Eight thoughts<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Reality<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n So.. Who are the candidates to lead Britain? Who are the best candidates? Well, let\u2019s see. For the next five years, unless there\u2019s a revolution in thought among the average Brits, or someone comes out of nowhere as a Statewo\/man, and wows everyone with statecraft, there are only half a dozen or so potential Statespeople. The perception these days is that we have to go for comparative youth, because that\u2019s where the energy is. That\u2019s not always true, because you need experience as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The party in government right now are to the right of traditional centre. Some of them are far right, and because the statesmen among them would be seen as devisive, we have to exclude them completely. That would include Rees-Mogg, John Redwood, David Davies, Iain Duncan-Smith and Bernard Jenkin. Then there are a load in the middle who are to some degree nondiscript. Among the leading group, there are very divisive figures, like Priti Patel the hanging judge, Gavin Williamson, Grant Shapps, Hancock and Gove, who is a born traitor with dodgy eloquence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Raab is nowhere near to being a statesman yet, he\u2019s a nervy lawyer way to the right, and Sunak sounds like a decent kind of a man, but I don\u2019t know him yet, and he has no real experience. So we\u2019re left with the leader. Absolutely indisputably, they need him. There is no one else.<\/u><\/p>\n\n\n\n Yes, you can now say that Kier Starmer is a big chief, but really he\u2019s just a big pinko, and the people he\u2019s gathering around him are of his own cloth. The left of the Con Party are in the same political space as the right of of Lab. There but for fortune. How many of their personal best intentions float around the centre ground? Where are the revolutionaries among them? They are all staid, middle of the road good British people. A lot of them on both sides tend to be a bit damp. They stood for election because they passed all the social tests, and the country voted for them. That\u2019s the system. In 1967 I sang, \u201cThe worst thing about the system is the system\u201d, and that still stands, but that\u2019s an almost invalid conversation. We\u2019d have to go back well beyond Cromwell to sort some of those ingrained \u2018national\u2019 proclivities. \u2018The System’ is \u2018of\u2019 us, and it\u2019s been scewed and developed by hundreds of arguments and crises for over a thousand years. We\u2019re in the middle of another right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, a revolution of sorts did happen in Dec 19, though it couldn\u2019t please most of us. What happened was that the majority revolted against the parliament, because the parliament had Not listened to them for three parliaments running. Parliament had point blank refused to acknowledge, and then obey, the people. It was as if the people didn\u2019t exist any more. Parliament farted about with three lots of being hung. Finally the people took over. They maybe weren\u2019t the people you wanted, or the people I wanted, but for sure, the people of Britain needed someone to listen, and more importantly, to hear, and to understand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The battle was fought out in parliament between those who wanted, at long last, to listen to supermarket workers, trawlermen, ex miners, teachers and unrated small business people – and those who couldn\u2019t get off the pot. The country was Very divided. It was dark; wasn\u2019t it? With very loud voices clammering outside parliament with megaphones for years on end. Then, straddling the maze of political in-fighting, betrayal and reset he had to mount, one man came through. No one else in his party was able to. They were all too timid, or too extreme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There were opportunities in the other main party, Labour, but no one was brave enough to take them. If, for one moment, Corbyn had seen the light, and offered, genuinely, to form a coalition with May to put a soft Brexit through, I would have thought that would have been it. I would have congratulated him, and we\u2019d still be tied to Europe. Literally, that would have been good enough for me and millions of others, but that wasn\u2019t good enough for Corbyn or McDonnell. They wanted the impossible. Corbyn couldn\u2019t let go of the old Labour stance on Europe, which was to Leave, which I\u2019d been part of, and McDonnell followed him into the fire. It was their only chance of power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Johnson toured the country before the election, and discovered that the people needed someone to rescue them from eternal division. His biggest calculation was predicated on \u2018What do the majority of people say they need?