SpoonfulOfDreams

Stay Calm & Get Out the Brolly

2020-05-04T03:27:00.001-07:00

CoVID-19 Day 43

It was a weekend. Yes it was a weekend and not everyone can say that. It was a weekend of few accomplishments, less than I'd hoped for but hey, who's counting. When you code software a minor breakthrough can take a major amount of time and small detail can take big thoughts. I had to put one problem down on Saturday and pick it up on Sunday because my brain just wasn't computing. You sometimes have to hold many things in your head and when your head's full of other stuff even simple tasks can be impossible. Sleeping on it works wonders. It's like passing it on to your backroom boys.

very little of what we have to do is so urgent it can't wait

That's what weekends are for. I've got a crowded Monday but I'm sure I have enough hours if I can knock the things down one by one. We punish ourselves for procrastinating but doing something today just because you can is not always the best option. Priorities are fluid because life has a habit of throwing things in the mix and very little of what we have to do is so urgent it can't wait. So keeping lists short is a good tactic and resisting pressure can make us more efficient. Our cognitive thought is clumsy and slow compared to the back office in our brains which is insanely fast. That's why overthinking is such a waste of time and energy. It's not that we're thinking too much but too much of it is conscious.

That's also why sharing ideas and concerns is such a good thing to do. You not only take the weight off your mind, voicing it is like dictating to your assistant (your unconscious brain). How many times have you asked someone a question and then come up with the answer yourself before they've had time to process it? How is it that your dog or cat solves problems for you? Even talking to brick walls is underrated.

I've been criticised for being too negative and that's something I bear in mind. Dwelling on the negative can be destructive as can voicing it in the wrong setting. But dealing with the downs on your own can be bad for your mental health. Sometimes they need to be parked and other times trashed but they have to go somewhere. We need to be more patient and mindful. We all have different ways of expressing ourselves.

So it's another sunny day with clear blue skies yet heavy clouds are over us. I gave up on the press conferences a while ago and don't read the government bulletins anymore. Social media is getting repetitive and the government lies are like elephant carcasses in the room.

The dry British humour is borne of trial and perseverance. It's an outward expression of our inward pessimism, a way of exorcising our doubts and fears and clearing the floor of debris to make room for hope. It's a way of acknowledging reality without having it dominate us. It's a way of telling the self-important to piss off and defiantly press on regardless.

What we have to avoid is the so called Dunkirk spirit where we mythologise our near misses and ignore the collateral damage. Don't be fooled by that blue sky - you will be pissed on. Just stay calm and get out the brolly.

Dissonance

2020-05-03T01:39:00.000-07:00

CoVID-19 Day 42

While this pandemic has put everything in stark relief, the short memory of the public and its gravity towards messages of comfort and national pride continually dull its perceptivity and grind off the rough edges. While we each can generally hold two conflicting realities in tension there is inevitable public consensus in what is often referred to as the narrative. It’s that narrative upon which our government relies because without the binder labelled “We are beating this”, written in indelible ink, the loose pages would tell a confused and shocking story. The solidarity with front line workers and agreement that we should continue the lock down are both brittle and precarious.

unless we address the future while dealing with the now
the future present will be worse

The enemy is silent and invisible and regardless of the education we’ve received about the Coronavirus it’s difficult for us to grasp what it really is. Maybe the most dangerous thing about a virus is that we have nothing physical we can liken it to. Without tangible evidence, public support relies on trust and past experience.

The problem with social isolation is that we have to process a collective problem individually and that takes its toll. We all process it differently, some struggling most with introspection while others face physical challenges of shared space, family dynamics and critical problems like financial and employment insecurity. If we are to emerge as a better society there needs to be a common understanding of what that society looks like but that requires we step back from the immediate challenge that turns our thoughts inwards. That’s a hard sell.

What is comforting to malign forces that are determined to make hay in this almost permanent sunshine is that the fragmentation of society they have so successfully achieved over the last few decades makes it so much easier for them to impose hideous sanctions because there is no collective opposition.

For those who seek a new future, what’s comforting is the evidence exposed by the pandemic that refutes the validity of the pragmatism that’s been drilled into us. The problem is that in order to fight for a better future, those dissonant truths and rough edges need to be foremost in the public consciousness, overriding the desire to go back to any kind of normal. It means society has to embrace the pain, not self medicate. It means we refuse to accept all hollow declarations of victory. At best we will be survivors.

