Isolation XI:Paint A Rainbow

"When the colours change I will chase your sadness away. See it glow when I paint a rainbow" - Paint A Rainbow, My Bloody Valentine.

It's Easter Sunday, my 29th day of isolation, and the global death toll created by COVID-19 is over 111,000. In the UK we've crossed the 10,000 death toll (including former Goodie Tim Brooke-Taylor - not a more important death, but a more recognisable one to many of us) and joined Italy, Spain, and France. Trump's USA has overtaken Italy to top the list and has become the first country on the planet to register more than 20,000 COVID-19 deaths.

Donald Trump likes to boast about having the biggest numbers at his rallies, the biggest numbers in the polls, and the biggest numbers at his inauguration. Even if it's not true. It'll be interesting to see if he boasts about the country he's, absolutely remarkably, in charge of topping this list. As the primary person responsible he's every right to. His criminal negligence, incompetence, and scapegoating, not to mention his complete unsuitability for his (or any other) job has exacerbated the American death toll exponentially. The blood is on hands. 

Here, Boris Johnson is out of hospital and he's recovering. The same cannot be said for the many thousands who have died partly because of his inaction and his reticence to be the bearer of bad news about the need for a lockdown. On Thursday night's Question Time, Darren McGarvey (aka Loki - the Scottish rapper and social commentator) made some great points about how short term thinking in UK politics, and the vast inequality in the country, have led to people not trusting politicians, taking faith in conspiracy theories, and, ultimately, a spread in COVID-19.

It's easy for people who've gone down that path to dismiss statistics but it's a lot harder to dismiss the reality of the situation when it affects your own family as Boris Johnson's father, Stanley, proved this week when he claimed his son being in intensive care brought home to him how serious it is. The man who boasted he'd still go down the pub when advised not to said this AFTER 95,000 people had already dead. If 95,000 deaths don't register with you as serious it's probably best if you don't procreate. Your children may be dangerously idiotic. People could get hurt because of that idiocy. People could die.

Not that The Sun, a disgusting right wing rag that besmirched the memories of Hillsborough victims by printing horrific lies about them and hacked a dead schoolgirl's phone, saw it like that. On Good Friday their front page claimed it really was a GOOD Friday because their beloved Boris Johnson was on the mend. 900+ deaths in a day in the country were relegated to a side story. Cunts.

How we receive our news is important and we need trusted sources. With that in mind I need to make a partial correction regarding my last piece on the crisis. Reuters, very much a trusted source, made it clear that MPs had not awarded themselves a £10K yearly pay rise. The decision was not in their hands but the hands of IPSA, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority. A public body created in 2009 because MPs could no longer be trusted not to fiddle their expenses.

IPSA said MPs could claim up to £10,000 for equipment needed so they, and their staff, can work from home. It still seems very unfair when hardly anyone else now working from home is reporting such help. I'd like to see a list of which MPs are claiming it, and how much they're claiming. I reckon we can all probably guess some who definitely will be and some who won't and, for the most part, what parties they belong to.

That cleared up, let's not let politicians off completely. Certainly not the ones in power. The Tories. Matt Hancock has suggested that NHS staff are using Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) too illiberally, the odious Jacob Rees-Mogg has told investors in his fund management company, Somerset Capital Management, that the pandemic has created "excellent entry points for investors" and they can look forward to "super normal returns". At a time of a deadly crisis, it seems Rees-Mogg is less concerned about the health of his constituents in North East Somerset and, instead, is choosing to cash in. Never has the term 'disaster capitalism' been so vividly illustrated.

Not only is Rees-Mogg reappearing after, seemingly, being hidden from view during the first weeks of the crisis in case he said something cruel and insensitive, Priti Patel's back too. Not only is Patel, like Rees-Mogg, vicious and nasty, she's unbelievably stupid too. It's a lethal mix. Not only does she not know the difference between terrorism and counter-terrorism (which you'd think would be an entry level qualification for the Home Secretary) she's now revealed she can't even read numbers off a page correctly. At a recent press briefing Patel proudly boasted that "three hundred thousand and thirty four, nine hundred and seventy four thousand tests" had been carried out across the UK.

I've looked at that figure several times and I can't even begin to work out what she was trying to say but, hey, why worry about clear messaging at the time of a deadly global pandemic? It's more fun to mix it up a bit. Rees-Mogg and Patel have been let out of Dominic Cummings' grisly dungeon not despite of their venality and ineptitude but precisely because of it. 

They're barely out of the gates of Tory jail and, immediately, they're re-offending. The incompetence is a sideshow. The main event, with predictions of future deaths looking terrifying, is the government's search for scapegoats being initiated and ramped up. My friend John made the pertinent point that ,soon, if one of your family die of COVID-19 it won't be because Boris Johnson didn't take his briefings seriously and preferred to go on telly talking about Big Ben's bongs. It'll be because they were a feckless idler who didn't do as they were told. Patel, along with Foreign Secretary and Johnson's current stand in Dominic Raab was involved with Britannia Unchained, a political treatise that described the British as among the laziest people in the world. That's the same Patel and Raab that got behind Brexit so we can 'unleash Britain's potential'.

