We are Not in this together

 We are Not in this together.

As the number of new COVID 19 cases tops 7,000 for the second day running, Boris Johnson addresses the nation yet again. On a day where the Commons Speaker berated the Government for treating Parliament with contempt for pushing through COVID rules without consultation I am listening with increasing cynicism to yet another lecture from a PM I have no respect for whatsoever. 

It is his 100th briefing in which yet again he reassures us we will all be fine as long as we stick together and do as we are told. Really? We Are Not In This Together. Literally as well as emotionally.  

Today, with hospital admissions increasing by the week, the North East, the North West, half of Wales and Scotland, in all millions of people in the UK are under local lockdowns. Lockdowns, plural, because these vary by region and are so complicated the Prime Minister himself cannot get them right, forced to apologise yesterday for 'misspeaking' after giving erroneous advice.

Down South we are not yet in lockdown. We have only to remember the rule of 6, with all its exemptions and complexities.  And ignore everyone else and everyone else's actions, as it is impossible to see the rule of 6 working anywhere.   

I make no judgement about that, I cannot tell why people do what they do. Ignorance, denial or  carefully judged objective decision? Everyone makes their own choices.  Whilst I absolutely despair and despise those who refuse to wear masks, that surely is a minor inconvenience for an undoubted gain, as for the rest, each to their own,  given the utter and complete chaos caused by continually changing obscure and illogical rules. 

Boris repeats yet again his mantra of 'common sense' , frankly the the only sentence he has uttered today that makes real sense. 

In a telling admission of that undeniable and truly depressing fact that we're in this for the  long term is the news that teaching  unions are already urging the cancellation of NEXT YEARS examinations. Fair enough. Well, at least one section with enough sense to plan ahead and allow students to concentrate on learning without the continual distraction of uncertainty. 

Because we are, alas,  in this for the long term. Time and funds have been squandered, testing is in tatters, the economy is shattered as is any cohesion or continuity in society as a whole. 

My journey feels endless today. I feel lost, unsure even where to start. There seems nowhere to go. We have made no progress since I begun this blog. The virus is as contagious, as deadly. There is no vaccine. The economy is dire. Education is a mess at every level. Before there was hope. There was trust. There was a rainbow uniting us . Now we are not in this together any more, what on earth lies ahead.

One post on social  media has so much attention this week it justifies copying here in full. I do not endorse it nor in many ways do I agree with it, yet it does accurately sum up how disenfranchised so many of us feel.   I too am mad, angry, deeply, deeply, depressed at the state of this country and I too now have no trust in our Government to keep me safe. This article summed up the breakdowns and divisions in society today.

Zoe Clews, via Facebook:

I thought long and hard about writing this post and I've been sitting on it for days. I know it may cost me friends. It may cost me business. But I’ve come to realise those things aren’t

worth a damn if we don’t have our freedom.

This is a long post. I make no apology for it. I hope you will take the time to read it, but my bigger hope is that it will prompt you to take pause and to think about what is important in your own life, even if that puts you in a different place to the one I have reached.

At the end of March, when we were told to go into lockdown, almost all of us did so willingly. People were dying from Covid-related illness in terrifying numbers, and there was a clear imperative to do something significant to turn the tide of the virus.

In those months, I nearly lost everything I had spent 18 years building. The losses amounted to tens of thousands of pounds. But I understood it was necessary, and what is money

anyway when it is balanced against a human life? Nothing.

The threat was obvious, and the response – untested as it was – seemed proportionate and appropriate.

It no longer feels that way. Today, British life feels like one of suppression and oppression; one in which our civil liberties are being rapidly and deliberately eroded in the name of

something else.

My contempt for this Government is almost limitless, but this is not a post that rails against party politics. It is one that simply asks you to question whether the attacks on our civil liberty are justified by science. It asks you to make a decision about whether the concession of your civil rights that you are

now required BY LAW to make are worth the social and economic damage we will inflict on the whole of our society – rich or poor, black or white, old or young.

Neither am I a Covid-denier. Whilst I don't know anyone personally who has died or suffered, I do know several who have had it and are now doing well. The virus is real. The

response of our government is not.

Without a single exception, everyone I have spoken to believes the new restrictions are illogical, that they make no rational sense. Not one single person believes the science has

been proven. In fact, there is open conflict publicly among senior scientists and government advisers about how the virus will or won’t spread. Boris Johnson mumbles about the restrictions being a ‘circuit break’. That simply doesn’t

add up. All around the country, thousands of young people are sent back to school to mix in year

groups of 200 or more.

Children are not immune to the virus, they are carriers. Yet Johnson is perfectly happy to send each and everyone of them home every day to older, perhaps more vulnerable people.

