the brilliantly leaping gazelle

As I get older, one thing I’ve noticed is not that I find most news either surprising or shocking, but that other people do. An example was provided yesterday by the BBC. I manage to avoid most news now, as it isn’t good for my mental health, me knowing the latest this or scandalous that, but when I log online, BBC news being my homepage, I can’t avoid it. I should change it, I know, but it does on occasion provide me with yet another ‘ oh for fucks sake’ moment.

People living in more deprived areas of England and Wales are more likely to die with coronavirus than those in more affluent places, new figures suggest.

 The ONS studied the 20,283 deaths involving Covid-19 that took place between 1 March and 17 April. In England, it found the mortality rate in the most deprived areas was 55.1 deaths per 100,000 population, while the rate was 25.3 deaths per 100,000 in the least deprived areas.

In what possible universe is this news to anyone? Did anyone read the first sentence of that story and think to themselves ‘Bugger me backwards with a pitchfork, can this be true?’

What did people think was going to happen when shipyards, coalmines and steelworks were closed under Thatcher’s Conservative government?? What did they imagine was going to happen to those workers who were now unemployed, to their children and grandchildren? What did they think would happen to those communities that were decimated, sacrificed on the altar of free market ideology? Did they not stop to consider that there might be a societal cost some time in the future? No of course not. They were too busy wondering who the fuck ‘Sid’ was and would anyone ever find him to give him a message. They were thinking about buying their council flat, or deluding themselves that they were now middle class because they drank Perrier, knew that hummus wasn’t a Greek island and watched mucky films with subtitles on Channel Four.

The same people who were too busy thinking of the benefits to them of Thatcherism, to ponder of the detrimental effect those benefits had on others. They were the voters ‘New’ Labour was after, when it jettisoned it’s commitment to re-nationalising everything Thatcher had privatised, and was no longer recognisable as a political champion fighting for a more equitable society. So much so in fact, that when Mrs Thatcher was asked what her greatest political achievement had been, she replied ‘Tony Blair.’

Is this a surprise?

In a statement, the government said it had commissioned urgent work from Public Health England to understand the different factors that could influence the way someone was affected by the virus and would set out more details in due course.

Not even remotely. Anyone with a scintilla of intelligence knows what it’s what causes those factors to occur that matter, just as surely as they know that the report will take ages to complete and it’s recommendations largely ignored.

That’s why I don’t join in with all this ‘Clap for Carers’ bullshit, and not because my brain injury has bizarrely affected my co-ordination either, but because I’ve always supported the NHS when it matters. Not as part of some meaningless self-aggrandisement bollocks, but in private, at the ballot box, by not ever voting Conservative, or worse, Lib Dem – they’re worse, because the same free market ethos, but disguise it. Think what you will about the merits or otherwise of Jeremy Corbinned, it is inarguable that Labour under him could’ve transformed this country for the better. Well you could argue against that proposition, of course you could, but you’d be an idiot, one of the many idiots who elected the paternity suit in a suit our PM.

The root causes of the inequality so rampant throughout the nation aren’t difficult to fathom, nor do they require flow charts or complicated theories to make sense of them. Thatcher (in)famously said ‘There’s no such thing as society’ and thanks to her zealous pursuit if ideology, it’s more divided than ever.

Yesterday I referenced McCarthyism without stating what I meant when using that term. I just figured that anyone reading my blog would know what it meant. I’m sorry, it was lazy of me, and I offer this by way of an apology.

McCarthyism refers of course to the work of that well-known comedic actor, Melissa McCarthy.