As Night follows Day

 

Night

Day

I didn't attend any of the Jubilee celebrations.  At a time of plague it seemed unwise.
So I was shocked at the pics of the crowds that weekend.  A million, or more, people cheek to cheek over several days.
You didn't have to be Nostradamus to foresee the consequences.


I'm wondering who authorised the above and like events.  If it was the Palace,  Her Maj must hate her subjects.  If it was the London Mayor, he must hate his voters.
If it was the PM and Downing St .... it was par for their course of ignorance and carelessness.

None of which excuses the responsibility of the attendees for their reckless venture into a plague pit.

It was a pain coming. It's been a pain going.

 

I broke a tooth.  I dunno when.  Yes, I was present at the time but I don’t catch everything. My eyes don’t see too well these days and I can be a bit absent minded.

A few weeks back, my tongue found that an upper molar no longer had a side, nor had it a middle.  The wall had collapsed and there was nothing within.
This took a bit of getting my head around .... as it were.

After a week of contemplating the inevitable I paced the neighbourhood looking for an NHS dentist.  All I could get was one who’d see me in a month.  I turned to Google and the phone.  It took me another two days. It can get wearing and it’s something very personal.

One number I was put through to a call centre in India !! 
Another I was put on call waiting.  “Your call is important to us.”  Obviously it isn’t.
111  I wasn’t prepared to queue for.
A lot of them didn’t do NHS despite their Goog listing.
One was ambiguous about it and had an online registration.  Fuck off.  This is the structure of my skull I’m worrying about, I need to talk to someone.

Eventually I found someone near Baker St who was prepared to see me in a week. 

So it came to pass,  I went over and found I was in the hands of a 4’10” micro babe with a  personality the size of a room. This instills confidence in the likes of me in a tight spot.   

I was laid flat and she had a look.  X Rays taken and it looked like it felt.  She said she could attempt an extraction but it was difficult and it might end up having to be finished in hospital.  Or I could opt for a direct hospital extraction, she didn’t know when that might be.  There’d be a wait.
I told her I was a “let’s do it now” kinda guy.  If she was up for it, I’d give  it a go.

I was booked in for a week later.  In the course of that week it began to give me gyp.

Psyched up, I trucked over for noon last Monday 16^th.   She was half an hour late. :facepalm:


We ran through the options again and I gave consent.  X Rays were taken (good ol’ Roentgen) and I laid horizontal.  I was numbed up, a process different to my last experience (15 ?? yrs ago),  a lot of pinpricks giving a quick, very local anaesthesia.
I was told to wave my left.hand if I wanted her to stop anytime.

I dunno what they did to hold my mouth open, couldn’t see a thing through the eye sheild I’d been given and I couldn’t feel it.   Anyway, she quickly got stuck in with her molar-grips.
 
She told me she was rocking it around to loosen it, and every now and then she would chant the mantra “keep breathing, keep breathing”.  I don’t know why, it was meaningless to me.  Why wouldn’t I ??   Mebbe it’s something they teach them at dental school to keep the rhythm going, like sailors sang sea shanties when pulling ropes. 

I’d no idea of time through this.  It all seemed very instant.  Some way in, I started to get jolts of pain and this was obvious so I got more numbed up. 
She was pressing hard down on my lower jaw, as if using it as a pivot or something and I had to wave my hand to tell her about this. 
It was getting a bit white knuckle.

We got to a point where she told me she’d got most of the tooth out but, as feared, it had fractured and the bit remaining ran deep.  She had another go and more pain.  She called in a colleague for consultation and, after more delving, concluded they couldn’t knock me out enough to keep me quiet and it was a hospital job.

She led me, in a shaky daze, back to reception where I put my X on some form then I shook her hand.  We’d just been through so much together.
When I got outside I realised I’d been too confused to put my mask on before going into reception.  Too late now.

Getting home I necked a couple of pain killers and they came up just in time for the pain foretold.
I looked at my copy of the paperwork and realised that I’d been on the table for 80 mins   Then I lay down, I was well jarred.