\u2019 He needed to know, because he needed to know where the base was. A lesser calculation might have been based on how much he had to lose. Not much. Some people gave him an earful. He walked through that. He took a lesson from the floods, and practical joked with a JCB. In the end, he blew the rest out of the water. The righteous screamed old screams, but if your head was cleared of factional bad habits, you automatically thought along the lines that there were six hundred rudderless citizens sitting in the only parliament the British people have that represents everyone; and one man who has the political clout to go for it. There wasn\u2019t another solution that wasn\u2019t pie in the sky; and there wasn\u2019t anyone else! And the nasty anti-Jewish thing going on in The Labour Party put a seal on it. That\u2019s the reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Boris Johnson<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I noticed that there were responses to my post of the 22nd March. They were written in the right spirit for these times, but perhaps a few of them need to be addressed in the current climate. I don\u2019t want to criticise any comments. I\u2019ve never done that, and besides, the current emergency dwarfs any nit-picking by anyone, including myself. This is a time to pull together, not for ploughing up ancient politics and fowling up your own online neighbourhood streets with personal effluent. There\u2019s no time for that. This will be the same throughout these islands. The Scots are in a slightly different place, because the new version of their own labour party, the SNP, voted to stay in Europe. The leaders in their party were sold on the issue. Unluckily for them, their counterparts in England had been under the ‘unrepresented’ cosh for longer, and many who were suffering wanted out. (Of Islington and Europe).<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, I\u2019ve written a few words to try to bring you up to speed with where I\u2019m at now, hypothetically, or where I\u2019ve been traveling to for the last few years, and particularly with regard to British politics and culture. <\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s been a bit of blowback at my mention of Boris Johnson. Well.. I have to say that Johnson has been all kinds of naughty boy in his time, using bits of racist language in his early days, and being generally unpredictable and absent on the job throughout his career. His behaviour has been loose, and he\u2019s been at times economical with the truth. He\u2019s a comic character and a free spirit. His career as London mayor Was generally successful. He brought people together. He\u2019s probably hurt people, and been selfish, but he also brings a smile to an occasion. He belongs to a privileged class, but he\u2019s a born adventurer. I\u2019m not his biggest fan, but he\u2019s a social liberal, and always has been. If I was forced to describe myself without affectation or rumour, I\u2019d consider myself to be in the same bracket. <\/p>\n\n\n\n His enemies, mainly in the capital and in the lynch mob on Twitter, generally foul-mouth him, but to be fair, he\u2019s not some kind of loose fascist. His actions don\u2019t ever seem to be spiteful or anti-social, like some people try to infer. I\u2019m not going to endorse his every murmer, who would? I\u2019m just asking some people to stand back from sounding like the front page of the some lurid tabloid pantomime. Or some front pages of the Daily Worker. This is Britain, and Guy Burgess is dead. Be reasoned about what\u2019s actually possible. The country doesn\u2019t always need to be run by John Major, Gordon Brown or James Callahan. A lot of his comment is satirical, which comes naturally to him. That seems to be an innate quality. It\u2019s not always PC either, which is why I sometimes appreciate his style.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think that he\u2019s been very clumsy with the Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe affair, and in supporting Erdogan in Turkey, and absolutely wrong to be onside with Erdogan against the Kurds. That\u2019s unforgivable, (although we have to be aware of the geopolitics between the West, Turkey, Iraq and Iran), and I can\u2019t see myself in any of those political positions, but I still think that he\u2019s the only man for the job in the current parliament. His energy is obvious and boundless. I wouldn\u2019t be comfortable with any of the rest in charge. It\u2019s too serious right now. We need someone who\u2019s been in charge before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The rest are all a pack of ditherers, and we\u2019d be back to cynicism. On the opposing benches, Starmer is a pale version of a technocrat, and uninspiring; as a speaker, he\u2019s little more than perfunctory lawyer; and not many of those who consider themselves as \u2018leader\u2019 on his side of the aisle would actually come close to being up for the job. There\u2019s no one there who you could say embodies the national spirit as well as Johnson. Lisa Nandy is probably the most honest the opposition has; at least she absolutely knew what was happening before<\/u> the election. The rest of the opposition were seemingly delusional. