The way it is

Is our government doing a reasonable job, given the 'circs'?  I do not know!  I haven't a clue!  My guess is that they are 'stumble-bumming' along to the best of their very average ability.  That's OK with me because, first of all, I do not have a complete grasp of the myriad problems they face and second of all, I do not think they are 'supermen' - ooops, or 'superwomen'!  They are, I guess, much the same as the Cabinets who ruled over us during the last two World Wars - now, they were truly dangerous and problematic times.  In both cases, the politicians involved 'stumble-bummed' along to the best of their ability and in the end - we won!

Of course, it is true that the 'enemy' at the time were other politicians even more dim, dumb and daft than ours, so that provided us with a significant advantage.  Today, the 'enemy' is a 'bug-a-boo' so tiny that several thousands could occupy the head of a pin.  There are multiple 'zillions' of them and they behave to no fixed agenda.  Thus, we are utterly dependent on the 'swots' who have risen to eminence in various fields.  They, of course, underneath their 'yuuuuuuuge' brain-boxes are just men and women like us.  So, just like us, they will push their theories and forecasts and sometimes they will be right and sometimes wrong.

Trying their best to choose between these conflicting theories will be our afore-mentioned politicians.  They will have to take the decisions - yeeeeeeeees quite!  Even so, they are both democratic and patriotic politicians.  Thus, they will, just like in dangerous times of old, 'stumble-bum' along trying their best to do their best for all of us!  At least we are not ruled over by some megalomaniac dictator who actually detests us and secretly hopes that 'zillions' of us will die and save him the problem.

So, my friends (and enemies) just do what I used to do 'back in the day' when I would be sent on a hideously long route march carrying a ton of kit, just grit you teeth and, metaphorically speaking, keep putting one foot in front of the other!

 

 

Comments

[Backofanenvelope]

"Today, the 'enemy' is a 'bug-a-boo' so tiny that several thousands could occupy the head of a pin"

Wrong. The enemy is China. The country and its ruling class.

[Whitewall]

and the virus infecting China is Communism.

[Loz]

Correct, BOE & Whiters, and a whole lot of other "frenemies" whose pols are pissing all over our pols in the handling of the crisis.

The judgement is not how well HMG performs in absolute terms vs C19 - which is currently awful anyway - but how well it performs relative to all the other governments - which is currently beyond awful.

SoD

[misssred]

and as you are marching, you can sing silly songs with no meanings! (i think the welsh wrote the lyrics to those silly songs.)

[Loz]

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/

Click the "Deaths per million" column to sort in descending order. We're 5th from the top in deaths per million people.

And the 4 in front of us are all past the peak and / or 2+ weeks ahead of us.

Can Blighty's "Envy of the world" go all the way and ring the bell in the "Bring out your dead stakes"?

SoD

[JK]

https://oldafsarge.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-roughnecks-of-sherwood-forest.html

Sure enough it's off-topic but ...

[Bob]

Communism makes people behave cruelly and stupidly, and it deserves no defense. However, the origin of SARS and C19 have just as much to do with Chinese country bumpkins. In their culture wild animals have been used in folk medicines and traditional dishes for centuries. Since China is still an emerging nation, many have to rely on wet markets since they don't have access to more expensive Western style markets. They see the efforts to close wet markets as Big Government overreach (emphasis mine):

"In response to the deadly outbreak of coronavirus 2019-nCoV (see Nature http://doi.org/dk47; 2019), China has temporarily banned the sale of wildlife in markets, restaurants and online. Given that much of this trade is already illegal, stricter enforcement and prosecution measures are needed if the consumption of wild animals is to be brought under control.

At present, prosecutions are often obstructed because of inconsistencies in the naming of species (Z.-M. Zhou et al. Nature 525, 187; 2015). Online trading in low-profile illegal wildlife as pets is commonplace (Y.-C. Ye et al. Conserv. Sci. Pract. http://doi.org/dk49; 2020). And the public’s desire for exotic wildlife products remains undiminished — particularly for use in traditional medicines. Dodging the law on such a scale is a disaster for global biodiversity and animal welfare, as well as for human health.

When, or if, wildlife trade is again permitted, it must be better scrutinized so that stringent hygiene and quarantine standards at markets can be enforced. Advertisements will need to include the scientific names of species as well as their provenance. Supplies from licensed captive breeders must be properly regulated and inspected — a step that would also help pin down violations of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES)."

