The UK's first spoilt brat PM

It may seem a strange thing to say but wealth, privilege and an elite education can have a very infantilising effect - on males particularly. A perfect example of this phenomenon is Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. As a child, he declared that his ambition was become president of the world. He was educated at Eton College and Oxford; at the former he is said to have expected to receive perks and privileges without having to do anything to earn them. Clearly his sense of entitlement developed at an early age. 

It is perhaps not very surprising that at university he became president of the Oxford Union, and even less so that he joined the Bullingdon Club, described by Wikipedia as "a private all-male dining club for Oxford University students. It is known for its wealthy members, grand banquets, boisterous rituals, and occasionally bad behaviour, including vandalism of restaurants and students' rooms." They always got away with trashing restaurants because their rich daddies reached for their cheque books; less privileged young men would undoubtedly have ended up in court.

By the time he left Oxford, he was clearly of the view that what was most important to him was obtaining what he wanted, irrespective of the cost or consequences, a pattern of behaviour that persists today.

Like Trump, he is a serial liar, but there's a difference: Trump cannot tell the difference between the truth and his own thought processes, while Johnson regards the truth as acceptable collateral damage in order to achieve whatever end he has set his sights upon. He was sacked from The Times in 1988 for making up a quote in an article, and he lost his job in 2004 as shadow arts minister of the Tory Party for allegedly lying about an extra-marital affair.

As Kirsty Major wrote in The Independent in 2016:

"As Mayor of London he promised to totally eradicate rough sleeping by 2012; it doubled under his leadership. His 2008 manifesto promised there would be manned ticket offices at every station; he closed all of London's ticket offices. He aimed to reduce transport fares; they increased by 4.2 per cent."

It's obvious that he was prepared to say absolutely anything to be elected, and having won, he made little effort to keep his promises. On the contrary, he was more interested in his pet vanity projects, cutting what he saw as unnecessary public sector costs, and helping his rich friends in business. He automatically upheld all appeals to him against refusals by local authorities to grant planning permission for developments. He was so irritated by a London Assembly member demanding an explanation how fire safety could be improved while fire brigade staffing levels were being cut and fire stations closed that he dismissively blurted out: "Get stuffed!" While this was before the Grenfell disaster, it was nonetheless a wholly unacceptable response, and it typifies his impatience with any questioning of his decisions, which is surely what the Assembly is for. This aversion to accountability has been a defining characteristic of his political career. 

His notorious Garden Bridge project cost £53 million, including £43 million of public money, despite never even being started. To date, I have't heard a word of apology for such a waste of public money. As a trade union rep, I represented one of my members who had been wrongly accused of deliberately misspending public money, a matter of little more than £100; if I'd lost the case, he would have been sacked. Johnson's squandering of millions of pounds hasn't earned him so much as a slap on the wrist.

He bought two water cannons, even though it is illegal to use them in the UK; presumably he either didn't know they couldn't be used because of his habitual inattention to detail, or in his breezy and ill-informed self-confidence he believed he could obtain permission to use them. Either way, his successor was unable to sell them and they were scrapped at a loss of more than £300,000. Who pays? The taxpayer, obviously.

As PM, during the worst pandemic to hit the UK for a century, he considered it important to spend nearly a million pounds repainting an aeroplane in patriotic livery so show Britain is ... well, I'm not actually sure what!
 
These projects derive from Johnson's self image as the man whose destiny post-EU is to recreate an image of UK greatness in the eyes of the world - not unlike Trump's mantra 'Make America Great Again'. That he fails time and again doesn't seem to dent this self-belief.

A fine example is when he managed to get himself infected with COVID19 by deliberately shaking hands with everyone, including patients suffering from the virus, that he'd met during a tour of a hospital, a foolish activity that he boasted about on television. My view is that he felt it showed him as a fearless leader and a man of decisive action during a crisis, but the reality is that, as well as making himself ill, he probably spread the disease further, both in the hospital and elsewhere. It is not impossible that his stupidity caused deaths. He was acting with the same sense of personal invincibility as reckless teenage youths performing stupid and dangerous stunts. 

The breezy and jokey persona that he has applied to his progression down the path to prime minister, the post he feels he was born to hold, has proved wholly unsuited to dealing with a dangerous pandemic. Faced with this disaster, he decided to exploit it to show that, unshackled from the EU, Britain could now be 'world-beating', leading the world in pandemic reduction.

Instead of simply purchasing effective ventilators, he set British industrialists the task of devising a superior, British, 'world-beating' version. Some of them were disgusted when he joked that it could be called 'Operation Last Gasp'. There's a time and place for humour, but a cheap gag about people dying when you're ostensibly in charge of overseeing a pandemic is extremely difficult to excuse.

He wasted around £11 million on a 'world-beating' track & trace system which didn't work and was abandoned - more public money squandered on yet another failed, 'world-beating', vanity project. The pattern just keeps on repeating itself.

Referring to the possible introduction of local lockdowns, he used the analogy of an amusement arcade game, Whack-A-Mole. Such a frivolous comparison is scarcely appropriate to describe a method of tackling a virus that has so far killed close to 50,000 of his fellow British citizens, but is quite typical of his inability to treat a very serious situation with the gravity it deserves.

Extraordinarily, he has recently been boasting about his government's overall approach to CV19, even though the UK's rate of excess deaths is the highest, especially in England, which is particularly significant because it is the only UK nation without an elected assembly of its own and is therefore subject to direct rule by Johnson's government.

Johnson has the sense of entitlement of a rich, spoilt brat who expects to receive what he desires without any need to earn it. His personal life has been a series of self-indulgent affairs that has left an unknown number of children - six at least - in its wake. He is a philanderer with a sociopathically under-developed sense of self-restraint. Like most such males, he would probably assert that he loves women, but in reality such behaviour is closer to exploitation than affection - he wants it, he takes it, and then flees.

It is signally unfortunate that, at a time of a national crisis that is killing tens of thousands of Britons, seriously damaging the economy and destroying hundreds of thousands of jobs, we are led by an immature, vain liar with an overweening sense of entitlement and the mindset of a spoilt, lazy, public schoolboy who has been granted far too much of his own way.

