Thought Of The Day

Having woken at a more reasonable hour, I see there were 3,395 visits yesterday and concern by staff for their safety continues pretty much unabated. The situation in prisons is of particular concern, but clearly the government has no appetite to consider any executive release, despite almost universal calls to do so. Ignoring all the rhetoric about us 'being in this together', it's still a right-wing government running things. 

I thought it would be good to re-publish the following from regular contributor 'Getafix today:- 

Like everyone else I'm terrified by Coronavirus. Especially as I have a family link to an NHS doctor working on the frontline in a hospital, and I'm afraid that the calm reassurences given to the gereral public by Government isn't reflected in what the doctors and hospitals are being told. The next 14 to 21 days apparently will show just how serious and deadly the situation is, and the 1.5 million most at risk because of serious underlying health conditions that received an NHS letter really need to keep themselves safe, as that letter also means that if you do get sick, it's highly unlikely you'll get access to a ventilator.

But as frightened as I am, I'm also fascinated by the rapid and liquid changes occurring to our social structures and what those changes are exposing. Richard Branson, Philip Green, Mike Ashley and Tim Martin have all caused outrage this week by their self interested response to the pandemic. Branson takes considerable amounts of money from Government contracts, many of them within the NHS, but he wants a £7.5 billion bail out for Virgin Atlantic, whilst at the same time telling his considerable workforce to take 8 weeks unpaid leave. Green has got rid of any staff he could without any renumeration, and Martin has told all his staff to go and apply for jobs at Tesco. He's also publically criticised the government decision to close pubs. There's no evidence he says that the virus can be spread by people going to pubs.

I'm sure that when this is over people will remember that those whose extreme wealth affords them access to political platforms, showed in a time of Global crisis that their primary concern wasn't for the safety and wellbeing of the public, but rather the protection of their own wealth.

We've also had a decade of austerity, and the mantra used for that was "we're fixing the roof whilst the sun shines". They've shrunk the State dramatically, and told us they've to sell off so much of our public services to the private sector to enable them to fix the roof. But now the weather's changed and the roofs OK but there's no walls left to put it on.

The State has been shrunk so much it's in a wholly inadequate position to deal properly with this crisis. But the call to Arms has gone out none the less, it's been sounded in the public sector, the third sector, a call for a huge voluntary contribution, and even to those that have retired from public service, all being asked to step up to the plate. The same call to Arms hasn't gone out to the private sector, and in fact much of the private sector are still being allowed to flaunt the rules, but they do so with the lives of employees, the CEOs just sit in their ivory towers. I'm sure many will remember all this when we come out the other side of this.

People too are beginning to realise just how important is is to be able to trade across boarders without restriction. Building the numbers of ventilators needed by the NHS to help combat the virus has been hampered as many of the components needed are manufactured in other countries that are also on lockdown. The same with our food supplies. Do we really want to live in a world where we create obstacles to essential supplies in exchange for some concept of national identity? It's terrifying, all of it, but I can't help being fascinated at the same time.

'Getafix