How does this break the circuit?

Covid cases in schools have quadrupled in the last week and 1,300 of the 32,770 schools in the UK report they are not fully open due to the disease. Under the ‘rule of 6’ an infected child who may not display any symptoms can happily infect

five other people today. Those six people can each meet and infect 6 different people tomorrow. Now 36 people are infected. The next day it’s 216. The day after it’s 1,296. The

day after that it’s 7,776. On day six, that rises to 46,656. And by the end of the first week that one child has infected 279,936 people.

I ask you again, how does sending that child to school break the circuit? How does the rule of 6 break the circuit?

Hospitality businesses will now close at 10pm, but it’s okay for people to infect each other for the rest of the day. How does this break the circuit?

But we are silenced, as I have been until now, by the fear that to question the political motives behind the new restrictions is in some way selfish, or that healthy suspicion or

cynicism will be repurposed by others as the woo-woo ramblings of an unhinged conspiracy

theorist.

So, we hold our noses and we pretend we don’t smell the bullshit and we hand over our rights and freedoms to a government that has so far failed to offer any shred of evidence

that it has a single clue as to what it is doing or why it is doing it.

And I’ve had enough. To quote Albert Finney in the film Network, I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore. It’s time to call bullshit on the abuse of power, on the invasion

of our privacy and liberty and on the questionable motives of a government that has seen its net approval rating drop an average of 7 points each of the last 5 weeks.

The government says hospital admissions are rising rapidly. Bullshit. Over the week to the Tuesday just gone, the number of new daily Covid admissions was relatively stable. On

Sunday, Monday and Tuesday the trend had slowed.

The government says it’s concerned about a rise in Covid-related deaths. Bullshit.

Statistically speaking, the death rate has been relatively stable since August 8 th . Yesterday there were 40 deaths. On April 20 the there were 1,172.

This government has failed to meet its testing targets. It has failed to implement a coherent track and trace strategy. Dominic Raab admits airport testing for Covid 19 will only identify

7% of those who have the virus. Matt Hancock warns students won’t be allowed home for Christmas.

And all the while respected virologists are also calling bullshit on the measures introduced

this week.

They ask why, if we’re experiencing a second spike, is it predominantly happening in regional areas rather than large metropolitan cities? The government has no answer.

They ask the government to disprove their argument that in fact it is now likely there is widespread herd immunity and that today’s relatively low hospitalisation and mortality rates amid high infection rates suggest that the virus poses a reducing threat. The government is silent.

No one questions the fact that the government’s top scientific adviser has £600,000 in shares in GSK and has made £5m from a Covid vaccine development. But if I so much suggest it’s in his and the government’s financial interest to suppress our

civil liberties until that (knocked up round the back of KFC rush job) vaccine is available, I’ve apparently gone la-la.

So, we allow them to continue to shovel their bullshit. We relinquish our power. The government hobbles the economy and borrows £30bn extra.

And we all shuffle a little closer to financial and emotional ruin.

I don’t care about leaving the pub early, or wearing a mask, or not going on holiday or only being able to see 7 of my mates. In that respect, the Covid measures are mildly inconvenient.

But I do care about the government using this situation to extend its covert surveillance, to extend its right of invasion of privacy, to extend the nature and level of personal data it

holds on every one of us, to extend its powers to silence free speech and the right to protest.

And I care about the further erosion of our civil rights that may be coming in the spurious name of protecting our health and safety.

I care about all THAT very much indeed. And I think you should, too.

You don't have to believe the Queen is a bloody Lizard or that Tom Hanks eats babies to think something is afoot right now. You simply have to have to scrutinise the facts and the

logic. It’s all out there.

Calling someone a conspiracy theorist because they suspect a government of not acting in the public interest or making up their rules on the back of a fag packet? That’s just a form of

gaslighting. It’s the same as telling someone they’re 'mad'; or carting Victorian women off to the asylum with a diagnosis of 'hysteria'; because they dared to disagree with their

husbands.

I’m not selfish. I’m not a 'Covidiot'. Telling people they’re ‘sheeple’ because you disagree them with is not helpful either btw, because all you do is drive everyone further into their trenches

I know this is uncomfortable for many of you to read. It's uncomfortable for me to write. But I simply cannot stand back and watch the unnecessary dismantling of thousands of lives

through a disproportionate and dictatorial government response without saying something.

I didn't come to this world to be scared and I didn't come here to not speak out. Neither did you. I’ve spoken to enough people to know many of you don't want to say anything because you’re afraid of what people will think of you, or the impact it will have on your business.

But free expression is your right and I urge you to be courageous and defend it. Our ancestors gave their lives for it.

