Sunday, 22 March 2020
Wednesday, 18 March 2020
Wash your hands and sing "God Save the Queen'
“The United Kingdom has an enviable reputation for resilience. In a rapidly changing world, we are at the forefront of embracing new opportunities and seeking innovative solutions to emerging problems.” Foreword to Cabinet Office National Risk Register of Civil Emergencies, 2017
In the three years since its publication let us examine the innovative solutions to the most recent ‘emerging problem', the COVID-19, Conoravirus outbreak.
VENTILATORS: These assist respiratory functions, pumping oxygen into the blood for vital organs. They are the main supportive treatment for critical stage COVID-19 patients.
Health Secretary, Matt Hancock said he could not make guarantees that everyone who requires a ventilator will get one, saying: “We don’t make guarantees in healthcare”.
Dr Chaand Nagpaul, Chairman of the British Medical Association says UK’s lack of ventilators “is a result of a decade of under-funding”.
Former NHS trust chairman Roy Lilley has said, “I mean we’ve seen this coming. It’s pretty obvious we were going to need more ventilators and somehow or other, either we’ve been left flat foot and haven’t started to buy them quickly enough or we’ve tried to buy them and they’re just not there.”
HOSPITAL BEDS: Dr Nagpaul, said the UK has about “a quarter of the critical care beds that Germany has and that the country’s “starting position unfortunately has been far worse than many other of our European nations”.
Europe is the third biggest manufactuer of hospital beds after New Zealand and the USA. Former NHS trust chairman Roy Lilley said “This is capital equipment and the hospitals won’t have been buying them”. He doubted European producers would sell to the UK now we are leaving the EU.
PROTECTIVE CLOTHING: The Times reports that, “frontline hospital staff fear that doctors and nurses will die because of NHS guidance that they do not need to wear full protective equipment when caring for virus patients.”
TESTING: The World Health Organization has criticised the approach of countries like the UK that are not prioritising testing, with its director General, Tedros Adhanom, saying “you cannot fight a fire blindfolded … test, test, test”. The Guardian reports that a junior doctor in an emergency assessment unit has started a petition called “Test frontline NHS staff for Covid-19 as a priority”, which has so far attracted nearly 700,000 signatures.
The UK government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance was asked if the UK should have mass testing on the scale of South Korea which has tested more than 250,000 people out of a population of 51 million, and is bringing infections down. He replied, : “I think we need a big increase in testing. That’s what I’m pushing for very hard.”
PRIVATE HOSPITALS: Spain and Portugal have led the way by requisitioning private hospitals, their equipment and staff. The UK are going to pay £2.5 million a day to ‘buy in’ these facilities.
LOSS OF EARNINGS: In the UK those who have lost their incomes are entitled to £94 a week. The Irish government is giving workers who have lost their incomes the Euro equivalent of £203 a week. The generous UK ‘scheme’ doesn’t even cover the many phony self-employed. Firms like DPD, a delivery company, is insisting that employees who self-isolate will still have to pay the costs of renting vans and equipment. And have I mentioned the homeless? It’s impossible to voluntarily self-isolate if you are sleeping on the street. The state should requisition hotels for the homeless. There they can be be fed, kept warm and offered medical assistance.
CLOSING SCHOOLS: The government’s reason for keeping schools open is that working parents will be deprived of the free childcare they provide. Schools across Europe are closed. In Boris Johnson logic it is better for children to travel to school, mix with each other, come into close contact with dozens of adults and spread the virus.
If Jeremy Corbyn were PM today, millions would feel more secure. Even a journalist like Robert Peston, who spent years attacking him, is now making the case for something resembling a socialist response to the crisis.
“ ‘Community organising’ is one of the platitudes frequently offered when someone is bereft of political ideas. It is hard to do and often very dull. This time it is different.” As one Tory minister put it to Petson, these principles imply that Boris Johnson will almost certainly have to oversee a Government that for a good year or maybe longer will look quite socialist. The Minister added, 'We'll find ourselves implementing most of Jeremy Corbyn's programme'.
www.davidwilson.org.uk
Tuesday, 17 March 2020
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
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…
Monday, 16 March 2020
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
Saturday, 14 March 2020
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
― Naomi Klein
Thank you Italy for leading the way against bleak visions
Now please consider signing up to ‘Protect The People’
Thank you
Tuesday, 10 March 2020
LEFT FIELD
BRIAN ENO “This is an excellent and inspiring book. David is an adventurer and a freethinker, who did something truly useful with his life."
SIR TOM STOPPARD “David has lived a life and a half. The broken world needed people like David; it still does”
MANDLA LANGA, winner of the 2009 Commonwealth Writers' Prize: "David Wilson is a national treasure"
RICHARD HORTON, Editor of The Lancet: “You write absolutely beautifully. Thank you for your wonderful book”
CRAIG MURRAY, ex-UK Ambassador: “David’s entire life has been dedicated to trying to make the world a better place”
Destruction, death, hatred and war, but also hope, life, love and peace. A true story that takes you into a world of anti-war marchers and war criminals, celebrity musicians and shady art dealers. Music is never far away - A major theme - music as healer. You will meet Pavarotti and Clapton, Brian Eno, Bono and Bowie, as well as many who have found music to be a literal 'life saver'.
My journey as a lifelong rebel began when my father, one of the first Allied doctors into Bergen-Belsen, showed me photos of the camp --- This terrifying awakening to fascism led me to a lifetime of political activism --- As co-founder of War Child, I helped set up a mobile bakery that fed the starving people of Mostar --- My connection with the Balkans had started with a tempestuous marriage to a Croatian, and ended with my becoming first director of the Pavarotti Music Centre in Bosnia, helping those traumatised by war through its music programmes.
Left Field has now been on sale for four years in bookshops, as well as an e book and audio book. With the agreement of Unbound, my publishers, I am now offering all 37 chapters free online. This edition has allowed me to include many more photos than appeared in the hardback edition, as well as links to music recordings. The final chapter was written by Anne Aylor who has been my companion for much of this journey. She has been my muse, editor and amanuensis.
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