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00378-w

[Bob]

The situation in China reminded me of that in the US during the Great Depression, when a lot of country folk got leprosy (Hanson's disease) from armadillos:

"During the Great Depression, Americans were known to eat armadillo, known begrudgingly as "Hoover hogs", a nod to the belief that Herbert Hoover was responsible for the economic despair facing the nation at that time.[25][26]"

"Armadillos are often used in the study of leprosy, since they, along with mangabey monkeys, rabbits, and mice (on their footpads), are among the few known species that can contract the disease systemically. They are particularly susceptible due to their unusually low body temperature, which is hospitable to the leprosy bacterium, Mycobacterium leprae. (The leprosy bacterium is difficult to culture and armadillos have a body temperature of 34 °C (93 °F), similar to human skin.) [17] Humans can acquire a leprosy infection from armadillos by handling them or consuming armadillo meat.[18] Armadillos are a presumed vector and natural reservoir for the disease in Texas and Louisiana and Florida.[19][20] Prior to the arrival of Europeans in the late 15th century, leprosy was unknown in the New World. Given that armadillos are native to the New World, at some point they must have acquired the disease from old-world humans.[18][20]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armadillo#Armadillos_and_humans

[Loz]

Looks like Social Services could have helped Blighty into an Arsenal-like 4th place already ...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/14/care-homes-coronavirus-why-we-dont-know-true-uk-death-toll

France - you know, that place of stunning bureaucracy that is, however, able to count the C19 deaths in its care homes more promptly than Blighty - includes its care home deaths in the count already, but Blighty does not.

Social Services is never too keen to count its death toll and abuses of course, as observed when the media had to drag out of them the fact they were starving and dehydrating 10,000 elderly and vulnerable people to death every year, and handed 1,300 vulnerable girls over to Pakistani Muslim rape gangs for use as masturbation toys.

I heard another one about Blighty's so called "Social Services" recently. They managed to increase the rate of re-offending by paedophiles. By pounding offenders with CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy), which requires the paedos to constantly revisit their sexual thoughts when most of them want to try and eradicate sexual content from their lives, the rate of re-offending was 8% higher compared to a control set who weren't given CBT.

Makes you wonder if Social Services isn't run for the sole benefit of paedos, doesn't it?

Anyway, Ireland and Germany count care home C19 deaths into their numbers too, but we've already overtaken them without counting our care home deaths, so we'll have no late challenge from their direction.

Now, if France's figure is 50%-ish from care homes and that's similar in Blighty then our number should be double what it is currently stated as.

Definitely a Champions League position for next year when the second wave arrives, and maybe even a trophy.

SoD

[david morris]

All the very best to you & Memsahib, Maestro.

& instruct SoD to get back in his box, unless (in light of the non existent leadership emanating from Bruxxles) he wants to publicly recant his slavish admiration for all things EU ?

Kind regards

[Loz]

Bob, the Chinese commie Country-Bumpkins have got nothing on Dorset.

You wanna see what they eat there ...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/4747249.amp/

Owls.

Who in their right mind would eat a fucking owl?

SoD

[JK]

Apologies. Pre-publicly released scientific research.

[JK]

"The findings appear in the advanced access online edition of the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution."

[Loz]

NHS begging for donations on "Amazon Wish Lists" ...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52274360

I know the humiliation is beyond all thresholds of pain. But it's the only way real change will come: hold up truth to power. Again, and again, and again.

Here's a Dorset owl sandwich to cheer you up, Gaffer! ...

https://images.app.goo.gl/sfridjd952ckfMAy9

SoD

[Bob]

SoD,

People eat roadkill here too, and quite a few hunt their own meat. You might not know what you're missing. If you want to try Coyote or Oryx or lots of others, order here:

https://www.exoticmeatmarkets.com/Exotic-Meat-Market-in-Indianapolis-Indiana-s/449.htm

It would be something adventurous to do during lockdown. I might start making my food look like something my mom would have given me when I was 6, like the owl sandwich, before much longer.