We will deal with the the present (well, poorly or abysmally) whatever is thrown at us because we have to. But unless we address the future while dealing with the now (and that’s not necessarily an exit strategy) the future present will be worse.

For me, I’m learning to confront my demons; those irritating, nagging parasites that feed off all negativity. They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger but the latter doesn’t inevitably follow the former. Such facile motivational phrases belie the depth of work you need to put in to prove them true or otherwise. What doesn’t kill you can make you weaker too.

I’ll let the sun cheer me and help me live in the moment while I square up to what I don’t want to face and enjoy what gifts life gives me. Happy Sunday.

MAY DAY? WILL DAY!!

2020-05-02T03:12:00.000-07:00

CoVID-19 Day 41

It was May Day yesterday but today would have been the May Day celebrations in Lancaster’s Dalton Square and on the streets. So instead there’s a virtual celebration — march round your garden or living room if you wish — and I’m part of it.

That we refuse to go back to normal must be the reality

It’s weird because I’ll be watching myself, pre-recorded. It’s great that we are using technology to overcome the obstacles and it shows a determination that we will press on regardless. But each conversation, conference, rally and get together adds to the tension, amplifying the dissonance. We can’t live like this indefinitely.

I can’t say I’m feeling the walls pressing in on me. I have the luxury of my own space and I can walk out onto the beach. What’s crushing is the sense of the world writing it’s own obituary. I should move on from this because it’s too depressing but it must be said. That we refuse to go back to normal must be the reality, not another hope.

My song is one of hope but sadly was written when I felt hopeful. Yet May Day represents all that has been done because working people dared to hope when their lives were hopeless. Throughout the world and in all centuries the oppressed have stood up for what was right without any evidence that their aspirations could possibly be realised and though many of us who rage against the machine have good, or at least reasonable, lives our aspirations can feel beyond a glass horizon.

The evils in our society largely come down to billionaires who cannot spend what they have and corporations that are literally heartless. As George Monbiot put it, we are beyond the age of hope, we must now act. The dystopian world we imagined is the world we live in and much of what we hoped to save has already perished. Carbon neutral by 2050 is a con. Green energy isn’t the answer. We have no cake to eat now the bread is gone.

But hope is not only the green on the other side of our fence, its the denial that our paved yard is beyond remedy; that self determination is ever utterly beyond us. Its what one pope called hope against hope. We are 99% there. It’s the 1% we have to deal with, who are 99% of the problem.

NO KERMIT, IT’S NOT EASY BEING GREEN

2020-05-02T03:07:00.005-07:00

CoVID-19 Day 40

Please imagine I’m up-to-date with my diary and I’m not writing 2 entries the same day to catch up. Please imagine I’m doing this for the benefit of my readership and not pandering to my own sense of self respect (of which there’s little — evidently).

I don’t know what day I’m on. I’ve had to check what the number was yesterday before starting today’s drivel. I’m in panic mode and I don’t know why. There’s no pressure on me and I don’t know what anyone’s expectations are so why am I bothered?

Anyway, less about me. How are you doing? ………………… ………………… ………………… ………………… ………………… ………………… ………………… ………………… ………………… ………………… sorry, am I talking to myself? Well no, I’m talking to my phone which is worse than anything. My head is spinning. Too much information and not enough hugs. It’s mental (am I allowed to say that). But it is!

Let’s carry on with this monologue pretending to be a conversation. My day, which was yesterday, was like doing a jigsaw of a green cat in front of a green screen. The finished thing looks like the box except it’s obvious I’ve forced the pieces into where they don’t belong — like who cares, it’s done. No Kermit, it’s not easy being green.

Someone said Matt Hancock was self congratulating on TV earlier which, to me, sounded disgusting but that’s just how my mind works. Actually it is disgusting because it’s all a game to them.

All they have to do is finish the jigsaw so they can say they’ve done it. It doesn’t matter that the finished thing looks nothing like the box, that they had to cut the corners off a few pieces, that the jigsaw will now have to be thrown away or that what really matters is that each piece is unique and that’s the whole point.

