Kakistocracy X:Society Is A Hole?

"We truly did everything we could to minimise loss of life" - Boris Johnson (on the day the UK's Covid-19 death toll, according to his own government's figures, passed 100,000.

"No, Boris Johnson, you absolutely did not. You didn't lock down. You didn't close borders. You didn't protect care homes. You didn't deliver on test & trace. You just didn't have the guts to take the tough decisions" - Rachel Clarke, palliative care doctor and author.

Whenever Boris Johnson uses the word 'truly' you can be guaranteed he's about to lie. In fact, whenever Boris Johnson opens his mouth to speak you can be guaranteed he's about to lie. The only way I'd disagree with Rachel Clarke's sharp riposte to Johnson is to say that he did eventually do some of those things but he did them way too late. In the case of lockdown it was a mistake he repeated, to costly and lethal effect, because he was scared of upsetting MPs in his own party's COVID Recovery Group. 

MPs like Steve Baker, Sir Graham Brady, Harriet Baldwin, and Adam Afriyie who opposed a second period of lockdown ostensibly because they believed that any benefits of a second lockdown would be outweighed by economic costs and other health, mental and physical, problems that may be left untreated.

But anyone who knows what Tories are like knows that that's not true. They opposed second lockdown, in my firm belief, because of their self-interest and Johnson appeased them until it became apparent that in doing so thousands, tens of thousands, of people were dying because of this appeasement. It doesn't actually help the economy to have one hundred thousand potential buyers and customers lying in morgues but that seems a moot point to the COVID Recovery Group.

Tory Tobias Ellwood, who (unlike the government he serves) at least has the balls to show his face on Newsnight and isn't driven by the destructive passions of Baker etc;, suggests we can look at why the UK has had such a bad result at some, uncertain, point in the future. Kick the can down the road and hope some other shit appears. Which it will because Johnson, Gove, Patel, and Rees-Mogg will make some other shit appear. Some irrelevant culture war shit probably but if there's another pandemic, a natural disaster, a violent break up of the union, don't imagine they won't juice that for all it's worth.

For this is a government that divides rather than unifies, that places self-interest above the people of the country it was placed in power to serve. Ten months into the pandemic, Home Secretary Priti Patel finally announced plans for ten day enforced hotel quarantine for those arriving in the UK - and even then only people from twenty-two countries. On the day of that announcement alone the UK announced 1,725 new Covid deaths. 

The UK death toll now, according to the government's own figures, is 106,158 and more than 50% of those deaths have been since November. On last week's Question Time, Fiona Bruce pointed out to the Tory MP Gillian Keegan (Member of Parliament for Chichester and Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Appenticeships and Skills) that South Korea took similar, more effective, measures back in April and their Covid death toll is now 1,425.

South Korea's population is not much less than the UK and it didn't have the benefit of either being an island or having a three week lead time before going into lockdown/enforcing quarantine but for every one hundred thousand people who live in South Korea, less than three have lost their life to Covid. For every one hundred thousand people who live in the UK, one hundred and fifty nine have lost their life to Covid (a figure that is only behind the much smaller nations of San Marino, Belgium, and Slovenia).

You are fifty-three more times likely to die of Covid in Boris Johnson's UK than you are in Chung Sye-kyun's South Korea. Keegan's response to Bruce was that we shouldn't compare the UK's result with that of South Korea as there were other factors to consider. Often these factors include population density (South Korea has a population density nearly double that of the UK) and the fact the UK has an ageing population.

The average life expectancy in the UK is 81 years old. In South Korea it is 82 years old. Gillian Keegan's words, like those of her Prime Minister, were utter bunkum. One area the UK can be incredibly proud, however, is with the vaccine. Regarding percentage of population who have received the first dose of the vaccine we are behind only Israel and the United Arab Emirates globally, and the government can take some credit for that - if little else. Finally they released, if only temporarily and perhaps because they were terrified that they were only one more disaster/u-turn away from collapsing in on themselves, that if they leave it to the NHS to administer the vaccine instead of outsourcing to their crony friends that things will go much more smoothly.

Despite decades of attack from the right, our NHS is still a source of pride to almost all in the country. You only have to walk the streets and look at all the children's drawings of rainbows still in windows to see that. The NATIONAL Health Service is a form of nationalisation, more like socialism than nationalism, which works when you're trying to look after the people of your country. It's so much more edifying than lining the already bulging pockets of Dido Harding and Serco. 