Yesterday I Googled how long an upper molar extraction would take.  Twenty to forty minutes.  Hey ho.

 

Last week in pictures

Beginning of the week I got this through my door from Sadiq.  I don’t find the picture in any way reassuring.

Later, Ricky Rhythm came round for a safeguarding visit.  Ostensibly I’m being safeguarded from going any madder in my hermitage.  Functionally I’m safeguarding him, his missus and their neoteen,  all working from home in a tiny flat.  (actually the lad is on school hol at the mo but it all still applies.)

A typical visit runs as:  matters of the day followed by a movie.  Something emotionally calming like “Cross of Iron” or intellectually stimulating like “Shaolin Soccer”. 
The end of the evening finds us invigorated and ankle deep in crisp crumbs and crown caps.

I showed him the leaflet and he took one look at the pic and said “No !!”  Then he started reading bits of it out loud and exclaiming “No!!”.  He said, one of the things he’d realised in the seventeen months he’s been locked down was that he never wanted to travel on fucking London Transport ever again.   I tried pointing out that it was TfL not fLT but couldn’t logically defend the difference myself.

He was already reaching for the bottle opener as I asked the obv next question  “So when are you going back to the office ??”
“Why is everybody asking me that ??!! ”
“Rishi’s latest initiative pal.  Haven’t you heard ??  Building on his previous experiment, everyone’s encouraged to return to the workplace.”
“What was his previous experiment ??”
“Eat out to help out.”
“The scheme that put a wave on top of the wave ??  Oh God.  Noooooo”

Coupla days later.  Picking my way through the stationary traffic across the Euston Rd, which may have been converted into a car park for all I can tell, I see a load of placards on a traffic island.

I made my way over to it to find out WTF. 

There were two ladies there, I chatted with one of  them as to what they were up to.  She said they weren’t part of any organisation,  just outraged citizens who wanted to draw attention to what was being steamrollered in.   i.e. internal vaccine passports and making things conditional on vaccination. 
I was particularly impressed with  “Nuremberg 1947.  No force or coercion in human experimentation.”
I commended them for their activism and wished them the best of luck with with their demo.



Fri  am, making my way back from Poundland (wherein much is more than a pound)  with a carrier bag full of crisps in anticipation of the next RR sanctuary bid,  the HS2 site is under heavy picket from Unite, the union.

I went over and asked them WTF ??

Turns out HS2 are reducing the rights of the workers there, not paying appropriate overtime payments, and not permitting Unite access to its members and non-members on site.  All of which, my informant tells me, is in violation of HS2’s agreement with the Govt.

I told him I didn’t think he’d get any support from any of the political parties.  Had he seen what Starmer had to say yesterday ??  He hadn’t.   The FT (I didn’t mention the paper, I’m not sure if it was diplomacy, shyness or just British reserve) reported him urging activists to embrace Tony Blair’s political legacy and be “very proud” of what was achieved under Blair.
He rolled his eyes.

I said I figured he’d be gone next year.  (But then, I think the same about Johnson.  Check the bookies for who will quit first :)

I asked him if he had a leaflet, and that cheered him up.  Then wished him success with the demo and good health.  Like what you do these days.

Then I did wend my way home.


They’re all activists.  The most successful one, the Mayor, is pissing into the wind.
The ladies have no one to voice their outrage through so have taken to the streets.
The mega infrastructure projecteers, one of whose justifications was the job creation, are engaged in union busting. 

 

Conspiracy Theories

The Geneva Convention Against Torture: Article Two, Section One “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability of any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification for torture.”

Jack Straw, Foreign Secretary, 2005. Evidence to Parliamentary Select Committee.

"Unless we all start to believe in conspiracy theories and that the officials are lying, that I am lying, that behind this there is some kind of secret state which is in league with some dark forces in the United States, and also let me say, we believe that Secretary Rice is lying, there simply is no truth in the claims that the United Kingdom has been involved in rendition full stop."

