A range of rants

 

 

A double vaccinated member of my Catalan family has now contracted Covid and will have to self-isolate, emerging from this on the 22^nd of December, just in time for the Christmas Celebrations.  At the moment he has flu-like symptoms, and we are hoping that they do not develop any further, relying on the expectation that the vaccination will limit any serious consequences.

     What it does do is emphasise that the pandemic is nowhere near over, and we are still very much in the dark as far as any coherent view about what post-pandemic life may be, and when we might be experiencing it.

     At this moment in time, all our planned celebrations for the three days from Christmas Eve are still in place, though these same plans become more brittle with each passing day.

     In spite of the growing fears about the Omicron variant, there does not seem to be a great deal of concern about the progress of the pandemic, and the rules that are already in place do not seem to be widely followed. 

     For example, we are now supposed to show Covid vaccination certificates in restaurants, bars, gyms etc – the policy is, shall we say, being loosely applied.  Today in a restaurant we were not asked for our certificate, and I saw no one who came into the restaurant asked.

     If this laxity is indicative of the approach here, then it is only a matter of time before the pressing need for more taxing restrictions are brought in because of an exponential rise in infection.

     I count myself partly to blame because, until Toni mentioned it this evening, it didn’t even cross my mind that the regulations had not been followed.  Life goes on as normal, and one is easily seduced into forgetting the reality with which one is surrounded.

     I know that it is wrong for the government to expect members of the public to act as their surrogates in getting policy delivered, but it is in all our interests that the very reasonable precautions that should be taken, are taken.

     I resolve to show my certificate even if I am not asked for it, and that might provoke the right behaviour.  I shall be more vigilant in future.  In a future that looks increasingly bleak as the news of the spread of the Omicron variation looks unstoppable.

 

 

Yet again I ask myself what the Conservative Party has to do to get people to stop voting and supporting them!

     It is an exhausting job merely listing the scandals that Johnson and his rag bag government have racked up.

     Just in the last week or so we have had the revelations about the last year Christmas parties that were held (or not held) in 10 Downing Street, with Johnsons categorical (eventual) denials having all the force of the ‘do not tumble dry’ instruction on clothes (image courtesy of John Crace or Marina Hyde in the Guardian).  Basically, if Johnson says something it is a fairly secure rule of thumb that the exact opposite is true.  So, while the rest of the country was obeying the strict lockdown rules, No 10 was flouting them.  And now lying about them.

     Coupled with this is the “apology” for failings in the Grenville Tower disaster in the administration of building regulations.  Tell that to the dead.

     Today we heard graphic descriptions of the disorganized chaos in the Foreign Office with the deadhead Raab presiding over a dysfunctional and deadly, inefficient, badly led, disaster of a department.

     And the final and grotesque garnish to the vileness of the government is the revealing of the lies that Johnson and No 10 have talked about the evacuation of pets before people.  I am a staunch believer in the fact that people who do not care about animals, will care little for humans as well.  But people must come before pets, and if resources were diverted to help a pet sanctuary rather than help the people who aided the mission in Afghanistan AND that Johnson lied about his involvement, then surely disgust and repugnance is the only appropriate attitude to have towards him and the low life that supports him.

     And that lot is only what has been brought to us today!  It is exhausting despising the worthless chancers who rule us.  With Thatcher (whom I hated and continue to hate) I didn’t feel this drained and depleted by my loathing.  Thatcher was a person and not a cult.  Johnson is a populist with, as far as I can tell, not a shred of ‘ethos’ motivating his actions apart from his narcissistic self-regard.  He demeans the country, politics, and himself.  He is a disgrace – but he will not and indeed cannot see that.  To recognize his own fatal limitations will mean his instant evaporation.

     It will be instructive to see what happens to the Conservative majority in the next by-election.  If the Conservative Party senses that he has or will become a liability, they will be ruthless in their elimination of an obstacle to their continued grip on power.

     I can look forward to Johnson’s fall from grace (though he certainly did that a long, long time ago) but I shudder at the ‘slimy things with legs’ that will slither their way out of the sewer of sleaze and corruption that is the Conservative Party at the moment and try and shin their way up the greasy Tory donor money painted pole to power.

     God help us all!

No choice to choose

 As I am off to the Liceu this evening - admittedly for an evening of ballet rather than opera, but that is how the season tickets tumble – I will deny myself the mucky pleasure of pointing out the corrupt sleaze that the Conservatives and presently mired in, led by a craven and despicable apology for a leader 

 

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who because of a ‘previous appointment’ cannot be in the commons to apologise or accept his knocks for his frankly appalling management of the Paterson Scandal. 

     I will instead, to keep my mind unscarred by justified vitriol, consider decluttering.

 

knees, operation, library, getting rid of books,

      

 

 

     With the present state of my knees, which are little more than flesh covered bags of various sized marbles, our present abode is almost perfectly unsuitable.  The house is spread over three floors with the ground floor containing only the garden and the entrance, while the living quarters start on the third floor.  There is no lift, and the stairs are unyielding and narrow.

     There is no bathroom on the first floor that contains the living room and the kitchen, so everything needs stairs.

     My study (or hollowed out space in clutter) is on the third floor and that also has no bathroom.  The result is, when you get where you want to be, you don’t move until you absolutely have to!