[JK]

https://theferalirishman.blogspot.com/2020/04/this-is-quite-interesting-12-minute.html

As we're on the subject of eating roadkill ... anyway folks just indulge me and spend the twelve minutes of your lockdowns because what else is there to do anyway?

Yeah I know it sounds crazy ... but then again so does Climate Change.

[Backofanenvelope]

I think it is essential that China be punished for the catastrophe they have inflicted on the world. If, as the UK government thinks, the UK economy shrinks by 20%, we'll all be spending less. Including buying from China. The UK gov could set an example by cancelling the Huawei 5G entry into the UK.

[Loz]

Can you Adam and Eve it? ...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/15/romanian-fruit-pickers-flown-uk-crisis-farming-sector-coronavirus

Brexit Britain still flying in Johnny Foreigner to pick Blighty's own fruit and veg, while unemployment soars and all the benefits go on the slate.

Quite incredible.

SoD

[Whitewall]

SoD, cut back on the benefits-I don't know what "on the slate" means- and more unemployed will show up to pick. Usually these labor imbalances because "domestic workers just won't do it" leaves off the other half of the problem which is "for the wage offered". Foreign labor is available as we know here, but in the big picture it isn't always "cheap".

[Loz]

At last, someone with the intelligence and courage to say the emperor's got no clothes ...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/15/covid-19-has-reminder-nhs-not-envy-world/

Sorry DT, but everyone needs to read this one - the NHS is a public health issue ...

The coronavirus pandemic has had two effects on British perceptions of the NHS. On the one hand, it has reinforced admiration of the staff. Nurses, doctors and other personnel have been like soldiers going into battle. They have got close to patients infected with the deadly virus and knowingly accepted a high risk of catching it themselves. The Government acknowledged last week that 19 NHS staff have died and that number is undoubtedly higher by now. Our clapping of NHS employees has been heartfelt and is well-deserved.

At the same time, another perception has been brought home to us. For many years, public debate about the NHS has been conducted as if there were only two healthcare systems in the world: the NHS and the American one. The American system has been depicted as heartlessly demanding to see your credit card on arrival in hospital and, in the absence of one, turning you away. Not surprisingly, the NHS emerged in these debates as a preferable system.

But the pandemic has been a vivid reminder that there are hundreds of other healthcare systems around the world and that many – or even most – have performed better than our own. Of course, it is early days and it will be a long time before a final reckoning is possible, taking into account the age-profiles of different populations, the density of how they live and such factors. But on the latest figures, the bald fact is that Britain ranks fifth worst in the world in deaths per million, coming after Spain, Belgium, Italy and France. We have become painfully aware that we have been behind the world in testing, too. Britain is struggling to build up to 100,000 tests a day by the end of this month whereas Germany was conducting 116,000 tests a day two weeks ago.

We entered the crisis with a lower proportion of intensive care units per capita than other countries and fewer ventilators. The more we admire and want to protect the NHS staff, the more we should be disturbed by the way that the NHS has not always managed to provide protective equipment for them. It is embarrassing to hear the Government resort to the excuse of “logistical problems” for this failing when other countries have overcome such problems. We find ourselves a charity case, being given a million masks by Taiwan.

Taiwan, along with South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong were all much closer to the source of the virus in China. To begin with, South Korea was one of the countries worst affected. But all these countries have managed to contain the spread of the virus to a remarkable degree. British deaths per million have been 190 so far. In these countries the figures have been 0.3, 4, 2 and 0.5 respectively. In due course, their figures may rise. But they have, at the least, bought time in which the researchers of the world may be able to develop an anti-body test, find treatments and, eventually, create a vaccine.

In the short term, admiration for NHS staff understandably overwhelms all else and we have to face the crisis as best we can. But when things have settled, we owe it to those staff as well as ourselves and those we love to look more closely at other systems. A truly independent inquiry with experts from around the world should be established to see where the NHS did well and where it fell short.

The most notable characteristic of the British system is that it is the most top-down, centralised one of any advanced country. In contrast, in Germany, 132 different laboratories – publicly-owned and private – got testing quickly. Their system is based on compulsory, individual health insurance which everyone has. It is diverse in its organisation and ownership. This diversity has endowed it with a flexibility and readiness to innovate that is not so easy in our command and control system.