Jeremy Wright, Attorney General, apology to the Belhaj family, Parliament 10 May 18.

" The UK Government believes your accounts. Neither of you should have been treated in this way.
The UK Government’s actions contributed to your detention, rendition and suffering. The UK Government shared information about you with its international partners. We should have done more to reduce the risk that you would be mistreated. We accept this was a failing on our part.
Later, during your detention in Libya, we sought information about and from you. We wrongly missed opportunities to alleviate your plight: this should not have happened.
On behalf of Her Majesty’s Government, I apologise unreservedly. We are profoundly sorry for the ordeal that you both suffered and our role in it."


So, in Jack Straw's words, there is some kind of secret state which is in league with some dark forces in the United States.

Of course Condi Rice was lying.  Everybody in the Bush administration was lying.  Most everyone in the Blair administration was lying.

In 2004 the reasons given for attacking Iraq, WMD (in itself not a legal reason), had been exposed as a lie.

  
Why would the U.S. set up an extra-legal prison (Guantanamo Bay) if not to render and torture prisoners ??  
Why would anyone think they weren’t doing it elsewhere ??  

We now know, due to the Senate Select Committee study (2014)  of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program, that the US tortured prisoners to death.

We do know that one of the torturers’ overseers, who also destroyed evidence of torture, Gina Haspel is now head of the CIA.  And that former head of the CIA (and its torturers), Michael Pompeo, is now US Secretary of State.

We know that no one in the USA or the UK has been brought to book for extraordinary rendition and torture.


“The secret state ... in league with some dark forces” is Conspiracy Fact.




Kudos to the conspiracy theorists /citizen journalists who went to the airfields to note the ID numbers on the planes and examine the flight plans which led them to the conclusion that we were supporting the CIA’s rendition programme.



Jack Straw
(https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmselect/cmfaff/768/5121304.htm  Q23)

Jeremy Wright
https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2018-05-10/debates/B9AD50CD-9D54-41DA-A18B-1526E7658593/BelhajAndBoudcharLitigationUpdate

Senate Select Committee study of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program
http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/senate-intelligence-committee-study-on-cia-detention-and-interrogation-program

Fears of the Semites

Lockdown 2.  I live alone, shielding, so have no conversation except with my self which, I find, only reinforces my prejudices.  I miss other people’s opinions. 

I rang an old friend.  We first met around 1980 so you can count the decades on your own  fingers.  He moved out of town in the mid ‘90’s but has kept up as a treasured friend since.

He’s just become a grandad and I figured he’d be full of news about the neonate and judgments on the Arsenal.
If only.

He opened with “What do you think about Labour ?”
“What ?”
“I’m feeling a bit nervous when I go out for a walk.”

(I’d known him for about five years when I learned he was jewish.  If that’s the word.  It was in conversation with him and his missus one day, about Israel, when she’d said “But you must’ve known we were Jews ?”  Why should I ?  It doesn’t occur to anyone to ask someone their race.  Does it ? )

“Why ?  You live in Brighton for God’s sake.  Where are you getting your news from ?    Do you only read the Guardian and watch the BBC ?”

“I read the Guardian. Did you see Nick Cohen’s piece ?”
“No.  Nick Cohen is a bag of bile.  He’s a chickenhawk neocon who probably thinks War in Iraq is still a good idea and is looking forward to Israel fighting Iran to the last dead American soldier.
Guardian M.G. employs people like Carol Cadwalladr who’s just apologised to Aaron Banks for lying about him,  and Luke Harding whose Trump /Russia Collusion fabrications collapsed under the Muller Inquiry.  And his story about Mannefort visiting Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy has been shown to be false.  It’s a disgrace the way the Graun have disowned Assange after the scoops he gave them..  Likewise the rest of the MSM.”

I gave up on the Guardian when they sawed up a couple of computer hard drives to destroy the files  Snowden have given them.  I mean, if they’d set fire to a filing cabinet full of paper files that he’d brought in a suitcase, fair enough.  But to “destroy” software by cutting up a hard drive is the gesture of an idiocracy.