► P.S. Since writing this post earlier today, I have learned that Johnson has launched an - in the words of the official government website - "independent panel to look at judicial review. A panel of experts will examine if there is a need to reform the judicial review process after an independent review was launched by government today (31 July)".

This government has had a number of setbacks because of judicial reviews, most humiliatingly when it was ruled that Johnson had broken the law last year by advising the head of state to suspend Parliament, which he did to close down parliamentary scrutiny of his embarrassing performance during the Brexit crisis. This high-handed action was quite typical of his sense that he is entitled to get whatever he wants.

However, because the Supreme Court blocked this shabby tactic, he has predictably responded by trying to have the rules changed. I say 'predictably' because simply accepting the judgment and moving on could be interpreted as an admission that he was wrong, something his self-importance could never tolerate. I am certain that he intends to ensure that future legal challenges to any similar overbearing actions by his government will become much more difficult to win, if not downright impossible. I'd like to be wrong, but with Johnson's record, it seems unlikely I shall be.

► This is a follow-up to a previous post: 

The USA's first toddler president.

The Russia Report and an Apology for Nigel

By happy coincidence, the publication of the controversial "Russia Report" yesterday followed my previous blog post about Luke Harding's chapter in "Shadow State" about the influence of Russia upon the EU Referendum.
Well, as we know, Russia denies all charges of interference. No surprise there, and, as people with a penchant for selective facts have picked up,  there seems to be no evidence of Russian influence either on the referendum, the Leave campaign or, presumably, the Brexit Party. One particularly aggrieved individual with this penchant is our old mate, Nigel Farage. Nigel feels himself vindicated, as he says on Twitter:
"Years of lies and smears from Remain politicians and much of our media. There is no evidence of Russian involvement with http://Leave.EU or me in the referendum. It was all a hoax — apologies are now required". Well, Nigel will get no apologies from me and I'm happy to say that his smug declaration has been received with scorn by many commentators. One reply on Twitter put it nicely:

“I’m not sure you’ve read the same report as everybody else, Farage,” said @HerbyCumberland. “Lack of hard evidence does NOT vindicate you or anybody else. We already knew that specific named persons appear in the unpublished classified annex. You are, as usual, being very economical with the truth.”
Quoted in "The New European":

"David Head said: “Come off it. The Russia report is explicit in concluding that no evidence was sought of Russian interference in the Brexit referendum.”

Instead of "Not Guilty", Nigel, Arron Banks and Leave.EU have earned a verdict that is only handed down in Scottish courts: "Not Proven". There is more to be said about Nigel, his cronies and the Brexit menagerie, but I'll save that for later. As far as the government is concerned, I don't think any less of them than I already did, but their response is as shifty and mendacious as is that of the Russian government. Witness their 20-page reply to the Russia report in which, as ITV says:

"...the government said there was no need to investigate alleged Russian activity during the Brexit referendum because regular assessments are made by Intelligence and Security Agencies."

Strangely, these assessments did not pick up on the fact that Twitter found 3, 841 accounts registered to the Russian Internet Research Agency - the same accounts active in supporting Donald Trump during his victorious presidential campaign. (See my last post, or Luke Harding's book, Shadow State).

There is little to be gained by pointing out the shaky relation that this government has with the truth - especially the present Prime Minister. That's very much in the public domain. Besides this, they are all Brexit supporters, so they have a vested interest in ignoring foreign interference in the EU referendum, because it could have led to the result being declared invalid. Alistair Campbell, on ITV News, said: "Brexit is a fraud". 

LibDem leader, Sir Ed Davey was quoted:

"He (Davey) accused Boris Johnson of refusing “a cross-party call to launch an inquiry because he is worried about what it might find”. 

And, as James O'Brien is saying on LBC as I type, this negligence, deliberate or otherwise, could cost the Conservatives votes at the next election.

This government, then, has many good reasons to let sleeping dogs lie.

Returning to dogs, I would like to conclude by returning to the hounds of Brexit - Nigel Farage, Arron Banks, Anne Widdecombe and the Brexit Party. I'd like to return, briefly, to a topic I wrote about in September, 2019, which was the refusal of Brexit MEPs to support the EU Parliament's resolution to call for the release of EU/Iranian dual nationals being unjustly detained in Iran. I noted that Gordon Brown, M.P., had commented on possible financial links between Russia and the Brexit Party, via the Leave campaigner, Arron Banks. From this, I surmised that the Brexit shower had voted this way because Iran was Russia's ally. No conclusive evidence of Arron Banks receiving Russian money has been found, primarily because no-one has looked for it. Nevertheless, I still find the Brexit Party behaviour on this issue contemptible - and suspicious.

There is one foreign observer who finds all this of great interest - he's been in all the papers.

"The Shadow State" - Brexit, Putin and Trump

I some times think that we are living in a collective nightmare in the UK and elsewhere. Covid-19 is frightening enough without Brexit, Trump and the bizarre antics of our "leaders". Fortunately, there are a number of perspicacious writers who work very hard to provide a truthful picture of what is happening. One such is the Guardian journalist, Luke Harding, who has written some excellent works on the relationship of President Putin with the West, as well as the murder of Alexander Litvinenko and the attempted murder of the Skripals in Salisbury. His latest book, "Shadow State" is a wide-ranging expose of Putin-directed interference in Western society, ranging from the bungled assassination attempt in Salisbury to the interference in the US presidential election - and much more.
"Shadow State" is, as John Sweeney says in the Guardian, "a necessary book", for all of us who are concerned at what we see happening politically. It provides us with details that we would not otherwise have. One example: six months after the Salisbury debacle, which was carried out by two GRU agents, their boss, Igor Korobov, died in "mysterious circumstances". A GRU defector described this as murder. Putin, he believed, was angry at the failure of the mission.
Even the Daily Mail, though ungraciously failing to mention Harding's book, joined in the controversy:

"A former MI6 spy has accused Boris Johnson and Theresa May of turning a blind eye to claims Vladimir Putin secretly bankrolled Brexit and held a grip on Donald Trump.
Christopher Steele, the veteran intelligence operative and Russia specialist, told MPs the May administration prioritised politics over national security. He said the government 'threw a blanket' over his 2016 'dirty dossier' about the US President to avoid souring relations with the White House ahead of forging a cross-Atlantic trade deal after Brexit."

