Isolation IX:Ain't No Sunshine.

"Only darkness every day" sang the recently departed and absolutely brilliant singer Bill Withers. It was a song, of course, about lost love but while the sun is shining in the sky most days now those of us addicted to news, of course, share that sentiment. How could we not?

Since I last wrote about this on Saturday the global death toll has risen from nearly 59,000 to nearly 75,000 and in the UK alone deaths have risen above five thousand. In France more then 8,000 have died, in the US over 10,000, in Spain over 13,000, and in Italy over 16,000. Yesterday the UK death toll (in hospitals alone) due to Covid-19 was reported as between 400 and 500. We live in such a topsy-turvy time that this almost seemed like good news.

Joining Eddie Large, Manu Dibango, and Adam Schlesinger on the list of celebrity deaths is Lord Bath of Longleat (you know, the one with the 'wifelets') and though celebrity lives are no more valuable than any others they do drill home the message that this can kill anyone. As will the news that Boris Johnson is in intensive care. A staggering development and a worrying one too.

The small minority of people wishing death upon him are guilty of showing the same, in fact much much worse, inhumanity as the Tory administration they profess to so detest. Having made it very clear, for over a decade, how much I dislike the man, his disregard for truth, and how much he's done to debase the political debate in this country I decided to kick off my "get well soon" Tweet with a mention that I'm "not a fan" for fear of being accused of being a hypocrite. Turns out this was wrong as well. As were people who wished him well but said they weren't Tories.

Twitter is a harsh, unforgiving place at times. If you don't show an adequate level of remorse, anger, contrition, or condolence a virtual pitchfork waving mob turn up at your virtual house to shame you. Those with the largest amount of followers often seem to be those who lead the largest mobs. Often, with social media, the best policy is to say nothing at all. Which is what I probably should have done. But, I stand by it. I hope Johnson pulls through just as I hope everyone suffering with this deadly virus pulls through.

Campaigning for a political party now would be gross but that doesn't mean people's health is apolitical. People's health is very much political. Now as much as ever. That's why the government has a Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. The political point I made, and stand by, is that Boris Johnson's vital treatment will be provided by an NHS his party have done so much to underfund and it's highly likely the doctors and nurses looking after him will be the foreign nationals who have been at the receiving end of the xenophobia he, personally, whipped up in order to get to be PM in the first place.


I hope he makes a full recovery and I hope, in doing so, he learns to value both the NHS and the good that immigration does for the country. But if the Tories are to change their direction of travel and move towards the middle to fight this those of us on the left must do so too. Centrist has, bizarrely, become an insult in recent years (and I'm not the only one to regularly cite WB Yeats' 1919 poem The Second Coming in reference to the dangers of this) but we need to be united to prevent further spread of Covid-19 and we unite by meeting in the centre and not by shouting at each other across a great divide (even though, ironically, that's what's needed on the health front). Name calling might demotivate your human enemies, viruses don't give a shit.

Trump's performances and behaviour throughout this whole pandemic have, like everything he's ever done, been woeful, pathetic, and amoral. An early draft of this blog, and a previous blog on the subject, wished death upon him. To do so now would negate everything I've expressed in the last few paragraphs but for the good of America, and the good of the world, he should be removed from office and removed from office soon.

Covid-19 looks like it's going to rip through America faster, and more deadlier, than any other country on Earth. With eight states still not on lockdown his policies, if you can call them that, have been a disaster and presage a larger disaster. It's not wise to make predictions in such uncertain times but I can't help thinking that, WHEN THIS IS ALL OVER, many other countries across the globe may want to put in place temporary travel bans for American citizens. Mexico should build a wall.

If you think that's just kneejerk anti-Americanism, it's anything but. I love America. I have wonderful friends there, I've spent three holidays there, my mum spent part of her infancy there and her biological father was American (from Montgomery in Alabama) so I'm a quarter American. Kind of. I love American movies, American music (punk, jazz, soul, funk, hip-hop), American architecture, American design, and I even love the cliches of the American can do spirit. It's just right now what's required from many there is a 'don't do' spirit. Don't go out on long drives, don't go to packed churches, and definitely don't go out buying guns.

Oppositions, across the globe, are taking a back seat now and we're not hearing much from either Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders in the US. The Labour leadership race was, properly, relegated to a minor story in much of the UK media but I must add I'm happy with the way it panned out. Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner seem to me like a team that mean business. Starmer's promise to not oppose for opposition's sake and to work with the government in their fight against the spread of Covid-19 were the words I wanted to hear and so was his pledge to not let them pass the buck and to criticise governmental policies when they believe that to be potentially harmful.