“What about when that woman MP said they should transport the population of Israel to the US ?”
“You mean Naz Shah.  That isn’t what she said.  From what I could make out she copied a tweet, a joke, from the twitter feed of prominent Jewish US academic Norman Finkelstein.  It’s a poor reworking of an old joke I first heard in 1966.
How do you solve the terrible problems of the world ?  Move the population of N.Ireland to Israel and the population of Israel to N.Ireland. “

He laughed.  It’s a good joke.

“You knew things had gone awry when Corbyn didn’t say ‘Je suis Naz’. 
The year before, we’d had the bloodiest handed tyrants and mass murderers of the world parading arm in arm in the streets of Paris for the right to spout offensive shit.  David Cameron was among them.
Instead, Cameron smeared Labour and Corbyn packed her off for reprogramming.

And another thing.  Just a few years before, US VP Joe Biden had told some meeting of Jewish dignitaries that  ‘it's fair to say that Jewish heritage is American heritage.’ “

“What about that mural ?”
“There are six people sat around the table.  Which two of them are Jews ?  What about the  people whose backs are supporting the table.  How many of them are Jews ? “
“But the hooked noses.”
“Are they ?  Some people see hooked noses where they care to look.  Have they ever been to France or Italy ?  Have they never heard of a ‘roman nose’ ?
The mural is typically ‘anti capitalist’, in the cartoon style I associate with Gilbert Sheldon of Furry Freak Brothers fame.”

“What about the eye in the pyramid above it.  It’s an Illuminati symbol ?”
“It’s also to be found on every dollar bill.  You don’t think the reserve currency deserves a mention in an anti capitalist mural ?”


“You surely don’t believe that conspiracy theory that it’s a smear campaign, do you ?”
“Not every conspiracy is a theory.  Just ask Guy Fawkes, it is November.
Antisemitism is traditionally the province of the right, not the left.  (he agreed.)


You don’t feel safe.  When I walk down the street, I don’t see ‘It’s all the fault of the Jews’ sprayed on the walls.  Marks and Spencers haven’t had their windows broken.
I’d like to see some quantification please.  Margaret Hodge submitted over two hundred antisemitism complaints last year but, it turned out only 20 of them concerned members of the Labour Party..
Half of all antisemitism complaints to the Labour Party in 2019 came from one individual. “


“But it’s all about Israel isn’t it.  Israel was set up as a safe home for the Jews.  If you’re anti Israel you’re anti Zionist and you’re against the Jews”.

“Christ on a bike, which school of philosophy did you go to ?  Not all Jews are Zionists  and not all Zionists are Jews.  Fact, most Zionists aren’t Jews.  Zionism is one of the tenets of the Evangelicals and over a quarter of the population of the USA describe themselves as Evangelicals.   VP Mike Pence is one of them. 
If I criticise Mike Pence for his Zionism it doesn’t make me an antisemite, it just means I find some of his beliefs a bit daft.”


“Have you read the EHRC?”
“It’s a hundred and thirty pages long.  No.  Have you ?”
“No.”
“I’ve read a few accounts by people who have.   Your fellow Brightonian Tony Greenstein for one.  (He’d never heard of him.  No reason why he should.)
Tony Greenstein was the first Jew to be expelled from the Labour Party for antisemitism.  I’ll just say those words again in case it sounded rational.  ‘Jew expelled for antisemitism.’

A lot of the ‘antisemitism’ expulsions have been Jews.

I’ll send you some links and in the meantime you can think about why Nick Cohen, Jonathan Freedland, Owen Jones and all the other shits at the Guardian etc haven’t metioned anything like what I have.

How’s the baby ??”


Turns out the baby’s bouncing and the parents are doing well too.  :thumbsup:


And I’m beyond disgusted that the media have created in people’s minds the illusion that it isn’t safe to walk the streets.


