There was his customary shabbiness. Not just the contrived pulled-through-a-hedge-backwards look, but the shiftiness and inability to answer straight questions with a straight answer. When asked about workers and what they're supposed to do during the period of Coronavirus-enforced isolation, Johnson said his government had announced an uplift in the living wage (sic) and "we hope the people listening to this will take away the message that they will be protected." Totally reassuring. Asked about respirators he side-stepped the issue, and he talked about restrictions but only offered advice and suggestions. Shambolic.
And about those workers. His non-answer meant nothing. There are ideas floating around in the right wing ether about enhanced sick pay and a temporary basic income, but all on offer today were platitudes and a recommendation one should work from home. Fine for those who can, but those who can't? Consider, for instance, the case of Richard Branson. While he rushed to the government begging for a £7.5bn bail out for the airline industry, his business saw it fir to put their workers on eight weeks of unpaid leave while he sits the crisis out snug on his private island. And where Branson leads, others are sure to follow. How are these workers and others looking at hours and wages drying up going to make ends meet? Johnson might have ignored this today, but he can't ignore it forever.
Also appalling was his recommendation that people avoid bars, cinemas, pubs, and theatres. Appalling, because he's basically consigned thousands of businesses to oblivion. As many have pointed out, business insurance only kicks in if the government shuts them down. By warding people away, many will be forced to voluntarily shutter to save money and not a few face going under, because their closure does not meet the terms of their insurance policies. Yes, support was promised to help small businesses in last week's budget, but how long do they have to wait, are they being contacted now about the help available, and how far back does it cover? Sadly, another of Johnson's oversights for which others will pay.
Yes, Johnson says his approach is guided by the science, which, in the UK's case, has significant holes. Even if the assumptions and modelling were correct, his job is tor provide the political response and the political leadership, to develop a biopolitics and necropolitics of Coronavirus. As Johnson's initial efforts show, this comes laden with all sorts of assumptions. His ruling class common sense is laissez-faire governance, of government presiding over the rules of the game (the Tories initially devised) and intervening only where and when it's deemed necessary to formulate this regulation, or address that upset in the equilibria. And this was how his time in office was supposed to be. Throw money at infrastructure projects, stoke the culture wars a bit, and get on negotiating a glorious Brexit deal. This prospectus has been destroyed by COVID-19. With everything seizing up, entire sectors of the economy staring down the barrel of ruin, and millions facing destitution on top of sickness, Johnson has to break with the governing habits that have served his class well these last 40 years. The logic of social necessity will compel him, as it has done every other European government, but at what cost while he dithers and delays?
I think it is clear from the public response to this situation that they do not trust Johnson. There are limits to their ideology and front even if Brexit means Brexit.
ReplyDeleteI believe pretty much all commercial insurance clauses have a pandemic exception, so they aren't going to pay anyway.
ReplyDeleteChancellor speaking later. There will be some support for businesses no doubt.
An arch Thatcherite friend has been calling for complete isolation and quarantine since January, so this isn't just left/right.
I live in Edinburgh I have witnessed 'panic' buying, a big stress on frontline services, but also community mobilization: volunteers and groups giving support to others- shopping etc. Nonetheless as a nurse I know that the NHS is under strain here, frankly not helped by the years of cuts. Do we trust Boris- of course not. We are doing what we can.
ReplyDeleteDid the PM include himself in the herd analogy or did folks just vote for him for entertainment? Oh yes I forgot Brexit. Looks like we are stuck with him for a while. We the herd.
ReplyDeleteJohnson has just signed the death warrant for the entire music and pub industry in the UK by not ordering them to shut down (which would trigger some insurance payments, hitting his mates in the city hard) but by urging them to “do the right thing” and shut down voluntarily, essentially sparking a witch hunt against those that don’t. This means those entire industries will have no financial help, no guidance from government and have now been made a scapegoat. This was the worst case scenario.
ReplyDeletePlease write/email/tweet to the Government UK Prime Minister now and ask them to FORCE pubs, clubs, theatres and cinemas to close. Advising all "to avoid pubs, clubs, theatres and cinemas" means that none of these businesses will get ANY insurance when WE have to take the decision to close, leaving the impossible decision with the business owner. Follow the example of France and Spain, HM Government, and order venues shut so that we are covered by insurance.
Expect a post from the Music Venue Trust which represents all grassroots music venues across the UK. Obviously this effects not only music venues or people in the arts. It affects everyone on some level.
