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