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.