Thangam Debbonaire
The policy of telling people to stay away from pubs and so on is nonsensical and unnecessary. But so is the policy to tell everyone to basically stay away from work in general for the indefinite future.
ReplyDeleteFor 80% of the population COVID19 poses no serious threat whatsoever. In fact, as the scientific advice pointed out, for people in that 80% contracting the virus so as to then build up herd immunity is the best protection for the population at large, until such time as a vaccine can be produced, but that is 18 months away.
All of the response to closing down economic activity whilst that 80% of the population could have gone about its life perfectly fine, is simply an irrational response to a moral panic that has been created mostly on social media, and with the help of a sensationalist mainstream media.
A look at what happens when you close down the economy by telling people to stay away from work as part of "social distancing" and self isolation is already being seen. Shops only have supplies to last for around 2-3 days, even without panic buying. If no one is working producing the goods to replenish the shelves, the shelves soon empty, which then causes people to panic buy for entirely rational reasons, so as to avoid being unable to provide themselves with supplies for an indefinite future.
That is already seen in Italy and France. Paul Mason has reported a similar thing at Tesco's in London at 8 o'clock this morning. China's economy shrank by 15% in the first quarter due to closing down Hubei, which is an entirely unsustainable situation for an economy. And, so far that has no affected workers in the health service or in energy supply, though schools are reporting large numbers of teachers staying away from school, most of them entirely without reason.
rather than telling pubs etc. to close down, the government should be insisting they stay open, and should rescind its totally irrational advice for perfectly healthy people who are not at risk to stay away from such places. Its the moral panic and response to it that is causing real damage not the virus.
When energy supply workers take the government's advice and stay away from work, even though they are perfectly healthy, the reality will soon kick in, as electricity ceases, and life shuts down, causing millions of casualties. As Marx said, explaining The Law of Value,
“Every child knows that any nation that stopped working, not for a year, but let us say, just for a few weeks, would perish.”
Today its days not weeks, because of the rise in the rate of turnover. Handing out trillions of pounds to businesses and individuals when nothing is being produced for them to buy with that money is a recipe for disaster. As Paul reports, already the shortages are causing prices to spike. Printing money and spreading it as helicopter money, whilst shutting down production and so supply leads to Weimar style hyper inflation, which will cause far more deaths and damage to livelihoods than COVID19 is ever likely to achieve.
Yes Tory
DeleteI agree completely Boffy. Keep going.
DeleteThe good news is that what is being seen now is a taster of what will happen as a result of a crash out Brexit. It shows what a stupid reactionary agenda was, and why Labour should immediately be calling for it to be scrapped.
ReplyDeleteHow likely is it that we'll see a surge in arson attacks, as some owners of pubs and music venue facing financial ruin decide to try torching their premises for the insurance money?
ReplyDeleteI agree entirely with Boffy's observation that our current situation forewarns the consequences of a hard Brexit.
ReplyDeleteWe are on a potentially very steep political learning curve and I for one intend to remind all my acquaintances on the Labour right that all their efforts to undermine the possibility of a Corbyn government can carry some of the can for the inadequacies of the Johnson government and the undoubted dire consequences.
Remember there were 1,700 cases in Italy on the 1st March, on the 8th there were 7,300 cases and the Italian government felt compelled to introduce a lockdown because their hospital system was collapsing.
ReplyDeleteThe statistics claim there are 1,950 cases in the UK right now, and the UK is making much less of an effort to contain the virus than Italy or Wuhan were making at a similar stage. It's pretty much inevitable that the virus will spiral out of control and you'll have hundreds or thousands of people dying 7-14 days from.
Anyone should self isolate, wash hands, etc.
"I agree entirely with Boffy's observation that our current situation forewarns the consequences of a hard Brexit."
ReplyDeleteBoffy is an absolute dangerous idiot. The W.H.O, the European centre for disease prevention, the lancet, the entire medical establishment and almost every nation on Earth believe the best way to fight this disease is to suppress it as much as possible. Every single claim made by Boffy is a moronic interpretation of what he hears on TV. Actually it isn't an interpretation but a stream of horseshit, it is a idiotic layman trying to explain the laws of Quantum mechanics and he delivers his high idiocy with such confidence. This is why he is so dangerous.
All I can do is plead with people not to listen to this colossal and dangerous idiot.
What the left should take from the coronavirus isn't that hard brexit is a bad idea and EU neo liberalism is a really great thing. What we should be doing is talking about the destructive iniquities of the capitalist system, the failure of a market system which delivers goods based on how much money you have rather than need.