And if you’ve got this far (thank you, by the way) and you believe that everything I’ve said makes me a "Conspiracy Theorist" then fashion me a tin-foil fedora quick-sharp, because I'm goddamn in.

Here we go again...

  Here we go again...

Six months today to the PM s announcement of lockdown and the country is still in crisis. 

Yesterday the PM was back in front of the cameras telling a reluctant and weary nation of the latest measures to curtail the spread of coronavirus and curtail our liberties.

It is lockdown light, smaller measures than expected and less than those imposed in Wales and Scotland. Selfishly I am relieved that I can still see my family and grandchildren provided we stick to the rule of 6. How long England continues to dodge the bullet of  'no households mixing' is anyone s guess but so far, so good.

The current programme is designed to limit the rapid spread of this deadly virus by reducing hospitality hours , reducing group gatherings for weddings, sports, funerals, etc. We keep the rule of 6, although its many exemptions have reduced it to as much use as a chocolate teapot.

Wealth versus health. Fair enough. But whose wealth. Those who have are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. We may have protected the NHS from coronavirus overload but we have not protected it from privatisation by the back door.

The abject failure of outsourced testing /track and trace systems, heralded as society's saviour, testing, has exposed us all to appalling risk . The multi million pound contracts paid from our taxes to companies who so blatantly cannot fulfil them is beyond disturbing. 

Dido Harding, the government appointed boss of this inept testing system, is married to John Penrose, MP, advocate of a US style privatised health system. Jobs for the boys.

Apparently moving these schemes away from public health will improve services.  Really, there was me thinking it was simply to line the pockets of the rich and powerful. Stories abound of people forced to wait weeks or travel hundreds of miles for a test, results can take forever and meanwhile folk are forced to self isolate as a result , missing work, missing education, missing the vital knowledge that could keep themselves and their loved ones safe. 

Testing was proffered as the answer to our prayers. A quick test and children can be back at school, people back at work, families breath easier. Excuse from Dido Harding for failure to produce/process tests. Demand was underestimated. Words fail me...

The media in all its shapes and sizes is now awash with political satire. 

                Steve Bell, The Guardian

As seen on Facebook 

Lewes has one of the lowest infection rates in the country, thankfully. So how depressing for us to see hundreds of students pouring into Brighton and Sussex universities this weekend. Paying through the nose for privatised halls of residence. Paying the full fees of £9,000 a year for online only teaching.

Do I blame them for coming anyway, no, as for many the option was a year with nothing to do given the sky high level of unemployment. Do I blame the Government for encouraging them to come, yes. These young people will be paying their debt for years whilst wealthy property developments laugh all the way to bank as the student flats fill up and the university coffers grow richer.

In fairness this year Sussex, like may universities,  have a higher than usual contingent of students from private schools owing to the corrupt, class ridden, A level fiasco. So I guess they can maybe afford it. Shame for everyone else, and shame on the Gov for putting money ahead of spreading this virus, moving those from highly contagious areas throughout the country and into those areas like mine where we are/were relatively safe. 

I have never been particularly proud to be British, I simply am, by a lucky act of birth. I live in comfort compared to third world nations, I find doors open across the world by proffering my British passport. Increasingly I have been ashamed to be British and especially now with the Brexit debacle looming.

These days I am also terrified to be British.  The utopian myth of our classless society is no longer even honoured as a promise. Instead the country has moved backward. The gap between rich and poor is widening. The golden ticket of self employment has brought debt to thousands as the economy shrinks by the day.

Panic buying has begun again this week as people fear another nationwide lockdown. Shortages are already apparent, not just in food but in medicines. Especially in medicines, as the global pandemic has hit supply lines. Where will this country go without the protection of the EU in the new year.

My angry stream of consciousness is undercut by worry. For myself, for my family, for everyone in education, in or out of employment, for the old, for the young, for the dispossessed. For us all.

I have been so lucky this year. I have not been ill. I live in a beautiful part of the country in a detached house and garden. I have had a wonderful summer with my family , also healthy and economically secure. 

With winter coming and our pause from the reality of the ongoing fight against this pandemic over, I feel increasingly helpless. This country embarked on our journey through coronavirus together and now we re on our own. Maybe we always were but it seems as if we felt together, we felt as one, we clapped for carers, we supported our communities. Not so now.

I

Summer 2020

 Summer 2020

Living the dream 😎 

Blissful oasis of happiness

Gorgeous weather. Sunshine week after week bathing these August weeks in a warm glow.

This is not life as I knew it but it is close. 

It has been a summer full of love and joy, full of fun times, full of family, full of friends. 

