We are inside 'Catch 22'

We are living in Joseph Heller’s Catch 22. Set inside a US Air Force unit in World War II Italy, Heller's novel sets out a devastating critique of the rackets carried out, ostensibly, as part of a nation’s war policy.

“I distribute my plum tomatoes under an assumed name,” said Milo, “so that Colonel Cathcart can buy them up from me under his assumed name at four cents apiece and sell them back to me the next day for the syndicate at five cents apiece. They make a profit of one cent apiece. I make a profit of three and a half cents apiece, and everybody comes out ahead." “Everybody but the syndicate,” said Yossarian. “The syndicate is paying five cents apiece for plum tomatoes that cost you only half a cent apiece. How does the syndicate benefit?” “The syndicate benefits when I benefit,” Milo explained.

Dominic Cummings is our Milo, Boris Johnson is Squadron Commander Major Major Major, always in when he's out and out when he's in. The long-suffering Yossarian is you and me.

Here is George Monbiot in today's Guardian: "When the government did at last seek to mobilise the system, crucial bits of the machine immediately fell off. There is a consistent reason for the multiple, systemic failures the pandemic has exposed: the intrusion of corporate power into public policy. Privatisation, commercialisation, outsourcing, and offshoring have severely compromised the UK’s ability to respond to a crisis ….at the end of the chains are manufacturing companies, some of which have mysteriously been granted monopolies on the supply of essential equipment. These private monopolies have either failed to meet their contracts, or provided defective gear to the entire NHS, like the 15 million protective gloves and the planeload of useless surgical gowns that had to be recalled.”

 

Who are the Cranks?

 

A friend asked me yesterday why I was writing so many blogs on the coronavirus. In slow motion here’s my answer.

I started this one today at 6 am after waking from a curious dream. In it, my wife and I were eating dinner cooked by one of our best friends, a life-long vegetarian. Her Irish father ran 'The Vegetarian Cafe' in London's Earls Court ten years before Cranks claimed to be the pioneers in vegetarian catering. 

In the dream meal she had seared a large slab of steak for me. I was puzzled because she told me I must eat it to stay alive. I tucked into the meat, but cannot tell you how it tasted because I woke feeling guilty. I was strangely moved because, not only had her dream-self tolerated the death of this poor cow, she had cooked it for me.

This dream was a double surprise, not just because the cook had abandoned her long-held beliefs, but also because, although not vegetarian, I have chosen not to eat cows since being given a bovine heart valve. I don’t eat pork either because pigs are intelligent. I know, lambs are cute and chickens can count!

My heart operation was the second of a trio of health crises over the last six years. First was a subdural haematoma and brain operation. Later, I had open-heart surgery, then a stroke caused by a bacterial infection that necessitated a 7-week hospital stay.

A couple of weeks ago I had a call from the Stroke Association to ask how I was getting on during the Covid-19 crisis. The friendly woman told me, “You do know you are high risk and looking at your records, you’re very high risk.”

I told her that I am lucky because I am in lockdown with my wife and that I have good friends and neighbours, including a total stranger who has been food shopping for us.

Here’s a sobering statistic. To date, a city the size of Salisbury has died from Covid-19. 

 

Ill and old, I know that I am on Dominic Cummings’ ‘to be culled’ list.

So here’s the answer to my friend’s question. This murderous government keeps my blogs going and flowing. So long as my cow forgives me for that dream meal, and my right hand continues to connect to my brain to type, I will fight these state assassins with my blogs.

I leave you on a positive note. Last night I attended a Zoom meeting of the North East Peoples Assembly. Watched by 4,500 people, I know that our numbers are growing.

And if you need help, or want to offer help to others, I recommend contacting your local Mutual Aid group.

Trashing the Country

 

Rowena Mason  in the Guardian writes, “The decision to set out an ambition to reopen schools and some shops in June and some hospitality venues in July – without the epidemic in care homes and hospitals yet under control – also shows Boris Johnson has also been swayed by the hawks in his cabinet.’

 

I wouldn't give the man credit for anything more than being swayed by a personality shaped by membership of  the Bullingdon Club in Oxford forty years ago. 

 

Harriet Sherwood interviewed a woman in The Guardian who recruited members to the Bullingdon Club at Oxford in the 1980s when Boris Johnson was a member. 

 

The woman said: “The whole culture was to get extremely drunk and exert vandalism. Every time someone was elected, they had to have their room smashed to pieces. People talk about the Bullingdon Club ‘trashing’ places, but it was serious criminal damage.”  

 

One former member told The Daily Beast how they sprayed the walls of the room of the person they were initiating into membership with champagne, tearing photographs, and cutting up mattresses. 

 

An 'initiate' classmate of Johnson told how he endured the ritual. At the end of it, he shook Johnson’s hand, was congratulated and told, "you have been chosen.” 

 

“We always hired whores,” he added, “but there is not really much point in hiring a prostitute if you consume two bottles of champagne.”

