HP Source: Incompetence, lies, and gestures

 

We Don’t Need This Fascist Groove Thing:

 

Boris Johnson, despite warnings that ‘the virus is out there, still circling like a shark in the water, and it will take all our collective discipline and resolve to keep that virus at bay’, is proceeding with the opening of bars and restaurants on Saturday, a day he has dubbed ‘Independence Day’. Armageddon or Groundhog Day might be more appropriate.

 

‘News guy wept and told us,

Earth was really dying

Cried so much his face was wet,

Then I knew he was not lying..’

 

If he needed further proof of his own dire warning Leicester is back in lockdown, and we may soon be adding to that as infections have risen in the Medway, the boroughs of Hammersmith and Fulham and Ealing in London, and Lanarkshire and Dumfries and Galloway in Scotland.

According to publicly available figures relating to tests by NHS and Public Health England laboratories, all these areas have seen increases of 10 or more weekly infections between 18 and 25 June.

‘I am expecting there to be a number of Leicesters,’ said Prof Deenan Pillay, a virologist at UCL and member of Independent Sage, the shadow government scientific advisory group. ‘The base level of infections going on in the UK is still much higher than it was in other countries in Europe when they started to release their lockdowns.’

The warnings come amid concern that some local public health officials are not receiving enough information about exactly who has tested positive for the virus and where they live to enable new outbreaks to be quashed.
 

‘UK is still much higher than it was in other countries in Europe when they started to release their lockdowns’

 

‘There are public health people in Leicester who are still unclear about precisely where the cases are,’ said Pillay. ‘The data problem has probably spawned a whole load of other infections, which could of course lead to deaths.’

All of this comes after fresh outbreaks in the US, who, on Tuesday, reported a record one-day increase of 44,358 new coronavirus cases confirmed. The US has recorded more than 2.6m cases, with a death toll currently standing at 127,410, approximately 25% of known deaths worldwide.

I have read some interesting commentary on ‘middle America’, Trumpland; it started with the disaster the virus is causing in Montgomery, Alabama, where Martin Luther King preached and where Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on the bus.

Hospitals are running short of drugs to treat Covid-19, intensive care units are close to capacity, and ventilators are running short. Between 85% and 90% of  sick and dying are African American.

The council debated for two hours whether wearing masks should be made compulsory. White council members asked if young children could get carbon monoxide poisoning from masks and spoke about individual rights. ‘At the end of the day,’ said councilman Brantley Lyons, ‘if a pandemic comes through, we do not throw our constitutional rights out the window.’

When the vote was called, it divided on racial lines; black members voted for and white members voted against wearing masks, the latter stating the need to preserve the fundamental right not to attach a cloth to your face.
 

‘The US has recorded more than 2.6m cases, with a death toll currently standing at 127,410’

 

Other Republican states seem equally stupid. Last week in Texas, Governor Greg Abbott insisted that his state ‘remains wide-open for business’, this is despite the fact that the virus has spread to every corner of the state overwhelming hospitals to the point that Houston medical centres are running out of ICU beds, bars are closing, and one town, near Houston, has imposed a curfew. On the 24^th June Texas recorded 6,584 new cases in one day.

And then there is Florida; On 20^th May the conservative magazine, the National Review, ran the gloating headline: ‘Where Does Ron DeSantis Go to Get His Apology?

This was aimed at the liberal critics of the Republican governor’s lax approach to coronavirus for having got it wrong: there was no spike in Florida. On 20 May, Florida’s daily infection load stood at 527 new cases.

Five weeks later, it reported a record 8,942 on Friday (26/06) and broke the record again on Saturday with 9,585.
 

Other wonderful examples of Americas stupidity include:
 

• Residents of Palm Beach, Florida, erupted in anger against a mandatory mask order, calling it the ‘devil’s law’ and an affront to ‘God’s breathing system’.
• In Jacksonville Beach, 16 friends decided to have a night out at an Irish pub – the entire group came down with the virus, as well as seven bar workers.
• A surprise birthday party in Texas led to 18 members of one family being infected.
• In Arizona, the Republican sheriff of Pinal county vowed not to enforce the lockdown on grounds of individual liberty, and promptly contracted the disease himself.