     If, and given the way the health service has been knocked for six by the pandemic that is a big ‘if’, anything by way of an operation was considered to try and get my knees back to something approaching normality – then my house would emphatically NOT be the place to consider recuperation.  This means that we now have to consider moving within the near future.

     This is a sobering and frightening proposition.

     Where I go, there also goes my library.  And libraries, unless you are totally wedded to Kindle, is not something easily transportable.  And my library is large.

     Were I to move taking only my Art books and catalogues then I would be moving more books than most people have in their houses.  And given that they are Art books, a damn sight heavier than the books most people have.  And Art books are but one small part of my holdings.

     In spite of what Toni says and believes, I have ‘rationalised’ by collection over the years.  I did manage to shed a depressingly large section of my library in Cardiff (books, I might add, that I still resent having got rid of) and over the years in Castelldefels I have donated masses of books to educational establishments (and I resent their absence even more) but, and this is a sad, but entirely understandable fact, I have replaced the Lost Volumes with new and essential books that I NEED.

     If I am realistic, I know that we are unlikely to find somewhere as commodious as our present place and that means that I will have to be bloody minded in cutting my holdings even further to the bone before we are able to move.

     Yes, I know that there are some books that moved with me from Cardiff that I have not looked at or even opened since they were unpacked, but I know that they are there and THAT is the important point.

     I also know that I can have the classics of English Literature (at least historical and out of copyright English Literature) stored electronically and I do have various books on my Kindle, but I also have the copies of the books in which I first read them.  And I am and remain a ‘paper purist’ – there is nothing like actually turning the pages and feeling the heft of a volume in your hand.

     Sooner, rather than later, reality is going to have to hit, and I am going to have to make some very hard choices.  But I am putting my faith in prevarication and the liberal application of embrocation to stave off the evil day.

     Long live the bound and printed word!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If only it was a comedy!

 

 

 

 

 

  

In the interests of truth and fairness I need to set the record straight.

     I thought, simpleton as I was, that Johnson might have had the good grace to let Paterson know that he was dumping him before it was generally known.  But no, the serial paid lobbyist MP, found out by telephone call from a BBC journalist while in a supermarket.  Of course, Johnson did not give him a head’s up, that would have shown concern for “a friend and colleague of mine for decades” and that is totally foreign to his narcissistic nature.

 

 

 

 

 

 

     I also thought that there might have been a little bit of negotiation to make the resignation happen smoothly with the promise of some honorific goodie some vague time in the future, but that too was crediting Johnson with a degree of strategy of which he is incapable.  Much better to just do it and the hell with the consequences – after all, that has served Johnson well in all the past fiascos.

     As a postscript to that paragraph, I have now read in the paper that No 10 does not rule out a peerage for the serial paid lobbyist ex-MP.  Who knows what that means?

     In a piece in the Guardian (4/11/21) by Kevin Rawlinson, he itemises Johnson’s U-turns writing that “a conservative count gives more than 30 often panicked policy changes since the 2019 general election.”  It makes sobering reading.  so, while urging you to read the original article in The Guardian, I'll list them:

 

 

 

'Ignore Covid' to national lockdown

Mass community testing

Bereavement scheme

Visa surcharge

Proxy voting

Rashford's free school meals campaign

NHS app

Reopening primary schools

Face coverings in shops

Huawei ban

Local contact tracers

Exam results in England

Face masks in schools

Eviction ban

England's second lockdown

Furlough scheme extension

Rashford's free school meals campaign - again

Cancelling Christmas

Lockdown a day after opening schools

Health secretary's resignation

Johnson and Sunak self-isolating

Foreign aid spending

Taking the knee

Air passenger quarantine

The Northern Ireland protocol

Critical worker pingdemic

Afghan guards

Natikonal insurance rises

Vaccine passports

Foreign lorry drivers

Sewage

Parliamentary standards and corruption

 

 

     How anyone can have faith in such a dithering incompetent like Johnson, defies belief.

     However, his abortive attempt to scrap the parliamentary standards system might point to his concern about what revelations and condemnations might result from the various financial irregularities, most pressingly in the refurbishment of his flat, issued by the very body he tried to abolish.  Junking democracy to safeguard his own selfish interests does seem a convincing explanation for the imposition of a three-line whip for something that was pretty self-evidently corrupt.

     Quite aside from party politics, the stench of corruption in the Conservative Party, is corrosive.  It taints the whole of political life, which is why it is essential that Johnson and the Conservative Party take responsibility for what the Conservative Party has done, apologise for the damage done and sack the persons responsible for the chaotic fiasco.

     The Daily Mail, in an otherwise scathing review of the despicable actions of Conservative MPs over the Paterson vote, tried to broaden the condemnation to all MPs.  That, in this instance is not fair, the only MPs who voted in favour of the abolition were Conservatives (with 1 DUP MP, quelle surprise!) they were not supported by any of the other parties.  The Conservatives own this particular piece of squalor.

     For me the viciously farcical air of the whole sordid episode is summed up in the story of Conservative MP Angela Richardson.  She was the parliamentary private secretary to Goblin Gove.  She abstained from voting in favour of the transparently corrupt motion and, on Wednesday evening she was duly sacked from her parliamentary private secretary post.  But 12 hours (sic) is a long time in politics, especially Conservative “politics”, and so by Thursday morning she had been reinstated in her job. 

     ‘Farce’ is too stable-sounding a term for what actually went on!