Monthly Archives: June 2020

Bananas

It’s hard to keep going in shielding “lockdown” without going bananas to some degree. Here are my thoughts on some recent (and one very old) news items, loosely connected to the theme of bananas.

Straight Bananas

This one’s a bit of a classic – but worth repeating here.

bunch of bananas
Bunch

We start today with the famous Euromyth about straight bananas. Undoubtedly just one of many lies written by Boris Johnson to fend off boredom when he was Brussels correspondent at the Daily Telegraph. The Wikipedia link in the sentence above contains several other myths. My memory is long enough to remember an actual Daily Express headline from before we joined the “Common Market” in 1973. It was warning the Great British public that joining the EEC would lead to the banning of the traditional British kipper. Well, we can all work out for ourselves that that prediction turned out to be decidedly fishy.

Beach Bananas

cummings and bornemouth
Cause ===> Effect

And so from fish to the seaside.

A great many people, me included, were horrified at the sight of the crowds on Bournemouth beach last week, with no respect at all for proper physical distancing. Local council workers collected 50 tonnes of rubbish from the beach on just one day: the average for a June weekday is about 5 tonnes apparently. It seems that there is a section of the British population who, as temperatures climb towards 30 degrees, “go bananas”. They find it essential to travel in their thousands to beaches and beauty spots, even in the middle of a once-in-a-century pandemic.

I am sure that a major contributory factor was the rule breaking by Dominic Cummings and the lamentable speech by Johnson in his support when the truth was revealed by the Guardian and Daily Mirror. If ever it was a case of “one rule for us, another for the rich and their friends”, this was it. This was a watershed moment: the day the UK government lost control of the public health message.

Johnson has compounded this major error of judgement with his announcements on easing lockdown restrictions in recent days. Johnson’s whole tone and body language result in a strong message that everything is being relaxed; the message of caution is sotto voce at best.

I for one expect to see coronavirus cases and deaths start to rise again soon. The USA is a warning to us all about what happens when a country is badly led.

Without a Trace

One of these has disappeared without a trace

Finally, I turn to three examples all illustrating Britain’s descent into the status of a banana republic. They all stem from the gross incompetence and hubris of the “Leave EU” mind set running (ruining?) the country.

In early May, we were promised a “world beating” app after rejecting the Google / Apple version adopted successfully in other countries. This was “global Britain’s” very own version of a Track and Trace app, now sadly abandoned adding months of delay.

Here’s a technical account of what went wrong. An article for more general reading can be found here on the Metro website. What a pitiful shambles of a country this makes us appear to the rest of the world. But it gets worse: read on.

Taking a Pounding

Our currency, the pound sterling, is another factor moving the UK towards the status of a banana republic. A Financial Times article from a few days ago uses the term “emerging market currency” because of the erratic behaviour of the pound’s exchange rate on currency markets.

This may all seem like esoteric stuff, only of interest to finance people and exchange rate obsessives. There is a very basic real world effect, which anyone travelling abroad from the UK will shortly find out. That is in the so-called “spread” of exchange rates: the difference between the buying and selling rates. Broadly speaking, the higher the reputation of a country’s economy, the narrower is the spread between buying and selling rates. The “official” exchange rate – the one usually quoted in the media – is the mid-point in the range between these two.

So the rate that holidaymakers get at an exchange bureau, the number of euros or dollars that they actually get when they exchange pounds, will be further below this middle figure if the spread is wider. In short, people will feel even more ripped off than usual. And the blame lies with the country’s plummeting reputation caused by the government’s incompetence.

Where on Earth?

And just when you thought it couldn’t get more stupid, here’s another tale of Br*xit hubris and idiocy by our government.

Remember Galileo? No, not the famous scientist of old – no, Galileo, the EU’s joint project to have a GPS system that was not dependent on the US military. (Sometimes, the US military turns off GPS, usually when they’re up to no good somewhere in the Middle East. Then all the satnavs in cars and smartphones stop working until GPS is turned on again.) The UK has spent £1.2 billion as its share of Galileo but is walking away from the project to devise our own system, as part of the government’s stance on EU negotiations. The estimated cost to the UK of this decision is somewhere between £3 and 5 billion.