That is a very serious accusation, and Harding makes much the same charge in his book. He also deals extensively with the Russian connection with Trump, and the election interference in the USA and Ukraine.. Two excellent reviews in The Guardian and The Scotsman cover this, but I wish to focus upon Chapter 9 : "Moscow Gold". This chapter deals primarily with the alleged meddling of Russia in the EU referendum, and brings back into scrutiny our dear old pal, Nigel Farage.

I had forgotten how, at the start of the referendum campaign, the accepted wisdom was that Remain would win convincingly. At the time, it never occurred to me that, as Harding says:

"For Putin, Brexit was a highly desirable outcome. His pan-European objective was to break up the EU and weaken the UK and NATO."

Putin's men in London, Ambassador Yakovenko and a thinly-disguised FSB spy, Alexander Udod, set out to help bring this about. The man seen in two of the pictures above, is Arron Banks, a UKIP donor whom I believed was part of  Vote Leave but was in fact a co-founder of Leave.EU, which, says Harding, was:

"...an insurgent outfit. It had an unapologetically anti-immigrant message. Banks...would give Leave.EU £8.4 million".

In November 2018, the UK electoral commission acted on information that the "true source" of the money wasn't Banks. Which brings us back to the spy, Udod. He met Banks at the UKIP conference in Doncaster, 2014, and invited him to lunch with the Russian ambassador. Banks has written that he did not take the Russian officials seriously, but concealed the fact that he met Yakovenko a number of times after this. There was sufficient cause for concern about these links with Russian bigwigs, and alleged Russian offers of business deals that Banks, and his sidekick, Wigmore, were hauled before the Culture, Media and Sport Select Affairs Committee in 2018. They (what a surprise!) denied any wrongdoing and posed as victims of Remainers in the media and in politics.

While being questioned, however, they made some interesting admissions. Wigmore said that "referendums were not about facts" and "it's about emotion". He also admitted lying to the press about the fact that Banks, who has a Russian wife and three children of dual nationality, was in Russia in 2016. (Banks said he and his family stayed in Moscow and visited the Hermitage museum. The Hermitage is in St Petersburg). He said that his job was to be "provocative". Jo Stevens MP asked what was the difference between provocation and lies. For those of us who found the Leave campaign inherently dubious, it raises the question: how many more lies were told by Leave during the referendum campaign?

Banks has written a book called "The Bad Boys of Brexit" in which he claims that Leave used "the power of social media". Luke Harding comments:

"What Banks doesn't say is that Putin helped in this cyber effort".

The Brexit-boosting Twitter accounts were later used in Putin's campaign to support Trump, causing the Democrat senator, Adam Schiff, to observe:

"From what we've seen, the parallels between the Russian intervention in Brexit and the Russian intervention in the Trump campaign appear to be extraordinary".

 In 2018, Twitter found 3.841 accounts credited to the Russian Internet Research Agency. This was endorsed by a parliamentary inquiry into fake news in 2019. Harding again:

"Moscow's playbook in the UK was the same as in the US".

In other words, they played upon populist and racist themes: immigration, Syrian refugees, EU migrants taking council houses and ISIS terrorism. Nigel Farage and the other Brexit luminaries have never acknowledged this, still less condemned it.

As for Mr Banks' finances, there was no Russian gold. However, Banks funded Nigel to the tune of £450 000, as well as the millions mentioned above. The National Crime Agency (NCA) has investigated Banks' share in diamond mines in South Africa and Lesotho, which could have been used to launder money from Moscow. It dropped the investigation, and the results of the investigation were not made public.

Harding remarks upon the difference between Teresa May's strident denunciation of Russia's role in the Salisbury poisoning with a curious inactivity towards investigating Russian meddling in the EU referendum. Harding again:

"...the British political class and the BBC ignored Russia's possible role in the Brexit vote".

Rightly, there has been no such restraint over the alleged attempts by Russia to hack into research into a Covid-19 vaccine, although the campaign bears all the the hallmarks of the two campaigns discussed above. The BBC has led the charge of denunciation reporting, and reported the predictable Russian response:

"We do not have information about who may have hacked into pharmaceutical companies and research centres in Great Britain. We can say one thing - Russia has nothing at all to do with these attempts," said Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for President Putin, according to the Tass news agency".

What a surprise, eh? Well, none at all, really. What is - perhaps - puzzling to some is the blatant way in which Russia's agents behave. It's almost as if they revel in being discovered. Harding, when commenting upon the Salisbury poisoning, says here:

"The message of the Skripal affair...could be boiled down to two words: "Fuck you".

He quotes a US presidential adviser as saying:

"They don't care about being discovered. It sends a signal that we have no respect for you".

Quite - but they are no less disrespectful when attacking American luminaries. During the last US presidential election, on my YouTube feed, I kept getting videos making scurrilous allegations about Hilary Clinton's sexuality, i.e. that she was a lesbian. At the time I could tell these videos were part of a concerted effort to discredit Clinton, but didn't know who was behind it - although I was bemused at why I was receiving them. Now, I know who was behind it, but am angry at receiving the videos; the sexuality of an American politician or anyone else is of no interest to me. Had I been an American voter, I would still have voted for Clinton, whatever her sexuality. I get a number of Russian hits on this blog, and I hope that my Russian readers - at least those who work for the hacking agencies - will take note for the next election in which they seek to interfere.

To conclude - who benefits from all this? Who gains by it? Well, here he is...

PS - I strongly recommend Luke Harding's book!

The Reading Murders: Terrorism or Not?

According to the WHO's latest statistics, 490,481 people worldwide have died of Covid-19, 43,230 here in the UK. Because of these dreadful figures, which show how so many have lost their lives, perhaps we can be forgiven for not making too much of a fuss about the killing of three people in Reading on the 20th of this month - just a few days ago. After all, when faced with, or suffering from, a life-threatening plague, we have plenty to worry about. This "prioritising" is perfectly understandable, but I think it a mistake, for reasons I shall give later.
The government took action to prevent a media frenzy, releasing a "Media Advisory Notice" warning against the publication of information that could prejudice a future trial. This might be a valid warning, but the only newspaper that seems to have taken any notice is the Reading Chronicle, the local paper, which says:
"As legal proceedings have begun, The Chronicle could be in contempt of court to publish any information on the man arrested following Saturday's attacks, including reports of previous convictions".

