the brilliantly leaping gazelle

I’ve been as good as my word, insofar as I’ve studiously avoided whenever possible all news reports, news websites and anything else that might distract me from more important concerns. But last night I was struck by the thought that instead of having the pips to herald the imminent arrival of the news on Radio Four, they should instead prepare the listener for the misery to follow with the first few notes of the funeral march. Or better yet, the boom-boom-bo-bo-boom of the ‘Eastenders’ theme. That’d set the mood nicely.

At his Inauguration address as President, Franklin Roosevelt uttered words that today have as much resonance now as they did nearly eighty years ago when he said ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.’

Last week my housemate’s daughter’s school was visited by the Coronavirus fear. Not the Coronavirus itself you understand, but the fear of it. This was in the form of a parent of a child had tested positive. No one was quite sure if anyone else in the family was affected but given the current climate the school had decided that they needed to close on the Thursday in order to do a deep clean ready to re-open on the Friday. To anyone trusted enough to write with more than crayons this raises some questions. First of all, how deep is a deep clean going to be if it can be done in one day? Most schools comprise of multiple buildings and so presumably a deep clean would not be a quick process. Why not keep it closed, do a really thorough job of it and re-open for the start of the new school week. Secondly, who would evaluate how effective such a clean would be? Or is it the case of a school marking its own homework? However, much more concerning to me is that no one saw this as an over-reaction, so premature that if it were a foetus, it’d be just past the sperm fertilizing the egg stage.

But in this current climate of media inflated hysteria, what can one expect? Far from being calming and restrained in its reporting, the media has helped create they very fear that leads people to clear supermarket shelves of toilet paper! Talk about the shits getting people so shit scared they stock up on shit rags! In fact, just a few moments ago one of housemates has just returned from our local Sainsbury’s with nothing more a cabbage, some peppers and loads of ‘photo’s of aisle upon aisle of empty shelves’. On Wednesday, my housemate who seems almost glued to her ‘phone for ever more depressing ‘facts’ showed me a thing on the government webshite whereby you see exactly how many cases had occurred within a specific geographical area and learning that London had the most by quite a large margin, it allowed one to zoom in and see how many cases in each borough.

It is worth bearing in mind that 4 out every 5 people who get Coronavirus will only get a mild illness. The other 1 might die. But as most deaths of any flu occur to those that are elderly, with weakened immune systems and respiratory problems, is it really a ‘killer virus’? Or an inevitable consequence of living far too long? As the BBC reported yesterday;

Ten more people in the UK have died in the last 24 hours after testing positive for coronavirus, bringing the total number of deaths to 21.

The UK government’s chief medical adviser said the patients were all in “at-risk” groups from across England.

The total number of confirmed cases in the UK has reached 1,140 while 37,746 people have been tested.

So hang on! If my maths are correct, less than 5% of those tested for the virus actually have it, and of that 5%, less than 2% had died. That means therefore that not only are the chances of getting the virus smaller, even smaller still is the likelihood of one dying from it. But that was yesterday. Anything could happen between the time I post this –  12.38pm on Sunday 15th March – and the time you read this and quite possibly will. Besides why let pesky facts get in the way of of fear and irrationality.

The media has created a snowball effect of fear which builds and builds, and the more it builds, the more politicians and health officials wish to appear to have some degree of control, whereas in actuality, they can only react to events and increasingly react to the way the media chooses to portray those events. Were can the media go from here?

My mind inevitably turns to Nigel Tufnel, the eponymous guitarist from Spinal Tap, who, when proudly showing off his custom-made amplifier to Marty Diberg, announced that it went up to 11. When Marty quizzed him about why it went up to 11, Nigel replied that when you needed an extra push, and you are on 10, where can you go? Nowhere. But on his custom made one, you could go to 11. It is the same with the media’s coverage of Coronavirus. They need an 11, a 12, a 13….

Remember ‘the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.’

