This is why people have died from Covid in exceptional numbers in the UK, and why many more will do so, as yet:
Trade used to grow at roughly double global GDP — from 1987 to 2007.
Now it barely keeps pace and global growth is itself anaemic and the decline in global poverty is beginning to slow.
And in that context, we are starting to hear some bizarre autarkic rhetoric, when barriers are going up, and when there is a risk that new diseases such as coronavirus will trigger a panic and a desire for market segregation that go beyond what is medically rational to the point of doing real and unnecessary economic damage, then at that moment humanity needs some government somewhere that is willing at least to make the case powerfully for freedom of exchange, some country ready to take off its Clark Kent spectacles and leap into the phone booth and emerge with its cloak flowing as the supercharged champion, of the right of the populations of the earth to buy and sell freely among each other.
And here in Greenwich in the first week of February 2020, I can tell you in all humility that the UK is ready for that role.
That was Boris Johnson on 3 February 2020 when the risks of Covid-19 were already known.
Johnson chose to be exceptional in pursuit of free market ideology, come what may.
That is precisely what he is still doing.
Tens of thousands have already lost their lives for that. Tens of thousands more have been harmed, maybe for life.
And tens of thousands more will be now, for sure.
All for the sake of an ideology, and an ideology at that which has driven our planet to the brink of irreversible climate change.
Other countries say our Covid policies are now a threat to the world. They are.
They are also a massive threat to us all, here in the UK.
And this was all by choice.
I hope that one day Johnson is held to account for this. His crimes need to be called out. That is what they are. And they require that he serve an appropriate sentence.
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Agree entirely with this analysis. However, this tragic situation is also the responsibility of the Conservative cabinet and MPs for backing Johnson’s policy (or lack of in many cases). In a similar way, the Conservatives should be held accountable as Germany was at the Nuremberg trials. for WW2 atrocities.
Our MPs need reminding that just following orders is no defence.
Pardon me for crashing in. These facts need dissemination.
https://mobile.twitter.com/caz_sampson/status/1415723730882412550
‘48553 cases today. 100 more patients in ICU with covid19 than 5days ago. No one talking about covid length of stay so I will.
Median ICU stay:-
Heart/major cancer surgery 1-2d
Covid (not ventilated) 5d
Covid (ventilated) 20d
Covid (kidney support) 32d
Do the maths’
Replies under that about pregnant women being admitted is stomach turning.
Found through Twitter feed of this site that I have just come across
https://www.nhsmillion.co.uk/
Seems straight. And bloody scary.
Thanks
This is scary
Its like a bad dream – no BBC interviewer can ask:
‘if we have a way of saving or protecting lives (vaccines etc) – yet choose not to and instead allow people to get ill and maybe die …how should we describe such a policy ? Is it deliberate killing?’
At yesterday’s emergency science summit, William Haseltine (ex Harvard etc):
“I believe that the strategy of herd immunity is actually murderous: I think that’s a word we should use, because that is what it is; it is knowledge that you are doing something that will result in thousands, and in some cases tens of thousands of people dying. It is a disastrous policy, it’s been clear that that’s been the case for some time, and to continue to espouse that policy is unconscionable.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-covid-scientists-warning-b1885305.html
Surely, there must be some kind of legal challenge available….Human Rights, health and safty etc etc.
A nightmore.
I agree with William Haseltine
The correct name for this policy is *eugenics*. Killing off old people is euthanasia (which we have already seen) but killing off the weak and vulnerable is eugenics. We must all start using this word.
We’re now witnessing all the worst aspects of Nietzsche and Ayn Rand rolled into a policy by witless, overgrown schoolboys filled with a sense of their own righteousness and ‘destiny’ who not only lack emotional intelligence but also the basic intelligence to see that what they are doing will not achieve what they want in any case.
Your anger on this fine Saturday morning is palpable from your two blogs this morning, Richard. And rightly so.
But sadly I doubt Johnson – or indeed anyone from his government of shallow, sycophantic, ideologues – will ever suffer such a fate. Indeed, I seriously doubt whether there’ll ever be a public inquiry – not while Johnson and his cronies are in government anyway. Next spring was the date Johnson floated but with what’s about to hit us with Johnson’s experiment in ‘herd immunity’, followed by yet another autumn and winter of fear and uncertainty, will, I think, put paid to that. There will simply be too much that needs covering by too many people – politicians and civils servants (Vallance and Witty chief amongst them) – by then to ever let the decision making of the past (what will be near enough two years) be examined until everyone involved has had time to put a safe distance between themselves and the stinking pile they’ve created.
