"Don't wish it away, don't look at it like it's forever. Between you and me I can honestly say that things will only get better" - I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues, Elton John.
"The emptiest of feelings, disappointed people clinging onto bottles and when it comes it's so disappointing. Let down and hanging around, crushed like a bug in the ground" - Let Down, Radiohead.
Apart from being multi-million selling stadium packing artists, Elton John and Radiohead don't have a great deal in common. It's unlikely a Venn diagram of their fanbases would have a particularly large central section. But one thing they both agree on, and have both written about in the last week, is the disaster that Brexit looks likely to be when it comes to the music industry.
Particularly with regards to touring Europe. Not so much for established acts like themselves but for smaller bands, solo artists, and orchestra members as well as the tour managers, road crew, sound and lighting technicians, and merchandisers that normally accompany bands on European tours. The fishing industry, which Michael Gove seems to have a permanent hard-on for and yet is still failing miserably, is worth a little less than £1bn per annum to the UK. The music industry is worth £5.8bn.
Nearly six times as much. Yet it was completely left out of the Brexit negotiations. Almost as if Boris Johnson was taking revenge for the fact that huge numbers of musicians and music journalists have been, correctly, highly critical of him and the rest of the Tory party over the years. Instead 'carnet' rules will come in to place that will make it prohibitively expensive to transport musical instruments across borders, as well as another set of rules relating to 'cabotage', which dictate that UK freight firms can only make two stops in the EU before having to return home.
Which would make your standard European tour impossible for all but the wealthiest of acts. It's cabotage as sabotage and, the worst thing is, it was a completely unnecessary act of self-sabotage. Elton John has said, rightly, that the British public "were promised something that was completely ridiculous and wasn’t economically viable" and Radiohead's Colin Greenwood added that his "heart sinks at all the new costs and kerfuffle" before going on to say that even though he's fortunate enough to be able to afford it, many will not be. Many promoters in the EU simply won't cough up the extra cash that is now needed to book British acts.
A vital stream of revenue will be lost to both musicians and to the UK - and culturally we will be a much weaker nation when our artists are less able to have their minds expanded by travel. This is more than a shame in a nation that has provided so much great culture to the world. This is a catastrophe. The Conservative Party, and specifically the Boris Johnson iteration of it, sees culture as something that has no value even at a time, these last ten months of pandemic, when many of us have sought solace in music, film, and television. For some people, music has pretty much saved their lives.
What future for a country that sees no value in the redemptive power of the creative industries? A bleak one, I'd wager, unless we change that very quickly. But it's not even the worst thing about living in Boris Johnson's Britain. Because here not only do we not put value on culture,we don't even assign value to people's lives. If we did we would not have voted in a party that applauds when NHS staff are refused pay rises and have, systematically, planned to chip away at that NHS until it is no longer fit for purpose and can be replaced by an American style healthcare system in which only the rich can afford treatment.
The pandemic has put the brakes on that for a while, and Johnson has made some noises about moving more of our health care system away from private investors - while not actually doing anything, but years of demotivation and underfunding have taken its toll on our health system. It's been a factor in the UK's staggeringly high death toll but far from the only one. Going too late into each and every lockdown, a failed track and trace system, intentionally ambiguous mixed messaging, as well as a belief among Johnson supporters that the rules simply don't apply to them has led to the UK having the fifth highest death toll in the world and the fourth highest per head (behind the smaller nations of San Marino, Belgium, and Slovenia).
As an island, or a group of islands, the United Kingdom had a distinct advantage when it came to stopping the spread of Covid-19 but it was an advantage that Johnson didn't take, one he refused to take. It got me wondering about how we compare with other island nations so I had a look through the statistics and compiled a list of the ten island nations with the highest death toll and the ten island nations with the highest per head death tolls. As the UK does have a land border with Ireland (something too many people seem to forget when it's convenient) I have, for balance, included other island nations that have one other border. The results are quite stark.
ISLAND NATIONS - TEN HIGHEST COVID-19 DEATH TOLLS
United Kingdom 112,465
Philippines 11,231
Ireland 3,686
Dominican Republic 2,801
Puerto Rico 1,883
Bahrain 377
Jamaica 357
Sri Lanka 356
ISLAND NATIONS - TEN HIGHEST COVID-19 DEATH TOLLS (PER 100,000 PEOPLE)
United Kingdom 169.47
Ireland 75.95
Malta 58.32
Bahamas 45.64
Dominican Republic 26.64
Cape Verde 24.83
Bahrain 24.21
Cyprus 17.83
Comoros 12.98
Jamaica 12.20
So, there we have it. The UK has double the per head death toll of the next highest island, or semi-island nation, Ireland and more than ten times the overall death toll of the runner up on that list, the Philippines. Australia's total death-toll of 909 has been bested, easily and regularly, by the UK on several single days over the last few weeks.
One part of the UK, however, has done pretty well and, you'll be not surprised to read, it's one in which Boris Johnson has little power. The Isle of Man registered only twenty-five Covid deaths and is now pretty much back to normal. There is no requirement to wear a mask, no need to social distance, and pubs and restaurants are open as normal.
