As each day passes and this ridiculous Lockdown continues, it becomes clearer that there are at least three different demographic groups with key behaviours linked to the Lockdown and the response to Coronavirus.

The first are people who either see and understand the disproportionate damage that the Lockdown has caused and is causing and includes the growing number who just want to get on with life and deal with illnesses if and when it might come.

Then there are those who are happy to sit at home indefinitely as long as they get paid, along with those who feel they have come this far and made sacrifices to get here and now want to see the Lockdown through to the point where no-one will ever be at risk from this one virus – no matter the cost.

The third group is considerably different to the other two. It contains those who are actively living in fear of Coronavirus, whether it is because of the Government programming that drove the implementation of the Lockdown, or because they have become emotionally compromised and tied into the narrative because they have either been personally or professionally exposed to the Virus. Fighting it has taken over their thinking in a very subjective and detrimental way.

That the dynamic between the groups is shifting is certain.

More people are out and about. More people want to be out and about. More people want to be back at work and want their children to be back at school.

Practicality will override selfishness. Group 2 will switch steadily to Group 1.

But those driven by fear in Group 3 are a different matter. Thinking rationally or considering ‘the bigger picture’ is not what their modus operandi is about.

Regrettably, many of the voices – perhaps all of them – who are driving the continuing fear-based reaction to Coronavirus that the Government championed at the start, are in positions of public responsibility. They have a very powerful voice that will be heard as soon as the media pick them up.

Today the NHS Confederation decided to step into that gap, insisting that the Government must get the new Contact Tracing App into use as quickly as possible. The inference being that Coronavirus cannot be controlled without it.

Sadly, any benefit that could have been derived from an app of this kind or the physical contact tracing exercise like the one the Government has now engaged thousands of paid people to administer was lost when they failed to implement it at the start.

Coronavirus is alive and present throughout the UK community. So there are no absolutes in terms of being able to monitor where and how the Virus was transmitted and between whom – just as there haven’t been for the fight against COVID-19 from the start.

It means that this is just another hollow exercise and no better than a diversion that is driven by fear to create more fear from it and keep people from resuming life and gain back to work.

People in positions of power with a public voice should know better.

The science doesn’t stack up. The Government response has been a joke. Every further attempt to scare people is making the developing economic crisis even worse.

If these people were in control of their thinking and not emotionally compromised, they would only be giving the public information that would help.

It’s time for them to do all of us a favour and shut up unless they have something helpful to say.

For goodness sake, let us make our own choices about where we go from here.

 

picture thanks to source unknown

One of the few positives of Coronavirus has been widespread recognition that many of the workers who make much of life as simple as having to pay a bill don’t get nearly enough income so that they can live the lives they have outside of work in the same way as most would choose.

The emphasis has been on Key Workers and specifically the nurses, healthcare workers and medical support staff who work for the NHS. But refuse handlers, van and lorry drivers, shop assistants, shelf stackers, gig economy workers, takeaway staff and many more besides all do jobs that streamline and bring significant value to our lives.

Because we have been conditioned to believe that money is the only thing that really adds value to anything, there is a clear link between public acknowledgement of what these workers do and the growing clamour to provide a financial reward.

Yet the problem that is difficult for many to see is that by raising the salaries and hourly rates of the lowest paid or those we accept are not paid enough, we simply set off a chain reaction of price rises and financial benefits that stretches right back up to the top. It makes the money we have worth less and quickly takes the real-world value of the new higher wage back to where it was before.

The supply of money isn’t the best way to reward the people that we need to value more.

It is the money system itself that is the problem. The way that it is managed by Government that is broke.

As long as this continues, life will always be something that the low paid simply cannot afford.

Free markets and liberalisation of finance, big business and the banking system are a great idea if everyone working within them operates compassionately and considerately with the emphasis fully on service with profits playing only a happy and coincidental part.

That’s not the way that it works.

With Banks printing money at will, agents buying, selling and transferring goods before they reach us without adding value to the process many times, and a city that speculates on company and asset prices like the impact on users doesn’t matter, the real people who just want to earn enough to provide for themselves and have a life observe the rich who play with money getting so rich they cannot spend all they have, whilst the basics in life are all the low paid can hope for and little more.