Amusing really, when you consider that all the media, including The Daily Mail, have published details of the attack and the alleged attacker, Khairi Saadallah. From The Independent, we learn:

"The Libyan man accused of launching a terror attack that left three victims dead in Reading at the weekend was under probation supervision at the time, The Independent understands.Khairi Saadallah was released on appeal from HMP Bullingdon in Oxfordshire just 16 days before the mass stabbing".

That bastion of law and order, The Daily Mail, said in today's edition:

"Police intercepted the Reading terror suspect on the street just hours before he allegedly went on the rampage, the Daily Mail can reveal. A specialist mental health team was asked to search for Khairi Saadallah after officials failed to find him during a routine check at his home last Friday".

So much for Media Advisory Notices! Nonetheless, there has not yet been any kind of public reaction. Another reason for this might be the fact that there is some controversy over whether this was a terror attack or not. According to the same Daily Mail edition, members of Saadallah's family have been actively denying that he is a terrorist. Interestingly enough, MI5 had cleared him of being a terrorist last year, as The Guardian says:

"Saadallah was on the radar of MI5 in the middle of last year, sources said, when he was briefly placed under investigation as a person who might travel abroad “for extremist reasons”. The inquiry was closed relatively quickly without any action being taken, as no genuine threat or immediate risk was identified."

Various media outlets have emphasised the fact that Saadallah has mental health issues. According to The Sun:

"Saadallah was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and delusional and paranoid schizophrenia, requiring medication before his release, a source told the Sun."

As regular readers of this blog know - only too well - dangerous mental health patients are a recurring theme of mine. They might well expect a similar kind of article here, but I demur in this case. However much I acknowledge the fact that Saadallah has mental problems. I favour the police view that this was a terrorist incident. To make my case, we need to look at the attack itself.

The mass stabbing began in Forbury Gardens , Reading, at about 7pm, June 20. Three men (L to R in the photo): Joe Ritchie-Bennett, a US citizen, James Furlong, a History teacher and a scientist, David Wails, were killed. Three others were injured and taken to hospital. The attack was sudden, vicious, and chillingly efficient. The horror of this event will traumatise witnesses of the stabbings, as well as the relatives of the three men, for years - perhaps for the rest of their lives. I speak for all of us when I send my condolences to the friends and relatives of these three victims, should they happen upon this blog.

Saadallah's mental history does not preclude him from being a terrorist. On the contrary, terror organisations find people with mental health problems very useful.  Daesh, in its early days, used mentally handicapped individuals as carriers of suicide bombs; the German Red Army Faction, aka "The Baader-Meinhoff Gang", recruited mental health patients for their so-called "Holger-Meins Commando" in the 1970s. Nor does it rule out "lone wolf" attacks - Thomas Mair, the murderer of Jo Cox, M.P., had mental issues, but was still motivated by fascist ideology.

There are two main reasons for believing this to be a terrorist incident.

First, this was a targeted attack, rather than one of the random attacks which are carried out by people with mental health problems alone. All the victims were gay men, and, I surmise, Forbury Gardens is known as a gay meeting place. All Jihadist terror groups hate gay men and, in Iraq and in Syria, aimed to liquidate them physically. ISIS have the nasty trick of throwing gay men to their deaths from high buildings. The fact that Saadallah attacked a gay rendezvous site indicates, I think, that he shares this murderous, homophobic hatred - and the ideology which promotes it.

Secondly, the attack was carried out with a significant element of skill. Each of the three victims who died was killed by a single blow. Contrary to popular belief, it takes some knowledge and practice to kill with a knife, and Saadallah certainly seemed to have that. Quite where he acquired that skill is open to speculation - perhaps in his native country of Libya, either from one of the many militia groups that plague that land, or even the local branch of ISIS.

This, I believe, endorses the police view that this was a terror attack. However,  it might indicate something else as well. With the exception of the Manchester Arena bombing in 2017, most of the deadly terror attacks have happened in London. The fact this atrocity happened in the provinces might hint at a change of attack location of choice for our terrorist minority - whatever their political or religious affiliations. 

Breaking Lockdown - "Only Half a Sausage"

The other day, a friend whom I shall name "Mr T" sent me an article from the online edition of "The New European", which is a rewarding paper to read, and I recommend it. The article dealt with the fact that the Tory MP for the Isle of Wight, Bob Seely, seen above, and the Brexit Party chairperson, Richard Tice, had attended a lockdown-busting barbecue on the Isle of Wight on May 22nd. As, on that date, we were all meant to meet only one person from another household out of doors, it was clear that these two political luminaries were in breach of the lockdown.

Tice admitted his presence at the event, which was held by his partner's deputy editor at the Spectator. Seely, on the other hand, tried to explain away his attendance. As well he might, as he at the time:
"... had been spearheading the efforts to promote a new government contact-tracing apps on the island"

Oh dear, what a clanger to drop! Seely claimed that he was unaware that a barbecue was being held, and had dropped in to discuss an article of his that The Spectator had published. He told his local paper that to leave would have been over-reacting. Besides apologising for his conduct, he stated that he had only eaten "half a sausage" (!).

Any right-thinking person would be displeased to learn about this event; what surprised me was the degree of anger expressed by Mr T. I have known this gentleman for about 45 years, and I have never known him to become angry over any political issue before. And angry he is! He wrote:

"... Richard Tice has always been at the spearhead of those pushing for Brexit; his partner is a journalist for the Daily Mail and was staying in her second home. They chose to ignore lockdown rules...Seems to me that everyone who was in favour of Brexit is incapable of dealing with serious problems and happy to ignore rules that they find inconvenient.
Bye bye liberal democracy run by educated, fair-minded people. Hello get what you can for yourself and cronies".
Well said! I am sure that most sane people agree with Mr T, but, unfortunately, some others vote Tory or for the Brexit Party. What these "patriots" do not seem to understand is the fact that the calibre of the people they vote for - Tory or Brexit Party - is very poor and making us a laughing stock around the world. One questionable Tory activist is Ryan Houghton, a Conservative councillor in Aberdeen. 