 

And what has Trump done? I can only describe his response as ‘American’, the US has bought up virtually all the stocks for the next three months of Remdesivir, one of the two drugs proven to work against Covid-19, leaving none for the UK, Europe or most of the rest of the world.

The first 140,000 doses, supplied to drug trials around the world, have been used up. The Trump administration has now bought more than 500,000 doses, which is all of Gilead’s production for July and 90% of August and September.

‘They’ve got access to most of the drug supply [of remdesivir], so there’s nothing for Europe,’ said Dr Andrew Hill, senior visiting research fellow at Liverpool University.
 

‘Us living as we do upside down

And the new word to have is revolution

People don’t even want to hear the preacher

Spill or spiel because God’s whole card has been thoroughly piqued..’

 

And from the reckless and selfish Trump to the reckless and deluded Johnson, or should I say Roosevelt, or Churchill?

As this column quoted some weeks ago, a governments first responsibility is the safety of the population.

5-years ago in their election manifesto the Conservatives wrote, ‘The first duty of government is to keep you safe.’

Of course, Tory governments had been promising this for years, they were the only party that could properly protect Britain’s borders, stand up to hostile countries, and maintain law and order.

Margaret Thatcher, when she first came to power in 1979 pledged to protect ‘family life’ and ‘the rule of law’, as opposed as what she described as a society supposedly ‘on the brink of disintegration’ after successive Labour governments.

More recently the Tories have warned repeatedly that even Labour’s participation in a coalition government would bring ‘chaos’. As the revered Tory philosopher Michael Oakeshott put it in his 1956 essay, On Being Conservative: ‘The man of conservative temperament … is not in love with what is dangerous.’
 

‘since the 2001 election, their lead over Labour among the over-65s has grown from 1% to 47%’

 

From boring they have osmosed into the party of senseless risk; cutting police numbers, cosying up to Russian donors, letting Brexit threaten food and medical supplies, their lack of urgency about the climate crisis. Their approach to Covid-19 has confirmed their cavalier approach to public safety.

The behaviour of the Johnson administration reflects his own recklessness, and lack of concern for the consequences of his own actions.

It also reflects the worldview of the Conservative membership that voted overwhelmingly for Johnson to become their leader and prime minister last July.

The previous month (June 2019) pollsters YouGov found that almost two-thirds of Tory members – nearly the same proportion that chose Johnson – were prepared to see Scotland and Northern Ireland leave the UK, and see ‘significant damage’ done to the economy, in order to achieve Brexit.

This selfish attitude reflects how the party has become ever more reliant on older voters; since the 2001 election, their lead over Labour among the over-65s has grown from 1% to 47%. Perhaps Covid-19 is nature’s way of righting this?
 

‘When I look back upon my life

It’s always with a sense of shame

I’ve always been the one to blame..’

 

The other driver of Tory politics, and one that is a growing influence, is the US under Trump.

Johnson and key members of his team are all keen students of the US, where conservatives have long attacked government attempts to make everyday life more secure as the ‘nanny state’ and a distortion of the natural social and economic order.

The US disdain for top-down government is highlighted by their cavalier attitude to Covid-19 lock-downs, and could see Trump and many Republican-run states hoisted on their own petard when the country goes to the polls in November.

One group that has never been a priority for the Tories are Black and Minority Ethnic (‘BAME’) communities. BAME households in the UK are over twice as likely to live in poverty ⁽¹⁾ compared to their white counterparts. The latest annual report by the Social Metrics Commission found that:
 

• nearly 50% of Black African Caribbean households were in poverty, compared with less than 20% of white families,
• BAME families were between two and three times as likely to be in persistent poverty than white households.

 

The commission said all people in poverty – particularly those classed as in ‘deep poverty’, meaning they lived at least 50% below the breadline – had been far more likely to suffer reduced incomes since lockdown, increasing the risk that the pandemic would drive a ‘significant’ increase in the incidence and severity of poverty.
 