The looming financial crisis created by the Lockdown will provide us with the opportunity to put all of this right. That’s as long as we have the right people with the right vision and the motivation to do whats right and see it through in charge.

The basic prices of goods, services and accommodation that are essential for the lowest paid worker to support themselves without help and live a life that is worth living now have to be controlled.

Only Government should have the power to adjust prices, print money or have the ability to manipulate markets.

The management of money and how it can be used against us should no longer be left unhindered in private, profit-hungry hands.

This is the way that every worker no matter what they do and where they do it can do their job and feel that they go home with adequate reward.

Let’s end the idea that more money can solve any problem and just change the way that life works so that it is something that everyone can afford.

Its difficult to know whether to laugh or cry when going out to visit any of the shops that are open or even stop at the garage to fill the car.

Wherever we go, the plastic screens, barriers, floor lines and arrows that have now been upgraded to prefabricated and machine produced versions make it look like living in Lockdown and having Social Distancing imposed upon us by our peers is just the way that things have always been.

Shop assistants who used to smile and pass the time of day now growl and point the way. Security guards at supermarkets look and sound more menacing than the 7 foot burly body builder types that policed nightclub doorways in the Nineties ever were.

What should be worrying us all is the air of permanence with the way that this all now feels.

Social Distancing in this form is here to stay for a very long time.

Yet nobody seems to be concerned or asking questions about what the long term costs of this social policing and the rise of a police state will actually be.

Fear was weaponised by the Government to implement the Lockdown. It was used to facilitate Social Distancing measures that are impacting upon normal behaviour each and every day.

Once fear has been unleashed by causes that can be controlled, there is no way to contain the results and consequences of its growth.

It is easy to appreciate that many people now live in fear of Coronavirus.

This fear is and always was unnecessary. It is manufactured and a direct result of what the Government has done.

Fear affects everyone differently. Many will not realise that it affects their outward behaviour and the way they interact with others in what might be very profound ways.

Fear made real on the faces, in the words and actions of anyone who is afraid looks very different from the outside looking in. Outward appearances are rarely what the individual understands they are projecting outwards or is being seen by others on public display.

The anger, abruptness, lack of polite language or rudeness that we are witnessing on the part of the workers who serve or steward us is unlikely to be intentional at all.

Regrettably it is not how it is experienced.

The Social Distancing ‘guidelines’, equipment, infrastructure and the way those with responsibility for policing it at any level behave towards us is influencing the way that we all think.

We are being programmed to think that it is normal to be herded around and treated like an animal and to be viewed with suspicion as if we are guilty without the ability to ever be innocent again.

This is a dangerous combination for us all as a society. Because people are being actively and aggressively conditioned to think that it is ok and quite normal to treat others this way.

The Lockdown was a crazy idea that has caused more harm than good, made worse by politicians who lack vision and are terrified of seeing themselves as being out of control.

But where the impact of the recession, job losses and business closures the Government has caused through their actions will be possible to address with the right attitude and thinking on the part of good leaders over time, the damage that has been and is being done to us all at an emotional level with the irresponsible and unnecessary use of fear as a tool of choice for the Government is a completely different thing.

 

 

Whilst most people now feel like Brexit was something that happened to them in another lifetime, reality is different and UK negotiators have continued talking with the EU over a ‘trade’ agreement that would come into force on December 31st.

What we learned this week, beyond the 24hr Coronavirus show, is the EU still believes that post-Brexit UK will continue to accept laws and the supremacy of the EU Courts above our own.

Amid the head shaking and hand wringing, it is clear their approach to ‘negotiations’ is to see everything the UK has – or will have – as only ever being a concession from them.

For them, this is not a negotiation about a new relationship where the stepping off point is what’s ours is ours and what’s theirs is theirs. They don’t realise you don’t build an agreement by making set-in-stone conclusions about what will or won’t appear automatically in-between.

There is no point questioning whether the EU missed the point of the 2016 Referendum. They clearly did.

Now, with the world holding its breath awaiting the impact of the financial depression that has been triggered with an inextinguishable gunpowder fuse, their inability to see beyond the EU project is quickly becoming much more trouble than it is worth.