That said, on a more positive note, from talking to people at my sailing club (not a posh yacht club I hasten to add), most of whom would be/were Tory/Johnson voters, I note that many of them can see through what’s going on now with Covid policy and are fearful and not at all taken in by any of the arguments. They also see through Johnson. That’s quite a big change from back in April and May when all I heard was how marvelous the vaccination programme was, and how sensible the ‘roadmap’ was.
So, I think apart from the hard core of Tories/Johnson supporters, the general population of England/UK have now had enough time to see that although the Tory press and the media machine said that the emperor had very fine, clever, clothes, and such a marvelous mane of blond hair, they were, in fact, threadbare, unattractive, rags, and that marvelous mane was just scruffy hair of the sort that some teenage boys think attractive in a rebellious sort of way when in fact it just looks shite.
Anyway, that’s my own Saturday morning rant out of the way. Not as powerful as yours by any means, but at least it made me feel a bit better. Enjoy the beautiful weekend (while you can).
Thanks Ivan
Enjoy your day too…
And you suggest something I think is happening – an awareness is being created that we really are being conned
The bulk of scientific and medical opinion has been against Johnson and co throughout, very strongly so on the latest decisions. They cannot say that they did not know what the consequences of their actions would be – death and disabilities. A case for Jo Maugham perhaps.
The opinion polls have been depressingly robust for the Tories, whatever justifiable arguments we might make about FPTP or progressive alliances. I’m not sure places like Cumbria (where I grew up) or rural Lincolnshire or Northumbria both of which I know a bit have shifted much. On the other hand, feedback from those canvassing in Chesh and Am suggests that there were some very hacked off moderate Tories. That very large shift was about a lot more than just HS2 and housing. The cronyism, mishandling of Covid and continuing anger about Brexit are cutting through.
As is so frequently observed, we still lack a positive and inspiring vision of a future Britain. That’s what will get people out. A future Scotland … well that’s another story.
Robin
I can’t see rural Cambridgeshire shifting much
But Ely has: it has moved pretty heavily LibDem. Lucy Frazier MP ought to be very worried.
At least in the UK, the Covid situation appears to becoming normalised”. This article was quite good on this normalisation (covering both Covid and climate change).
https://eand.co/none-of-this-is-normal-5a8bd67544c2
In one of Richards previous blogs (“It is very hard to make up callousness on the scale that this government evidences, almost daily”), the end comment was ” It’s as if humanity has been sucked out of us as a nation.”. The Mendacious Fatbergs of this world (they are all around us) can only come to prominence in a society where indeed humanity (& empathy for others) has been sucked out. This “project” of reducing the English to an unthinking herd has been very successful.
Short of a revolution, Mendacious Fat will never be held liable for his crimes. Neither will the Toryscum party, which has been the main operator over 40 years (I inlcude B.Liars crew who were simply toryscum lite) of the project which could be summarised as “every man for himself and devil take the hindmost” – which is exactly the current toryscum approach to Covid. Mendacious Fat has got bored with the whole thing & is thus indifferent to rising death rates (“I don’t care if bodies pile up in the street”).
Given the above, the current trajectory is for gradual isolation of the Uk from mainland Europe, both politically (how can you deal with a congenital liar?) and physically (why allow the British to contaminate the rest of the continent). Think of it as a slow-burn “28-days later”.
Then, once our standards of living are sufficiently eroded, we’ll be glad to work for peanuts or in exchange for workhouse style bed and board in Sunak’s Charter Cities. It would be interesting if we could hear informed reports of how things are going in the one his father-in-law runs in India but I’ve not seen any yet.
“I hope that one day Johnson is held to account for this. His crimes need to be called out. That is what they are. And they require that he serve an appropriate sentence.”
Absolutely right. But the chance of that actually happening? Zero.
He’ll get a wad of cash for writing his memoirs and bugger off.
It’ll be the Lords, though, won’t it? Ennoblement of some form, surely.
I don’t know why, but this comment immediately made me think of a pig wearing lipstick.
I doubt any courts in this or any other jurisdiction will hold our government and politicians accountable in a criminal sense. Who, on what charge, where?
But there will eventually be a political reckoning, perhaps later than we wish but hopefully sooner than we fear, and the judgment of history will be damning.
I think that one day the Tory party will get its comeuppance but we may have to accept that it will not be in our time.
We must also realise that extremists like the Tories know very well what they are doing and this adds a destructive note of desperation to their antics. For them there is no turning back or softening of their approach. They are playing for keeps, like the SS, Nazis and NKVD did in past times. This will make it very hard to counter their lies and deceit in the mid term.