Mr Houghton was suspended from the Tory party last year after allegedly making a number of anti-Semitic, Islamophobic and homophobic remarks on his blog. He has been re-instated recently, and insists that the remarks were made ten years ago and taken out of context. The BBC quotes him as saying:

"The comments which led to my suspension were isolated and took place nearly a decade ago. They in no way reflect my political or professional record and I find prejudice of any kind abhorrent."

All well and good, but he is on record as saying that while there was:

"no credible evidence to suggest the Holocaust did not happen...I do find some of the events fabricated."
It is not clear what he meant by these "fabricated events", but the very suggestion that any of the painstakingly chronicled crimes of the Holocaust have been falsified, is itself a form of Holocaust denial. 

That will take some living down, both by Mr Houghton and the Conservative Party.

The Dominic Cummings fiasco will take even more living down. Attempts by BoJo to dismiss the whole affair have been a dismal failure. Cummings himself gave a very strange explanation of his condust to the media. As Ian Hislop said on "Have I Got News For You":

“He (Cummings) gave an hour and a half of utter twaddle. It’s absolutely clear he did break regulations. He found one tiny clause which he said made an exception, but that didn’t cover the journey to Barnard Castle, it was nonsense, absolute nonsense."

The events of Cummings' lockdown-busting trip are well enough known, and there is little point in repeating them here.  What is becoming clearer by the day, though, is that this government is failing in just about everything, whether it be in response to Covid-19 or to Brexit, in the quality of its candidates and ministers, and even by the breaking of its own rules. As the LibDem MP, Alistair Carmichael wrote in The Independent:

"Angela Eagle called Jacob Rees-Mogg the worst leader of the House of Commons “in living memory”. There is a palpable frustration about a leader of the house – and a government – that appears more interested in wielding its parliamentary majority than in accepting accountability for how it wields that power."

The one positive sign on the horizon is the growing anger of so many - even those with no firm political convictions - with this government which is growing increasingly unaccountable.

Ian Duncan Smith once said: "Do not underestimate the determination of a quiet man"; the Tories would do well not to underestimate the anger of politically-quiet men like Mr T.

Mocking the Past - and Repeating It

Before Covid-19 launched itself upon the world, we looked back with a mixture of bewilderment and derision at the way people reacted to previous pandemics. The Black Death, or Bubonic Plague, which devastated Europe in the mid-14th Century, is thought to have killed 50 million people worldwide - 20 million in Europe. The disease brought fear and death in equal proportion. As no-one knew what caused it, and the medical science of the day could not provide a cure, people resorted in desperation to methods of treatment that now arouse ridicule and disgust. One such - self flagellation - is seen above.
A pre-Covid-19 website provides a mocking list of "10 Crazy Cures for the Black Death" - although it's hard for a modern reader not to be shocked at some of these "cures". One such was to rub your Bubonic sores with a live chicken. This method was invented by an English physician, Thomas Vicary:
 "People would shave a hen’s butt and strap it to their swollen lymph nodes . . . while the chicken was still alive. Then, when the chicken got sick, they would wash it and repeat the process until only the chicken or victim was healthy."
Other treatments included smearing yourself with excrement, washing in and drinking urine and - incredibly - eating crushed emeralds. Then there were leeches, used for bloodletting - a method which continued into the 19th century.

Racists, nowadays, blame innocent Chinese people for Covid-19. In the mid-14th century, the Jews were the target of much worse:
" Some people took the religious thing a little far and decided that the best cure for the plague was to purge the earth of Jews. Governors of cities across Europe rounded up Jews, boarded them up in their homes, and then set them alight".

Other, remarkably familiar-sounding treatments included positive thinking and not eating meat. Until recently, we would have spoken of all these "treatments" with great amusement.

The 1918 Flu Epidemic, erroneously described as "The Spanish Flu", was more terrible in its effects than the Black Death, but did not last as long. In 15 months, from the spring of 1918 to the summer of 1919, it is thought to have killed at least 50 million people in many countries - some historians say the true figure was double that number. Unlike Covid-19, it killed younger people rather than older, and took the lives of more people in 24 weeks than AIDS has killed in 24 years. As with the Black Death, people lived in fear of catching the disease, and, lacking an understanding of the nature of the virus, resorted to outlandish methods of treatment.

Here in the UK, as the BBC tells us: 

"Public health messages were confused - and, just like today, fake news and conspiracy theories abounded, although the general level of ignorance about healthy lifestyles did not help."

It was thought that smoking could ward off the disease, and one Conservative MP asked, in the House of Commons, if drinking cocoa could prevent infection. Overuse of aspirin is now thought to have contributed to the appaling death toll. And, says the BBC:

"In November 1918, the News of the World advised its readers to: "wash inside nose with soap and water each night and morning; force yourself to sneeze night and morning, then breathe deeply. Do not wear a muffler; take sharp walks regularly and walk home from work; eat plenty of porridge."

In the USA, especially in the mid-West states, people fell back on folk remedies. The CDC website records the case of Sarah Elizabeth Northrip Wright, as told by her grandson, John H. Wright:

"Elizabeth′s father, Orian, did not become ill but most of the rest of the family did. The Northrips brewed a tea–like drink made of sassafras roots, leaves from the pokeweed plant, and elm tree bark. The roots, leaves, and bark were put into a one-gallon kettle, boiled in water, and cooled before drinking. Elizabeth believes this “tea” helped her family survive; there were no deaths."

One intriguing treatment with modern connotations comes from the son of Judy McGlaughlin Seggerson of Indiana. Her father, Art, had been working away from home and had been taken ill before returning home. The then little Judy rushed up to her dad and hugged him. Her worried father then:

" ... insisted that Agnes (his wife and Judy's mother) literally bathe Judy in Listerine®. In the next weeks, Judy and her sister were forced to frequently gargle with Listerine (which they were not very happy about). With a lot of loving care from Agnes, Art eventually recovered. No one else in the family became ill with the flu. For the rest of his life, Art credited Listerine® with saving his family, and I remember him gargling with it every day."

Whatever our views on the apparent follies of our forebears, Covid-19 has afflicted us with the same fear of the unknown and a desperate search for remedies, political, medical or otherwise. Among the weird and not-so-wonderful treatments extant we find cocaine, garlic and homeopathy. Other lunatic ideas include drinking bleach and spraying the body with chlorine. Social media throws up many fake remedies, including drinking hot water and the amazing diagnostic tool of holding your breath for 10 seconds - if you can do that, goes the "theory", you haven't got Covid-19.

