Lockdown lite? Really?

 NEW LOCKDOWN Day 2, Saturday

 

 Bit of an anti-climax, my bike ride, this morning.  There was I expecting to be stopped at the border by masked police as I dared venture into the ‘Sitges’ part of Castelldefels – and, nothing.  No even the sight of a police car.  Instead, joggers, cyclists and walkers (with and without dogs) and the vast majority of them without masks.

     Yet again, I wonder at what news broadcasts these people are watching, as the ones that I see add incrementally to the supressed terror with which I regard ordinary life in the Time of Covid – whereas, for those mask-less people they either have secret supplies of the Moscow vaccine or they are living in a fools’ paradise, in which infection only happens to other people.  On my bike ride I counted (because I do) 150 people who were not wearing masks, in an area where we have a new lockdown and where there is a curfew.  Logic seems to be in short supply.

     But enough of the constant bewailing of the idiocy of the general population; the sun is shining and I know that the real blame should be laid on those who have the PAID RESPONSIBILITY to consider our safety and to encourage us to abide by clear instructions for our SURVIVAL.

     I am convinced that the incandescent ineptitude shown by the governing classes will finally have allowed the status of politicians even to sink beneath the previously accepted nadir of human activity, estate agency. 

      

Trump (Dump him!  Dump him!) used to be an outlier for idiotic mendacity but, alas, he is now seen as more of a patron saint by bumbling politicos throughout the world.  Those sad imitators must be terrified by the prospect of Trump’s political demise, as they will no longer have the shield of his in-post awfulness to make their deficiencies seem moderate by comparison.  I wonder how Johnson is contemplating being called the British Bolsonaro?  Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it does it?

     Taking of U-Turn Johnson, it seems as if it is likely that there will be a pronouncement early next week that England will have a stringent lockdown, a firebreak, to contain the appalling increase in infection.  Perhaps Johnson should also U-Turn on the provision of free school meals at the same time in the hope that the reaction lockdown will cover any (further) fall-out. 

     I wonder what Brain Box Cummings (the Master of Forecasting) will have advised.  Cummings’ past performance puts him on a par with a pop ‘clairvoyant’ in one of the trashier teenage magazines and let’s face it, he only manages to preserve his ‘reputation’ for being far-sighted by retrospectively doctoring his past posts.

 

I have delayed posting this until after The Blond Buffoon spoke (eventually) to the British Public in his waffling, bumbling, ‘ur’-heavy delivery, and looking all the time as though he would rather be somewhere, anywhere else.  This is his umpteenth U-turn - is anyone keeping count?  Like Trump’s lies we need to have a Radio 4 programme like ‘More or Less’ keeping tabs on Johnson’s vacillation, and calling it out as such as yet another glaring example comes out of his mendacious mouth.

     As an example of speaking to the public it was an inept performance; as a way of rallying the troops and explaining clearly and carefully what we need to do and why we need to do it – well, Johnson has never been any good at that sort of thing.  And frankly, after Cummings’ various jaunts in defiance of the rules, it is very hard to take anything Johnson says as having even the faintest stamp of moral authority.

     In other words, we were treated to yet another public embarrassment of stuttering ineptitude by a public servant (sic!) who looks bored by the effort of having to do what he feels he has to do to keep the rule-following population that elected him quiet, or at least,  quiescent.

     For how much longer is anyone’s guess: and that covers not only Johnson’s position, where the people in suits are prowling around seeking whom they might kick out, but also the attitude of the British/English people, and their ability to keep from open rebellion against a distant elite that seems daily more remote from their concerns.

 

Today was sunny in Castelldefels and the paseo was crowded.  In theory all the people I passed on my bike ride today should have been from Castelldefels, but I very much doubt that that was true.  Every weekend we get an influx of people from the surrounding area and today was no exception.  I saw no evidence of an increase police presence checking family-filled cars coming into the coastal part of the town – and without that visible presence (going on the experience of the last lockdown) people will behave as if irksome rules are not for them.

     I await further developments in our fortnight (as planned at the moment) of restrictions to see how the situation develops.