As the sun, finally, shines down all over the UK and lockdown measures are eased this weekend saw people smiling, drinking in parks and pub gardens, and I even witnessed dancing. Socially distanced dancing - but dancing all the same. Stoke Newington was buzzing. Dalston was buzzing. The South Bank was buzzing. Covent Garden was buzzing.
It's not back to 'normal' yet (whatever that even is) but with the vaccines seemingly resilient against even the new 'Indian' variant (so far) there is hope that we may, slowly, finally, be starting to put this nightmare behind us. So it's not a time, surely, to criticise the government? Certainly many think so. Boris Johnson's Tory party are enjoying a huge lead in the polls and even though the UK still has the fifth highest death toll in the world, one that was clearly and easily avoidable, many are giving the man and his court a free pass and many others simply want to move on.
But I don't think we should. Not completely anyway. Maybe Covid will never again wreak as much danger as it did over spring of 2020 and the winter of 2020/2021 but those responsible for mishandling, negligently and, I would contend, criminally, the pandemic need to be held responsible. Other challenges will come our way. If these failures remain in charge they will fail us again.
There are 127,782 reasons the government should be held to account, held to scrutiny, for their actions. If people can get their knickers in their twist, as Piers Morgan - of course - has done, about Japanese tennis player Naomi Osaka refusing to do press at the French Open tournament you'd think they'd be in equal uproar when elected politicians refuse to submit to questions about something that, I dunno, just feels a bit more important than a game of tennis.
But who is the person who appears in front of a select committee to make the case for both a public inquiry and the sacking, multiple times, of Health Secretary Matt Hancock. None other than Dominic 'Barnard Castle eye test' Cummings - the person who did more to put Johnson and Hancock in power in the first place than anyone and a person, despite this time clearly speaking a version of the truth rather than an outright lie - even if it was only because the truth now suits his personal agenda, who the country lost all faith in over a year ago.
You would have thought the country would have lost all faith in Hancock and his boss, Johnson, too. But Johnson, particularly, seems to find a new trick to distract the British people whenever it looks like they're starting to see through him. How about a quick marriage to Carrie Symonds in Westminster Cathedral (a Catholic cathedral, for his third wedding, nice touch) which also means she is now unable to be called to testify against him if need be?
How about an offer to bring back British Rail but this time with the name needlessly changed to Great British Railways? How about Matt Hancock claiming he's "saving lives" and taking credit away from the hard working NHS staff and volunteers who actually are. How about instead of trying to bring the country together, making strenuous efforts to divide it further so that those who aren't with Johnson become not just the opposition but enemies and, in many cases, deemed unworthy British citizens.
None of these tricks were beneath Johnson and his cronies before the pandemic and they are certainly not now. Take a walk in this divided nation, as I so often do, and see the evidence pile up in front of your eyes. In the shires the gardens are adorned with Union Jack flags and St George crosses and in London and other large cities the windows are adorned with BLM posters (thankfully, the NHS rainbows are something we can all still agree on - even as many of us vote to get rid of the NHS).
It seems to me like London, the big cities, and the university cities (Oxford & Cambridge) now see a very different future for the UK, or England, than the towns and villages do. A future in which we try to improve the country for everyone. A flag says "no thanks, we're alright as we are". What sort of country waves flags around?
Not, generally, liberal democracies. North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan, Jordan, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, and, of course, the United States all feature heavily in the list of nations keenest on waving flags around. They are not the nations I would hope the UK would aspire to be like. Flags outside municipal buildings and at sports events - I get it - and people are free to fly whatever flag they like in their own garden but these flags don't scream EXCELLENCE or DOMINANCE. They impotently yell INSECURITY and DECLINE.
It's one of the main reasons that much of Scotland now wants to leave the UK. They want to live in a country that is determined to improve the lives of its people - not one that shouts loudly at how lucky the people are to live there. The UK government, English government really, is like an abusive husband constantly telling its wife, the rest of the UK and most of us who live here, we're actually lucky to have them and, amazingly, we defend them for doing so. Almost out of shame for having made the decision to vote them in/marry them in the first place.
In the middle of May, in Glasgow, hundreds of people surrounded a UK Immigration Enforcement van and, telling the Home Office - "you messed with the wrong city", eventually succeeded in stopping the detention of two men. It was proof of how Scotland is now going in an almost completely different direction to England.
Scotland now sees Scottishness as an inclusive concept - you can become Scottish if you want to. In England, Englishness is something you are born into and for many, still, only then if you are white. The England that Johnson presides over is eternally suspicious of outsiders, of those who look different, of those who speak differently, and, most of all, of those who think and act differently.