I have just emerged from having 10 days of Covid-19 symptoms. It was, to be honest, scary: the first time in my life that I have thought it possible that I might imminently die. Believe me, that kind of experience makes one want Britain to have the best possible healthcare system, regardless of all prior tradition or prejudice.

Will there be a "truly independent inquiry with experts from around the world" do you think?

I wouldn't hold your breath waiting.

The way it is.

SoD

[Loz]

Let me be clear, Whiters, I'm all in favour of Johnny Foreigners flying in to pick our fruit and Brit peeps on benefits shunning low end work while they wait for a better job.

That's the exact benefit to the ordinaries of being in the single market and as many other free movement treaties as social and political considerations will tolerate.

What I was pointing out is the utter failure of Brexit to deliver Brexit. The utter contradiction and hypocrisy in the behaviour of HMG against its so called Brexit principles.

You guys and gals must be really pissed to see BRINO operating de facto, if not by a specific, discernable Theresa May style implementation.

When this is all over, the demographics will have changed substantially enough, and the clear visibility of HMG's fecklessness when left on its own so apparent, that another referendum is a democratic must.

How can a bunch of dead people be allowed to run a country of the living who've changed their minds anyway?

SoD

[David Duff]

" a country of the living who've changed their minds anyway"

Really? Is that based on the sort of confident self-delusion that allowed the pro-EU worshippers to blithely accept a referendum in the total confidence that they would win?

And given the way in which the rulers of the EU (ie: Germany) have treated the Med nations, what makes you think they bear any goodwill towards the country that humiliated them TWICE in the last century?

[David Duff]

Also, SoD, you should read this as an example of just how, er, 'free and democratic' Germany is these days:

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/german-lawyer-who-criticized-lockdown-arrested-taken-psych-ward

'Ve haf vays of making you OBEY!'

[Backofanenvelope]

"country of the living who've changed their minds anyway"

Obviously we need another referendum. And then another one. And then another one.......

[Loz]

"a country of the living who've changed their minds anyway" Really?

Yes, really. They changed their minds at least two years ago even with the Brexiteer wrinklies still around because every poll since then has shown the Brit peeps for Remain.

what makes you think they bear any goodwill towards the country that humiliated them TWICE in the last century?

We don't want their goodwill. From a political point of view we want the "field of glory by other means". The ability to rally our friends and fight our enemies in continental Europe by participating in the treaty that keeps the field of glory thus so. And we want the single market, which was Blighty's invention which you left behind like an abandoned tank in Dunkirk.

Also, SoD, you should read this as an example of just how, er, 'free and democratic' Germany is these days

Yet more ammo to beat them with in the diplomatic field of glory: "How dare you treat Poland as outside the scope of democratic, liberal behaviour expected of EU countries when you yourself behave like this ... etc." Something like that.

Obviously we need another referendum. And then another one. And then another one.......

Err, that's democracy isn't it? Unless you favour the democracy of that German who once elected said we shall have elections no more.

SoD

[Backofanenvelope]

What a hypocrite you are SoD! If we had another vote and voted remain; you'd be first online to say we didn't need another one.

[Bob]

The private part of our healthcare system continues to be heartless. Millions who are unemployed because of the pandemic are now without health insurance, joining the 30 million who were already uninsured. Many will have to declare bankruptcy because of astronomical hospital bills. Some have already died because they couldn't see doctors. There's a good chance the system will change in the coming years. There's virtually no chance it will change into a centrally planned model like the NHS.

[Loz]

There's virtually no chance it will change into a centrally planned model like the NHS.

Lucky you.

Just copy the South East Asians.

Or if you really want to know which system is the best, the guy who wrote the NHS knocker article above has written a book about it ...

James Bartholomew is the author of ‘The Welfare of Nations’ in which he compares healthcare systems around the world

There's a clue in the title about his angle, which means you probably won't like it.

SoD

[Bob]

SoD,

A presumptuous play on The Wealth of Nations, eh? After reading two reviews I don't understand why you'd think I'd not agree with at least one of Bartholomew's conclusions. Central planning is a failed model. Anyone who denies that at this point in history is delusional.

America won't follow East Asia. Their societies are culturally too dislike ours.

As an aside, I think Libertarianism is a nice idea that's completely impractical and probably will be for a very long time. Maybe in another millennium humans will be rational actors, but we aren't even in the ballpark at this point.