• Overall, 14.4 million people in the UK were living in poverty in 2018-19, up by 100,000 on the previous year, of which 4.5 million were children.
• About 4.5 million people – 7% of the population – were in deep poverty, and
• 1 million people (11%) were in persistent poverty, meaning they had lived below the breadline for at least two of the last three years

 

The commission said BAME households were more likely to be in deep poverty than white families – around one in 10 adults from a Black British, Pakistani, Bangladeshi or mixed background were unemployed, compared with one in 25 white British people – and so were more likely to suffer heightened financial exposure to the pandemic.

It found that 19% of people in families where the head of the household was white lived in poverty in 2018-19, compared with;
 

• 32% of mixed ethnicity families,
• 39% of Asian/Asian British families,
• 42% of families classified an ‘other ethnic’,
• 46% for Black/African/Caribbean/Black British.

 

But other than preparing for the binge that will be the 4^th July re-opening, what are our illustrious leaders plans? Do they include those living in poverty? ‘Build, build, build’, is what he says.

Populist politicians through the ages have loved building, capital project appeals to their vanity. Even as his Reich was crumbling Hitler dreamed of rebuilding Linz, Mussolini built EUR in the suburbs of Rome, a suitable concrete monstrosity from a monstrous dictator.

Even as Messrs Cameron  and Osborne imposed austerity on us, cutting spending on public and local services by a third, they sailed ahead with nuclear power stations, aircraft carriers, high-speed trains, airport runways and garden cities.

Johnson’s vanity project is names ‘Speed’ (he might be better served trying some!). Except for trains and airports, much of the building he proposes is necessary, however, none of these are ‘speedy’ projects.

Then there is his track record of failed vanity projects when he was mayor of London; the Royal Docks, a cable car across the Thames, the giant empty ‘Nightingale hospital’, much of the housebuilding he championed along the Thames aimed at foreign buyers still lies empty.
 

‘What we need is jobs today not tomorrow vanity projects, this requires cold, hard cash’

 

What we need is jobs today not tomorrow vanity projects, this requires cold, hard cash such, e.g. the £14bn a month the chancellor has committed for the 9-million people on to the public payroll under furlough. In 4-months’ time when the furlough ceases, the ONS predicts a million workers will be thrown on to benefits, sending the jobless figure to 3.8 million people.

Schools, hospitals, and social care needs cash today to pay their staff, for equipment, for repairs, for transport.  As a result of the reaction to the pandemic many hospitals are reportedly operating at just half capacity, we don’t need more we need to better use what we have. Labour isn’t a scarce commodity, cash is.

The private sector, especially SME’s and their employees have been hit hardest by the pandemic, the IoD reports that more than half of directors it polled have a crippling debt mountain. To support them the government needs to extend furloughs, freeze rents, and loan write-offs. Whereas Mrs Thatcher was the epitome of Toryism and small business, this Tory government is putting them to the sword.
 

‘a million workers will be thrown on to benefits, sending the jobless figure to 3.8 million people’

 

If you add to this a ‘hard’ Brexit people are in for exceedingly difficult times. The answer is, as I wrote earlier this year, is to ignore the thoughts of inflation and to step-up spending. Germany tried the opposite after the 1929 crash and that experiment ended with the Nazi’s coming to power.

This column has mentioned numerous times that we are returning to the politics of the 1930s, it is a prediction that looks frighteningly prescient, as the masses influenced by the newspapers billionaires owners and the parties they fund to blame immigrants for the poor wages and lack of job security.

The continued victimisation of the elite by Trump and Johnson is aimed at the intellectuals who are sufficiently intelligent to understand the perversity of their ideas and oppose them.

As we have written before their policies are revisionist, ‘Make America Great Again’ and ‘Take Back Control’, suggesting a return to days of empire allowing the old and privileged to wallow in nostalgia. This is the politics of symbolism and slogans, bereft of the true substance required to govern.
 

