LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 39 – Thursday, 23rd APRIL

 

We seem to be trapped in a never-ending news cycle that endlessly repeats itself: statistics and excuses.

     It is fairly obvious that the present front bench is no longer truly concerned about how this crisis works out in terms of the human cost, but rather in who is going to be blamed for the way in which the crisis has been managed.  They can already see the various paragraphs of blame in the conclusions of the inevitable public inquiry and they are thinking, as always, only about their own survival and that of their discredited party. 

     If I was a member of the group of scientific experts that have had any contact with the Conservative politicians I would be engaging a lawyer now to keep a watching brief for the time that the Tory scum begin to put all the blame for their actions on the selective scientific advice that they will claim that they always followed.

     I think the case for corporate manslaughter charges against relevant ministers is almost overwhelming and I would willingly support a crowd-funded appeal for funds to prosecute the perpetrators of the fatal self-serving dithering incompetence that characterised the management of the crisis so far.

     The story of the PPE supplies get more murky by the second, with the Turkish connection being more akin to farce than competent procurement.  We have utilized the RAF to fly to Istanbul to get a partial cargo back!  The PRIVATE firm that our government has used to store the PPE stockpile has been sold to another firm during the crisis!  You couldn’t make this rubbish up, but is par for the course for a government that can pay millions to a ferry line with no boats.

     All this and Brexit too!  The bunch of third-rate incompetents still have the desire to take us out of the EU with no deal.  Weeping is not enough!

     The papers are taking a little time to consider who might be the scapegoat for the fatal disaster of crisis management.  The obvious candidate is Matt Hancock the man without fixed ethos, who swallowed his previous beliefs for the tempting offer of a seat in the sort of cabinet that he would have shunned previously.  But, what the hell, in the dregs of ability that is the present Conservative Party, he is some sort of star.

     With what has happened so far in the debacle of the crisis he has said things and made claims that cannot all be true.  He has therefore said the thing that was not.  And there is the question of the 100k tests that he has promised by the end of the month which are clearly impossible to deliver.  So that will be a resigning matter.

     With a fragmented cabinet in the absence of the Blond Buffoon and with the in fighting that must be going on, poor old Beckett must be wandering around with a selection of knives sticking into his back! 

     I have zero sympathy for him.

The talk of exit strategies is gaining ground, though we are not getting very much clarity about what they might be.

     Here in Spain I think that the weekend relaxation for the isolation of kids might be a way of the government seeing how well or how badly the population runs with this.  If it is a disaster and people take advantage then perhaps there will be a swift reversion to a stricter lockdown; if it goes well, perhaps it will be a start of a series of relaxations.

     The Scottish parliament is saying that some form of social distancing will be in force until the end of the year, at least for the at risk sections of the population.  We are not dealing with any definite information; there is no way that plans can be made for any events months ahead.  When is flying to and from Spain going to start again?  No idea.  And no idea about when we might expect to get an idea.

At least the sun shone for some time today.  I’m thankful for that.

    

Playing The Game

 

The fact that I am tapping the keys to my laptop early in the morning is a tribute to my determination to lay off my compulsive reading of The Guardian as soon as I had eaten my muesli.  The unrelentingly awful news contained in its pages, that seems to bring to mind the worst excesses of the 1930s, and the feeling that I could do nothing about what was happening, was certainly beginning to get me down.

I now give the Guardian headlines a rapid scan on my phone and do the quick crossword and then leave the gruesome details for later in the day.  I still listen to the Today programme on Radio 4 - there are limits about how far I am prepared to go to set myself free from negativity – but there is something more transitory about hearing the news rather than reading it, and that makes it easier to take.  At least for me.

There is always the problem of 45.  I, like so many others, have never (and will never) come to terms with the reality of the present POTUS.  You see, try as I might I cannot get the news out of my mind, no matter how early in the morning I get up!

I have been struggling to find an image to sum up my understanding of how characters like 45 and the ex-third-rate Foreign Secretary actually see the world.  I know that both of them are incapable of seeing anything without the opaque filter of their own egos, but I do wonder about characterising their views of the political reality around them.

I suppose the easiest way for me to consider them and their activity is to find a game that can act as a metaphor for their respective approaches.

To start with 45.  I think that he sees the world as a game of Jenga, but his concept of the rules is not to see how many pieces he can pull out without destroying the construction, but rather to find the piece that will bring the whole structure down to ruin – and then reveal that he actually owns a much better, gold plated, Trump-stamped version of the game that will make everyone (i.e. himself) much better off.  And, after all, it’s only a game – and a game that lacks the seriousness of, for example, golf.

Johnson, (I refuse to call him by his Christian name because that gives a faux chumminess to his selfish egotism) is the leading instigator of coulrophobia in British life.  Dangling from a zip line while waving a toy Union Flag, tousling his carefully unruly hair, roguishly spouting Latin to liven up his calculated throwaway phrases, he assiduously works to polish his upper-class-twit-of-the-people image to mask his embarrassingly naked ambition.

His game is a more sophisticated one than 45’s, it’s the game of tea leaves.  You wait until the dregs are left in the cup, swirl them around and invert the cup then gaze at the pattern that is left and interpret it as a sign of the future.  Johnson is a master of pareidolia, apophenia, patternicity and agenticity – all of those are words that define the ability to perceive patterns where none, perhaps, exist.  Johnson wittingly or unwittingly (both work for him) situations and then he defines the resultant chaos through the refining lens of his own ego.

