Words are important!

 

 

Still no indication of when I am going to be vaccinated.  My group has been prioritised in so far as we are told that efforts are being made to vaccinate us, but we have also been told to be patient we are at the younger end of the tranche.  Which of course, I am.

     The galling thing is that, had I still been in the UK, I would have been vaccinated by now.  I always told myself that my probable jab date would be in April, but it looks likely that my first jab will now be next month.

     I do have an alternative: to go to one of the mass vaccination centres and I did get as far as filling out an on-line application, until I found that the nearest centre is rather further away than I am comfortable with.  But, I have also decided that if I get no indication of my chance of a jab by the end of the week, then I am filling out the form and going wherever I can get one.

     Next month also sees the relaxation of national State of Emergency rules and even now, people are behaving in a more relaxed way, and given the low rates of vaccination that seems foolhardy to say the least.  It therefore follows that to be safe, it will be worth a boring car ride to some centre outside the region to start to get at least a putative 60% protection from the influx of visitors that we are bound to get as the weather gets warmer.

 

I watched PMQs today and saw Liar Johnson have a whole series of anger management problems with the clinical questioning of the Leader of the Opposition.  Keir was viciously glacial in his contempt for Johnson’s bluster.  And, as usual, I watched the Prime Minister’s performance with a mixture of shame and loathing: shame that such tawdry liar could get to the highest office in the land; and loathing that the burbling semi-coherent venom he spat out abused the language in which I delight.

     When teaching Paradise Lost, especially Satan’s great speeches in Book 1, I always said that politicians could learn a lot from the way that Satan use the form of what he said to cover the truth in what he said.  The Heroic cadences of his words almost masked the reality of defeat.  The speech is magnificent in the way it sounds – but it is all lies, a series of empty rhetorical gestures.  Johnson didn’t even rise to an interesting rhetorical gesture in what he said – but what can you expect from a moral vacuum?  Johnson should read Paradise Lost – not Satan’s speeches, he will never rise to those linguistic depths of mendacity, but rather to read about what happens to someone who tries to live the lies he spins!  Unfortunately, Johnson is clinically and morally incapable of what Satan experiences,

“Abashed the Devil stood

And felt how awful goodness is”

Since Johnson is incapable of feeling shame, there is not even a slim chance that he will ever be “abashed” and as he finds it virtually impossible to appreciate “goodness” without seeing it as weakness, there can be no moment of recognition of a force greater than himself.  He has no moral compass because he is his own loadstone.

     I am not, by the way, comparing Satan with Johnson.  Satan in Paradise Lost is a literary construct, a humanized embodiment of evil and therefore the purity of the depiction is compromised by the very humanity that makes his character able to be appreciated by the reader.  But the concept of the character of Satan is a very useful example to use when comparing what he says and how he says it with the way of looking at and listening to the techniques that politicians use to duck answering questions or to rewrite disaster as victory.

     Time after time, I come back to the failure of the “delete all and insert” technique of formal debate from my time in college, when clever debaters used to think up amendments to motions using the “delete all and insert” to try and completely change the original motion to its opposite.  Sometimes this worked or should I say ‘worked’ and the amended motion was passed, but then it failed when reality came into play and the thing had to work in the real world outside debate.

     Words are tricky things and you play with them at your peril.  In the graveyard scene in Hamlet when talking with the gravedigger who plays linguistic games with what Hamlet is saying, Hamlet says, “How absolute the knave is!  We must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us.”  Johnson, Gove and the rest of the third-rate lickspittle lightweights with whom they have surrounded themselves are playing the gravedigger and hoping to “‘scape whipping”

     I would remind those worthless attendant lords that Hamlet does not end well and neither will they.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 52 – Wednesday, 6th May

I am not, it must be said, a fan of the Blond Buffoon, so I probably did not come to the viewing of PMQs with an open heart and a forgiving attitude.  Be that as it may, I have to say that I have rarely seen a more cringe worthy performance than that of our Prime Minister (sic.) answering questions from the Leader of the Opposition.

     Johnson’s bumbling waffle was an embarrassment, and it was all the more telling because he was bereft of the usual Tory baying to cover up his lazy emptiness.  He is an indolent man, and his shallowness was on pitiful display in this exhibition of his fatuousness.  Starmer destroyed him with the sort of questions to which there is no answer, unless the proven liar changes the habits of a wasted lifetime and actually finds a modicum of veracity and admits guilt for the catastrophe of the management of the Covid crisis.

     It seems almost redundant to say that the number of deaths in the UK is now over 30,000.  30,000 lost lives.  30,000 people dead.  And we are told that we should not jump to international comparisons, even though the government itself produces those comparisons.  We  now have more deaths from Covid-19 than Italy.  We are paramount in Europe with the number of deaths.  Are we supposed to forget that we were told that “deaths under 20k would be a good result”, so we must assume that 30k deaths is a disgusting catastrophe.

     One can go on listing the disasters that this government has ‘managed’: the non-provision of PPE; the whole question of Care Homes; the provision, number, and quality of tests; the lies we have been told; the lack of transparency; the lack of an exit strategy; the slowness of the initial response; the criminal irresponsibility of Johnson in failing to take distancing seriously; the provision of masks for the general population and on, and on.

     It is obvious that we need an independent inquiry now so that this disaster is not repeated.  The process needs to be started immediately and the evidence needs to be gathered as a matter of urgency.  Thirty thousand people have died and it is inevitable that even more will follow them if we do not learn the lessons that can prevent the growth of fatalities.

     The UK is being reported in foreign newspapers with a mixture of astonishment and sorrow and Johnson is regarded as the wrong leader in the wrong place at the wrong time – a watered down version of Trump – and with a cabinet of inadequates: a perfect storm of negatives at the time when the crisis demands the very best.

I continue to go for my bike rides and am joined each time by a whole variety of people who have broken out bikes to take part in our daily Paseo.  There is a certain determination in the exercise that we are taking and few people look as though they are enjoying the experience!

     I miss my daily swim – it gives a shape to my day and it starts it ‘properly’ as I swim at 7 am, then my cup of tea and making notes.  It’s a good start.  I could start my bike ride at 6 am, as our time slot is from 6 to 10, but I am disinclined to do that.  There are limits to my desire to exercise!

Our Catalan lessons have developed, in so far as there is another lesson this Friday in the morning and via Google Meet.  I have not found this system to be one that I get on with, but I am going to try a change of computer and hope for the best for the next attempt!