On Thursday, the BBC reported that there were now 400 coronavirus cases in Italy, an increase of 25%. Now, an increase by 25% of sounds mightily scary doesn’t it? Only a rationalist would point out the fact that Italy has a population of 92 millions, and that an increase of 25% to make the new total 400, would therefore mean that originally 325 were infected meaning an increase of 75. Doesn’t sound half as scary does it, an increase of 75?

If we apply that kind of percentage methodology – or hyperbollocks – to the increase in UK coronavirus cases from 15 to 16 then an increase of one equates to 7.5%. An increase of a small amount in a small amount to begin with will, when expressed in percentage inflate it. It may well be factually correct yes, but helpful? That was on Thursday night but if I post this on Saturday night the number of cases will have increased, that’s a given, but nowhere near the amount fear-mongering the media are creating, and then reporting on the very phenomena they’ve created.

On Thursday, the bastion of even handed and moderate reporting that is the Guardian carried a story about the governments Chief Medical Officer suggesting that potentially schools might have to close for two months to prevent its spread. I know this only because my housemate told me about this. This was exactly the sort of forward thinking needed, plans to deal with a potential outbreak worsening and exactly what the government should be doing was my reaction. Indeed, how could any adult able to read without moving their lips think otherwise?  If only The Guardian could combine supposed government callousness, an already barely coping NHS and Brexit into a story that would cover most pre-existing biases of it readers. If they could just shoehorn something in about the dangers of vaccinations versus the benefits of adopting a vegan diet to ward off ailments, and possibly a fracking angle, and for good measure something about micro-plastics compromising humans immune system, then one

could surf on the rivers of cum gushing out of The Guardians HQ if they could manage that.

Actually, what we need to do is bite the bullet and enact the ‘Herod Solution’, you know, King Herod, him from the bible, the villain in the nativity play, that one. The one who decreed that all new born children in wherever he was king of and Mary was about to give birth in, be slaughtered to prevent the messiah living. Well if as a preventative measure every child under 5 was deemed a potential health risk and for the common good was killed? It might seem to be a bit of an over-reaction, but as an American Major told a reporter after reducing a village to rubble a  during the Vietnam War “In order to save the village we had to destroy it.’

Mind you, why stop there? Might combating the spread of the coronavirus yield some unexpected benefits to society? Bear with me. 4 out of 5 people who get it only suffer a mild illness and get better, it’s only the very old who are at the most risk. Why doesn’t every person in the UL over the age of 75 just kill themselves now and put our minds at rest. After all, the longer you live the greater is the likelihood that you’ll die and we know that the cost of adult social care is only going to increase the longer more people live longer. A win win and if they have a house and leave it to their children, it eases the burden on housing. Actually, they should do it anyway as humans live fat longer than is both practical – in 1841 the average life expectancy for a working class male in England was 43 and the human body isn’t designed with longevity in mind – or indeed desirable,

Is this as far fetched as reports in the media that Hyde Park is being considered as the site for mass burials? Mind you, having just typed that I did just sneeze and I am feeling a bit peaky….

I haven’t posted a blog for a while now, partly due to the fact that each post gets on average fewer readers than Boris’s Johnson has children and partly due to the fact that since last Christmas I’ve been avoiding news bulletins and websites. This has been a conscious decision and yet bizarrely my not paying attention to what is going on doesn’t seem to have had a discernible effect on anything.

I knew I was onto a winner just before – or after — New Year, when my partner asked me what did I think about Megan and Harry? Oh, I said, what have they done now? The notion that they’d done something that some people considered news worthy and were talking about it endlessly came as a shock. Although it has to be said, much less of a shock than me not knowing about it and then me knowing about it and still not caring about it. I may continue in this happy state of blissful ignorance regarding events that have no direct effect on me for the foreseeable.

However one thing that I have unsuccessfully avoided is news about the Coronavirus and last week a housemate asked me how many people had died because of it, to which I replied, ‘Not enough’. As any reader familiar with this blog will know, this is a fair encapsulation of my view of things – namely that there are far too many people alive for this planet to sustain and therefore we need a drastic and immediate reversal of this situation. At present the world’s population stands at 7.6 billions and everysecond here are two births, so you can work out how many babies have been born in the time it’s taken you to read this post.