After four years of the British government behaving rudely about the EU, the EU (specifically Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission) finally lost her patience and made a bad move. Unfortunately for her and the EU, it was a very bad move. With vaccination levels in the EU far behind those in the UK, daft threats to invoke Article 16 of the Northern Ireland protocol (allowing either the EU or UK to unilaterally suspend aspects of its operations if either side considers that aspect to be causing “economic, societal or environmental difficulties”) managed only to unite Arlene Foster, Sinn Fein, Michel Barnier, and Boris Johnson in their opposition to her.

Something you'd have previously thought impossible. It's not, from any angle, von der Leyen's finest moment and, as you'd have imagined, Brexit supporters seized on it to show just how lucky we are to be out of the EU. As they have, unsurprisingly, seized on the UK's vaccine success (so far). I don't blame them. I agree with them (on this one) but I still think some of the blame should be apportioned to the person who created a border across the island of Ireland in the first place. A tousle haired killer clown called Boris Johnson.

The UK should be applauded for its vaccine success (and I'm pleased to say my mum is getting hers on Wednesday - at Basingstoke fire station!) but we shouldn't see a 'Boris bounce' on the back of this. He still needs to answer to the spiralling death toll he has overseen. Populist governments like those of Johnson, Bolsonaro in Brazil, and the thankfully now departed Trump in the US have, I've remarked often, had the worst Covid results on the planet. 

Interestingly, in terms of health care, socialist, and left wing, governments have had the best results. The one party socialist republic of Vietnam has registered just thirty-five deaths (not thirty-five thousand, thirty-five) and, in New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern and her Labour party have presided over just twenty-five deaths. Capitalism loves to host a big messy party but the socialists always have to clean up the mess afterwards.

In terms of health care socialist, or other left wing and Labour governments, have, demonstrably, done a better job of protecting their citizens. NZ/Vietnam. Capitalism hosts a big messy party but socialism always cleans up afterwards. 

What has happened in the UK, and elsewhere, in the last ten months is that the lights have been turned on in a room and everyone's seen what's been going on in the darkness. What's been going on is poverty, blame, division, austerity, hatred for the other and, at first, we were shocked, we spoke truthfully about our desire for change - but as we've grown accustomed to the light we've stopped blinking and grown equally accustomed, and even inured, to the poverty and austerity. 

We don't check death tolls so regularly now because we've become hardened to the situation. It's not that we don't care about others as much as we have compassion fatigue and self-interest. This is what Boris Johnson and his Tory party want. They want us to only care about ourselves and we have been conditioned to feel this way for decades. The kakistocracy of Boris Johnson is, so far, simply the most extreme example of this move towards complete and utter self-interest.

Another move towards the destruction of what we might reasonably call 'society'. In 1985 Sonic Youth released their second album, Bad Moon Rising, and it included a track called Society Is A Hole. Among stream of consciousness lines, Thurston Moore intoned that "society is a hole, it makes me lie to my friends", that "everybody is scared", and that "we're living in pieces".

I don't believe, in truth, that society is a hole (you will witness far more acts of kindness on any given day than you will acts of cruelty) but I do believe it is our responsibility, our duty, to make sure society doesn't become a hole. There's certainly some holes appearing in it right now. We stop society becoming a hole by looking out for each other, being kind when we can, and not voting for hate because when we vote for hate that is what we get - as millions of people can see quite clearly now.

When I wrote a few weeks back I was in the worst place, mentally, I'd been during this pandemic so far but writing to you now I am in a much much better place. Of course I am worried about my future, the future of the country, and the future of the planet (that's why I write these bloody blogs) and of course I can't wait to see my friends, go for walks, visit the pub, go for a curry, and resume my trips to galleries again but I'm feeling on top of my emotions again and that's a good feeling.

I've listened, as ever, to lots of music (and that always helps), I've enjoyed, and bawled at, It's A Sin on Channel 4, the second series of Mark Kermode's Secrets of the Cinema, I've played (and flukily won) Carole and Dylan's quiz, and I've started the second series of Narcos on Netflix. Better than that I've cleared my head with regular walks around Peckham Rye Park and Dulwich Park and, best of all, I've chatted with friends and family (thanks, this time, to Dad, Mum, Valia, Simon, Michelle, Adam, and Shep). The best way to stay positive during negative times is, of course, to do positive things, think positive thoughts, and not be afraid to tell people when you're down.

Coming out of this pandemic will be slow and uncertain, and surviving this disastrous government may prove more difficult still, but one day we (or at least some of us) will look back at this time. It's up to us to make sure that when we do we look back on it from a better place and not a worse one.