Ever decreasing circles.

Ever decreasing circles 

This was originally a journal of a journey. 8 months on, the reality is a grim nightmare of travelling in ever decreasing circles.

I try to live as normally as possible in an abnormal world. Social distancing, rule of 6, are now part of my everyday.   Scheduling family visits as local lockdowns throw assorted areas into assorted tiers with assorted rules has become a weekly ordeal. 

Anger and bitterness replaced national unity many weeks ago.  Lockdown seems simplistic in retrospect, bathed in golden sunshine, the country pulling together, society pulling together to create cultural moments to unite us all. There are few rainbows fluttering now.

Bojo's policy of delegating Covid responsibilities and restrictions onto local authorities has ended in the inevitable. Wrangling over financial settlements have broken open fault lines macro and micro, pitting communities against each other.  

Tues Oct 20th, Government fails to reach agreement with leaders led by Mayor Andy Burnham in Greater Manchester , forcing  PM was bounced into imposing Tier 3 from Westminster.  

As the week goes on, generous packages are being dangled over their heads in what local leaders say is blackmail. More areas become Tier 3 hotspots, like South Yorkshire, and those in Tier 2 eye up the rising infection rate with fear. 

Sussex remains in tier 1, though for how long who knows. As does Norfolk. It is a measure of the speed life changes that only Wed did my beloved granddaughters there know I was coming to visit on Friday, and even that is a leap of faith.

There is a world weary cynicism. Bojo's popularity is now in minus figures. The nation fixates on his thinning hair rather than his speeches. Or, to put it bluntly, his credibility is shot. Rumours from Downing Street that he intends to resign in the spring "as he cannot manage on his salary" are treated with joyous contempt. 

I did not vote for our PM, but such is democracy. However, his public persona centred on his twin creeds of liberalism and localism. Both have come back to haunt him. The media of every persuasion have picked apart the tatters of the laughably inept Track and Test system revealing the flaws in his privatisation strategy. 

Alas this joke of a system is far from funny. It has cost the taxpayer billions whilst lined the pockets of businesses but worse, far worse, its failure has left us vulnerable to the second wave of the virus raging in all its fury.

Today the chancellor announced a more generous version of the job support system for those in tier 2. Accusations that this has finally popped up only after London moved into tier 2 cannot be answered satisfactorily. The poverty stricken North, after many weeks of tier 2 limitations, agree it is better than nothing. 

Since when did health and wealth become so divided. Surely they are two sides of a whole. None of us is one or the other. Only the truly wealthy or the truly sick can own this separation in any meaningful way. 

The battle over local financial settlements has shown this in stark contrast . Without work, without income, people die. Not of COVID . Of illness, malnutrition, mental health... Families fall apart. Lives fall apart. COVID can kill but so can poverty.  

In this weeks battle over funds Greater Manchester health authority insist they have the capacity to cope with increasing demand whilst the Government disputes this. Each side can produce the relevant figures.Lies, damn lies and statistics.

Is there any good news. Not really. The last time there was a glimmer of hope it turns out to be based on data missing tens of thousands of positive tests. I have to wonder if our country would ever have known had the scientists not cheered us all by saying the virus was dying out. We do know how to treat it better, which is one silver lining. The rest is confusion, chaos,  ever decreasing circles.

Looking back on this blog my writing in March and April was innocent, naive, simplistic. I believed I only had to get through 12 weeks before the worst was over. I was wrong.