Unfortunately, the Coronavirus isn’t the answer to this problem, at least not yet anyways.

I can’t help but notice that there have been very few Coronavirus deaths in Europe but onaverage 600 people a year die from the flu in the UK, but in 2013 13,000 died of it. Yet we’re meant to be concerned about this supposed killer virus? Really? The coronavirus scare reminds me of Jo Swindle, in the sense it was only she that was saying she was a possible PM and it is only the media that are making a huge issue out of this supposed killer virus. According to the BBC, as of yesterdaynearly 78,00 people in China had had the virus, of whom only 3,000 have died. A mortality rate of less than 4% is not commensurate with the headlines, methinks.

Possibly the government should make flu jabs compulsory, legislate to prevent children from attending school unless they’re vaccinated against MMR or better yet, making access to the NHS or private medicine conditional upon one proving their fully inoculated. To ensure we’re all safe.

I know this might seem a tad self serving, but it’s nowhere near as selfish as the people on that cruise liner in Japan wanting to be repatriated back to the UK, making their problem our problem. They’re on board a ship, keep them their and whoever is alive and healthy after four weeks is alive and healthy and able to set foot on dry land. Practical Darwinism.

On a more sombre note, Andrew Weatherall died last week. If you knew who he was, you’ll know this saddened me

But enough of this! Lets have a happy ending instead, well not that kind of happy ending but Ryuici Sakamoto performing ‘Happy End’!

In order to welcome in the New Year, I thought I’d post a blog all about 20/20 vision and I’ll admit it’s not in the fist rank of original ideas. Quite possibly you’ll read other, better-written things using 20/20 vision as a way of interpreting the events of 2020. Or not, depending on whose eyes the writer is seeing those events through.

Anyway I thought it incumbent upon me to first discover what is meant by 20/20 vision, because like most people I’m familiar with the term, yet have only a vague idea of what it actually means. So I did some googling. It’s to do with visual acuity.

No, me neither.

According to the font of all human knowledge for the lazy, Wikipedia,

Visual acuity (VA) commonly refers to the clarity of vision. Visual acuity is dependent on optical and neural factors, i.e., (i) the sharpness of the retinal focus within the eye, (ii) the health and functioning of the retina, and (iii) the sensitivity of the interpretative faculty of the brain.

There’s loads more, detailed and quite frankly time consuming more to read. Not that my time is so precious, you understand, but it was the last five words of the opening paragraph that resonated. ‘Interpretative faculty of the brain’ neatly sums up one of the challenges I face following my brain injury; for if the way one correctly sees the world is in part dependant on a healthy brain, then it follows that a damaged brain is not best equipped to do this.

I’ve been considering this for nearly a week now, looking at some of my decisions after the brain injury through the prism of this new information. Following the brain injury, the doctors were, in all fairness to them, remarkably honest about their lack of knowledge about how exactly my brain injury would affect me. But one thing no-one ever even mentioned was my its effect on my mood, and if the way I interpret events is flawed, then might this not have consequences on my mood? Might they both create and reinforce the other in a circle of negativity. By no stretch of the imagination have I been Mr. Jolly since the brain injury, but equally I wasn’t always before it either.

It was just never this long lasting, seemingly continuous and all pervasive before. I know that it seems odd when its written down, but I can’t remember what it feels like to feel calm, relaxed or at ease with oneself. I mean I know I must have felt that, I just don’t know how it felt, and worse still, being resigned to never feeling that way again. I hasten to add that I’m not in a state of perpetual anxiety all the time, but more that….okay, here goes. You know the feeling you have when you’ve said to yourself you need to remember to do something but you forget what it was, but know you’ve forgotten what it was? It’s a bit like that. All the time.