August has been an almost ordinary month in an extraordinary year. 

As infection rates remained low I and everyone else have savoured every minute of precious freedom from stress and anxiety.

This virus is weak outside, so in relative safety from contagion the nation has relished its summer holiday.

For me it has been precious time in our tranquil Norfolk cottage,  wonderful, wonderful time with my family creating fresh memories with young and old alike  to replace those long grey empty lockdown weeks. 

Birthday bbqs, family picnics, walks, biking, hiking, sitting on the beach gazing at the sea, simply being together. 

I treasure the sounds of laughter, the smell of sun cream, the barbecue sausages, the sight of smiles and the taste of cool ice cream of a hot day. 

 

I am not the only diarist to have taken a holiday from writing to concentrate on being in the present.  

If this can be the final destination then that is fine by me. But that was never to be. As the summer evenings draw in the dangers of coronavirus draw closer and closer again. As the schools go back it is time to leave paradise island and face reality.

Autumn 2020

Week 1 of the new school term across the land. Normal train services resume. Buses are a regular sight. Offices begin a phased re opening as urged by a Government desperate to restart the economy.  Shops, markets, playgrounds, restaurants, gyms, pubs, all opening . The streets are humming with life.  

Final destination? Life as we once knew it? If only. 

September 9th.

Boris Johnson holds his first full  national press conference since July, dragging a reluctant nation into acknowledging the truth. Infection rates have been rising sharply for weeks.

So far, hospital admissions remain low but it is obvious we have a long winter ahead. With no vaccine, with no coherent test and trace system and with still scant testing available this virus is ahead of us all the way and lying in wait. 

According the ministers, this is , of course, 'our fault', 'We' , the nation,  are accused of relaxing too much, for forgetting  we were only on a break from coronavirus, for enjoying the 'eat out to help out' scheme, for enjoying the staycations, for spending our money to get the economy going as we have been continually as encouraged to do. 

And now we must be held to account with strict new rules to avoid a new lockdown. No more than 6 people at any one time. Indoor or outdoor. 

Unless:

schools

workplaces

colleges

organised sports

weddings

funerals

Gyms

Restaurants

Pubs 

etc, etc.......

Um. 

Illogical policy made without consulting parliament , announced at 10.30 pm on Sept 8th, despite a question being asked in parliament and dodged that very afternoon by the PM, and due to take force on Monday 14th. Post many, many parties, no doubt.

Yes obviously we need to face facts. But this 'simple rule'  cannot be the answer, surely?

I know I am miserable facing the end of the summer, miserable facing the winter ahead, miserable facing more limitations of my liberties, my life, but I do not want to die from the ghastly virus.  I simply do not feel this sudden deluge of shock tactics fills me with any reassurance. 

Balancing the economy, education and society in the face of a killer virus is a tight rope act but after 6 months media reports show support for this Government is at an all time low. 

Illogical policy on the back of a summer of further confusing and conflicting rules, quarantine changing weekly on destinations forcing people to change, at enormous cost, journeys home to avoid self isolation. Many openly ignore  quarantine obligations,  given it is openly not enforced. Many more cheat the system by crossing borders. It is such an obvious nonsense when Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have different rules it is understandable people find easy ways around such crazy rules.

Of course there is a need for action. Infections are surging and whilst primarily amongst the young here so hospital admissions and deaths are low, these are rising rapidly in France and Spain and we are following the same paradigm.  

Did we relax too much? Maybe. I do not think I or my loved ones did, we stayed outside, we sanitised, we cleaned, I have not been to a cinema, to a swimming pool, to a gym. 

Despite membership has been pushed out for everything, despite campaigns to encourage keeping the high street alive, despite campaigns to ensure all children return to school, despite campaigns to urge students to attend university, for employees and employers alike to abandon working from home in favour of reopening the offices.. 

We did not hug, us adults within my non household family, despite longing to. We accepted that a hug was not necessary to know how much we loved each other, that close physical contact was risky. All summer, we continued to make sacrifices to keep ourselves safe.

We avoided crowded places, even outside. We barely visited even a playground, only local ones at unpopular times. The garden was our oasis. We needed only to be able to be together to be happy.

I know I  am lucky, I have space, two bathrooms for a Covid secure visitor facility, family who share the same language of behaviour, who are confident in each other.

I have had the summer of my dreams. Now it is time to think about packing to begin the onward journey. Because, if truth be told, we have not yet reached the end.

If only. 

How was your summer?  Time outside time, like mine?  What is ahead of us now?  This entry bridges a gap , it spans a glorious summer, an oasis of happiness.  Real time begins again, diarists are back recording, for ourselves, for policy makers, for the future.  Please do join me.