11 June 2020
Diary of a Corbynista
Ignoring the Science
by Don Urquhart
4 June
The media are more openly criticising Covid-19 policy since the Cummings fiasco. Yesterday Newsnight continued its series of special reports on Care Homes making clear to what extent these institutions were abandoned even while Hancock was claiming to have surrounded them with a ring of steel.
Earlier Channel 4 Dispatches took us though the relationship between scientific advisers and ministers making clear that the latter were being highly selective about the advice they wished to follow. Most telling for me was the statement that Johnson’s lockdown speech on March 23rd was in response to President Macron’s threat to close the border between the two countries unless Johnson took decisive action.
So much for following the science.
5 June
Last week I asked you what a number of people had in common.
The answer is that they had hits with similar names:
Doris Day –Move Over Darling – 1963 hit
The Rolling Stones – You better move on 1964 hit
Curtis Mayfield – Move on Up 1971 hit
Spice Girls – Move Over 1997 hit
Witt Lowry – Move On 2015 pop release
Marshmello – Moving On 2017 pop release
Sia – Move your Body 2017 pop release
Samu – Move On 2018 pop release
Mike Posner – Move On 2019 pop release
Boris Johnson – Move On – 2020 hit penned by D Cummings
6 June
Yesterday a suitably socially distanced lunch with family. A consensus is forming and for me a particularly difficult decision is in the offing.
On the one hand the next General Election is in May 2024. Until then we are stuck with a government with which we will have no truck. Some 40 Tory MPs made feeble protest over the Cummings scandal but let’s face it they are the most bovine of lobby fodder. We love this country but are forced to consider a move to Scotland.
Although my late and much loved Dad hailed from Montrose I have had a deep antipathy towards our Northern neighbours since a visit to Wembley with my wife in 1977. Who or what were these creatures muscling their way towards the stadium inflicting terrible abuse on the natives including horrific suggestiveness towards the fairer sex? It was only when I upbraided one of them that I discovered that they regarded the annual visit to London for the “greet haeing it awa” as a quasi religious ritual. Later that afternoon after a 3-2 victory and some contemptuous trickery from Jim Baxter the ritual extended to destroying the goalposts and digging up the hallowed turf.
Since that day my feeling towards the Scots has never returned to an even keel and by God I have tried – working happily if nervously in Edinburgh for 6 months. But the damage was done on that terrible day in 1977.
So I am weighing it up.
7 June
As the Tories limber up for sending more people out to die from Covid-19 their potential victims should be working on survival tactics. Here’s one:
Stay at home.
When the Tories say it’s time to get back to work, people need a guarantee from their employer that the workplace and transport to and from work are safe. A good way for the employer to do this is to take out life insurance for all people asked to work away from home.
Tell me that’s unreasonable. Either it’s safe to go to work or it isn’t.
8 June
Johnson and his ministers were quick to come out yesterday to accuse the Bristol demonstrators of thuggery and to advocate prosecution.
They should tread carefully as they could be on the wrong side of history. Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Emmeline Pankhurst and Nelson Mandela are just a small sample of those who employed civil disobedience when confronted by a wall of bigotry.
9 June
Ursula is a secondary schoolteacher who has alerted us to the fact that in her borough not a single laptop has been delivered to a disadvantaged child. The Guardian reports that this is the case throughout the UK.
So much for government pledges to support such children. And now that they are pressuring adults to get back to work and schools to open there is little chance of those laptops ever arriving.
10 June
This lot meet up once a week to work out how to make our lives more miserable. Can you find the names they usually go by?
Lippier Rat
Wooden Drivel
Cholemia Veg
Enable Claw
Larva Lebensraum
Uriah Sinks
Brink Rejector
Haziest Bluster
Chesty Offeree
Barmaid Icon