So if my interpretive faculty is flawed, and I know it, it seems wholly sensible that I factor this in from now on, and so for 2020 I’ve resolved to try and be less previous me about things and more, well, more.

Well it makes sense to me and that’s the main thing, but how long it lasts for is another. But thankfully, if you’re reading this on New Years Day morning that is, I’ll be paying the price for being champagne-tastic last night so my resolve once I’m awake and had some tea…

I am a misanthrope and the longer I live, the more deeply entrenched it becomes and the greater my conviction that my misanthropy is not just correct, but a wholly inevitable response to the ceaseless bedevilment that other people cause me.

But any reader of my blog knows this. So it is seems entirely fitting that as Christmas is all about miracles, I’d treat you all to an unjaundiced, non-cynical and not critical of anyone or anything post.

What has caused this sudden volte-face? Have I suffered a sudden blow to the head, been kidnapped by aliens and replaced by a doppelganger or is there something in the water?

No.

The reason is this.

A Christmas card made specially for me by my favourite person in the whole world, my favourite person possibly because I’ve known her all her life, possibly because of her relentless capacity for mucking about, possibly for lots of other things, but unquestionably because of her wonderful effect on my extremely moody outlook. All the medication I could swallow would be nowhere near mood enhancing as a four year old delight banging insistently on my bedroom door and shouting “Get up, get up, I want to play”, until I did. And because I did, I still do.

Because I don’t have to undertake the more onerous responsibilities of her parents, such as getting her ready for school or making her go to bed to name but two, being free of these constraints means that I can regress somewhat and become a man-child. I don’t have to pretend that broccoli ice-ice-cream is a good idea or that carrot cake is a cake or that farting is anything other than hugely entertaining. It’s her unshakeable belief that I could want nothing more than to play with her, that whatever I’m doing is merely a stop-gap until she rescues me from that particular tedium.

A Christmas card, it has to be written, the receipt of which was in no way commensurate to its utter wonderfulness or indeed, the effort required to make it so. I am reliably informed that plans for a Christmas shopping jaunt were changed so this magnificence could be created. I am not, outwardly at least, a very emotionally demonstrative person, eschewing what I consider to be rather American effusiveness, in favour of something altogether more composed. But although my face didn’t betray it, I was both thrilled and impressed by it.

To write that she has massively improved the quality of my life would be textbook understatement. Aside from the ‘Peppa Pig’ and ‘Holly and Ben’ phases of her life, I could’ve quite happily done without those. But she’s almost nine now, and as we all are wont to do, looks back with disdain on the follies of her youth, her youth being something she still has lots of. In fact, when her parents saw all her presents under the Christmas tree and comparing her haul to theirs, asked what she had that they hadn’t, I said simply ‘Youth’

Well, that and being adorable.

‘The Queen’ is on shITV3, which purports to show how Tony Blair saved the monarchy from itself after the death on Diana. Whenever I think of it, I think of the Queens reaction when she found out who was going to play her.

Some old hag who looked as if she’d been perpetually sucking a lemon?

No.

Helen Mirren! She must’ve thanked her lucky stars! If anyone could make the toot the queen wears look in the least bit not dowdy, it was her.

As if to underline how radically different our society is since the election result, yesterday the BBC reported that,

The Duke of Edinburgh has spent the night in hospital after being admitted as a “precautionary measure”.

Can you imagine any other pensioner being able to rock up at hospital and being admitted as a “precautionary measure”?

Mind you, I suppose it does help if that hospital is the private King Edward VII one and not a chronically under-funded N.H.S one. One where as long as you can pay, you can stay; except in this case, it’s you, me and every other taxpayer who’re paying. I wonder if ‘precautionary measure’ is some kind of euphemism or else a coded message, because I can’t think of what possible precaution the ageing Greek gigolo might need?

Anyway, according to today’s Guardian

 The Duke of Edinburgh is expected to stay in hospital for a few more days while receiving treatment relating to a “pre-existing condition”.

According to reports, the move follows a spell of ill-health. The Sun quoted a royal source as saying that the 98-year-old duke had had a fall recently, while the Mail reported he had been battling a flu-like condition.