The other fault in their favour is HM Opposition. It is totally disorganised and ineffective as is Parliament itself. This factor remains a huge stumbling block in the relief of the nation from Tory cruelty.
The best we can do is record our dissent, our narratives of these times so those in the future will be able to get an idea of what things were like, so that they are able to pass judgement.
I think that record is vital
At the risk of a hail of brickbats…
Today’s Tories are very different to the one nation Tories of old and that is one of their weak points. You might have disagreed with them but the likes of Clarke, Soames, Grieve, Wollaston, Stewart, Lee have profoundly different views to the nationalist, xenophobic, divisive, Randian, callous, corrupt bunch in power today. I suspect the remaining Tory membership are a lost cause but there will be a lot of people who have voted Tory who feel deeply uneasy.
Branding all Tory voters as bastards is probably not an effective way of chiselling them off though it might be fun to talk that way. Undermining the Tory vote might just be as important as a progressive alliance. Chesham and Amersham is a clue.
“but the likes of Clarke, Soames, Grieve, Wollaston, Stewart, Lee “……….all supported Cam-Morons/Gidiots austerity which led to circa 120,000 deaths.
Thus I disagree, the toryscum have always been socipaths of the first order, the only area of disagreement being the degree, with the current crew sitting out there with …… who? In fairness they are not directly killing people (a la Pinochet) but have through omission/incompetance etc killed circa 140,000 (covid) with more to come and show a “on the record callousness” which is jaw dropping. Perhaps we need to think of them as a mirror – reflecting the current state of mind of the English population. There’s a happy thought.
Are we really going to have time for assessing an appropriate punishment for Boris and his backers? For what we consider normal to continue, or to be reverted to, we need a degree of stability in the planet’s weather systems and in the general health of a clear majority of the Western World’s population, neither of which we seem likely have in the near future at least. We’ll probably be more preoccupied with mere survival, I’d think. I’m keeping the freezers full while I can.
Hopefully I think that Johnson and chums by killing people outside the U.K., see the International response, in which circumstances there will be a case of genocide thereby bringing him and his ilk before the International Courts.
We can only hope and push for others to hold him to account.
I live in Nova Scotia where we have had no covid cases for the last few days. Our public health department is thankfully very risk averse and the politicians have gone along. It is different in other parts of the country and looking at England and the way the whole covid pandemic has been handled appears shocking and ignorant. However, even living in safe little Nova Scotia I understand that we really are not free from covid. The covid issue, from what I have read, is a global issue and the vast number of the Earth’s human inhabitants have not even had one vaccination and are very unlikely to get one. The likelihood of variants arising which outwit the existing vaccinations is very real. The drug companies are making fortunes out of these vaccines, selling to the rich countries, even developing additional vaccines to outwit the current variants. I read somewhere that only 39 billion dollars would vaccinate fully every person on the planet. Isn’t is sad that this amount of money – which in the context of what is spent in many outrageous ways – cannot be forthcoming to help us all.
You maybe interested to know that Boris Johnson’s sister Rachel was interviewed on CBC The Current a few days ago. I didn’t hear the whole interview, but her spin is that Boris was misled by herd immunity scientists ie the death toll in England isn’t his fault.
If you’ve ever wondered why there are so many pop songs about love and so few about politics, it’s because love sells and politics doesn’t. There is no neo-liberal conspiracy to stop people buying songs about national health care or international landowner subsidies, it’s just how humans are. And from tomorrow we have to accept reality and stop expecting big centralised government to love us and start loving each other.
There seem to be one hell of a lot of songs about politics to me
It’s as if John Lennon never wrote Imagine.
From way way back, the function of the king was to defend his people from the four horseman of the apocalypse – or die in the attempt. And if he failed – ‘The King must die’
Surely someone in the ship’s crew knows how to take the wheel and steer to safety?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wheel_of_fortune.png
The wheel of Fortune turns:
I go down, demeaned;
another is raised up;
far too high up sits the king at the summit
— let him fear ruin!
for under the axis is written Queen Hecuba
Wanting to jail our political opponents is rather Trumpian, Richard. It’s beneath you.
You mean you think democide is not a crime?
Can you prove it is democide? If you can how many leaders around the world should all be guilty? After all only a full permanent lock down with no border travel is guaranteed to avoid preventable deaths. No country has done that so by your definition prisons around the world should be full with their country’s leaders..do you understand how stupid you found?
Stupid?
For falling out a oily taste that is being condemned around the world?
With respect, look in the mirror if you’re looking for someone with that quality