As are schools, colleges, nurseries, and non-essential shops. The Chief Minister for the Isle of Man, Howard Quayle - a former farmer, was proactive in closing down borders and nimble in taking other measures to counter the spread of the virus. When twenty-eight year old Dale McLaughlan took what sounds like a stupidly dangerous jet ski ride across the Irish Sea from Scotland in an attempt to visit his girlfriend on the island he was jailed for a month.
If she dumps him after he's risked his life on a jet ski and served four weeks in chokey for her, he'll feel aggrieved. But elsewhere on the Isle of Man they're pretty happy, "in fine fettle" according to 75 year old blacksmith George Kneale interviewed while enjoying a pint in The White House Hotel in Peel, and that's because they did what they needed to when they needed to do it and didn't make disingenuous and self-serving comments about the economy.
Because if you look after people and their health that tends to be better for the economy than letting a deadly virus spread around the people of a country. Even now, nearly eleven months into the pandemic, the UK government are stalling on introducing quarantine for new arrivals into the UK because they still don't seem to have worked out quite how to do it. If they don't know how it's done ask Australia, ask New Zealand, ask the Isle of Man. If you don't know how to do a job you ask somebody who does know how to do it to teach you to do it. You don't bluster on about the fact you're actually really good, world beating even, at the job but still don't ever actually fucking do it.
The chaos of this, something done by the government, stands in stark contrast to how well the vaccinations, run by the NHS and overseen by the army and countless volunteers, are going. Over twelve million people in the UK have had their first jab and more than half a million have had their second and that can be nothing but good news and a reason for cautious celebration. We may have to accept that Boris Johnson will probably enjoy a bounce because of this despite the fact that him and his government are directly responsible for the staggering UK death toll.
Johnson, and Gove - and his dismissal of experts, should also take much of the responsibility of turning the UK into a post-truth society where conspiracy theories can gather traction easily and quickly. These conspiracy theories aren't harmless fun. They cost lives and they ruin lives. Dr Rachel Clarke, the medic who was written so powerfully and eloquently about working on the frontline of the NHS during the pandemic, has been called Satan, Shipman, Mengele, and Hitler for pointing out that Covid is both real and deadly.
She has been called a child abuser and colleagues of hers have been threatened with sexual abuse so severe they would require their own ventilators as well receiving messages calling them an "evil criminal lying piece of government shit" who should be "executed immediately for treason and genocide".
In a country where we reward those who lie with high powered jobs like Mayor of London, Foreign Secretary, and Prime Minister, it's easy to see why so many choose to believe lies and spread conspiracy theories. Many conspiracy theorists are simply very stupid people who have a pathological need to look clever and could never achieve that by fair means. A friend of mine's brother wrote on Facebook, "imagine
being so stupid that you genuinely believe that you know more about a
virus than the entire planet’s scientific community".
Sadly many do. Those who hold the truth dear are involved in a battle on several fronts. We must conquer, or at least contain, the virus but we must also stop the spread of bullshit, be it from the tech giants, Rupert Murdoch's gutter press, or from Westminster itself. We must not allow ourselves to stoop to their level and we must remember there are more good people out there than there are bad. A point proved when, at the age of 100, Captain Sir Tom Moore died in Bedford Hospital on the 2nd February.
Captain Tom, as all agreed, represented the best of British in so many ways. Not only did he raise over £39,000,000 for NHS Charities Together, he did so modestly and with a smile on his face (and also went on to have a number one single, You'll Never Walk Alone, with Michael Ball, win the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Helen Rollason Award, and get knighted not long after his 100th birthday - most settle for a telegram). But the outpouring of love for Captain Tom on his death seemed, to me, universal.
Whatever political position we take, we can (most of us) recognise when a good person is doing a good thing, and it's this we must cling to now. During these times when we still can't see our friends and families. It's been thirty-three days now since I saw a single person in real life to talk to (I'm aiming to beat last year's record of fifty) but I've not felt too down about it because we now have the tools, the Zooms and WhatsApps, to stay in touch even when we can't actually touch.
I've chatted with Mum and Dad, Pam, Michelle (who drew the below picture of me), Vicki, Shep, and Adam, I've done Sharon's Kahoot quiz (finishing second to Tony), and I hosted my first London by Foot lockdown quiz (which Dan won with Pam a close second), and I've been taking shorts walks (it's cold and nothing much is open) around Peckham Rye Common and Peckham Rye Park.
Friends, and trying to walk over 11,000 steps every day, have kept my spirits up and so, as ever, has music. I've always been proud to come from a country, a city even, that has such a vast library of outstanding music to offer the world. I'm feeling less proud to live in a country that has become so small minded, so insular, that it now wants to take that away. Not just from our European friends, but even from each other. There has to be give and take in a cultural relationship as with any other relationship. Sadly, we have still not learned that Boris Johnson and the cronies that make up his administration are only capable of taking. Taking our money, taking our culture from us, and even taking our lives.
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