We
are waiting to hear what the traffic flow is like. Spain and the UK have both emphasised that no
one (except of course for Conservative Ministers) should travel during the
Easter weekend. We should all stay at
home. So far a large number of fines
have been imposed on those who attempted to make the journey to second homes or
to the beach. The story of a group of
people form the UK attempting to go on holiday to France via private jet both
shocks and also doesn’t surprise: the rich assuming that rules are only for the
poor. Again.
As I keep saying, I do realise that I am
in a fortunate position being in a spacious home with access to a communal pool
for my solitary walk – though today there was an entire family of parents and
little girl in the tennis court next to our pool: on parent walking while the
other played with the kid. We even said,
¡Hola! to each other. At a safe
distance. Such is community: you best
show community spirit by shunning it!
The
number of deaths reported in the UK continues to horrify and I have little
faith in the ability of the government to organize themselves with sufficient
efficacy to limit the growth in the numbers.
The distribution of masks and other PPE seems limited and the testing is
little short of scandalous.
In Catalonia we are entitled to a free
mask, allegedly waiting for us in our local pharmacy, with the option to buy
another mask. Toni will have to find out
if this is true by calling in to the pharmacy when he gets fresh bread. It will at least be a small step in the right
direction in coming to terms with the reality of the virus.
Some firms in Spain are asking their
workers to come back to work after the Easter Bank Holiday. This is essential for the recovery of the
economy, but I do not see how this can be done with any real degree of safety
without adequate testing in place. Some
workplaces are simply not conducive to social separation and, with the best
will in the world, people forget to be paranoid all the time and allow recently
learned essential behaviour to slip.
Wearing a facemask is unpleasant and wearing it with glasses is clumsy
and therefore all too likely to be pushed down or up rather than used constantly.
You can sense, even in isolation, that
people have a natural wish to ‘return to normality’ but if that totally
understandable wish is allowed too soon, the end results will be deadly. And, why should we expect or even want
previous ‘normality’?
This virus and its progress and
particularly the way that it has been dealt with by the politicians would seem
to me to indicate in a blazingly obvious way that things must not be the same
after this crisis. The measures,
financial, social and political that have been brought into play to cope with
the crisis illustrate as clearly as possible the inadequacy of the previous
financial, social and political measures.
Why should we return to proven, failed ways of life?
You think of measures like guaranteeing a
working wage; of housing the homeless; of supporting the NHS; of protecting
people with disabilities – all the things that our austerity government
previously said were unaffordable: now funded.
Failing railways renationalized; small businesses supported – no
Socialist idea rejected! If it can be
done now, it could have been done then.
If it can be done now, it can go on being done. If we pay money to keep airlines alive, then
we own them. We have already had the
obscenity of Tesco receiving a governmental emergency handout and then paying a
dividend to their shareowners. How long
do we go on encouraging with our money (and though I live in Catalonia I pay
British taxes too) those who boost the inequalities in our society, giving ever
more money to those who already have? It
seems to me that the message of one of the badges that I used to wear god knows
how many years ago of “Eat the rich!” is more relevant now than it was then! And what a condemnation of our political
‘progress’ that is.
We cannot allow the billionaires and the
big companies to pretend that they have nothing to do with the situation in
which we find ourselves, not obviously in the making of the virus (though in my
more paranoid conspiracy theory moments, I have my doubts!) but in the way that
the government was equipped to deal with it.
Private Enterprise does not, essentially, care for us. It is driven by profit and not by concern. In times of crisis, it fails and allows
government to ride to the rescue, and then, when things are better, it goes
back to doing what it does best: exploit!
There
is cloud cover, but intermittent sunshine – I’m not sure what this encourages
on a population that really wants to get out and about. Perhaps if it was blazing sunshine it would
be more of a temptation, this neither one thing nor the other encourages people
to go back indoors and watch something else on Netflix. Probably.
Well,
back to my daily poem. I have an idea,
its now just the working it up to be something that I can call a draft. Check out what I have already written this
Holy Week on smrnewpoems.blogspot.com