How exactly is this news? An old man has some of the same problems many other old people do. But rest assured,

The duke’s condition is not considered serious enough for the Queen to change her schedule. She left Buckingham Palace for Norfolk by train on Friday, to begin her traditional festive break on the Sandringham estate, where the duke has spent much of his time since retiring from public duties in 2017.

So clearly the problem being all alone in a cold house for Christmas like so many other old people on benefits isn’t one of them.

Hang on, I’ve just that last quote again, about him ‘retiring from public duties in 2017’ and I can’t help but wonder what on earth were these public duties? Did he help out as a hospital porter when he wasn’t being a fireman? Or work as a teaching assistant at an inner city primary school and then do a quick change,  don a hi-vis jacket to be their lollipop man? Going on holiday and opening civic centre’s isn’t a public duty, people aren’t depending on him to do it, unless of course the definition of what duty means has changed?

One of the many things the election has clarified is the relative importance of one issue against another to the electorate. So,  despite being told many times that this election was about climate change, that the time to act was now, that doing nothing meant an accelerated worsening of extreme weather events, despite all of that and more, enough of the electorate prioritized short-term gain at a cost of long term pain.

I actually don’t care if the human race becomes extinct, I mean we’ve let other species become extinct, so why should I? Has our existence really been a good thing for the planet?

Our hypocrisy concerning the importance we give to helping to save the planet is best summed up by Christmas.

Not by the amount and what kind of food we consume, how it’s produced or how it reaches us. Although that’s bad enough. Nor is it the elaborate light displays which illuminate the outsides of houses. At least they’re not as bad as the ones in public spaces. Neither is it the rampant consumerism, all wrapped in wrapping paper which, if it has glitter on it, can’t be re-cycled. Whilst that might possibly be a strong contender, it has far too many different aspects to it, such as it’s this and that – c’mon, you know what the this’s and that’s are – to be a simple and instantly understandable illustration of our hypocrisy.

Christmas tree’s. Whilst we know how important tree’s are to absorbing CO2, so much so that the amount of tree’s each party pledged to plant if elected became a thing, regardless of that we still cut down tree’s as long as they look pretty when we dress them.

We know all this, but we do it anyway. We’re not so much sleep-walking into disaster as running towards it.

Of course I’m aware of the inherent logical contradiction in yesterdays blog, in fact the same one contained in all my posts that lambast people for not exercising their right to vote. Namely, that a in a democratic society having the right to vote also means having the right not to vote. It’s like democratic ying and yang.

Except not.

Voting carries with it consequences that affect more than just the individual. They also have a social responsibility, an obligation if you will, to the society of which they are a member. They have expectation of what services of the state will provide. We may not like everything the state does for us, but there’s also a lot we do like. What if the state decided that the reward for voting was continues access to the services the state funds, but that the reward for not voting was a termination of the social contract. It doesn’t happen but it should.

Imagine if a child turned up on her first day of school and the head said ‘Sorry and all that, but your Mum saw fit to exercise her democratic right not to vote so the state is freed from all obligations it was previously legally mandated to provide..”

And imagine that scenario being played out in hospital A&E departments, ‘I can see you’re having a heart attack, but sadly you didn’t vote and we’re underfunded as it is, so we have to priories our resources on those who did.’ Or when calling 999 you got a message saying ‘Your call isn’t important to us as we can see that your calling from a ‘phone registered to someone who didn’t think voting was important. Good luck with that. Bye.’

If access to government services was contingent on people voting I think it would have a beneficial effect democracy. I can’t see any downsides.

Because these things bother me, earlier on today I was wondering what would the election result looked like of instead of our current system -first past the post (FPTP) – we’d used the form of proportional representation used in the last European elections. The answer can be summed up in five words; very different, no Conservative majority.

And because I’m a lazy bastard, thankfully those nice people atThe Electoral Reform Society did all the heavy lifting, as the method used at European elections is a tiny bit complicated. But just because something is complicated, it doesn’t mean it isn’t fair, just that to properly understand it requires some effort is all.