In Northern Ireland, undone by trusting Johnson's lies about the border down the Irish Sea, Arlene Foster stood down. Arlene Foster was neither admirable as a person nor a politician but Edwin Poots, who has been voted in to replace her, could prove to be even worse. As witnessed by an almost comically irate performance on Newsnight by his backer Ian Paisley Jr, Poots looks to be trying to move Northern Ireland back to more sectarian, and God fearing, ways.
Voters, one hopes, will desert the DUP - and Sinn Fein - in droves for the Green and Alliance parties. Closer relations with Boris Johnson and his party will lead to clearer, and louder, calls for Northern Ireland to become part of a Republic of Ireland and Johnson's negligence, untrustworthiness, lying, and incompetence will mean that the Green and Alliance parties will be able to back this just as easily as Sinn Fein. Already they are no more against it than they are for it.
That's the thing with liars, of which Johnson is the UK's most infamous in my entire lifetime. Eventually everybody sees through them. Take Jenny McGee, the nurse who kept vigil over Johnson while he was in intensive care with Covid at St Thomas' hospital last year. Last month she handed in her resignation as a nurse as she was sick of the "lack of respect" shown by the government for NHS and other health care workers before going on to explain how upset she, and her colleagues, were with the government's indecisive and ineffective handling of the pandemic.
The woman who helped nurse the Prime Minister when he was genuinely close to death has been rewarded, in her own words, with a "kick in the teeth" from him and his government and yet this is the person we, as a nation, are trusting to bring us out of a pandemic. I have full faith that the British people will pull themselves out of this mess but that will be despite of, rather than because of, the likes of Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Priti Patel, Dominic Raab, and Matt Hancock.
My faith that things will improve comes not from the Houses of Parliament or the vast majority of the British press that act as Johnson's courtiers, rather than interrogating his many indiscretions and failings, but in simpler things. That people - both in the UK and around the world - are, on the whole kind and want to help each other. Even many of those who have been conned into voting for those that are not.
My anger with this distrustful and shambolic government is as complete as it ever has been but my own personal mood is, right now, very good. That's because I've done lots of things that make me feel good and I've surrounded myself with people that make me feel good.
Alongside my usual walks in, and through, Brenchley Gardens and Peckham Rye I have visited Basingstoke. Ostensibly for work but I did manage a few pints and a curry in Spicy Tadka with Shep, Adam, Teresa, and Cheryl. Ian and Arlow joined us for drinks but skipped the curry as Arlow's not really got into Indian food yet.
I took my third walk in my solo Permabulations on the Perimeter series, this time around the edge of SE4, and, on Saturday, finally, returned to the Capital Ring with a hugely enjoyable walk in glorious sunshine from Hendon to Stoke Newington with Shep, Pam, and Ian. Kathy and Mike joining us at Highgate. We visited a couple of pubs en route and we all ended up in Rasa N16 for more veggie Indian food and the day was probably the most fun one I've had in 2021 so far.
It was certainly the one in which I walked the most steps. On Monday I met Sanda for the first time this year, sun still out, for coffee and cake in Oree in Covent Garden. I've chatted on the phone to Mum, Dad, Adam, Michelle, and Simon, somehow won Dylan's Eurovision quiz, came joint second in my first quiz at my new work - as part of a team, set another 'godfather' quiz for Evie (which she did brilliantly at - she's getting so bright now it's hard to keep up when setting questions), and I joined a Eurovision watch party with Sanda, Sharon, Carole, Dylan, Kathy, and Ian.
Not sure that's one I'd do again but was an experience. More enjoyably - for me if not them, I've attended art exhibitions at the PACE Gallery (Robert Mangold) and Tate Britain (the excellent Lynette Yiadom-Boakye) and online talks from Skeptics in the Pub about the not very jolly, but certainly interesting, subjects of suicide and healthcare outcomes in middle to lower income countries.
I've finished watching Line of Duty (series five and six), boshed out the third series of Motherland - never as funny as it should be, and been enchanted by Caroline Catz' Delia Derbyshire film and I've finished reading William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying and started on Cosey Fanni Tutti's Art Music Sex.
Oh, and I had my second jab. This time followed by a pint, as I promised myself, in the East Dulwich Tavern and a read of that above mentioned book. It feels good to be double vaccinated, it feels good to be working in reasonably secure employment with nice people, it feels good that the sun is out, and it feels good to have so many people in my life that make me feel valued. It feels really good to know that on Saturday, finally, TADS will get together for the first time since October to walk from Rye to Camber Sands. But what would make me feel really good is if Boris Johnson and his band of crooks and cronies would fuck off once and for all. There's little chance of that in the short term so I shall continue to enjoy the things that do make me feel good - and continue to hold this stinking government up to the criticism they have so thoroughly earned.
No comments:
Post a Comment