Month: January 2021

The government has given contracts to private companies to provide free school meals (after being humiliated by Marcus Rashford). You might not agree with giving free school meals but you must be totally appalled, ashamed, aggravated, by the callous way these companies are using your tax money to enrich themselves whilst not providing the care and help needed.,

So the government says there will be stricter shut downs. To be honest it is as if nothing has changed here for 4/5 months. Most seem to be working as normal – well the new normal, some from home, but lots out and about.

Schools have more children attending than in the first lockdown. I have total sympathy for working parents who want their children educated properly. But at the same time it defeats the purpose of the lock down and shutting schools if they have a large attendance.

There is also the pressure on teachers expected to teach and set and mark online work. And the children who have no access to broadband or a laptop. Cluelesss Williamson apparently turned down free broadband for these children last week – what a horrible specimen he is; both useless and vindictive. What planning was put in place over the last 6 months before this predictable second wave occurred (and it was predicted – it might be worse than predicted, but all people with functioning brains knew it was coming.

Will there need to be a distinction between essential workers and critical workers? Certainly if the infection rate does not start to fall imminently I suspect this distinction will have to be made, at least for the 3 weeks to see if the infection rate -r- can fall below 1. in Essex it must have been much higher. Thought, how is the r number affected by the speed of transition, I know it should not really matter but…?

Britain will soon have 2 new “news channels’ from the likes of Fox News. Those who criticise the BBC should be careful what they wish for. At least with the BBC any perceived bias from left or right is fiercely debated. This will not happen with news channels promoted by the like of Murdoch and Discovery. These channels will have no duty to the public, they will be free to peddle the false news of the kind that propelled Trump to his Presidency. The British public have shown themselves equally mall-able to false news, so could we be seeing the development of yet more media promoting populism.

Populism – what an oxymoronic word? Let us all vote for less tax – until we need the NHS, or other services. More tax would be sensible at the moment – especially the rich who have made billions due to share rises in lock down. Unfortunately the centre left and right is too liberal to demand constraints on this pernicious influence on our democracy.