Happy Christmas?

 

 

Today marks the real institutionalisation of the pandemic.  I had to show my Covid Certificate or Passport to get into the swimming pool.

     There was the usual failure of the technology when it turned out that the image of my scrambled digital thingy on my mobile phone (you can tell that I have forgotten what they are called) was too small to be read by the mobile phone app that was being used to check entry.  For some reason the phone did not allow me to expand the image to make things easier for the desk staff, but eventually I was allowed in.

     Last night on the television there was a piece on the long lines of people in the centre of Barcelona who had just realized that their access to bars, restaurants and gyms was going to be ended if they could not produce a valid covid certificate, and so they were desperately queuing to get their jabs.  I suppose that one should think, “Better late than never”, but one can’t quite rid oneself of the bone deep irritation that one feels when thinking about the sheer inconsideration of people who can’t give a hoot for the general good until it impacts on them directly.

     In the armed forces, I remember reading from years ago (and had it confirmed by my Dad) if you suffered from sun burn, it was considered an offence as the ‘injury’ was ‘self-inflicted’.  I feel very much the same from those people now clogging up precious hospital beds, where the vast majority of Covid patients in ICUs are unvaccinated!

     I don’t remember the same degree of vaccine avoidance about other fatal diseases and feel that the political edge given to Covid vaccine reluctance is one left over from the disastrous ‘presidency’ of Trump. 

     His macho idiocy and cavalier attitude towards disease prevention is directly responsible for deaths.  For anyone else you would ask yourself how the hell he manages to sleep at night knowing the damage he has done to families and to institutions – but with such a sociopathic narcissist like himself, where he is the centre of his own sick universe, he is able to redefine responsibility and ignore so-called collateral damage.

     In Catalonia, I take the requirement to show that you are vaccinated to be a clear sign that our government is taking things seriously. 

     Yes, there are contradictions contained in what we understand to be the new rules for socialising and, as things stand at the moment, I will be able to go to my next opera in the Liceu with almost full capacity.  I assume that we will be asked to show a Covid certificate for entry there too, but I have yet to be informed by the House, and the performance is only a week or so away.

     I do understand that, as a retired person, I can afford to take a fairly purist attitude towards restrictions: I do not have to commute, my financial wellbeing is not connected (directly) to the health of any one firm or place of work in the UK, I can afford to be complacent, in so far as my pension is from the government and not from any public company.  Yes, the ability of governments to pay their pensioners is directly dependent on the wealth of the country providing them, and the restrictions on people being able to work has lessened the tax money that the government can spend, but we are still protected in a more direct way than a self-employed actor, or waiter, or salesperson.

     Christmas is the time when some industries make a chunk of their earnings: the Panto season in theatres is essential to the health of the theatre for the coming year; restaurants look to party bookings during this period as a guaranteed source of income to see them through the leaner times in the year.  All computation about what will and will not happen financially has been thrown into disarray by the pandemic.  Nothing is certain.  Rules change on a weekly basis.  Long term confidence is something of a dream.

     Those lucky enough to be on a combination of full, state, and professional pensions are assured of a fixed payment each month.  For the majority of the working population the pandemic has shown how privileged this financial state is as what previously had been thought to be guaranteed proved itself to be not as firmly grounded as hoped.

     I do understand that keeping the economy going is of essential importance, pensions are, after all, paid by the contributions of those still working – but there is also the question of the health and safety of the nation to be taken into consideration too.

     In the UK at the moment, there are wildly differing approaches depending on who you listen to in Government about what you can consider doing this Christmas.  John Crace (the Guardian Political Sketch Writer, and well worth reading) is fond of using the image of Schrodinger’s Cat to illustrate some of the contradictory attitude of government.  Johnson seems to have abdicated responsibility for giving clear advice about what to do this Christmas apart from saying that Christmas Parties should not be cancelled, but he still harps on about personal responsibility where what he is doing is off-loading the burden of accountability on to some sort of mythical inner logician that we all have inside us, that will allow him to claim that any increase in deaths because of faulty precautions taken will be the responsibility of those who die and not the person who has the title of Prime Minister and who should be leading us.