And, of course, Johnson has perfected the “delete all and insert” approach to life.  The term comes from my experience in General Body meetings in university where in student debates someone would propose an amendment of the “delete all and insert” type which converted the original motion into its opposite!  Johnson is very good at that because he lacks historical perspective – at least as far as his own ethical narrative is concerned.  So, to play his game, all you have to do if the last set of tea leaves were not satisfactory is drink another cup of tea and get a new set.

 Johnson is a ‘crisis manager’ not, in any sense that he is able to calm the situation or even manage it competently, no, his type of ‘crisis manager’ is the type that makes the most of a self-made crisis to advance his career.

Johnson is working to emulate his role model, 45, so that he can walk down Oxford Street and shoot someone and get away with it.  Given the way that he is regarded by the so-called base of the Lower Than Vermin Party, Oxford Street might be a no-no, but the High Street in one of the more rural shire villages might be a possibility.

It is now time for my swim where I can wash away the import of the previous thoughts, at least for an hour or so.

And then back to my work on Elsheimer, who is proving to be a much more elusive character for my research than I would have thought possible for a painter who is, undoubtedly, famous.  But that makes it all the more interesting and I have ordered books!

When 45 and Johnson have been consigned to the ignoble waste heap of grotesques, the paintings of Elsheimer will still, in their jewel-like intensity, be providing delight.  And that is an article of faith that I keep hold of whenever I listen to the news!

Why do I listen to the news?

Today is the Day of the Constitution.  And a Bank Holiday.

Horrifically, we get to see our “government” – the worthless bunch of right wing self seeking members of the minority government of the most corrupt party in Western Europe all standing together, smirking at a population that did not vote for them to be the government but, due to the ineptitude of the opposition political parties has allowed this ‘criminal’ bunch to stay in power, to force our President into exile, to imprison our political leaders, to invoke 155 and all of this from a party with 9% support in Catalonia that has assumed control of our country.  And you have to say that vast sentence in one breath to get the full effect!

And now on television, Ana Pastor the president of Congress, is making a speech in which key words like “liberty”, “democracy”, “justice”, “rights”, “tolerance”, “dialogue” are being used that, for this ‘government’ have a very specific meaning which does not even come close to anything that I understand the words to mean. 

Listening to the national Spanish government reminds me of my time in a student strike in Swansea University when I was part of a delegation which met with members of the governing body of the University.  The Chair of the university Council that we met was Ifor Davies, trade union supported Labour MP for Gower, and it became clear that the words and concepts that I was using to put forward the student case were also being owned by Ifor Davies, but it rapidly became clear that a common vocabulary did not mean common beliefs. 

There is nothing more frustrating to hear your words used against you by someone who wilfully redefines their meaning poles away from an understanding that should be common to you both. 

But Ivor Davies was an established, institutional ‘Socialist’ in a safe Labour seat and he was never going to be on the side of radical change, and it was my first ‘real life’ experience of, “the devil can cite scripture for his purpose” approach to political debate.  In spite of this happening decades ago, I still find that approach hurtful and distasteful.  And I hear it every day as soon as a member of the Spanish National Minority Government opens its mouth.

I can’t even turn to the UK news to add a moment of tranquillity as the Conservative Brexit convulsions continue to make my country an international laughing stock. If I understood the extract of the news on Radio 4 correctly the government has not undertaken a study of the financial implications of Brexit on British Industry!  

If that is correct, then the government and especially the Minister for Brexit have been criminally incompetent; if they have done studies (surely, they must have) and they are deliberately keeping yet more compromising information about the disaster that Brexit is going to be from the general public then they should resign.  En mass, and now!

Though, finding out that the minority Conservative government is unprepared is par for the course given the generally clueless mess that the Conservatives (“lower than vermin”) have made of the whole Brexit fiasco so far.

I thought about that after the last Brexit disaster but two (or was it three) when the unprepossessing leader of the troglodytic DUP (the dim but intense girl you wouldn’t have wanted to have been put next to in school) Arlene Foster phoned up the zombified misfiring robot that masquerades as our Prime Minister and peremptorily informed her that she had to stop talking to those nasty Europeans.  And the very next day the throwback Tories rose like the scum they are and mouthed their inane platitudes.

It was seeing in The Guardian a photo montage of the main Tory Brexiteers applauding the stance of Foster (Ian Duncan Smith, Redwood, Lawson, Rees-Mogg etc) I was reminded of the line up of The Munsters or The Addams Family, the same freakish look but without the family charm of The Munsters or the moral clarity of The Addams Family.

Why is it that we have to tolerate these startling failures (IDS for the state of social services and care of the disabled; Redwood for his ‘singing’ of the Welsh National Anthem among other things; Lawson for his singing as the pound plunged; Rees-Mogg for existing) pontificating about an appalling situation that they have consciously helped produce.  Based on what they have already done, what the hell do they know about how to make the situation in the United Kingdom any better?

I need to watch a film or go to the opera again or listen to music or read a book and convince myself that there is intellectual life out there that is not tainted by political idiocy.  And Trump is now moving the American Embassy to Jerusalem!  Each day brings more bad news than can be easily consumed in a twenty-four hour period!

We must make the days longer!