Today as Prime Minister, Johnson is exerting vandalism on a far greater scale and trashing the whole country. In following the 'hawks' he is no longer spraying walls with champagne, but our lives with death. 

 

How many of you are happy to have been ‘chosen’?

 

www.davidwilson.org.uk

Boris Johnson 'on the downward slope'

 

Boris Johnson says we are 'past the peak’, ‘on the downward slope’, and have 'been through a long alpine tunnel’. (Government Press Conference, 30.04.2020).

In 2012 when skiing in the Italian Alps he ran over an eight year old boy. He followed this with the admission that, "In the course of a 35-year skiing career of relentless incompetence, I have been involved in some of the most epic prangs ever witnessed."

All very amusing except for that boy, but now the setting for his ‘relentless incompetence’ and ‘epic prangs’ are no longer ski slopes. A whole nation is there for him to tumble and fall about in. Worryingly the Alpine references remain.

Here is sanity from Richard Horton, Lancet Editor who tweets this today.

Daily UK deaths this week. 813, 413, 360, 586, 765, 674, 739. We may be ‘past the peak’ but the number of daily deaths is a human catastrophe. Many of these deaths were preventable. News headlines should not be about meeting the 100 K testing target. They should be about these deaths

The Joker

CORONAVIRUS UPDATE (17.03.2020)

Boris Johnson told business leaders on 16 March that the effort to manufacture more ventilators should be called “Last Gasp’. Meanwhile the company ready and willing to make millions of them has not received one order from the NHS. What a joker!

 

The ‘government’ is going to pay over £2.5 million a day to use private hospital beds. Meanwhile the Spanish have requisitioned them. This means the private health companies will make a profit out of the pandemic. Coincidence or planned?

Theatres are ‘advised’ to close but not ordered to. This means they cannot operate insurance cover and many smaller venues and theatre companies will go the wall, but hey a business opportunity for new property development. Coincidence or planned?

The UK is second from bottom in Europe for level of support to ill workers. In France, employees can exercise what is known as “the right of withdrawal” from work by walking off the job if they believe their health and safety are at risk, without having wages docked or facing punishment. In the UK no such luck with just £94.25 a week sick pay.

Meanwhile non-tax payer Richard ‘hold em to Ransom‘ Branson asks for £billions as airline ‘Coronavirus compensation’.

As the Italians say (who are increasingly on strike over all this) BASTA - Enough. My Jewish friends would add ‘Already’.

Keep well and don’t get upset - organise.

 

My regular blogs are here: www.davidwilson.org.uk

Need more information than you can get from MSN. Here are a few websites/ Facebooks for you. Twitter is also a useful source of information and debate

THE CANARY
https://www.thecanary.co/

NOVARA MEDIA
https://novaramedia.com/

WEAR RED
https://www.patreon.com/weearred

SKWAWKBOX
https://skwawkbox.org/

VOX POLITICAL
https://voxpoliticalonline.com/

EVOLVE POLITICS
https://evolvepolitics.com/

ANOTHER ANGRY VOICE

https://www.facebook.com/Another-Angry-Voice-185180654855189/

 

JOHN PILGER

http://johnpilger.com/

JONATHAN COOK

https://www.jonathan-cook.net/

 

and this US website

 

COUNTERPUNCH

https://www.counterpunch.org/

 

There are many more.

Finally there is ...

ARTIST TAXI DRIVER – a regular short and funny video‘take’ on the day's news.

https://twitter.com/chunkymark…

 

Boris Johnson's Cardinal Richelieu

 

 

 

William Hannage, Professor of Epidemiology at Harvard University, says of the UK, “Your house is on fire, and the people whom you have trusted with your care are not trying to put it out ….the UK government has inexplicably chosen to encourage the flames, in the misguided notion that somehow they will be able to control them. I assumed that reports of the UK policy (on Coronavirus) were satire – an example of the wry humour for which the country is famed. But they are all too real.”

 

This fire is taking place while the Cardinal Richelieu of the Boris Johnson regime, Dominic Cummings, sits at the centre of government policy.

 

Cummings wrote in a blog in 2016 that he is 'particularly interested in public health and the field of epidemiology … It is already the case that farmers use genomes to make predictions about cows’ properties and behaviour … It is already the case that in vitro fertilisation can select the egg which will be most advantageous with the highest prediction for IQ.’

 

These are the thoughts and words of Boris Johnson’s senior adviser.

 

They say judge a man by his friends. Cummings had Andrew Sabisky appointed as his subordinate. A step too far when it emerged that he had made comments in support of eugenics, and the relative intellects of black and white Americans.. He resigned.

 

But Cummings admits to a strong continuing friendship with Stephen Hsu, a theoretical physicist who is currently searching for an intelligence gene. Even though mainstream science has pretty much scrapped the notion that race has any kind of biological basis long ago, that hasn’t stopped Hsu from trying to link intelligence with race.

 

So Cummings, Sabisky, Hsu and we must assume Boris Johnson, are eugenicists, believing in the practice of selection of ‘desirable’ traits for the ‘improvement’ of humans.