Then there are the conspiracy theories, which have led to waves of hatred and violence against many innocent people around the world. David Icke's barmy idea that Covid-19 is 5G attacking our brains is one such delusion, as is the belief that the disease was manufactured by the Chinese government. Aliens from outer space are also suspected, as is Greta Thunberg. And there is worldwide hate crime against many groups, particularly people of Chinese and Far Eastern origin.

Perhaps, then, this pandemic has taught us that we are not really so different from our ancestors as we fondly imagined. At the risk of sounding flippant, I shall be sure to use Listerine twice a day.

Lifting the Lockdown: Spot the Fanatics

As I type, James O'Brien on LBC is asking why the right-wing press finds it so easy to attack public employees (teachers, doctors, nurses, binmen, etc.) as being enemies of the people. The latest set of villains are the teacher unions and, by implication, all teachers, as we can see on the front page of the "Daily Mail" today. He is also (rightly) pointing out that teachers have good reason to be mistrustful of the government, following the deceptive way our political leaders have behaved over the rate of coronavirus fatalities in care homes. There is no doubt that the Right - of all shades - are aiming to politicise the lifting of the lockdown.

I first saw a sign of this when an article from "Spiked" magazine was posted on Facebook. The author - the editor, Brendan O'Neill - launched into a diatribe against an amazing variety of targets, all of whom support the need for lockdown. These include the Labour Party, Piers Morgan, the TUC, "loving leftists and millennial media types" and anyone who supports lockdown, all of whom are engaged in some apparent campaign not to let people go back to work, and are intimidating the present government. O'Neill says:

"I know I’m meant to be scared of Covid-19. But I’m far more fearful of the lockdown fanatics."

He goes on to say:

"Sadly, the government seems increasingly incapable of withstanding pressure from the fearmongers in the media and cultural elites. And so it backed down. The lockdown will stay."

What we should note here is the fact that a continued lockdown was advocated by leading scientists and doctors, including those well-known fanatics of the British Medical Association. O'Neill omits to mention the rising death rate, the nursing home debacle and the risk of a new surge of infection, should the lockdown be relaxed.  Instead, he bursts a blood vessel trying to minimise the effects of Covid-19:

"... coronavirus is proving manageable. It has not overwhelmed our health systems. It is not the 

plague. It is mild or even asymptomatic in most people. Society can handle it."

 Brendan "No Problem" O'Neill

Now, I was reassured that Mr O'Neill was a lone crank - but he is not. He has a kindred spirit in the ex-"Strictly" dancer and MEP, Ann Widdecombe. Ms Widdecombe has joined the debate by bombastically declaring on GMB:

"The former Tory minister and Brexiteer insisted ‘young and healthy’ Britons should return to work as soon as possible and use public transport to get to and from their workplace...

If we don’t get the economy going there are going to be huge long-term health problems as well as economic problems.”

And so we glimpse another cause celebre of the Right: get the lazy workers back into work asap. I am sure that every profit-hungry employer would have been delighted to read of Ms Widdecombe's outburst. Other enthusiasts would include the people who are planning to attend anti-lockdown protests this coming weekend. The Guardian says:

"Flyers for around 60 protests to be held in parks in cities such as Manchester, Leicester and Southampton have circulated online, produced by the little-known “UK Freedom Movement” which aims to say “no to the new normal and no to the unlawful lockdown”.

Disturbingly, the police are concerned that the Extreme Right are becoming involved. Jayda Fransen, the ex-Britain First deputy leader, is suspected of being behind flyers for these illegal gatherings. As the Scottish "Daily Record" says:

"No one has officially taken responsibility for the leaflets...Fransen has been linked to it through a firm she set up on Companies House on April 30".

It is becoming clear, then, that the far-Right and alt-Right see lockdown as an opportunity to be exploited. Spearheading this is the Daily Mail, whose aforementioned front page is attacking the teacher unions, resorting to a squalid ad hominem attack upon the NEU leader, Dr Mary Bousted. We should expect a lot more of this in the near future, with continued attacks upon teachers and, when the right-wing media see the need, on other public sector workers. Richard Littlejohn, in today's Mail, is having a go at the police. Who, one wonders, are the real fanatics in this whole sorry affair? 

Lastly, and I thank James O'Brien for this, let us remind ourselves that the Tory politicians who stand on their doorsteps and applaud NHS workers are the same individuals who, several years back, opposed pay rises for NHS doctors and nurses.

As a retired teacher and a serving school governor, I fully support the teacher unions in their concern for a safe return to schools. If the unions are being attacked by the right-wing media for this, they must be doing the right thing.

Is hypocrisy on the syllabus at Eton?

John Donne, Unity, Disunity and Pandemics

Most English Literature students will be acquainted with the poetry of the man in the picture above. John Donne (1572 - 1631) is known as one of the "Metaphysical Poets", and features on most English Lit. syllabuses. This is a well-deserved accolade, as he was an excellent writer who deserves to be both studied for academic reasons and read for pleasure. Most students, though, who admire his sensual and passionate verses about Love, are not aware that he became a devout Anglican clergyman, becoming Dean of St Paul's in 1621. As a clergyman, he wrote and published a number of sermons. Very few people read his sermons nowadays, but many of us know of this passage from his Meditation 17:

This is often quoted as an appeal for common human unity in the face of Life's trials. It foreshadows the hippy mantra "We're all one", we all belong to each other and share a final fate: death. It implies that we should care for each other as we are all human together. I sometimes wonder what Donne, a practising Christian, would have made of the fact that his religious meditation would go on to inspire Humanists, secular minded socialists and the title of a book by a hellraising American left wing writer and KGB agent - Ernest Hemingway - "For Whom the Bell Tolls".
Donne was familiar with the presence of disease; the average life span in 17th century England was just under 40. Quite what he would make of the Coronavirus is an interesting thought. The latest figures show that 29, 315 people have died of this horrible disease in the UK; 259, 381 worldwide. As an educated man, he would have read of the toll from the Black Death in the 14th century - about 50 million. He might have thought that we got off comparatively lightly. He did not see the death toll of 65, 986 in London during the Great Plague of 1665-66. Nor did he witness the depredations of the so-called "Spanish Flu" , 1918-19, taking the lives of 228, 000 British people. 50 million are said to have died worldwide in that time, although some historians say the true figure is double that.
As far as unity counts, as in Donne's meditation, how united are we? Well, everyone agrees that this disease must be stopped, although politicians world-wide are in disagreement about how to bring this about. Here in  the UK, we have seen an arousal of community spirit and, by and large, observance of lockdown restrictions on our everyday lives. There has been an outpouring of support for key workers, especially NHS staff. If John Donne lived down our street, I am sure he would have joined in the 8.00pm outdoor applause on Thursday evenings. Anti-immigrant feeling is said to be at its lowest ever, following the magnificent contribution of both Commonwealth and EU migrants to the NHS during the present crisis.
Unfortunately, there has been activity from those who do not share Donne's sentiments, both here and abroad. Our old friend, Nigel Farage, has followed the lead of his hero, Donald Trump, by blaming China for COVID-19. As "The National" says:
" The Brexit Party leader, in a column for Newsweek, says Donald Trump was correct to dub Covid-19 the “Chinese virus” as he claims China is responsible for the outbreak". 
Nigel has got himself into trouble recently for making repeated trips to the South coast while the rest of us observe lockdown. He has complained bitterly about a visit from the police, claiming that his immigrant-baiting trips are in the public interest. It's a shame that he didn't make visits to Chinese communities to see the harmful effects to which his remarks have contributed: racist attacks upon Chinese people (and anyone of Far Eastern appearance). The Guardian lists a number of such attacks - and they are increasing. Sky News has reported:

"At least 267 offences were recorded in the first three months of 2020 during the COVID-19 crisis - including assaults, robberies, harassment and criminal damage.
Victims described being punched, spat at and coughed on in the street as well as being verbally abused about coronavirus after the first case was reported in China".

The same is happening in the USA, but this is only part of the conspiracy paranoia happening worldwide. Wikipedia, which is not always wrong, lists a multiplicity of such absurdities. The World Health Organisation (WHO), describes this phenomenon as an epidemic, which is ironic, if you like. Iran blames Israel; Indian Muslims have been blamed; David Icke blames 5G masts; it's germ warfare by China, etc, etc. The UN Secretary general, Antonio Guterres has spoken of an international "tsunami of hate and xenophobia". Quoted in The Independent,: 
" He called on political leaders to show solidarity with all people to help combat hate speech, and said the media – especially social media – should “remove racist, misogynist and other harmful content”.
In spite of this, some optimistic pundits look forward to the end of this plague as the possible dawn of a new era of co-operation and unity. Well, I hope so, despite the contraindications given above. I'd like to think that we will see the end of racism in the UK - or at least the beginning of the end. It would be nice to think that we would value our NHS workers more, whatever their origins, and pay them decent wages in the future. I'd be delighted if, as a gesture of compassion, the UK and every other country were to hold a day of remembrance for all those who have died from COVID-19. Following Donne's logic, we would be mourning for parts of ourselves. As part of the ceremony, one solitary bell should ring in memory of every life lost. That bell will toll for all of us.
I think John Donne would have liked that.

COVID-19: “No one could have anticipated this”

A near-deserted Southport promenade

One afternoon a couple of weeks ago, I was walking along the promenade in Southport, Merseyside, and for a while there were no pedestrians, cyclists or vehicles on what was usually a busy thoroughfare. For a few minutes, I felt like a character in one of those post-apocalyptic stories in which someone wakes up and wanders the streets only to find he is a solitary survivor, such as in '28 Days Later' or 'The Day of the Triffids'. The illusion was soon dispelled of course, but for a few moments it was a slightly eerie experience to wander in daytime around a familiar public place that was completely devoid of people.

COVID-19 is the first pandemic that has affected my way of life, but it is certainly not the first pandemic of my lifetime: AIDS, H1N1 Swine Flu, Ebola and SARS are just some of the widespread diseases to have afflicted the human race in recent decades, but the big difference this time is that the whole world has been affected, if not by catching the disease, then by all the restrictions to which everyone has been subjected. This is definitely not merely a problem in a far away country involving people of whom we know nothing (to paraphrase Neville Chamberlain's infamous turn of phrase).

I have been in turn surprised and frustrated when people say, “No one could have anticipated this”. Such a statement is profoundly ignorant of human history – there have been many more pandemics than those I've listed, such as the post-WW1 flu outbreak that killed around 50 million people and the Black Death which wiped out between and third and a half of the population of Europe [click here for a list of history's 20 worst pandemics]. What is the basis for assuming that we in the comfortable West had somehow become immune? It was only a matter of time before something like this hit us, and with international air travel, diseases can spread in weeks over areas that in previous times would have taken them years or even decades to cover.

There is also an element of smugness involved: we Westerners have tended to assume that with our sophisticated health care systems we can respond rapidly to any such incursions and contain them before they get out of hand, unlike large areas of Africa and Asia that have inadequate health provision. Pandemics in such areas haven't concerned the West as much as they should have done, mainly because they haven't affected our businesses, economies and national prosperity. Such hubris was bound to be punctured sooner or later.

Fiction has not been short of pandemic predictions. To give two more examples (out of many): the BBC TV drama 'Survivors', made in the 1970s and remade in 2008, and 'The Stand' by Stephen King (novel 1978 and TV series 1994), in both of which most of the world's population is wiped out by a mutated virus for which there is no cure. In the USA, some people have been comparing COVID-19 to 'The Stand'; Stephen King himself tweeted that it wasn't really the same and encouraged people to take care of themselves. A reply from one individual demanded angrily of the author: how did he know? Had he actually read the book?

The point is that pandemics have existed in modern times both in real life and in popular fiction (books, radio dramas, TV series and films), and I therefore can't see how anyone could seriously assert that it was impossible to anticipate one affecting the entire world. People doing so either are ignorant (wilfully or otherwise), or are defending political regimes in power at the time.

There have always been pandemics – the earliest-known one was around 3000 BC in China – and while they continue to persist in modern times, we in the West complacently tended to ignore them because they usually affect the developing world rather than us. However, as many fictitious pandemics have suggested, we can all be vulnerable to a virus mutation for which we have no treatment and against which no nations would have any defence, which is precisely what is happening now in real life. Fortunately, COVID-19 is nowhere near as deadly as its fictional counterparts: we can be thankful we are not facing a 90+% mortality rate.