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Actually, Johnson\u2019s liberalism has slightly let him down in this current situation. He\u2019s been loath to lock the country down, or use the police until recently, for instance. He should have shut down earlier, (I was shut down at home here on March 3rd), but that would have been against his religion, and might really have tested the population to failure by now. It\u2019s easy to echo the Twitter terraces, and call him a c**t, but d\u2019you really think that that\u2019s intelligent criticism? Or correct? Or serves any purpose other than to show yourself up as being intolerant, utterly uninformed, and opposed to anyone except who YOU would want to take the reins\u2026! The howling Twitter mobs didn\u2019t decide who should lead Britain, neither did the \u2018old\u2019. The people decided they\u2019d put their trust in someone who was energetic enough to end the dithering. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Covid 19, Parliament and Johnson<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s a lot of hardship being experienced at this moment, particularly by people in medicine who are working hard to rescue as many of us as possible, and what needs to be understood<\/u>, is.. (and IMO, nobody actually says it like it should be said, ie\u2026 \u2018Whatever you do today<\/span><\/strong> will be reflected in the number of dead in three weeks time\u2019). In any responsible society, care has to be taken with the most fragile lives. Locking an entire population down obviously has to be timed, and is fraught with difficulties and questions about liberty versus martial law in civil crises. <\/p>\n\n\n\n From a \u2018free will\u2019 libertarian standpoint, it would always have been about trying to pick the right moment to secure national approval for urgent mass action.. To repeat myself, Johnson has always been a social liberal; he was always going to do this by committee, and he\u2019s the only PM we\u2019ve got. The recent clique of Hammond, Gawke, Leslie, Grieve, Swinson, Starmer, Corbyn, Woolerton, Soubry and Letwin, etc., actually put him there, and they\u2019ll carry that with them into history. Still dithering. Enough roy! No need. Stupid boy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Johnson\u2019s not personally been heavy handed during this emergency. That\u2019s not his style. He WAS operating according to the science, although the scientists then questioned the route they were taking, and seemed to change course at the very moment that the world suddenly needed whole body PPE, and found themselves at the back of queues that they could have been at the front of!.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The fact that there shouldn\u2019t be a queue is another bucket of worms. The scientists thought that they could do it an easier way, by letting the population do it \u2013 by becoming mildly sick and developing so called \u2018herd immunity\u2019. That has nothing to do with Johnson, unless you think that he ought to be chief scientist as well as PM.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, it seems that when they checked the modeling, and reassessed the disease, its virulence, and the oncoming statistics, it probably became very clear that too many more were likely to die under the \u2018herd immunity\u2019 strategy. It would seem to be that the consequences of that U-turn have left more medical staff in danger of infection, because the position they could have had in the queue for chemical agents\/materials and PPE had been relinquished; and the consequences of that are that there are now less of those materials available in the \u2018market place\u2019. Johnson isn\u2019t going to blame the scientists for that. This is a journey that we\u2019re all taking together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It may be that the route through science needed more testing! Apparently, a test of the NHS\u2019s capacity to deal with a pandemic was tested in October 2016. It was called Exercise Cygnus. Between Oct \u201816 and March 30th<\/sup> 2017, it was decided that the NHS had failed the exercise. Theresa May\u2019s government failed to follow up on that.<\/u> Jeremy Hunt, the then health secretary, obtained a total of \u00a3b28, after that, for the NHS, but how much of that was spent on respirators and PPE? More importantly, perhaps, how much heat was there in the Brexit debate at that time that deflected from the necessity to address that failed exercise, as well as other national exigencies? How loud were the voices that obliterated the urgent need to address a national health problem – that would surely have had more visibility but for such blocking and shrieking!? We\u2019ll never know\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n Reminder<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n If you\u2019d been reading my blogs for the past few years, you will know that while I\u2019d publicly supported leaving Europe for 47 years+, I didn\u2019t vote Leave because my granddaughter wanted to stay in Europe, and it\u2019s now her world. I wasn\u2019t going to negate her vote. My first estimate of Charles De Gaulle \u2013 (Potential EU progenitor at the time<\/em>) was made in the 40\u2019s and 50\u2019s, when I was a boy. The impression he left on me has always guided my subsequent scepticism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Rebels\u2019, General Election 2019, Prevous Blogs and Friends<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I appreciate what Johnson has done in giving Europe no further opportunity to plunder this particular island with impunity. Plus, it will be up to Europe as to whether they want to do a deal or not. I don\u2019t particularly want to walk away, but the boot has definitely been on the other foot since the last election. A deal with Europe wasn\u2019t going to be possible until all the faffing around and very public obstruction of parliament had been brought to an end by the 2019 election. As you will know, the (mainly Metropolitan London) Establishment\/parliament, had to literally be sacked. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s now become possible for a decent deal to happen between what European partnerships are left standing after this economically disastrous disease has run its course. Which may take years. Just to make this clear, I haven\u2019t regarded the eurosceptics as being The Establishment for at least a couple of decades now. How could they be? They\u2019ve been fighting the Establishment for at least twenty years. Similarly, the word \u2018rebel\u2019 was, for 3 years, being used to describe people, (above) who were clearly establishment. It\u2019s people like me, and the average ex-miner, in our own very small way, who are the rebels, not people like Philip Hammond or Dominic Grieve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rebels my arse, they were stuck to Europe like clams! Apologies for that show of wroth, but you couldn\u2019t get more establishment than they were. (You heard this here first. The appropriation of the word \u2018rebel\u2019 to describe people who were as straight laced as it\u2019s possible to be, really angered me for 3 and a half years! Propaganda by a state that\u2019s now being gradually deposed. Fake nomenclature! Misnomer. Cognitive dissonance again, up the garden path). My own view of politics was mangled in this process. I obviously didn\u2019t belong where I thought I did! It was very disappointing.<\/u> When Johnson won, I didn\u2019t want to gloat. I didn\u2019t want to score any political points. Far from it, I was displaced, and a bit lost.. And again, for the umpteenth time in my life, there\u2019s a chance that I\u2019ll be disowned. For realising what was going on, and writing about it. And having an opinion that\u2019s not fashionable in what used to be my own circle of friends and acquaintances. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve documented a lot of this in previous blogs. They\u2019re in folders denoted by year, not by title. There aren\u2019t many of them. They all mark a particular time. (Not all the titles are obvious and selectable. Some of them are hidden under the first blog written in each year. From memory, I think that 2017 is one such year, the first essay being in the January of that year, and the rest, of that years\u2019 blogs, underneath it).<\/p>\n\n\n\n I tended, increasingly, towards the end of writing those blogs, to want to withdraw, (from writing them), because my perception was that it wasn\u2019t my world any more; that my world was elsewhere. They\u2019re now ancient history. Non-the-less, I\u2019ve made copious notes since, and recorded hours of radio and tv during this last 4 years. If I ever have to write the book, rather than writing the songs, I will. Hopefully, though, it\u2019s now in the past, and we can move on. Please.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can open up a discussion about freedom of movement if you like, but I think, increasingly, that after this pandemic, that might well become a mute point. Actually, possibly a white elephant. Please, let\u2019s move on. I no longer want to write about this. Or be confronted with it. If the vote had gone in the opposite direction nearly four years ago, it would be virtually dead now. At least for a whole generation. I don\u2019t want to talk about this any longer, let alone write about it, but I find that I\u2019m having to defend myself. Largely for owning up, and being honest about my opinion. I don\u2019t want that any more. It\u2019s an encumberance. I need to think about something else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n China and Too Many Questions – Testing For Covid 19<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Because of a typical, obvious and outrageous health issue, China has partially destroyed its major markets, or \u2013 taken a \u2018Great Step Forward\u2019\u2026 take your pick.. And presented the human world with a new threat. Will they be held to book? Will anyone mention anything to them at all. Will China\u2019s trading partners insist that they no longer attempt to cross bats with anteaters? I\u2019ve heard it said that the Chinese will eat anything on the table, except the legs! Am I in trouble again for this comment? Is it racist? Xenophobic? Or is it just old fashioned humour? Who knows anymore?… Will a treaty be drawn up? Which nation will betray the treaty first? Life will continue. Hiding from the continued attack of a swarming, mutating, myriad tentacled, massive alien. Now and then. