Isolation XXI:The Lives Of Others.

"You're twisting my melons, man" - Step On, Happy Mondays.

Today is happy Monday and June is bustin' out all over. You can meet up, in England (regional variations apply just to keep things nice and confusing), with up to five friends, you can have BBQs in your back garden and invite people round, they can even walk through your house and use your toilet to save them pissing in your garden. Yes, despite there still being more than one hundred, often double or treble that, people dying each day and the R rate hovering, it's believed, perilously close to one in many regions, the British government has began easing the lockdown regulations.

Despite health officials warning against it due to that rate of infection still being too high and public faith in the government being fatally eroded by the shameless lying and contempt shown by Johnson and his boss Cummings over the Durham/Barnard Castle fiasco. There are over 38,000 dead of Covid-19 in the UK now, in Italy the current number is 33,000+, Brazil (as predicted the big risers in this grisly league) are up to over 29,000 deaths, France is above 28,000 and Spain has topped 27,000.

There are more than five thousand deaths in Mexico, Belgium, Germany, Iran, Canada, the Netherlands, and India and there have been more than one thousand people who have died in Russia, China, Turkey, Peru, Sweden, Ecuador, Switzerland, Ireland, Indonesia, Pakistan, Portugal, Romania, Poland, and Chile. That's A LOT of death. Over 371,000 deaths across the globe with over 105,000 of those in table toppers and world beaters USA alone. The USA are beating the world in this league the way an American cop beats an unarmed black man. Determinedly, repeatedly, without apology, and fatally.

So what does Trump do about the six figure death toll, the forty million and rising unemployed, and the police brutality (and blatant and unapologetic murder of George Floyd) that has ended in riots across cities like Minneapolis, Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles (I'm not condoning the riots but Black Lives Matter campaigners across the US have been taking the knee for years and have not only got nowhere with it but have been roundly condemnded for their peaceful protests)? What does Trump do? He plays golf, he watches TV, and he brands Antifa a terrorist organisation.

He brands the fight against fascism a terrorist action. Sending out a message to all those who fought, all those whose families fought, against fascism in WWII to let them know they were terrorists. Trump has, in a way more explicit than ever before in his own craven life, sided with fascism against anti-fascism. Trump has said, proudly, in a Tweet that can never be erased that when it comes to fascism he's with Mussolini and Hitler and he's against Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Many speculate Trump's presidency (one in which he's never governed, always campaigned, always blamed, always scapegoated) is over. Some say it will be over on November 3rd this year (flush the turd on November the 3rd) but let's remember we've been here before. Everyone laughed when he launched his campaign, fewer people laughed when he became the candidate, even less were chuckling when he became President, and, to appropriate one of Bob Monkhouse's finest jokes, nobody's laughing now.

Instead they're dying, or rioting, or worrying about dying in poverty or being unable to look after their family. You need a gallows humour to survive these times but those with the darkest sense of humour must be those who thought you could elect such a vain, vengeful, mean-spirited, incurious, humourless, bullying, arrogant, racist, sexist, sexually abusing, lying fucking piece of shit into the White House. Family members of Trump supporters already live with shame. The shame will pass down the generations. If, that is, Trump doesn't get so pissed off with the bad publicity he nukes the planet.

To both get away from the news, and to process it, I have, as ever been speaking to friends and family, walking, and listening to music. To remind myself that (though those in power right now are the most uniquely awful to hold office in generations and that those who voted them in were either conned into doing so by populist tricks or are as genuinely small minded and nasty as Trump and Johnson) most people aren't shit. Most people are kind. Most people care. Most people value love, friendship, family, nature, and genuine human connection.

Since my last Isolation blog on Friday I've spoken to Mum and Dad (as I'm doing every day - which is weird but nice and caught up with Vicki which was, as ever, absolutely lovely. I've walked in Peckham Rye, Peckham Rye Park, Dulwich Park, and Burgess Park (the weather has been gorgeous), and I've enjoyed another Kahoot quiz. This time with Dylan in the role of quiz master and Owen taking the non-existent spoils

London, and (I'm sure) the rest of the UK, looks as beautiful in the spring as it ever has done - maybe, in view of what's happening - even more so. Most people seem internally relaxed and content to sit in the sun enjoying socially distanced chats with friends or sit alone in parks sunbathing and reading books. Making the best of the situation. But, of course, there are people doing bad things. There are people getting tetchy, people whose patience is about to snap, there are people pushing past each other in queues and risking the spread of the virus, and, worst of all, in very rare cases, there are people spitting in each other's faces and telling them they have Covid-19 (see the case of Belly Mujinga who died after just such an incident).