After this pandemic subsides, and history shows us that they all do sooner or later, we in the West should realise that we do not have any kind of invulnerability. Instead of glibly asserting that COVID-19 could not be anticipated and planned for, we should be humble enough to learn from this experience that in a closely connected world, no nation is an island entire of itself (to paraphrase John Donne) and that such an emergency, not only can happen again, but definitely will. The only question is: when?

The Sadness of a Recurring Theme

Please - if you can spare the time - gaze on the photograph of the little girl in the photograph. She looks such a sweet-natured child, the kind of youngster that any family would be proud of, any school would like as a pupil, any child would want as a friend. With this in mind, it comes as a dreadful shock to learn that this lovely little seven-year-old girl is no longer with us. The shock deepens when we learn of how she died - it brought me close to tears.

For Emily Jones, as she was known, was stabbed to death in a park in Bolton, Greater Manchester, on Sunday, 22nd March. She was murdered by an anonymous mental health patient in what has been described as a random attack. Details are sketchy about the event, but they seem to follow a familiar pattern that I have written about so many times before: random, unprovoked, savage violence, followed by incarceration of an unspecified length. The BBC says:

"A 30-year-old woman arrested at the scene on suspicion of murder has been detained at a secure facility under the Mental Health Act."

As yet, the attacker has not been named, and we await further disclosures. We do need to know who she is, for future reference. As I have said too many times already, the people who carry out these atrocities may well be incarcerated in secure facilities, but there seems to be nothing to stop them from being released, "cured", in a short time - perhaps to kill again.

However long the murderer spends locked up, the parents and family of Emily Jones face a life sentence of grief and agonising loss. Emily was their only child, and what they are going through now is unimaginable. Indeed, Emily sounds like the type of child she looked to be. Her parents called her "the light of our lives" and said: 

"Emily had such a cheeky smile and was beautiful inside and out. She had a heart as big as her smile."
Emily's murder is a terrible loss to her family, and a sad loss to the world. We needed Emily Jones and we need many more like her. We can only nod in agreement to what her parents said:
"This random act of violence means that we will never get to see our beautiful little girl grow up into the wonderful young lady she was showing such promise of becoming...It is truly heartbreaking to wake up to a world without Emily in it and we cannot comprehend why this has happened".
I would like to thank Rednev for alerting me to this tragedy and I know that I speak for all who read this blog in sending our condolences to the parents and family of Emily; I am only glad to have been able to pay tribute to such an outstanding young lady. May she rest in peace. There will be, I hope, an investigation onto this incident, and we will learn just how and why this dangerous individual was allowed to be walking freely in a park, armed with a knife, with children around.
I would like to conclude with a note of explanation. Most people, I hope, will understand already why I post so regularly on this subject. Unfortunately, some commentators think I am obsessed; others have accused me of "laying down the law" - whatever that means. 
I write about the danger posed by murderous mental health patients for the very simple reason that anyone could become their victim. Emily, along with all other victims I have written about, was killed in a random attack. Any one of us, and our loved ones, could fall victim to these people. I keep writing about such attacks, because I hope that by alerting people, someone will pressurise the apropriate authorities to bring these atrocities to an end. Hope springs eternal...
There is of course, another reason. Every victim of these crazed individuals had a name, had hopes, dreams and families who loved them. I like to think that by writing of their tragic fates, I can help, somehow, to keep their memory alive. Anyone who doesn't understand that, well, I'm sorry for you.

Nigel Farage and his Racist Followers - a National Disgrace

Mistakenly, I thought I wouldn't be blogging about the Coronavirus crisis. After all, I thought, so much is said on a daily basis that comment from this blog would be superfluous. Well, I got that wrong. Looking on Facebook today, I read of an article in the Nursing Times which can be read in full HERE. The headline: 

"Nurses on coronavirus frontline facing ‘abhorrent’ abuse from public"

shocked me deeply, arousing feelings of anger, shame and outright despair. Ruth May, the Chief Nursing Officer (CNO), said on TV:

“I’ve seen all over Twitter some of our nurses and midwives and care staff being spat at and being abused by members of the public."

Predictably, there is a nasty racist component to all this abuse. A Filipina nurse, Reizel Quiachon, told of how she had been assaulted and racially abused.

“A man elbowed my rib, intentionally pushing me to the side, the female partner then shouted racial abuse. Doctors, nurses and healthcare workers are literally risking their lives on the frontline with limited resources and yet some people feel the need to impose more hatred and fear."

This disgusting attack, which shames us all, points out yet again that we have an unreconstructed racist element in our society that manifested itself as part of the Leave campaign during and after the EU referendum. I have talked of this before, but the beast is roaring again. The people who carry out this abuse and violence are taking their lead from their hero, Nigel Farage, who in turn has taken the lead from his idol, Donald Trump. Farage said, on Twitter:

"It really is about time we all said it. China caused this nightmare. Period."

There is a direct link from this outburst by Farage to the abuse of Reizel Quiachon. The morons who abused Reizel would be unable to distinguish between a Filipina and a Chinese girl - although that would not make their actions any less despicable. This incident is only one of a number of racist incidents against people from the Far East living in the UK. Channel 4 has reported this, and there is a rise in such attacks in the USA.

As for our old pal, Nigel, he has been described as a "hateful, repulsive racist". He will undoubtedly deny it, but will do sweet nothing to condemn or oppose the rise in hate crime. Of course not. Mr Farage knows that would alienate his racist admirers.

As for the abuse of nursing staff and doctors, words fail me. These selfless men and women are working long and hard to combat this 2!st century plague, and deserve our thanks, our praise and support. Mr Farage and his racist followers - an important section of the Leave campaign - make me feel deeply ashamed to be British. Compare the way nurses are being treated here to the way they are being praised and honoured in Europe. In Spain, Italy, Switzerland and even Turkey, they are applauded from balconies.

Well, it's up to the rest of us to condemn these vile attacks upon the brave men and women who have come to this country to care for us when we are sick. They deserve the highest praise that we can give them - and that applies to all NHS staff, wherever they come from. I hope this final image speaks for all of us who contribute to, or read, Rhymes and Routes.