Either the Euro in part or the EU as a whole is likely to collapse as EU Member States realise that their immediate priorities lie beyond political agendas and that for very practical and human reasons, they must have flexibility to make decisions over public and fiscal policy within their own borders. Their futures are best served being alone.

For many EU Member States, the truth is they are tied too closely into the EU through the rigidity of a common currency. It appears impossible for them to go out on their own.

With the German economy being the Euro’s dead man’s switch, it now looks all but inevitable that their response and measures being taken in response to the Coronavirus emergency make it likely the EU will break up or there will be a return to national currencies that will lead to the same thing.

Either way, the building blocks that gave the lie to what has always been about creating a sovereign European-wide Government are in the process of being read the last rites.

With the financial problems and legacy that the Johnson Government has already bequeathed us over only 8 weeks, the last thing the UK needs is to be tied to an EU that is about to create an even bigger financial black hole as it rolls over and begins to die.

The so-called ‘No Deal’ scenario has previously been presented by those whose first loyalty was to the EU as if it were a choice and that it would be stupidity to complete the process of Leaving the EU if there was no trade agreement in place.

But the reality of the post-COVID-19 World is that we MUST put the UK, our businesses and our people first.

Anything other than a simple trade agreement between the UK and the EU will expose us to more problems than we can deal with anytime soon. It will be far more trouble than it is worth.

The Government would be very generous to our EU Member friends if it simply offered a free trade agreement on a take it or leave it basis with no strings attached.

So if the EU collapses the talks before June, they will be doing us a favour that we should thank them for and wish them well for however long it lasts.

 

 

 

 

If anything demonstrates just how out of touch and anachronistic the Unions are today, it will be the argument being staged on the front pages, where Union Barons want to stop teachers going back to work amid the spurious argument that their Members won’t be safe from Coronavirus if they do.

The Daily Mail carries the headline ‘Let our Teachers be heroes’ which sounds great.

But as the whole Lockdown is being perpetuated on the back of myths the Government and its Behavioural Insights Unit created, it really would be good for everyone if Teachers focused on being the nations educators once again.

They could begin by doing everything right now to help children of all ages learn as they can and should.

Parents shouldn’t have to wait for the Schools to return or for a discussion about when it will happen for this headline to be used.

To do so suggests the only thing that makes any employee a hero is if they leave their home and become exposed to the perceived increased risk of catching Coronavirus in a job that pays them and which they applied for at some point by choice.

Oddly, many of the people who would like to be heroes right now don’t have the opportunity that teachers have done since the start of the Lockdown and still do.

Technology like FaceTime and Zoom will allow and facilitate contact between teachers and children to be taught on a level not far short of a universal basis.

Oddly, Private schools are already filling this gap and in many cases offering a complete alternative timetable as they do. But State education is not.

Instead, parents of children in ‘free education’ who should today be in schools across the UK have had to manage the fallout of bored and disengaged children who want to do nothing because the people who need to motivate their academic studies are not available to them even in a basic coaching form.

Their teachers have instead relied on pages of dreary worksheets made available through clever portals that they tell us are a workable replacement for the work and the learning they would receive if they were physically in school.

Yes, some of our kids are motivated to utilise what’s on offer to them however weak it might be. Like many other parents, I have one child who is and one who is not.

This damaging replacement for schooling that the Government and media have systematically overlooked doesn’t allow for the significant number of disengaged kids nor those that sit somewhere in-between.

The counter argument is likely be that as there are children (or parents) that don’t have access to the internet or to smartphones, schools cannot give to one or any number if they cannot be certain that they can give to all.

This is a sad, regrettable reality where rights and inclusion have been twisted by activists who have nothing to lose like our children do and have assumed the responsibly to police the workplace and every perceived misdemeanor that is involved.

The outcome is it is always the lowest common denominator in standards or achievements that inevitably comes out on top.

Parents who are desperately doing all they can to keep their jobs whilst working from home are not responsible for changing what any healthy child’s perception of their home vs. the school environment should be.

Home is home. School is school.

The only way to find a happy median in the shitty circumstances this Government created is for teachers to make the best of the situation and get actively involved.