No-one’s buying Matt Hancock’s excuse for more draconian restrictions on our lives

1. Yes we should be focused on the conflict of interests situated within the means of achieving sensible behaviour and the capacity that a right wing government has, with a heritage of wilful and wasteful oppression under its belt, and as the continual author of systemic corruption, for bleeding some of their class and cultural antipathies into policy heavy-handedly.

   They are acting like a narcissistic parent who wants a quiet life, hadn’t planned having offspring and doesn’t really know how to square what is with what they’d have liked. They’re at risk of finding themselves to be somewhat like my dad, gluing back together a toy steering wheel he stamped on or selotaping up a Snakes & Ladders board he tore up because he did not invest in his role mindfully. It’s a sleight of perception they’re slipping toward, as with not acknowledging that prior shoddiness and the dismantling of the NHS are behind some of the extent of the problem, and then passing the buck.

   ‘Or we’ll ban all exercise outside’. I think they’re about to push their luck a bit too far. We know it’s serious and that steps need to be taken by us all, and we know measures need to be mindfully and proportionately forceful. But it would be thoroughly stupid to overstep the mark this way. You would have mass disobedience over it if that’s where we’re going. The threat is counter-productive, and even making the threat prior to delivering it is probably going to be damaging. Still, they’ve messed up the rest of the matter so it’s no surprise. Bit weird having someone who has symptoms being able to make statements like this anyway, as surely he has some delirium, I mean outside of the delirium that Conservatism is already.

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2. Excellent quality article Emily Apple! This should be the quality that the mass media aim for.

   Of note, Sweden has taken a markedly relaxed approach to this, in comparison. OfC, their health and welfare systems aren’t as previously devastated.

   https://www.anti-empire.com/swedish-spring-no-coronavirus-quarantine-or-police-state-lockdown/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily+Headlines

   (It’s a propaganda site, but I checked with a Swedish mate and it all fact-checks out).

   So in other words, it is EXACTLY as you said – the severity of Covid-19 in the UK will be directly due to the negligence and incompetence of this Tory “govt”, but they and the media will try to pin the blame on the general public instead.

   Unfairly, even the ones who didn’t vote for them.

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3. I do not condone in any way Catherine Calderwood’s behaviour. For a supposedly intelligent woman it was stupid in the extreme. However, I do not remember Grampian police turning up at Balmoral to warn the heir to the throne, along with his wife and an entourage of six, that he was breaking the Corona virus advice. Hardly the best example for him to set especially as he was already showing symptoms before he left for Scotland. Moreover, he and his wife (I don’t know about the entourage) were tested by Grampian health services ahead of medical staff. Surely the house and grounds he was living in before he left are quite big enough for him to self-isolate? Dreadful example to set.

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4. “A picture paints a thousand words.”

   Pictures can also be used to distort the facts.

   I live in Brighton. I read several reports at the weekend of how “scores” of visitors were flocking there. There were photos of “crowds” on the beaches and seafront. These were all taken with long lenses which foreshorten distances, and make people look to be much closer together than they are. Photos taken from a drone and a local webcam gave a far more measured impression; of scattered small groups of people, keeping well apart from one another.

   My own visits to the seafront confirm the latter impression; not the dramatised reports. I also note a small, and very reasonable police presence.

   I detect something far more pernicious, however. There is a certain sort of Puritanism creeping into news reports, as well as statements from the likes of Hancock. People are, God help us, sunbathing! There is a growing air of: “Don’t you know there’s a war on? How dare you take pleasure in anything at a time like this?” It is OK to exercise, but the clear implication is that exercise should not involve anything approaching pleasure. Once we have punished ourselves with exercise, we must hurry back home – and woe betide anyone caught not reading their Bible.

   Why this shock horror reaction to people sitting in the sun, well away from others – actually taking pleasure in the spring? Is all joy to be put on hold in a time of crisis?

   The photo to which the caption I quote at the start belongs, shows a couple, sitting on a very empty beach, eating sandwiches, and being addressed by a policeman. There is no real indication as to what the policeman is saying to them. If, however, he is urging them to leave the beach, the question in my mind is: why? What harm are they actually doing?

   What disturbs me all the more is how many on social media are buying in to this new Puritanism.

   We believe that there are merits in social distancing – and I am prepared to accept those recommendations until it is proven otherwise. We also know that there are serious implications for physical and mental health around being apart from our fellow human beings. There are grave consequences also from being separated from nature.

   My internal jury is out as to how well or badly this government has handled the current crisis. We won’t truly know for months. But, when my neighbours start to judge me for wanting a bit of harmless sunshine, and are then, as a consequence, willing to accept – even advocate – cruel and draconian restrictions on my most basic freedoms, then I do start to worry.

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