Others, too, continue to push the conflicting ideas of British (always English) exceptionalism while, at the same time, telling their compatriots they're idiots. I've seen people, well meaning, claiming British doctors and nurses are the best in the world as if (a) their training didn't matter, the creation of the NHS itself didn't matter, and they're good just because of an accident of birth and (b) conveniently overlooking that over 100,000 members of NHS staff come from over two hundred different nations. From India to Ireland, from the Philippines to Poland, from Ghana to Greece, and from Bulgaria to Bangladesh.

Raab and Patel's idea that Britain and its people are both exceptional and the worst idlers on the planet will find its deadly analogy in this crisis. The doctors and nurses will be praised as heroes and (correctly) applauded while, at the same time, being told they're greedy and selfish for demanding fair pay and adequate PPE. Other key workers will be told what a brilliant job they're doing just as Patel and Raab put in place an immigration points system that will be based on earnings rather than utility, and those who, in time, we'll need to replace them will be denied access to a Britain that thinks it's an island despite a land border with Ireland and maintains the now shattering illusion that it can recast itself as an impenetrable fortress.

The little Englander mentality, the island that believes only bad things come from overseas. These myths, like so many British citizens right now, are lying in hospital with a very very gloomy prognosis. Like those citizens, these myths will soon be buried and, like those citizens, few should attend the funeral. In New Zealand, another island but not one prone to boasts of exceptionalism - except in rugby, the leader Jacinda Ardern took the health advice seriously from the start. New Zealand has seen just four deaths. Not ten thousand.

New Zealand has a population of less than five million so there are other factors but not enough to count for more than ten thousand extra deaths. After a few weeks in which even this government took the pandemic seriously, we're seeing them slowly revert to type like Big Brother contestants who have started to forget the cameras are on them and start picking their noses and bullying each other.

The Overton Window is being gradually prised open and not just so the smell of Patel and Rees-Mogg's rancid mouth farts don't fill the air at a time when we're all stuck indoors. Slowly, gradually, the rich and powerful are seeing how much blame can be placed on the blameless (even the brave and courageous) and shifted away from themselves. It's been a very successful strategy in the past but you'd like to think making doctors and nurses the villains of the piece wouldn't play well in Peoria now - and it won't. But two months, two years, maybe even two decades, down the line let's see how the narrative develops. The seeds of blame are being planted in the gardens of the innocent and if we don't nip them in the bud now they'll grow into mighty oaks of hatred and blame. The shade of them so all encompassing we can no longer see the truth.

These metaphorical trees need cutting down but real trees, and flowers and skies, have kept me ticking over at a time when I'm having to postpone all the walks I organise for friends. I miss them but I've also been thinking about other things I've been missing. Not so much the things I tend to go out to do (gigs, exhibitions, movies, theatre, and those walks) as the peripheral things I do around them. Having a pack of Hula Hoops and a Cherry Coke on the bus down to Southwark, flicking through travel books in South Kensington Books on the way to the V&A, eating an ice cream as I walk up Exhibition Road, walking the New River Walk down in to Canonbury, and simply sitting in the park with a newspaper and a bottle of water and soaking up the rays of the sun which, typically, hasn't so much got its hat on this Easter but has come out with a fucking massive sombrero, a pair of Bermuda shorts, and is cracking open the cold beers while we all hide indoors. Probably Corona too, the cheeky yellow bastard.

We're sacrificing spring primarily to save as many lives as we can but I'm also sacrificing it in the hope that it means I still get a summer. I've got weekend breaks in Abersoch and Chepstow planned with a selection of some of my favourite people in the whole world. Of course those trips might not happen now and I'll be heartbroken if that's the case. But I'll understand. To end lockdown before it's safe to do so would be both criminal and suicidal so I'll stay in.

I love going out more than staying in on the whole but staying in, watching TV on the sofa, and chatting regularly to your friends is not the greatest sacrifice any human is making in 2020. Since I last wrote I've enjoyed long chats with Ben, Vicki, Jason, Shep, and, as ever, Mum, Dad, and Michelle (Evie's Easter Egg hunt melted my heart), I've had a brief walk on One Tree Hill just down the road from my house, I've been out for teabags (I'm British - that's an essential), beer (I'm British - that's an essential), and soap (nobody's gonna argue with that one), and I hosted another Kahoot quiz (Mike won) which I enjoyed a lot and hope others did.

As ever I've been listening to lots of music. Dan Whaley's Out of Limits show keeps my spirits up on a Monday morning and the BBC (an institution that, like the NHS, I cherish) have given me Late Junction, The Freak Zone, Huey, and Nemone. All shows I try to listen to every week. A list to which I've recently added, long overdue, the Craig Charles Funk and Soul Show. He's playing Gil Scott-Heron, Prince, and The O'Jays, and it's sounding great.

The sun's out, there's some beers cooling in the fridge, and I've even got some lemon cheesecake for later. There's soul and funk music blasting out and friends, family members, and even people I've not spoken to for decades are sending me lovely messages. It sounds idyllic, doesn't it? It kind of is. There's just this one thing though. I think you know what it is.