Earlier this month, a thirty-three year old woman left her friends house in Clapham and headed home over the Common and along the South Circular Road. As we all know now, Sarah Everard never made it home and soon after her disappearance a serving officer of the Metropolitan Police, Wayne Couzens, was arrested on suspicion of her murder.
It caused, understandably, a tidal wife of grief and, equally understandably, women all over the country came forward to share their own stories of fearful walks home, crossing roads to avoid strangers, clutching keys in their hands in case of the need for self-defence, and, of course, some far more harrowing stories.
The point was made, quite correctly, that it is no longer, and never was, the job of women to make sure they don't get raped and murdered. It is the job of men to make sure they don't carry out rapes and murders. So, when a peaceful vigil in honour of Sarah Everard was held in Clapham Common a week later, self-distanced and masked, you'd think the Met may have policed it lightly.
They, of course, did not. The mostly female protestors on Clapham Common were treated a lot more aggressively than the mostly male anti-lockdown protestors on Oxford Street this weekend. The behaviour of the police was utterly shameful. So was, unsurprisingly, the behaviour of our government. Instead, led on by chief bully Priti Patel, they announced the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (which could make it a more serious offence to attack a statue than a woman) and tried to use the cover of Covid to sneak through a piece of legislation that would be the greatest infringement on our civil liberties in my life so far.
My suspicion/fear is that this is partly because the government are planning to block any attempt at a public inquiry into their mishandling of the pandemic and they're only too aware that that will go down very badly with millions of people and that tens, hundreds, of thousands of those people will wish to protest about that. If formerly legal demonstrations are criminalised then it is not only acceptable, but it is correct, to take part in, and to incite, civil unrest. Which is exactly what we saw in Bristol this weekend.
At least up to a point. I agreed with Bristol's mayor Marvin Rees, himself an opponent of the bill, when he said that when the protest turned to violence it became "counter-productive" and was more likely to be used by the government to promote the bill than it was to stop it. Which I can't help thinking might have been part of their ambition. This is a particularly combative, aggressive, and divisive government and one that has come to believe it only survives because of those traits.
If you keep changing the meaning of civil unrest then more people will be found guilty of it. This is a government that thrives on creating enemies and this bill provides them with plenty. As long as proxy cultural wars can be waged an inquiry into the mishandling of the pandemic can be postponed indefinitely. Which would be a huge injustice to all those who unnecessarily lost their lives because of Johnson's administration.
Rafael Behr wrote, in The Guardian, that "for most people, the pandemic is not a question of party allegiance, or political at all, in the sense of electoral rivalries fought out in Westminster. That does not mean there is no interest in the truth. It is possible to see blameless tragedy and harm aggravated by incompetence reflected on different surfaces of the same event. The urgency in setting up an inquiry is not to accelerate the settling of partisan scores, but to secure for posterity the foundations of fact on which the history of the pandemic will be written. It is to begin the forensic work of excavating the site before it is flooded with propaganda and reshaped to the contours of a myth, narrated by the prime minister in the first person".
There needs to be an inquiry because governments cannot, and should not, escape scrutiny when over one hundred thousand people die. The £37bn spent, or wasted, on an ineffective test and trace system (about which Sir Nicholas Macpherson, the former permanent secretary to the Treasury, has tweeted that it "wins the prize for the most wasteful and inept public spending programme of all time"), the transferal of Covid patients into care homes, the first late lockdown, the second late lockdown, and the third late lockdown. All these things need to be investigated and those responsible held accountable. Or we are in serious danger of repeating the same mistakes when the next crisis arrives. Which, with this government, will not be long.
It's not only at home that the British government is proving an unreliable player. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has said we should strike deals with countries with poor human rights records which would be even more shocking if it wasn't for the fact that we already do this. Raab says we need to put money before morals (hardly surprising, he's a Tory) but Britain, under Johnson, is fast gaining a reputation on the global stage as an untrustworthy player. Promises are broken as easily and glibly as they are made - and they are made very easily and very glibly.
In the last couple of weeks alone, Jonathan Calvert and George Arbuthnottt's new book Failure of State goes as far as to suggest Johnson could be charged with 'gross negligence manslaughter' and Priti Patel has suggested sending asylum seekers to be 'processed' on the Isle of Man and Gibraltar despite not even bothering to run it by, or even inform, the relevant authorities in those places of the plan. A stupid and vain thing to do though not as dumb as the time when she suggested we could use a big wave machine to force migrant boats back. Conveniently overlooking the fact that the vast majority of boats that arrive on our shores are delivering us stuff we need!
