before the planned school (and therefore the rest of society) opening date of March 8. Then it will simply be a repeat of past mistakes as the virus, not properly dealt with, creeps back into our lives. I don't trust the government to have grasped this yet. Not when there are so many lunatic backbenchers who don't take this seriously.
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