The odd bout of impatience or non-violent bad temper is unpleasant but forgivable. Spitting a lethal disease into a care worker's face is vile beyond belief and is simply unforgivable. The person accused of killing Mujinga's case collapsed and that's sad. I don't know enough about the case (there's been a lot of news and it's not possible to take it all in) to comment on why I think that is but I do know enough about this government to know that the case against them must never collapse. Their negligence, their lying, and their disgusting double standards during this crisis should never be forgiven. I will never forgive them.

As the sense of lockdown being eased undoubtedly sets in people are certainly taking advantage of it - and it's hard to blame them. I don't want to point to those sunbathing on Bournemouth or Durdle Door beaches or to those packing beauty spots up north or London parks because the vast majority of them (though certainly not all) are doing their best to social distance and to apply the intentionally unclear and ambiguous rules. Let's not seek to blame those trying to abide by rules that aren't clear. Let's look at those that are setting the rules with full intention of creating that uncertainty. An uncertainty that always turns to division. A division that can be juiced by Johnson and Cummings to blame the public for their own personal and governmental failings.

Boris Johnson was, on the back of the ongoing Cummings and goings injustice, desperate to give the nation some good news. He always is. That's how populism works. That's a huge part of what made our death toll so high in the first place. He didn't want to be the bearer of bad news about lockdown so he went full 'Boris' and announced kids back to school, horse racing back on, football back on, BBQs back on, meeting friends back on. Even though many of those things were happening anyway with police reporting that many questioned about breaking of rules have simply been saying that if Cummings can do it then so could they.

Which isn't a good enough excuse but it goes to show just how seriously Johnson and Cummings have undermined the health message - possibly intentionally. It certainly shows Johnson values Cummings more than he cares about public health. As Greece announce people will be able to take holidays there again soon (but not from the UK - the infection rate still too high here), as the notoriously morally dubious and dodgy Serco (speaking from personal experience) are given a contract by the government to carry out track and trace before admitting they're only going to give staff one day training, and on the back of Johnson's flip-flopping over whether or not foreign NHS staff should pay for the privilege to treat patients we have to finally realise that this is a government that is as incompetent as it is negligent, it is as negligent as it is self-serving, and it is as self-serving as it is carelessly cruel. It cares about nothing but its own survival. It's not looking to kill you, it's not looking to perform a cull. It is, quite simply, callous and indifferent to you, your family, your life, or their lives.

It knows, Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings, and Michael Gove know, they've got away with terrible acts before and, that, when this is all over, they can simply reframe the story and shift the blame. Create new monsters and straw men to attack, open another window on the potentially endless culture war. But when I say KNOW what I mean is THINK. It's up to us to show them, at the ballot box or sooner - BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY, that this is no longer acceptable. Never was.

If the suddenly sidelined SAGE advisers and still way too high daily deaths toll are to be believed (and you really should believe them more than you believe a government of proven and deadly liars) it's too early for this relaxation of lockdown. They fear a second spike. Nobody knows for certain but many of us fear that second spike. Prudence now, it seems, would be the advisable avenue to take but that's not this 'maverick' government's style. Their style is to wing it and, for that, our country has already paid too high a price.

Following Cummings' breaking of the rules, breaking of the law, and getting away with it, it seems a significant number of the population no longer want to take the long and slow safe road back to whatever will come to look like normality and maybe that's what Cummings wanted all along. To nudge us back towards herd immunity, Because that certainly looks like where we're going right now. Herds, once they've been milked completely dry, quite often end up getting slaughtered for profit.

To get back to the Happy Mondays song that started this blog, you'd 'call the cops' - but many of them are too busy murdering black people.