Time for a Tune: click Here

Right, now on with the show.  The Flatulent Leader – or should I say, Our Sergeant Major ? – is presiding over a rotten show.  And I for one am sick of it and sick of him

I am sick of the stench of corruption – planning decisions taken for the sake of a grubby donation, lies, incompetence, greed, stupidity, bluster.

At our school, the top set in each year comprised Form A; the also-rans made up Form B, but worst of the lot were a group of hopeless cases known collectively as “The Remove,” whose habitat, so far as I remember, was behind the bike shed, where they traded cigarettes and dirty magazines.   I can’t think of a better word for our government: Remove

Rebecca Long-Bailey has been sacked. That is a sorry end for somebody who stood as a candidate for the party leadership in an election less than 3 months ago.

I do not propose to go into the arguments over what exactly she did, or didn’t, because there is another far more important point. By saying that L-B did not measure up to the standards he has set Starmer has shown both a ruthlessness and, far more importantly, a determination to apply a key principle:  high standards of behaviour, and comment are required to be a member of the shadow cabinet.  Would that the government had the same approach rather than foisting liars, cheats, fools and worse on a long suffering public.

The stench of corruption in public life comes from the government benches; and the government benches only.

Lord Jonathan Sumption, retired Supreme Court judge and all round good egg, says that in his opinion* “you have to go back to the early 1930s to find a British Cabinet as devoid of talent as this one.”  He places, to coin a phrase, disappropbrium on the head of the Flatulent Leader as follows: “The Prime Minister, who in practice makes most of the decisions, has low political cunning but no governmental skills whatever. He is incapable of studying a complex problem in depth. He thinks as he speaks – in slogans.”   Such  ill-government has consequences, which follow inevitably as night follows day, “These people have no idea what they are doing, because they are unable to think about more than one thing at a time or to look further ahead than the end of their noses. Yet they wield awesome power. They are destroying our economy, our cultural life and our children’s education in a fit of absent-mindedness.”

Well, I beg to differ.  It may be that the Flatulent One has no idea of the disaster he is setting in flow, but there are those who do: those to whom he is beholden.  I think Lord Sumption may be correct in thinking that those in high office are dullards, who do not appreciate the ‘catastrophe’ they have let loose, but there are those behind them who do, absolutely.  Whether that is our country’s political and diplomatic enemies, or whether it is a shady group of hostile mercenaries (the “fund managers”) to whom I have alluded in the past, or, quite possibly, both is a matter for conjecture.  But I suspect that the government is dancing to the tune of some very malign force.

Which raises a question: what constitutional safeguards do we – or any democracy – have when the appointed government ceases to act in the national interest; is, not to put to fine a point on it,  intent on damage of a hitherto unimaginable scale?

• Sumption wrote in the Daily Mail

Brexit: the UK will be freed to go out and forge our own trade agreements, and one of those towards the top of the list is with Australia.   Good old Oz: they’ll help us out, they’re more or less British anyway.  Like Hell they are.

Former Australian  Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has called the Brexit Trade Plan – if it can be so honoured – “utter bollocks.”  Former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has said much the same, explaining that to walk away from a market of 500m people is madness, and that, whether we like it or not, Australia’s place in the world is as part of the Asia Pacific region.  From an Australian perspective the trade that matters is with China, Japan, Indonesia, New Zealand, the Philipinnes… not the UK.  And as it happens, far from being sun-burnt cousins, most Australians are well aware that the Australian founding fathers were British rejects: “what goes around comes around,”  as you might say.

I am aware of the ambiguity of today’s headline: it could be a reference to the apparent success of hard-line Brexiters in government in pressing ahead with their insane program of national destruction.  But, it isn’t.  It is instead a reference to the collective sigh  of relief at relaxation of the toughest of the lock-down restrictions: we are heading into a Fool’s Paradise.  Now I’ll tell you why.

I cannot call it a government “plan,” because there clearly is not one, but there is, let us call it a prime ministerial plea, for the public to go out and spend.  Shops, cafés and restaurants can now open, people are returning to work, the 2-m rule is teetering on withdrawal.  Breathe easy and let spondulicks flow.

The re-awakening of the UK is patchy: devolved governments are markedly more cautious than Johnson’s – but then they do not have the same requirement to get the donations rolling in.  The lock-down could not go on for ever, and other European countries are also opening up.  I believe the UK is unique in imposing quarantine restrictions on those coming from countries with lower rates of infection, but for this argument, that’s a quibble.  The point is,  any re-opening is fraught with danger.

Take, for example, the case of New Zealand, where there have been no new cases for 24 days.  That is until a day or two ago, when 2 new cases were found (as it happens amongst people coming into the country, but that is by-the-by).  From those 2 cases the NZ active tracing program has identified 320 “contacts,” to any one of whom the virus could have been passed.  Yesterday the UK reported 1,115 new cases.  You can work out the rest for yourselves.

I am not a doctor. In the words of Anthony Hancock, (though it might equally well have been said by Matt of that ilk), “I never really bothered,” but the son of a friend of mine is: he is a research scientist specialising in virology and immunology at a leading UK university.  If his father is to believed, he says that amongst his colleagues it is not regarded as possible that there will be a “second spike,” but as certain, and it will likely start around September.

My advice – and I stress, I am no doctor – is stay cautious, and keep your hands in your trouser pockets.

Forget the virus.  Stress is one of the biggest killers of our times.  Nobody knows how many it knocks off each years, but almost certainly tens of thousands (I’m thinking in terms of the UK).  And the concept of stress can be subjective: we all think we are going through it.

One thing can be cleared up: stress is not pressure.  Pressure comes, for example,  from taking a “big” decision, a decision with consequences.  In its most malign form stress is not far removed from frustration: it is the inability to alter circumstances that eats away at you, body and soul.

Hang on: this is supposed to be a blog about politics, not matters medicinal. It is: because the damage that Johnson and his team of incompetents are doing is not confined to their mismanagement of the virus, and the economy.  By pressing ahead with policies (take your choice: Brexit, dismembering the Dept. for International Development… ) vigorously opposed by at least half the country, they are working up  to the biggest incidence of stress related disease that this country has endured for many a long year.

“There’s no such thing as a free lunch,” or so says the proverb.  Well, there will be just that for needy children this summer  Thanks to a government u-turn.

Don’t misunderstand me, I am delighted that the government has changed its mind on this important issue, but appalled that it should have had to: it should not have got its policy direction so wrong in the first place.

The coronavirus pandemic has taught us one thing, if no other: personal relations, and other people are the most important thin in life.  The idea of our government – composed, incidentally,  of some of the richest men in the land – simply looking the other way when children are going hungry is shameful.

It is very nearly equally shameful when the only reason they change what passes for their minds is pressure from outside.

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The WHO says the UK is still in the “active” phase of coronavirus – and people should adhere to the rules and behave with caution.

Boris Johnson – who has not attended a COBRA meeting for over a month –  says “shop with confidence;” or, to put it another way, “shop ’til you drop.”

It is now clear to all but the most dense that Brexit was a rich man’s game: the idea  being, persuade by any means possible the plebs to vote for it, and meanwhile take out almighty bets against the British economy.

Chillingly, the virus response is going the same way: a few plebs and proles are dispensable: profit isn’t.  Simple as that.

David Cameron’s sister-in-law is to take over from Ozzie Osborne as editor of the London Evening Standard.  Fans of Ozzie – if there are any, which I doubt, given the damage he wreaked on the country – will be delighted to know that he moves onwards and upward to be “editor-in-chief.”

It seems the old mantra that what counts is who you know has not expired quite yet.

I saw this comment on social media this morning

What more need be said ?