‘their policies are revisionist, ‘Make America Great Again’ and ‘Take Back Control’’

 

Politicians appear to be above the law; Robert Jenrick, the housing secretary, was able to flout the rules and assist a developer who is a major Tory donor, Cummings defied the lock-down to drive around testing his eyesight.

They compounded this with consistent lies that leave the electorate unable to discern the truth. Johnson even lies about lying.

This columns title wasn’t chosen because I like the song (actually, I do) but because I feared we were sliding down the slope towards Fascism as Trump and Johnson continue the policies of polarisation to feed the supporters prejudices, the attacks on the elite and culture, the lies, and the constant need for scapegoats and the narrative of betrayal.
 

‘I feared we were sliding down the slope towards Fascism’

 

Where they differ is their support from the old rather than the young, and their gospel of individual freedom as opposed to total subordination to the state, although they constantly exhort the glories of the state.

I differ from some commentators as I believe we will see similar economic conditions to the 1930s where economic collapse and mass unemployment led directly to the rise of fascist governments.

In the 1930s this was triggered by the 1929 stock market crash, whereas today we are in a prolonged crash caused by the double whammy of austerity post the GFC of 2007-08 and this year’s pandemic.

The masses were only just getting back to ‘normal’ from the first when the second hit, both countries now face a major slump in which millions could lose their jobs and homes.
 

‘a major slump in which millions could lose their jobs and homes’

 

Finally, there is the power of propaganda, the Nazis through the evil and odious Joseph Goebbels were past masters at this. The power of social media is far greater, e.g. Cummings was able to target the ‘undecided’ during the Brexit referendum, constantly bombarding them with targeted misinformation and turn Remainers into Leavers.

Today’s enemy isn’t a stormtrooper with a machine gun, it’s a nerd with a PC and an evil master, neither are what either the UK or US need.
 

‘Iron-fisted philosophy…

Is your life worth a painting?

Is this ‘girl vs. boy’ with different symbols?

Being born is power

Scout leader nazi tagged as ‘big sin’

Your risk chains me hostage

Me, I’m fighting with my head, I’m not ambiguous…’

 

Notes:

1. The poverty line is set at 60% of the median UK income, which equates to £325 a week for a single parent with two children, £439 a week for a couple with two children, and £239 a week for a pensioner couple

 

Some tough reading from Philip this week, and some startling stats that should not be ignored; the theme of inequality writ large and likely to get worse as America gets back to work and the UK relaxes lockdown. I’m sure the author is not the only one to be extremely nervous on both fronts.

That we should remain aware as Leicester goes into local lockdown some of the reactions on the other side of the Pond might be comical if the consequences were not so serious.

No mentions of BLM this week, yet the disproportionate effect of covid to both the health and wealth of BAME communities becomes a central theme.

Boris does not emerge with credit on any front, and Philip is not short of ammo to illustrate his beliefs; 14.4m people living in poverty, including 50% of Black African Caribbean families, including 4.5m children is shameful.

And what comes next? Philip has often warned of the potential to slide into the politics of 1930s Germany and he is no less afeared today.

 An eclectic mix of tracks with pretty slim pickings as Philip is only offering up 18pts this week; roll-over rules apply for those with 16pts and above.

First up ‘a classic from the master’s break-through album’ – 1pt for David Bowie and three for ‘Five Years’; next ‘this is a song that demonstrates why I continue to love music, every era and genre throws up a master’ 3pts for Kanye West and three for Gil Scott-Heron’s ‘Who Will Survive in America’, and a harrowing video to boot.

Third up is this week’s ‘gimmie’ – ‘razor sharp lyrics and social commentary’ 1pt apiece for Pet Shop Boys and ‘Its a Sin’; lastly its the track to make you go ‘woah’ – ‘an angry note from a US hardcore legend’ and six well-earned points if you can get to Minutemen and ‘Political Song for Michael Jackson to Sing’.

Enjoy – end if your planning to venture out this weekend, let’s be careful out there.
 

Philip Gilbert is a city-based corporate financier, and former investment banker.

Philip is a great believer in meritocracy, and in the belief that if you want something enough you can make it happen. These beliefs were formed in his formative years, of the late 1970s and 80s

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