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.