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Showing posts with label Rees-Mogg idiocy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rees-Mogg idiocy. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 02, 2020

LOCKDOWN [Phase 1] CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 79 – Tuesday, 2nd June



It doesn’t help that my head is buzzing not only with the rules and regulations modified on the hoof in Spain and Catalonia, but also the nonsensical doublethink of Orwellian proportions that cover the gibberings of various ministers as they constantly try and square the political circle on various media outlets.
     No one really knows what is going on.  Forget for a moment the on-going series of lies, deceptions, mendacity and invention that are linked to the Unicorn figures regarding testing that Hancock delivers to a sullenly disbelieving audience; and set aside too, the fantasy that is rapidly growing up around the Track and Trace fiasco, what we are left with are a series of instructions/suggestions/laws/stimuli for the instinct/or whatever that are supposed to cover our actions during our daily life.
     I know that I can go out for exercise during certain times (distinctions that appear to be generally ignored in Castelldefels); I know that I can go to the shops to get essential goods whenever I like; I know that I can go to a restaurant and eat on the terrace of same, but I can’t go inside, or go to the loo; I know that I think that I can meet others outside in a park or a garden – but anything from this point onwards is just a bit hazy.
     It all reminds me of school.  But then most things do, it is difficult to be a teacher for thirty years and not use that experience as a sort of range of reference.  So, anyway, rules.  Every school that I have taught in or been in has a series of rules.  It might be an infant’s school, or a secondary school or the Open University, they all have rules.  And very necessary they are too, at their best they allow you to know where you are and they give you the satisfaction of knowing limits.  But.
     And there is always a ‘but’.  Take one school rule from my past: “When pupils have entered the school buildings, they must take their outdoor coats off.”  Let us, for a moment, forget about the raison d’etre for this rule, if indeed there ever was one.  Just consider the rule.  It is simple and easy to see if it is being obeyed.  As the pupils came into the school after break or the lunch hour, teachers were monitoring their entrance and could therefore urge the pupils to obey the rule.  Which I did.  In spite of the fact that I couldn’t see the point of the rule.  Take off coats in the classroom?  Yes, I could see the point there.  Take them off as soon as they entered the school buildings?  Why?  Still, I did my duty and asked hundreds of kids to “Take your coat off!” and carry it.
    In every staff meeting where rules were discussed I urged the abolition of what I saw as a completely pointless rule.  Every one!  But I got scant support.  Even from those members of staff whom I had seen (with my own eyes!) disobeying the instruction to tell the kiddiewinks to obey, but in front of the senior staff they all became rule enforcers, and to hell with reality.
     The rules of lockdown are there and people obviously can agree with them, because it for their own health and safety.  But in reality rules are always for others, or they are like Schrodinger’s Rules, they apply and they do not at the same time.  If other people break the rules then they become glaringly obvious and essential to maintain, whereas if you break then, then it’s . . .
    
Every day seems to bring evidence of the deliberate attempt of government to humiliate and denigrate the people that they are supposed to serve.  In Britain the latest idiocy of Rees-Mogg in forcing parliamentarians to come in person to the Palace of Westminster to vote was, after a three-line whip from Johnson, was passed.  This effectively disenfranchises those members who are over 70, with childcare issues and those with conditions that mean that they should shelter.  All that forced through to get Johnson some sort of crowd so that his glaring deficiencies are moderated by baying support from the rabid sheep of the Conservative party.
     In the USA, Trump’s forcing a cordon sanitaire through peacefully protesting demonstrators who were there because of the murder of George Floyd, just so the spiteful inadequate could have a photo op in front of a church holding a bible upside down, was low even for a semi evolved life form like Trump.  He never fails to find new depths of squalid self-referential unfeeling vulgarity. 
     Vile populist governments, demonstrating, with a sickening lack of regard, just how much they think of the people who misguidedly elected them, unite both sides of the Atlantic.
     God help us all!