Our plans for yet another “world leading” go-it-alone project looks like it will be as big a fiasco as all the other deluded dreams. The government has invested in a 20% stake in a company called OneWeb. They are designing a completely different network of satellites designed to serve a completely different purpose from Global Positioning. All the developed GPS systems use satellites in orbit 20,000km above the Earth. The OneWeb system uses satellites only 1200km up, designed to provide internet access, not GPS.

How long will we have to wait until – just like Track and Trace – it’s back to the drawing board, following months of wasted effort?

The “Lollipop” Plane

The “Lollipop” Plane

Still, we can console ourselves that our Prime Minister now has a vanity jet aircraft repainted from camouflage grey with £900,000 quids’ worth of red, white and blue paint.  Critics say it looks like a lollipop; it’s more conspicuous appearance will handicap its previous use for fighter jet refuelling when not needed by the PM. An easy target in hostile airspace!

It’s hard to imagine anything more designed to place the UK in utter contempt with other world leaders – apart, of course, from the world’s autocratic rulers who revel in such tat. Banana, anyone?

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The Shield Crack’d

I’m confused. And I feel a bit less safe than I did a week and a half ago. I know I’m not the only one.

Cracks in the Shield

I have mentioned before that I am one of the people to have been classified as “extremely vulnerable” to coronavirus and so I’m one of the so-called “shielding” group. The initial guidance letter on 23rd March advised us to stay at home at all times for a minimum of 12 weeks: not even to leave the house for exercise or for getting food or medicines. (There were 2 copies in quick succession, from my GP and my current “overseeing” hospital.) The original guidance even recommended packing a hospital bag, just in case, including contact details for next of kin: a bit scary to receive this at the time!

For most of the next 10 weeks, there was nothing at all from gov.uk or the “NHS Coronavirus Service”: we were left just to get on with it ourselves. Many in more challenging circumstances than I felt even more abandoned: a recent edition of Woman’s Hour has some actual case studies. (The relevant audio starts around 16 minutes into this audio clip on BBC Sounds.) Over this period, I first convinced myself that our (sheltered) garden was as safe as the house – subsequently confirmed by my hospital consultant.  Then, I felt safe doing short (30 minute) walks from home for exercise: I see very few people in our rural area and those I do see all keep apart well over the 2m distancing rules.

Then, unexpectedly, on 19th May, a third letter arrived from another hospital where I had treatment in 2018, carrying roughly the same words but extending the lockdown period by 15 days to 30th June. Just four or five days later, even more unexpectedly, Johnson announced a relaxation of the lockdown rules for us shielders along with relaxations for the wider public.

Frankly, I’m deeply, deeply suspicious about this change of government guidance. The relaxations of the lockdown rules (in England), coupled with widespread flouting of them on beaches and at beauty spots in last weekend’s sunshine, potentially makes the “world out there” a less safe place. So I’m ignoring what Johnson said and I’m relying on more trusted sources (e.g. Independent SAGE and selected “experts” via trusted media) and carrying on much as before.

Cracks in the Lockdown

Johnson and his gang of zealots and idiots (a.k.a. HM Government) were beginning to lose their tenuous grip even before the “Cummings Lockdown Tour” of Durham and Barnard Castle was made public by the Guardian and Daily Mirror.

Several events have now occurred to undermine the government’s position – and our trust – even further.

  • Cummings’ Rose Garden press conference was a load of self-interested preposterous bullshit which revealed even more actions in which he had broken the rules.
  • The pathetic, craven, orchestrated defences of Cummings’ position by about 50% of the Cabinet simply destroyed any vestige of respect for the individuals concerned.
  • Johnson’s ill-judged defence of Cummings exposed him to a wider audience as weak, lacking judgement and, together with the previous point, strongly reinforced the message: “one law for us and another for everyone else”.
  • The many tales of raw emotion from those willing to tell their stories of self-sacrifice for the common good added a potent emotional impact to the narrative of hypocrisy and elitism.