Far from being a warning about Brexit the virus is actually creating a vision of how we should be organising human society, how the anarchy of capitalism is highly destructive, how the incredible inequalities in the world have created a rotten system. This is a prelude and a warning of the environmental disaster to come and hints at the changes we need to make in order to create a sustainable future.
This virus is a better critic of the capitalist system than Boffy ever would be, except Boffy is a bagman of free trade and markets. The last thing this idiot could be described as is a Marxist. As if Marx would be saying, the lesson we can learn from all this is just to carry on the destructive path and don't worry about anything.
Marx criticized those who only saw in poverty negativity, he spoke of its revolutionary potential also. This virus is teaching us so many lessons about the precarious and destructive nature of globalised neo liberal capitalism.
Boffy, being a bagman of this system, simply wants to let people die in the name of market fundamentalism. Seriously the idea that this idiot stands on the left is surely blown out of the water for good.
@Boffy wrote:
ReplyDeleteChina's economy shrank by 15% in the first quarter due to closing down Hubei, which is an entirely unsustainable situation for an economy. And, so far that has no affected workers in the health service or in energy supply, though schools are reporting large numbers of teachers staying away from school, most of them entirely without reason.
rather than telling pubs etc. to close down, the government should be insisting they stay open, and should rescind its totally irrational advice for perfectly healthy people who are not at risk to stay away from such places. Its the moral panic and response to it that is causing real damage not the virus.
This is crazy. No society can tolerate thousands of people dying of disease all over the place and Coronavirus is no longer confined to a handful of locations in the UK, so a total Italy-style lockdown to snuff out the virus is inevitable. The longer the lockdown is delayed, the longer and more severe it'll be, the more people will die, and the greater the ultimate disruption to the economy.
Boffy,
ReplyDeletePlease stop spreading (albeit on a small scale) dangerously ill-informed, trivialising, contrarian bullshit.
"This is crazy. No society can tolerate thousands of people dying of disease all over the place and Coronavirus is no longer confined to a handful of locations in the UK, so a total Italy-style lockdown to snuff out the virus is inevitable. The longer the lockdown is delayed, the longer and more severe it'll be, the more people will die, and the greater the ultimate disruption to the economy."
ReplyDeleteReally? So, why, in 2018 did the UK then allow 17,000 people to die from seasonal flu? Why does it allow 80,000 people a year to die from smoking related diseases, with a further 320,000 a year to contract serious smoking related illnesses?
What is more if the 20% of the population actually at risk of serious consequences from contracting it were enabled to effectively isolate they would not be at risk of dying from it, whilst the scientific evidence is that the other 80% are at effectively no risk of dying or even serious illness, but risk only mild or even no symptoms!
What will kill millions is closing down the economy by having that 80% unnecessarily quarantantine themselves rather than continue to produce all the goods and services the whole of society requires for its very existence. A few weeks ago, the shut down of a couple of power stations brought the entire national grid down, which led to essential power to hospitals etc. being cut off. Imagine what happens when electricity supply workers not in just two, but a whole series of power stations take the advice to self isolate and stay at home. Imagine the effects of that on lives when there is no electricity not just for a few hours, but even for several days, let alone the potential for that to happen for a few weeks given that that is how long the government is now saying such self isolation will require.
I was pleased to see that yesterday, the government's chief scientific advisor, Sir Patrick Vallance confirmed a number of things I have been saying for a while.
ReplyDeleteHe pointed out that the actual number of people infected is probably in excess of 100,000, so giving a mortality rate of 0.1%. Its just that its only the 2,600 people whose symptoms were so severe as to require hospitalisaton, are the only ones who have been tested. The other 97.400 people who contracted he virus either had no symptoms, or else had such mild symptoms that they did not seek medical advice.
He also confirmed that children were at no risk from going to school in respect of the virus, because children other than those with respiratory diseases etc. are unaffected by it. He also confirmed that the large majority of teachers and other staff were not at risk from it, because as with the 80% of the population in general, they would suffer either no or only mild symptoms were they to contract it.
Which all, therefore, begs the question of why the government was then closing schools after all other than for the fact that they were responding to an out of control moral panic, and to the fact that schools themselves also responding to that moral panic had begin to close down anyway.
All we need now is for the virus to be blamed on witches, and we can expect Salem all over again.
The SPGB must be frustrated, they have called for the commanding heights to be nationalised and a Tory decides to nationalised the non commanding heights too!