 

And today their beliefs lie behind the “Herd’ policy of allowing the Coronavirus to take its course and thereby dictating the outcome of your and my fate.

 

Anthony Costello, Professor of International Child Health and Director of the University College London Institute for Global Health, questioned the tactics behind the ‘Herd’ policy and argues they are against the policy set down by WHO. He tweeted a series of questions showing scepticism, including: 'Will it impair efforts to restrict the immediate epidemic, and cause more infections and deaths in the near term?' He also questioned whether coronavirus causes strong herd immunity or 'is it more like flu where new strains emerge each year needing repeat vaccines?'

We like to criticise China as a totalitarian regime, but there
the epidemic has been contained after seven weeks of intense national effort, and by NOT following the ‘Herd Eugenicists’.

 

I am not happy with Cummings and his friends having any say in my possible mortality. Are you?

 

www.davidwilson.org.uk

Protect the People

“Many more families are going to lose their loved ones before their time”, Boris Johnson

“This, without a doubt, is neoliberalism’s single most damaging legacy: the realization of its bleak vision has isolated us enough from one another that it became possible to convince us that we are not just incapable of self-preservation but fundamentally not worth saving.”
― Naomi Klein

Thank you Italy for leading the way against bleak visions

https://prruk.org/coronavirus-sparks-nationwide-strikes-in-italy/?fbclid=IwAR3dLkKhwFdcROatGIQ8FnxlOyi_QTagfyVwYkTo0hXaPGicYAI8PcZA6Uc

Now please consider signing up to ‘Protect The People’

https://www.protectthepeople.co.uk/?fbclid=IwAR0OLD8IftLhpb-zyw6h0HY-01bZhd1AO4wZBIUdrKCVhHMF1NkX976ZMdA

Thank you

David Wilson

further reading 

 

www.davidwilson.org.uk

Corbyn is 'hopelessly out of date'

Tony Blair, with his wife and children, own ten houses and twenty seven flats. Their London house in Connaught Square is worth over £8 million.

 

Yesterday he emerged from Connaught Square to do the rounds of the studios and tell us that The Labour Party must "build a new progressive coalition" with the Lib Dems. 

 

He attacked Jeremy Corbyn for advocating policies "which are hopelessly out of date and not suitable for addressing the problems of the 21st Century." He went on to warn us that "Labour's aim is not to trend on Twitter or to have celebrities temporarily fawn over us, our task is to win power".

 

This from the man described by the BBC as “the arch-exponent of celebrity endorsement.”

 

Amongst those who ‘fawned’ over Tony at No 10 when he was PM, were Sting, Sir Elton John, Bono, David Bowie, Bob Geldof, Mick Hucknall. Joan Collins, Dame Judi Dench, Cilla Black, Clive Anderson, Rosie Boycott, Delia Smith, Sir Richard Branson, Melvyn Bragg, Kevin Keegan and not forgetting Phil Redmond, the creator of Brookside. The theatre director Trevor Nunn, the conductor Sir Simon Rattle and the architect Lord Rogers, also sipped and supped with him. The full list is boringly longer.

 

Here is what is out of date. Tony Blair’s personal ‘fortune’ is, according to that left-wing newspaper, The Daily Telegraph an estimated £60 million.

 

This in the context of a country where the richest 1% of own more than twenty times the wealth of the poorest 20%.

 

An Oxfam study concluded that “more than 20 times” is an understatement with The Office for National Statistics emphasising that information on wealth inequality in the UK is "seriously incomplete" and that it’s particularly hard to measure the wealth of the very rich.

 

In the world as a whole the richest 1% have more than twice as much wealth as 6.9 billion people. 

 

While people at the top get influence, opportunities, power and invitations to pontificate in TV studios , people living in poverty miss out on the basics - like a decent education, healthcare, food and jobs. The ‘out of date’ Corbyn has been there to remind us of these facts.

 

On the same day that Blair was cabbing it from Connaught Square to Sky News and on to the BBC, Jeremy Corbyn was visiting flood victims in Rhydyfelin in Pontypridd. Two days earlier he was helping feed the homeless in Slough while the shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell, was at Belmarsh visiting the imprisoned truth-teller, Julian Assange.

 

Fuck knows where Boris Johnson was and I doubt we want to know!

Are we really sure the right person is in No 10 today?

Spring is on its way

Here is Nigel Farage in celebratory mood and joyous Brexiteers in Parliament Square last night. 

Our (but not my) PM was nowhere to be seen. He has already done his flag stunt. 

 

We have to settle for his video message which opens with these words, "For many people this is an astonishing moment of hope”. 

There is only one true word in that sentence - ‘astonishing’. I am astonished that this country has moved so fast from hope to despair. When I woke up this morning I thought of this picture from Mel Brooks’ ‘Springtime for Hitler’. 

Unfortunately we are going to have to get down and dirty before we can mock and laugh. We are going to have to learn from the French and that will be no joke.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kon0rmLQE7U