Joe Biden  http://www.politico.com/blogs/politico44/2013/05/biden-jewish-heritage-is-american-heritage-164525

Pandemic greeting

Where once we sprang across the space, arms outstretched eager to shake hands, we now greet at an antisocial distance. 
Like no longer lovers at the funeral of the friend who brought us together.

Jailbreak

Chuck came round the other night.  Yeah.  Exactly. At least it was after dark, so only he saw. 

He turned up on my doorstep seeking sanctuary.  Jailbreak. 
It’s not the first time but the period is getting shorter.  Chuck lives in a tiny flat with Mrs C and their lad. They’ve all been working from home since Lockdown.  Only one of them has won the prize for geography essay in that time.

Chuck’s been a home worker for a week longer than Lockdown.  The global corporation he works for is located at Kings X.  The top management there, knowing what the word “pandemic” meant and realising they were next to one of the largest transport hubs in the world, didn’t want their HQ staff breathing the air exhaled by virus carriers so they sent them to work from home.  VPN’s all round.

I let him in and, keeping an anti-social distance, prepared the route to the kitchen for him to decontaminate.  Doors have to be blocked open and the sink tap turned on.  Then I wait with the bottle of Fairy Liquid to squirt soap on his hands, after which I can leave him to it.  He washes himself and anything he’s brought with him.
I open the balcony door so’s we get a good circulation of air.  I too live in a tiny flat.  The balcony is no bigger than a railing.

So we sat and talked.  The family are all well, neither of us know anyone afflicted.  He tells me, apart from the necessary shopping interactions, he hasn’t seen anyone outside but me.

He tells me “The Govt are incompetent.  They’ve known since the end of January there was an epidemic on the way.” 
I point out, yet again, that no one voted for the present lot because they thought they were smart.  That wasn’t what the election was about.  Parliament had spent the previous two years choking us with their incapability.

He thinks they’ll restart the schools soon.  “When the lad goes back to school, I’ll have to stop coming to visit you.”
“You realise that may mean for a decade ??”
He blinked.
If the lad stays at home;  school, uni and a postgrad is ten years.

Doing the simple maths, with my simple understanding, the plague is highly contagious.  Two days after contracting it, you become infectious.  It may take a week before symptoms show.  The pupil takes it from home and infects the school before symptoms show at home.  The infected school kids take it home with them etc etc ....
School is transmission central.

I felt he was missing a link. “Have you thought about what you’re going to do to protect yourelves when the lad comes home from school every day ??”
The answer, obviously, was “No”.  It’s unthinkable because there’s nothing you can do.

There’s also the question of how you are going to protect the teachers facing the simple maths.


There’s no way to cover the schools’ risk until there’s a mass vaccination programme and that will be two years away. Assuming that immunity is possible, we don’t yet know.

Anyway, the core function of school is not to teach the “three R’s”, it’s to learn how to communicate with your social peers.  Hence the continued existence of public schools.


We turned to the near future.  I think suppression is necessary and that means a minimum of three months Lockdown.  My guess on the economic hit with that, and the ensuing unemployment costs, will knock out at least a quarter of annual GDP.  How to pay for it ??  Print money and /or borrow it.  It took 60yrs to repay our WWII loans, why be pussy now.

  Chuck thinks there’ll be a second wave in the autumn, I think the way they’re going it’ll be sooner.  We agree that public transport is a problem.  Apart from the crush, buses, tubes, trains all have air conditioning, recirculating air.  It’s guessed that’s why bus drivers have proved vulnerable. 

I figure the sooner they get people going back to work, the sooner the infection rate is going to go up.  The risk on public transport, and for office workers, is increased in an environment with recirculating air conditioning.

He also said, if he goes back to work the environment is going to be so weird.  His colleagues are going to be looking at him like he’s come to poison them.  And he’s going to be  looking at them as though they’ve come to poison him. 


I think it’s likely that Lockdown will break down soon.  He’s sat on my sofa, allotments are suddenly popular with former pub regulars, and the girls I pass on the street have a look in their eye that says “It’s Spring”.