I voted for Jeremy Corbyn as leader and I supported him initially. His non-position on Brexit caused me concern and when my doubts were expressed many Corbynites came forward to tell me to "fuck off and vote Tory" - which, of course, I didn't do. Leaving aside that telling people to vote for your political foes is a suicidal strategy (and proved so in the last general election) I started to feel the bitterness of many Corbynites was rendering the Labour Party a liability to itself and, sure enough, some supporters of Rebecca Long-Bailey are crying 'fix' even now.

Long-Bailey herself presumably doesn't share this view as she's been appointed Shadow Secretary of State for Education. The inclusion of Lisa Nandy and Emily Thornberry, as well, in Starmer's shadow cabinet shows him to be an inclusive leader and we already know he is decent, hard working, and honest. If the worst people can say about him is that he's a bit dull I can easily live with that.

Labour Party infighting, already an unpleasant diversion, should be brought to an end now. Nobody's even watching that show at the moment. There's other stuff going on and some of it, only a few weeks ago, would have seemed incredible. The Queen making a rare non-Christmas speech was remarkable enough but the fact that I, an anti-monarchist for as long as I can remember, found myself agreeing with everything she said was more remarkable still. For me at least.

A bizarre virtual Grand National was run (this year no horses died so, to me, it's better than the real one and we should stick with it), TV interviews are carried out with lengthy boom mics, and heroes, of sorts, are coming from the most unlikely places. Obviously the doctors, nurses, and other key workers are the true heroes of our time and I'll be out clapping them as long as we're asked to (as well as campaigning and petitioning for better pay and conditions) but in the media, the field I usually choose to write about, two unlikely candidates to link together wrote wonderful things about Covid-19 and our collective responses to it.

Frankie Boyle, in The Overtake, wrote a powerful and darkly hilarious piece about how the word 'herd' is probably not the best way to refer to a population of human beings, how the "villainous kneecap" Toby Young has actually aligned himself with a deadly virus, and, most powerfully of all, how WHEN THIS IS ALL OVER we should not return to the normal of people sleeping in the streets, children living in poverty, and using our taxes to help Saudi Arabia bomb the people of Yemen.

Let's not return to normal, let's return to better. I've long liked Boyle and his writing goes from strength to strength. Former Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee is known to most people as a man with a big cock who was on a leaked sex tape making the beast with two backs with Pamela Anderson. So he wasn't somebody I was waiting to hear from on this situation. But his open letter to Trump accuses The Donald's press conference of being more "a word salad that had a stroke and fell down the stairs" before calling him a "fried dick sandwich with a side of schlongs", "the perfect circus orangutan diaper from Plato's World of Forms", and a "Bible thumping cock socket".

I said earlier calling people names isn't big or clever but I'm making an exception here. This is worthy of Chris Morris in his Brass Eye pomp. Apparently, Lee didn't even write the letter but that doesn't really matter. It cheered me up and it made me laugh and those are no small things right now. The people who went on Twitter to post photos of a packed Brighton beach taken last summer are just malicious but, at least this time, the Twitter mob that corrected them did it with humour and posted pictures like these below with captions like "BRIGHTON BEACH RIGHT NOW"

That cheered me up too. As do my daily chats with Michelle and Evie, Mum, and Dad, and a long call with Shep (who'll be missing getting out walking, pubs, and waterfowl - probably in that order). Music, as with my previous blogs in this series, has lifted the spirits immeasurably. Dan Whaley's Out of Limits show, a regular pleasure, reminded me of the greatness of both Hector Rivera and Vince Guaraldi, Ian Fuller's musical Facebook posts (especially Clarence 'Frogman' Henry) have been fillips too, and, of course, I've been listening to lots of Bill Withers alongside the likes of Pixies, Thelonious Monk, Little Richard, and Michael Vallera. Nina Simone's Ain't Go No, I Got Life had me in tears. Oh, that woman could sing.

Tonight I'm hosting my first Kahoot quiz over Zoom. Quite a few have said they'd log on for it. As far away as North Wales and even Los Angeles. I'm really looking forward to doing it. Setting it killed several long hours and I enjoyed it so much I got lost in it, forgetting, albeit briefly, why I was doing it in the first place.

But not for long. This terrible virus is not going anywhere fast. We still need to maintain social distancing, we still need to stay in as much as possible, and we still need to keep checking in on family and friends to see how they're coping. I started the blog with words by the dear departed Bill Withers so I'll end it with his words too:-

"Sometimes in our lives we all have pain. We all have sorrow. But if we are wise we know that there's always tomorrow. Lean on me when you're not strong and I'll be your friend, I'll help you carry on. For it won't be long 'til I'm gonna need somebody to lean on".

Peace and love xxxx