     The corruption, lies, deaths, incompetence, bullying, hypocrisy, and cowardice of this twelve-year-old government makes the “Thirteen years of Tory misrule” proclaimed by Wilson in 1964 look positively prim by comparison!

     Here in Catalonia, we have a government where the equivalent of the Conservatives has little power, but there is a limit to what can be done when the parties we do have are squabbling amongst themselves and hardly living up to the names of the political sections they are supposed to represent.

     Politics seems to be becoming murkier by the month and adds nothing to the confidence with which we can look forward to Christmas and the next year.

     I fear that the imposition of Covid passports is just a step in the process of softening us up to accept far more stringent restrictions when the full import of the growth of the Omicron variant is clear.

     “Happy Christmas” is a fond hope, not a greeting.

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 54 – Friday, 8th May

Where does one start? 

     It almost takes me back to what I realize now, were the morally halcyon days of the end of Thirteen Years of Tory Misrule when scandal followed scandal culminating in the heady sexuality (which I must admit I hardly appreciated at my age then) of the Profumo Scandal.  I can still recite the names of the main characters in that sordid grande affaire with salacious relish!  Of course the most notable thing about that particular scandal was that Profumo actually resigned.  A politician resigning!  Ah, those were the days.

     So we come to the present regime in the UK, another Tory regime with a decade of misrule behind it and a bewildering array of ‘resignable’ mistakes connected to the Covid crisis.

     The papers of SAGE have been released to the press but with redacted sections to protect the government’s narrative of ‘following the science’ as if there was a concept of Science that was absolute and beyond political mediation.  Were I a scientist advising the government, this government, I would be very, very concerned because it is fairly obvious that the Tory party is lining up the Science (with a capital ‘S’) to be the fall guy in the inevitable public inquiry.

     Let us continue with the catalogue of contempt.  The care homes situation does not seem to be getting any better.  On the anniversary of the liberation of Mauthausen, it is a cruel irony that the care homes in Europe now appear to have distressing overtones of extermination camps, in spite of the sterling service of care staff who are woefully and disgustingly underpaid, understaffed and under equipped.  How many elderly people have to die before this discredited government accepts its blame and works to ameliorate the situation?

     The continuing numerical farce of the testing seems to be unending and the increasingly discredited Beckett has not, again, accepted that he has failed.  And Beckett is one of the less noxious members of this government, especially when you consider that the organizing brain is the loathsome Cummings, the Marie Antoinette/L’eminence gris de nos jours but with a more vicious take on Marie’s airy dismissal, more of a “Let them die” sort of vibe rather than an invitation to appreciate brioche!

     The numbers of those infected continues to grow and the daily death count is a constant accusation.  One that cannot be avoided by using the amours of a randy professor to try and subvert the news on the day that the death rate became the largest in Europe.

     The comedy of errors that is the ordering and non-delivery and eventual delivery and delay and quality check and rejection and farce and death is something that is so absurd that it couldn’t be made up!

     The latest idiocy can be placed fairly firmly at the feet of the Blond Buffoon who ignoring parliament, decided to announce the easing of some of the lockdown measures.  Unfortunately the right-wing press has hailed the announcement as something of liberation from the tyranny of lockdown deprivation and has geared up the population to expect dramatic ‘freedom’ when the numbers of deaths and infections does not justify anything other than the mildest of loosening.  This weekend is going to be fine and it has a Bank Holiday, so people are going to expect sunbathing, beach visiting and lazing about in parks.  The expectation of more than is likely to be on offer is going to produce tensions that can have fatal consequences.

     Here in Catalonia and Castelldefels, the mere suggestion that there are going to be phases of loosening of lockdown has been enough to inflate expectations and suggest that it might be time to bring on the new normality.

     From my observation the young have comprehensively decided that they are immune to the virus and they are certainly acting as if the virus is only for the old.  I think that the transition from lockdown to anything that is not lockdown is going to be very difficult to bring off, when the younger part of the population thinks it is immune and the other feel that they have done more than enough already and are ready for a little (or a lot) of relaxation.

     It is going to be a rough few days - with worse to follow.