ReplyDeleteBoffy's idiocy reaches new heights. He clearly hasn't read the latest projections from the government's chief scientific advisors and their prescriptions for what needs to be done. He simply explains to us that the science backs his outlook even as every scientist in the known world proposes strongly the exact opposite of what he says! But thanks Boffy for once again letting us know how right you are about everything. In these horrific times it is comforting to know you have been proved correct yet again.
But to cut a long story short, the government's chief scientific advisors advise that we go into complete and utter lockdown.
The reason given for the school lockdown was as follows:
TO LIMIT THE SPREAD OF THE VIRUS
To assist health workers coping with the spread.
The data modelling shows that if nations were insane enough to follow dumb fuck Boffy's advice this virus would spread exponentially to every inch of the globe, killing millions with the unknown outcome of how the virus would evolve in such circumstances.
The data modelling also shows that the breakdown in society would be far more extreme than a total lockdown and probably would last longer.
This why the governments chief scientific advisor, who dumb fuck quotes, is proposing the exact opposite of what dumb fuck says.
Dumb fuck thinks every government in the world is responding to a moral panic in every country in the world. For dumb fuck this virus is nothing much to fret about. Dumb fuck thinks every single scientific body in the world is wrong and he is right.
We can only thank god that dumb fuck is nowhere near the levers of power. Even Trump seems the very model of sanity compared to dumb fuck.
Boffy, I invite you to reduce the surplus population, and please do so with all haste. And please ask the Weatherspoons owner to join you.
ReplyDeleteAt least that way you won't be a burden on those front line health workers you would so recklessly put in arms way. Unless of course you are proposing disbanding medicine altogether and just letting everyone die of all diseases.
My mum is a nurse and FYI they do not let people die of the FLU. Thousands are cared for, millions get vaccinated and some unfortunately die.
When you need blatant lies to back up your assertions you should be aware that places you among the scum of the Earth.
Your belief that we allow people to die of the flu is fake news.
You must be really proud of yourself that in a midst of a major world crisis you decide to spread such lies.
“What will kill millions is closing down the economy by having that 80% unnecessarily quarantantine themselves rather than continue to produce all the goods and services the whole of society requires for its very existence”
ReplyDeleteWhat utter claptrap and flawed logic.
Most of the stuff comes from abroad you dimwit! Let us say we followed your reckless advice and decided to carry on as normal. Not only would every other nation ban any travel in or out of the UK but they would also ban any goods coming in or out of the UK.
When I walk down the high street and see the goods on display no more than 5% are essential for sustaining life, in fact most of it is useless shit we don’t need.
In fact it was reported a few days ago that global carbon emissions were down 50%!
Hopefully once this nightmare has ended we will look at every good we produce, decide which we don’t need and with all haste start producing goods and services we actually require. You know like ventilators, ICU beds, investing in medical resources.
The era of globalised capitalism must come to an end. Nothing shirt of that will suffice.
Erica,
ReplyDeleteTotal bollocks and not based on anything I have said. Far from putting front line health workers in "arms" way, I have argued that far more needs to be done to provide them and care workers with the proper PPE. But failing to properly isolate the 20% at serious risk is precisely the way in which health workers are being put in harm's way! Its isolating the 20% that I have proposed, and that you and the government is failing to do!
A look at the actual facts shows that those that have died, and those that have been hospitalised all come from the 20%. Its your policy of failing to effectively isolate that 20%, and instead pointlessly trying to isolate the 80% that is causing hospitals to be overrun, and staff to be put at risk!
I have not said that we "let" people die from flu I was responding to a claim that we could not let thousands of people die from COVID19, by pointing out that thousands of people die from flu every year whilst we do not implement the same kinds of lock down currently being proposed to prevent it. We have 80,000 people a year dying from smoking, and 320,000 coming down with serious smoking related illnesses, but smoking has not been banned.
So, its not blatant lies other than on your part, along with the same kind of trolling misrepresentation. Its you that is spreading fake news, and your whole approach leads me to think that you are probably just the latest incarnation of the Sentinel's multiple personality, so I will save myself the trouble of responding to your nonsense any further.
Concerned Citizen
ReplyDeleteThe SPGB regards nationalisation as simply reproducing capitalist social relations, and thua does not advocate it. Maybe you're confusing them with some Trotskyist groupuscule, the Socialist Party that is the successor to Militant Tendency, perhaps?
* and thus does not advocate it
ReplyDelete