Anyway, here’s what we could have had,

The Conservatives would’ve lost 77seats, leaving them with 288 whilst Labour would’ve gained 14 meaning 216 The really big winners wouldn’t have been the Lib Dems up 59 from 11 to 70 , nor the Greens jumping from 1 to 11! Neither would it have been the Brexit party who would gained 10 seats, bringing their total to, er, 10!

No, the real winner in all of this would be us, the electorate. It would’ve seen another hung parliament and probably another election, but why is that such a bad thing. If the electorate realize that their vote has consequence might it not focus the mind?

Indeed, as I pointed out only a few weeks ago,

If the Liberal Democrats were in the least bit serious about being democrats, they would’ve demonstrated their commitment to the ideals of democracy by having vigorously campaigned for a change the present electoral system with the Brexit party. Had this bizarre sounding but eminently sensible alliance been effective, democracy could have been the winner on December 13^th. If, the morning after the 2015 election, the Lib Dem leader, Vince Unable had launched the campaign for reform by highlighting the discrepancy between share of the votes versus number of seats in parliament of all main parties.

He could’ve made the point that voting reform was well overdue because whilst the Liberal Democrats had won of 7.9% of the vote, that this had translated into 8 MP’s, whereas the S.N.P had got of the 4.7% of the vote but 56 MP’s. The S.N.P., like democracy when it works to their advantage, but here’s the thing – democracy doesn’t have options, you can’t chose which bits you like or don’t like of the democratic process, either your in or your out. Yes, it’s all well and good wanting another referendum on independence, but when they had one, they chose to stay part of the UK. If you choose not to fight in English, Northern Ireland or Welsh constituency’s, fine. It’s your choice. You chose to be here. Suck it up like everyone else has to.

After the 2017 election, this would have even greater consequences, as we know only too well. The Liberal Democrats had won of 7.4% of the vote in that one that this had resulted in only 12 MP’s, whereas the S.N.P ‘s 3% became 36 MP’s. Had the made this an issue one of fundamental importance of democracy that the method of electing a government had to be if so it was to have any legitimacy in the eyes of the governed. Had they done so, there is every possibility that a vote on reforming the voting system to make it truly democratic could have taken place in the recent European elections which, if successful, would have had a far more beneficial effect on our democracy than overturning the referendum result and ignoring 17.4 million people.

Of course such an alliance would require the support of Nigel’s Farrago. if it was to truly cross the political divide, and not simply be a case of centre-left complainers complaining, they’d need his support to have any chance of success. Now leader of the Brexit party, but in 2015, he was leader of UKIP, remember them? With him, well, they’d be pushing at an open door. In 2015 UKIP won 12.6% of the vote which got them all of er….1 MP. Had the Liberal Democrats and the Brexit Party together campaigned for a fairer voting system then possibly. If Vince Unable had said in 2014, in 2017, or her election as Liberal Democrat Leader Jo Swindle had said, upon being elected Lib Dem leader, ‘I may disagree with the Brexit Party – in fact, I vehemently oppose everything they stand for – but being Liberal Democrat, I believe that if you voted for the Brexit Party, your vote should count for something. As a Liberal Democrat, but a democrat first and foremost I don’t believe that any vote should be a wasted vote. ’

 

But they didn’t with the result we are where we are because of it. Mind you, her plan to unilaterally revoke Article 50 was a vote winner, wasn’t it?

And what chance a change to the voting system, doing away with FPTP, a method used in one other European country, that textbook example of democratic excellence, Azerbaijan? As much chance as I have of winning gold at the next Olympics in the 100 meters. Why would any party that has consistently benefitted to from FPTP want to change it?

Just keep reminding yourself that ultimately it’s the 27.3% of the electorate who fucked us over, granted the voting system didn’t help matters, but a voting system first and foremost needs people to vote in it.

Unless you’re in Russia.