STAMP YOUR FEET AND STAY UPBEAT

Celia says I should not be so depressing, and the blogs should be more upbeat, but keeping up with events has been somewhat of a problem. The covid 19 virus is seemingly more difficult to check despite the rolling out of various vaccines. It rampages round the country oblivious to the hope of its imminent eradication. Its mutations have caused great confusion. On the one hand, in the light of vaccines being deployed, a sense of optimism and relief caused the powers that be, to call for moderate relaxations of interaction between peoples with an expectation that normal commerce was on the horizon. On the other hand, it is clear that the powers that be spoke too soon and are now back peddling like fury to rationalise their over optimistic view, despite the knowledge they had of the mutation spiralling out of control and the need for restraint till a much greater number of vaccinations have been administered.

Thus, confusion reigned and frustrations set in.  At his current press conferences, the Prime Minister ducks and dives away from questions about his responsibility for having created the confusion in the first place. But that is typical Boris. “No need to answer that, let’s move on -next!”.

 

Rolling in on top of his discomfort, the reaction to the mutation in the UK by the rest of the world, in closing off their borders, has shown up what isolation and taking back control has wrought. The Transport Secretary boasted, that the numbers of lorries stuck in motorway traffic had been reduced from 500 plus to 170 thanks to the preparations made in anticipation of Brexit, thus showing how well prepared the UK was in dealing with traffic heading for the ports and the tunnel. Ample provision had been put in place to deal with any increase in a pile up of traffic at newly created parking sites. In fact, the number of lorries creating a bottleneck has increased to over 1500. So much for preparation. The Prime Minister boasts of his friendly conversations with ‘Emanuel’ (whose birthday it was, apparently) which will of course resolve the situation in a trice. Still the headline reads “1500 lorries stuck in Kent as UK talks to France” and “Lorry numbers stranded at border continue to rise”. 

I am not suggesting that had the Government reacted to the evidence of the virus mutations, when they were informed about it in September, that the situation at the borders would be any different, but judicious and more effective thinking might have created a different scenario than the one we now have. In any event, on the learning curve of the realization that the referendum was a colossal mistake, this is a very salutary lesson.

 

It is about time that governments realised just how interconnected the world actually is. If the world wide web is any sort of lesson, it is time to wake up. No country can take back control. The world economy and the world climate are a global problem that is clearly out of the control of any single sovereign state. The best and brightest in all countries need to interact to find cooperative solutions. 

 

The solution to the current pandemic, it would seem, is to roll out a program of vaccinating the entire world population. Otherwise, coronavirus will not be eradicated. It is clearly too virulent to be ignored. People can and have been infected more that once. Let's just get on with it.

 

Nonetheless, be that as it may, it should not deter anyone from having as nice an end of year sequence of celebrations as one can have. So here a couple of dittys to cheer you up. They both involve cultures with stamping feet and hand clapping. Very upbeat.