Brittania rule the waves indeed! This is a government that intends to stamp out all criticism and to face no scrutiny and that's why I write about them. Because there may be a day when I can no longer do so safely. In ways they get repetitive, Johnson, Patel, Raab and company like to pull the same tricks over and over again and, as they work, why not, but, in other ways, there is a gentle nuance to their deception.
A slight variation in each lie, each act of cruelty. It made me think of the minimalist compositions of Steve Reich, Terry Riley, or Stars of the Lid (hence the blog title, it could have been another Stars of the Lid track - December Hunting for Vegetarian Fuckface - for the title alone - but the refinement of the decline seems to be what the Johnson administration specialise in so that's what is.
There is, necessarily, a lot of repetition in the Kakistocracy blogs to reflect this but also, hopefully, there are small but subtle changes that make up the bigger picture. Evolution of thought, rather than revolution of the mind. Fearful they may be merely philippics in an age which hardly needs more philippics I have made a point of countering my critique of our elected officials and their motivations with sections of positivity to show, hopefully, that I am not just another hateful Internet warrior. To show I do have a life outside of this blog and to bring that life into this blog.
That life, this last fortnight or so, has been pretty good. I've chatted on the phone several times to Michelle, to Ben, to Adam, and to my Mum and Dad. I've walked in Peckham Rye Park and Common, Brenchley Gardens, and I've even left London.
On Friday I went to Basingstoke to pick up a laptop for my new job (my first ride on public transport for well over two months and, wow, wasn't it exciting - I nearly squealed when the train went over a bridge) and, while I was there, I had an M&S takeaway sandwich with Cheryl while sitting on a wall overlooking a car park in an industrial estate and met Shep for a walk through the green fields between Cliddesden and Farleigh Wallop.
It was great. Much needed company and much needed fresh air. Saturday was equally good as I got my first Covid jab (which you can read ALL about here) and on Sunday I walked to Brockwell Park where I met with Pam and Kathy and we watched a swan tend its eggs.
I've attended Skeptics online events about The End of Denialism and the Vampire of Croglin Grange, I've finished reading Will Ashon's Strange Labyrinth (a lovely gift from Jack), I came third in Carole and Dylan's Kahoot quiz (behind Tony & Alex), and I somehow snatched victory from Ian on the last question of Matt's Kahoot quiz. Even more remarkably I won my Dad's sports quiz, again, despite paying no more than cursory attention to the world of sport these days.
I've watched season 3 of Ozark, Bloodlands, the 1945 film noir Detour, and The Story of Welsh Art with Huw Stephens and, while on the Welsh front, I've booked a holiday, in July, with Michelle and Evie on the Llyn peninsula in North Wales. It's in a static caravan on the edge of Hafan Y Mor, the former site of Butlins' Pwllheli, and though it's only a weekend break I am really looking forward to it.
This has all been great. Spirits have been lifted and though the point of these Kakistocracy blogs is to shine a light on the egregious behaviour of the Johnson administration (which, until he's gone, they will continue to do so) it's nice to end on a note of hope. The palliative care doctor Rachel Clarke has, for me, been one of the most trustworthy and informative frontline commentators on the pandemic and she's never been shy of giving it to those who have failed us with both barrels.
So when she wrote, on Sunday, of being "buoyed by hope" I shared her sentiments. She wrote about not just easing of lockdown restrictions and the vaccination programme's success but also about the hope she got from witnessing the "calm, resourceful, altruistic and imaginative response to disaster", from seeing people acting "impulsively, out of love and on principle, to help each other", and from living through a time when "strength, courage, and compassion have abounded". She ended her piece by writing:-
"Four hundred years ago, John Donne asked: “What if this present were the world’s last night?” Have the grimness and fear of the past year not provided an answer? Have we not learned that when darkness falls what erupts is the impulse to care for each other? I do not know how this is going to end. But I do know – because the pandemic has taught me – that people, by and large, are reliably, tenaciously and remarkably good".
These are sentiments I echo. As the flowers begin to bloom and the trees start to blossom, it is possible to see a brighter post-pandemic future and if we can make that one with less division, more equality, more kindness, and more love then that will be all the better for everyone.
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