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Life is all a matter of perception in any case; and a fantastic experience, in lockdown or not. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m just as confused as anyone else about testing for the disease. There seems to be enough agent\/material to make tests, otherwise they wouldn\u2019t be constantly saying that they\u2019ll \u2018ramp them up\u2019. Is it a question of manufacture? How can government completely standardise kits that are being made in small amounts by by a multitude of manufacturers? Is that a problem, and if so, why? Where does the responsibility lie for efficacious testing product between a vacuum cleaner manufacturer, a laboratory, a hospital and a government? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Are nations secretly fighting nations at the back doors of chemi labs? Is money talking again? Is there really enough agent\/material to make millions? Have they changed strategy again, because they\u2019ve re-modelled another course? Is there an element of the agent\/material that\u2019s difficult to obtain? If so, are they not telling us for political reasons? Or moral considerations? Is an element being blocked? What kind of bottlenecks exist? How suspect is the science? Has it already changed? Are the politicians protecting the scientists? Are they seeing something no one else can see, because of particular science\/modelling? Is the picture still too confused? <\/p>\n\n\n\n The government are about two days ahead of us in terms of announcements of stats etc. Is there a sudden rush to the West Midlands that we\u2019re not being told about yet? What expedients are being utilised? Are areas being treated differently? Is a partial experiment naturally being presented to the scientists, because what happened in London can now be modified in the West Midlands? Or The North East? Or Blackpool South? (As opposed to North). This doesn\u2019t smell so much of incompetence, rather more like timing between tests for the disease and\/or later, better tests for the antibodies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Because I\u2019m not a scientist, I don\u2019t know how much the one might interfere with the other if they were being used in the same region but in different processes. What happens if you test negative to the antigen, but you then have antibodies? Presumably, the test for the antigen is wrong, is it? What might the science be saying? I\u2019m thinking right now that they don\u2019t have tests that are 100% accurate, either for antigens or antibodies, and as Prof. Chris Whittey said this afternoon (last Sunday), they need time yet to be able to harvest the better antibodies that\u2019ll build up in the population in a few weeks time, (from those people who have had the disease).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although there\u2019s been a switch of tactics, there remains a general consensus on the strategy. Anyone who has not been following government advice delivered by Chris Whittey, Richard Vallance and Johnson are endangering their community and their country\u2019s forward progress. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This Page, and Political Point Scoring: and Europe<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n This page was NOT particularly set up as a political soapbox. And in particular not to alienate the great majority of the population. It was set up to impart a lifetime of wonder and reflection. Often it does<\/u><\/strong> stray into opinion, but I always make the effort to try to be as factual and even handed as I can be. It was not set up to perpetually bark into any particular tiny political corner of so-called civilisation, nor to polarise people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And especially not at a time like this, when social cohesion is at its most needed, and thoughtful actions are the order of the day. The more you try to score a political point, the more you should be ignored. (I\u2019d really love to ignore some of the things I\u2019ve written; about 14 paragraphs back. I probably need some kind help). I see and hear all kinds of people dying to score political points all day long right now, but unless they attempt to bring actual help with them, emotional or practical, they are just being bloody minded and really boring. <\/p>\n\n\n\n There are known culprits. Some of them skulk around on pages like this, others droop around in parliament, while other drones are in receipt of high honours, or in other prominent places. Whole areas of Twitter are awful places right now. So unbalanced. As if Kier Starmer could take over, wave a wand and less people would die! If I could interrupt the groaning righteous Twitterfeeders for one moment with one message right now, it would be GET A GRIP! The minute I see or hear doom mongers and lurkers making political points now, I turn the sound off the radio or TV. I won\u2019t name anyone. That would destroy the whole point of writing these last two paragraphs. This is a time when the pot needs to call the kettle quits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n