For those tempted, or inclined, to “bend” the rules, “doing a Cummings” quickly became a source of self-justification. Key scientific opinion warned that England was easing lockdown restrictions too soon. There is widespread unease in public opinion too.

The previously announced change from the clear “stay at home” to the vaguer “stay alert” message started the rot and provoked much derision at the time. It’s been downhill for government credibility ever since.

Acting Suspiciously

So, we’ve just had a torrid couple of weeks when the government has totally lost whatever trust I had in them. I treat every single policy change with suspicion. Any so-called facts and figures from government sources I now double-check from other reliable sources of information. The daily (or now, weekdaily) government briefings have been reduced to propaganda exercises, with fiddled figures and disappearing graphs of international comparisons when they no longer served Johnson’s propaganda purposes.

A whole raft of announcements following the 25th May rose garden fiasco were made in the next few days, each one intended to provide “good news” in a desperate attempt to move the news agenda away from Cummings’ misdeeds:

  • Johnson’s bungled “return to work but not by public transport tomorrow or maybe Wednesday” announcement
  • The reopening of schools to years R, 1 and 6, which came as a surprise to those working in education and leaving too little time to prepare. The rationale for choosing reception and year 1 children as well as (the expected) year 6 has never been satisfactorily explained by the government.
  • Exactly the same pattern has been repeated in the announcement about the return of dentistry on Monday next. Dentists are complaining that they have had insufficient time to prepare. And what else? Sound familiar? Problems for dentists with getting sufficient PPE (Personal Protective Equipment).
  • Relaxations on socialising (meetings of up to 6 people in gardens as well as parks) are basically unenforceable, making it much easier to disobey them. A recipe for increasing the virus spread, I would say.
  • The much-publicised “track and trace” was “launched” last Thursday. Everybody except government knows this was a sham and the scheme will be up and running properly somewhere between the end of June and October, depending on your optimism. It’s the same old centralised-run scheme using private contractors such as Capita who in turn use unskilled staff with too little training. The promised NHS app, fanfared at the start of its trial on the Isle of Wight, has vanished out of sight for now. Rumours have it that it’s not working properly.
  • And for us shielding folk? The relaxations of the rules came as a complete surprise to NHS staff and to charities supporting people with the relevant pre-existing conditions. There has been no medical evidence whatsoever to justify the change. We’re meant to take it on trust. Which leaves us feeling confused and more vulnerable.

The new rules for England, unlike Wales and Scotland, do not specify a maximum distance people are allowed to travel – hence the crowded scenes at the weekend on our beaches and beauty spots.

Scientists and government advisers are increasingly distancing themselves from government policy announcements. Do you believe that R (the reproduction rate) will stay below 1.0? I’m far from convinced.

I simply don’t trust anyone in Johnson’s rabble. It seems to me to be a basic requirement for a functioning democracy that citizens trust their government in times of crisis. Johnson and company fail on all counts.

World Beating

So I find everything the government says and does delusional. If I hear another Government Minister say the words “world beating” I shall scream! Here’s one thing we’re world beating at. On Wednesday, deaths from coronavirus in the UK (359) were greater than for all of the EU27 countries combined (311). Here’s the graph:

Covid 19 Deaths 3 on 3rd June 2020

Full story here. And besides, why would we even want to beat the rest of the world on anything to do with the pandemic? Surely, if ever there was a time for global cooperation, for example in developing a vaccine, it’s now.

An Old, Old Enemy

So what underlies all this? I think it’s another manifestation of our old enemy, English Exceptionalism. To the rest of the world, with our plans to leave the EU, the chimera of “Global Britain” and so much more, we’re even more of a laughing stock. People in other countries pity us. Here are just a few examples:

Countless further examples are out there on the internet of the degree of contempt in which the UK is held around the world. It’s demeaning, it’s embarrassing – and it has to stop.

The message gets clearer all the time. If you don’t care whether your granny dies prematurely, carry on voting Conservative. Keep your illusions. It’s just that they’re getting more lethal by the minute.

Or… The case for a Government of National Unity, with Keir Starmer in a key role, gets stronger by the minute. Then there would be at least one grownup in charge.

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