I'm Back!

Years and years ago, before anyone had ever heard of disease and pandemics, I started this blog. I gave it a stupid name from an Alan Partridge episode and proceeded to talk about stuff. This year, to save me from tears (as the wise men of WHAM! Once said), I’m going back to my roots. Or at least this blog, which, at this point, I’m sure nobody will read. 

Why?

Because after the Tory party conference and six months of gut related discomfort, I have to do something to save my sanity. We’re possibly a year out from a general election where there is every chance the Tories could pull some dark magic out of the bag. Aided of course by the endless spiral of dismal broken promises that is the current Labour party. In short, I have no faith that putting Liz Kendall in as DWP secretary will be noticeably better than the Tories following through on yet another attack on the poor and the sick. 

Yes, the man wearing the suit may be different, but the rhetoric is the same. What time is it? It’s Bash The Poor O Clock. Here we fucking go.

It is increasingly clear that capitalism is in civil war. If Brexit wasn’t a shining example of this then what else is? The Tories have no answers, Brexit will divide us forevermore until we stop. But we can’t stop because the political system is so broken that a fringe of voters seems to hold power. Unfortunately they seem to be the same fringe that put Liz Truss, disastrously and inexplicably, into power. She promised them what they wanted to hear, having no personality or ideas of her own (she voted to Remain but quickly jumped ship without principle). Now she is back again, haunting that same tiny space called the centre. A term that belies the reality of its political positioning. Over the years the centre has shifted to the right. We can see how far by using Suella Braverman’s equally inexplicable rise to power as a yardstick, applauded despite having failed to achieve anything regarding immigration.

This is a period where words mean nothing. Politicians tell abject lies and even when called out, to their face, will still cling to a truth that doesn’t exist. Starmer didn’t propose a meat tax. It isn’t a Labour policy nor anything more than a passing neuron during a conversation somewhere. It isn't a policy. That doesn’t seem to matter; claim it was and just deny the assertion you are laying. Lies are truth, and truth is whatever you need it to be.

Into this horrible context is the pernicious transphobic gotcha ‘question’, “what is a oman”? It isn’t an honest inquiry because the inquirer doesn’t want a full throated answer. Either you accept their definition (all women are 100% adult human biological females) or you are a groomer, a drag queen story nonce, or something. The truth isn’t so simple and can only be teased out in nuanced complex conversation, as supported by science. Most women are adult human females. Not all. Some are born without certain organs. Some transition through gender identity. Some people are intersex. Biology is not a binary, but the discourse is. Now politicians have to sign up to this unwritten charter, held by a minority of vicious tongued bullies. Again a tiny minority.

To these issues capitalism offers no answer. All women, trans and cis, face an unequal society. Why fall for division? Working women have more in common with their trans sisters than they do with Rishi Sunak, Keir Starmer or Graham Linehan. In fact he has little in common with anyone, having alienated most of the people in his life through his lonely violent crusade against an already marginalised community. Yes I support trans rights, because human rights are meaningless if conditional.

It goes without saying that Braverman’s rhetoric is nothing short of incendiary. While i think there is some worth in deploying the F word (no, not that one, the Fascist one!), it would not be correct. Fascists don’t generally come from the ruling class, they emerge from the working class or perhaps the middle. From people frustrated by capitalism’s inability to resolve crises such as these we are living through. They are shaped and moulded by nationalism and bigotry as a result; things the ruling class fans and exploits, as in the case of Braverman. Probably not deliberately, but as part of their nature. It’s who people like Braverman are: a mass of contradictions that really only class politics can explain. She is herself the product of migration, but identity politics offers only a partial solution and divides often. Instead she is more the product of class: posh school, privileged life, rarefied air, conservative politics. There are no answers from her, only the exacerbation of actual fascists, which may or may not bear fruit in the coming period.

Anyway. That is enough for today. I am back. Where are you?

Cold Cuts

You still here? I thought I'd cleared out these cobwebs months ago. After all the terrifying viral nightmare is over, right? Everything's tickety boo and we're back to just moaning at minor Tory malfeasance, right?

Right?

If only.

Who would have thought, two years ago during Pandemic Christmas, that we'd be facing crippling fuel and food prices while freezing to death in an early cold snap. Yet here we are, proving once again that, under the Tories, things can get much worse. 

Three Prime Minsiters later and Britain is collapsing. No matter the brand of lipstick on this pig, that's the truth. Fortunately, while you sit in abject misery afraid to do the most normal everyday thing and turn the heating on, there is some royal turbulence to distract. Bread and circuses to remind you that you can't afford bread, and that the circus is just a Tory farrago of incompetence and malfeasance. This isn't a government anymore, it's a racket.

They have refused everything they could do to help people. Now, when the weather is at it's worst (for now), people are struggling. I am certainly people, and I am certainly struggling. As with the heatwave, I find I just can't cope with these extremes of weather. It's not even as if we've never had arctic spells before. As a kid this would have been magical: somewhere between the Box of Delights and the planet Hoth. A world of rural adventure as a child, when you are immortal. Skidding around on frozen ice. Now I can't even sit indoors without feeling the cold. It gets into your bones and festers. You can't root it out. There is no scalpel or shovel into the soul.

