An
unconvincingly dry start to the day, where the most you can say about the
weather is that it is not raining. I
will, however, take the opportunity to go for my walk in the dry, or dry-ish
conditions, about which I will not complain – for fear the rains return!
At times such as these one takes pleasure
in small mercies, so I am truly thankful that I was able to complete my
regulation walk unaccompanied by the lashing rain that has been such an
obtrusive feature of the last three days.
And I had to wear a jacket, as the temperature was nowhere near the
twenty-one degrees that my London cousin told me would be the norm where she
was! Still, I will bide my time and as
we move nearer to the summer, I think that the balance of warmth will tip back
in my favour!
Spain
is going to ask for a two-week extension to the lockdown, putting its possible end
some time in May. Although the curve is
flattening, there are still deaths and new cases of the virus and I am not sure
that we have a convincing exit strategy.
It would be tragic indeed if the loosening of restrictions resulted in a
virus spike towards the end of May. I
suppose the government is putting a great deal of hopeful expectation on the
summer heat doing more efficiently what they have failed to do. God help us all in the autumn!
In Britain the controversy over the
non-joining of the EU bulk buy initiative to get PPE shows no signs of calming
down with the Civil Servant’s mea culpa letter being scrutinized stylistically
in a way which would have done credit to the reading of the runes that used to
go on in the gnomic pronouncements of the old USSR during the Cold War. I do agree that paragraph three in the letter
is one of Mandarin double-speak and the refutation of what was a clearly stated
‘fact’ that Brexit was the root cause of our non-participation is far less than
convincing.
It is depressing to realize that the
government is more concerned about getting away with questionable statements,
or maybe downright lies, in the short term in the hope that the inevitable
inquiry in the longer term will be bad, but people will have moved one and
memories are inevitably fickle and we will probably be back on the old
territory of Brexit chaos to take people’s minds off what happened all those
weeks ago.
In the USA Trump is demonstrating on a
daily basis that consequences are for little people and that lies, blatant and
proven, are no hindrance to a narcissist’s grip on power if his base is
indiscriminating enough.
I feel very much the same about those
people who voted for the present Conservative government and feel that the
“Vote Conservative!” badge that I used to wear years ago is still more than
valid, as around that injunction in smaller letters it had, “Young and
stupid? Old and selfish?” Some things never change.
Our ostensibly “socialist” government here
in Spain, propped up with left wing parties’ support, is a little less than
impressive and, apart from moving the corpse of the dictator Franco, it is
difficult to point to any real achievements.
Admittedly, Trump has set the bar absurdly low for competence in crisis
for a so-called democratic government, but his fatal dithering in the early
days of the crisis has been mirrored to an extent in other governments in
Europe.
It remains to be seen how the releasing of
the Plague Children into the community works out. It has been said that kids can be unwitting
carriers of Covid-19, so without testing allowing youngsters out from lockdown
is something of a gamble, especially for the more senior parts of the community
– in which category I firmly place my good self. I can’t help thinking that there will be a
whole age group re-watching Chitty-chitty-bang-bang
and thinking that the figure of the ‘Child Catcher’ is one whose time has come
round at last!
The
story of the EU Bulk Buying Scandal has taken a further turn with the EU
detailing when and how many times the UK had been informed about the whole
thing. One, or all of the front bench
ministers is/are lying, as the ‘missed email farce’ is not really gaining any
traction, while the 'Brexit Prejudice Pantomime' is seeming more and more like
the truth. So these unutterable bastards
put the absurd foot-shooting of Brexit before actual people’s lives. Who would have thought that Conservatives
would have done something as despicable as that? Well, I for one!
This is obviously a resigning matter. At a time of national crisis there might be
some who might say that to change the people at the top would be counter
productive. Fair point. But what if the people at the top are a bunch
of vicious incompetents whose actions have killed people? Surely getting rid of them is an act of
self-preservation? And don’t forget, the
first to offer his too long delayed resignation should be the Blond Buffoon for his
dereliction of duty in ostentatiously going out of his way to mix with Covid-19
carriers and thus become infected and deliberately taking a NHS bed that could
have been used more profitably for those who, in spite of taking every
precaution, caught the virus. Vile
man. Vile government.
The
Spanish government has now (again) come round to the point of view of the
Catalan government over the question of the Plague Kids and how free they
should be in the Great Breakout for this weekend. The untramelled liberation of the Plague
Kids has now been modified to bring it more like the Catalan suggestions that
stipulated that kids under 12 would be allowed to accompany a parent for recreational
short walks but not NOT going to places like supermarkets and places where real
human beings could be infected.
It remains to be seen just how the
population interprets this relaxation, though I do not think that people are
going to be too scrupulous and if they are not, then we are looking at more
deaths later.
On
the more positive, cultural side, I have, at last been able to print out a copy
of The Coasts of Memory – though I
think that there is more editing to be done before I am satisfied!