People should be rioting over this. In fact they should be rioting over the fact the government has intervened to ensure the RMT maintains their dispute by inserting a demand neither side involved wanted. They know that driverless trains are a redline, and so drove a wedge. But nothing will be done because our society is so addled by a partisan hack media. Apathy rains and so we all sit in the damned cold. In short: people should be rioting. 

Fortunately the unions are stepping up. Hopefully actions, which, in the coming week, are almost daily, will coalesce into something that can take a life of its own. A general strike. We cannot afford to let the media, and their tory masters, divide us. This is an obvious tactic, relying on two ideas: that there is a limited pool of resources (ie wages) and so if the Unions get their way, everyone else loses out. Secondly increases in wages cause inflation. This is false and is obvious given that the rampant inflation we are currently experiencing has nothing to do with wages because no one has seen their wage increase (despite many successful direct actions).

To the first point: again it's rubbish. We are one of the richest economies on earth. Corporations, energy companies especially, have made out like bandits these last few years. The resources are there. More importantly they are generated, not by a vanguard of entrepreneurs blazing trails, but by the workers themselves. Those currently getting screwed over and smeared. Don't fall for these lies.

Yet despite the heat of industrial action, this is a cold winter. Who knows how long this cold spell will last. All I know is we can't go on like this. I will have the heating on. I'll be damned if I'm going to be scared into submission by Tory malfeasance. I would encourage others to do likewise, if they can, they can't cut all of us off. Never mind the don't pay campaigns that petered out, the same consequence might well happen just by virtue of cold circumstance.

Great Balls of Fire!

 Facts are simple and facts are straight, facts are lazy and facts are late, facts all come with points of view, facts don't do what I want them to!

Thus spake David Byrne in the guise of the Talking Heads on the song, Crosseyed and Painless, from the very excellent, Remain In Light. An apt description for this summer and my experience of the inferno we are currently subject to. 

Red alert. For the first time Britain is going to experience extreme heat. Others may scoff, but they live in countries adapted to it. We aren't used to that, and that is the trick of climate change. Whisking you away to a place you've never been and expecting you to insta-adapt. We could, but we won't.

Pop quiz: Where was Boris as a COBRA emergency meeting was held, regarding the weather. Was he?

a) Attending, chairing the meeting as a prime minister caring for the nation.

b) Partying at Chequers, like inflation was 1999%

Hint: it's not a.

How does one cope with the legacy of these last two years? Where everything has changed, yet wearing the guise of the ordinary and the usual? Everything has changed, but nothing has changed. Denialists - cranks - will say "it's always been hot". or, the perennial straw man: "we used to grow wine in Roman Times". These are not arguments. They do not explain why things are as they now are. It's probably the wage price spiral anyway.

I am alienated. It looks like the country I grew up in. The faces are the same, the lies are the same. The broken system remains broken. But now, while home burns, Boris fiddles. While Nome burns, the freakshow comes to town. Which of these fact denying truth twisters will remain unbroken from their economic contortion act to become the next monster in chief? 

Something has broken. It may never come back. This brave new world is hot to the touch. The sun, once a friendly welcome beacon - "here comes the sun" - is now an intruder. Angry at our poisoning the sky. Indifferent as we are to our own footprint on its heart. It gets a lot angrier than the rampant Christ-fascist wave in America. One that will drive out the last vestige of resistance to the baked in climate change. Baked in, like me in my house right now. Stifled by invisible waves of hostile air, unable to function. technology is unwelcome in the heatwave. All we can do is yield in our arrogance, if it will let us. I hope my computer will allow me the opportunity to post this without burning my fingers or melting down.

The world is on fire. It may never stop burning. On the plus side, intellectually illiterate self deciever, Liz Truss, may well be the next PM. The best we can hope for; blasted incompetence writ large like the fire that burns over half of the European continent. Pork Markets!

The Shite After Christmas

What is there to say at thi point? We have gone beyond all reason into a place where the political has been replaced by the tedious narrative of culture war. People are either woke or...asleep? I don't know. All I can say is that the gaslighting intensified over the past month. Over Christmas, when people might reasonably expect a break from the nightmare of the last couple of years. But nope, instead we were and still are treated to the intense spectacle of a posh twat refusing all responsibility. We need a report into my behaviour he claims, thus proving the very thing he seeks to refute: that he is an untrustworthy clown.

And yet he will get away with all of this. There is no accountability. The mechanisms of government are a) under his control and b) completely unsuited for that task. The met police, now investigating despite claiming it wasn't their job despite it being their job despite them still prosecuting other people for breaching the rules, have followed his request to fudge everything. He gets what he wants, Sue Grey will get let off the hook and receive a Damehood I'm sure. It is an obvious cover up, conduced right in front of our eyes while we are told there is nothing to see. 

 We are approaching the second anniversary of lockdown and the doors to plague island have already been thrown open. Boris desperately wants the support of the cranks that are in charge of the Tory party and so he gives them what they want, which is an end to any kind of response to the pandemic. But Covid hasn't gone away. Forgetting about it doesn't make it disappear. The new variant, which may well be replaced by something worse, seeded over Christmas and the subsequent death rate increased to reflect that. Now we are seeing almost 2000 people a week die. The price of Boris' premiership.

How can things get any better with this situation? The world seems on the edge of a knife. I think third world war somewhat (and hopefully) unlikely, but there is trouble everywhere. People are tired and angry, but are the angry enough to do anything to change the rotten power structures that continue to oppress us. 

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.