Wet Hug

2020-05-01T01:38:00.003-07:00

CoVID-19 Day 39

I think there’s a pattern. I have a good day then a bad day, then a day where I get back in the saddle - its ‘in’ rather than ‘on’ isn’t it? And I’m now back into writing in the morning — I guess that’s just part of the rhythm. So its the morning of day 40 and I’m writing up day 39. Am I going on?

We need the earth and we need each other. Screw everything else

I don’t know what to think right now. I’ve written about rhythms and patterns and now I’m thinking ‘grooves’. Someone once said that a rut is simply a grave with its ends knocked out. Put another way, a rut is just a very long cul-de-sac, the difference being that cul-de-sac’s and no-through roads warn you beforehand whereas ruts just seem to suck you in. While some are saying this crisis has the potential to change some fundamentals others are seeing the fundamentals being bolstered so that they are impervious to change. The surge in community spirit, on the other hand, is just that, and can be blown away without anyone noticing.

All you have to do is move the goalposts slightly as the Daily Mail have already done by criticizing the NHS while making themselves look good by procuring a million pounds worth of PPE (and their proprietor remains a tax exile). We all know how easy it is to get people to bite the hands that feed them. You just need to nudge the community spirit ever so slightly to the right and, hey presto, you’ve got nationalism. Screw the love — institutions are not people — we need to be really, really, really angry with the government and let them know how pissed off we are. If you are not pissed off you’ve not been paying attention. We are being groomed by those who don’t do crisis, they just do it to us.

They write the time signature, set the tempo, compose the bass and we just sing the melody. Listen to the bass. The only way real change happens is in cacophony and when the rhythm is interrupted like a glitch in the matrix. Its what happened when CoVID-19 hit. Everything changed, economically, socially and politically but what came through was the true rhythm of life. When we stopped playing, nature sang and it sounds beautiful.

Today (actually yesterday) I got caught in a hail shower and it was wonderful. Its been lovely having the sunny days but that’s kind of like nature at a distance, pimping the sun and avoiding its difficult relatives. Getting drenched in a shower is like a wet hug or a meteorological kiss. We need the earth and we need each other. Screw everything else.

False Positives

2020-04-30T07:44:00.003-07:00

CoVID-19 Day 38

I know my days see-sawed before the virus struck but the rhythm wasn’t so noticeable. We are all in a Mexican wave rising on the applause for NHS workers and sinking with latest death toll. CoVID-19 has its own rhythm but that’s not what drives our wave.

I was up two days ago then down again today. But while our mental health is more brittle under the constant stress of unknowing and lack physical contact, that only explains the rawness, not what drives the moods.

Life is a series of negotiations, playing cause against effect and actions against consequences

Earthquakes
 devastate communities but much less so when the building are built to 
withstand them. When you travel through Greece you see new homes 
constructed around frames that will move as a unit during an earthquake.
 When you build something hoping against acts of God you are living in 
denial; that you are not subject to the same laws as others; that you 
are a special case.



The
 Coronovirus outbreak and much of the crisis run on parallel lines, 
connected and interdependent but one is not the cause of the other. Its 
like saying my car stopped because it ran out of petrol when your petrol
 gauge wasn’t working and you just passed a petrol station. The fact 
that you’ve never run out of petrol before or that you have a large tank
 does not mean you are immune from breaking down.



In
 some cases the mental, physical and economic outcomes are directly 
related to the outbreak but never does one thing entirely explain the 
other. Rarely does that happen. Life is a series of negotiations, 
playing cause against effect and actions against consequences. There is 
not a proper opposite of truth or love just as hindsight is not really 
20:20 and much of our wisdom is mostly to do with false positives.

If Only…

2020-04-29T00:52:00.002-07:00

CoVID-19 Day 37

It has rained before during the lockdown but today was a proper day of rain. Though some have wondered if the cleaner air, as a result of the lockdown, was causing us to have such a sustained bout of sunshine still it had to break. True, particulates in the air do allow the precipitation of moisture in the atmosphere but there are natural seeding devices such as salt and sand thrown up by waves and as we live by the sea and near mountains which drive warm air upwards there’s hardly need for pollution.

I created myself some masks this evening though I’ve not worn them in anger yet. All it required was a T shirt and a pair of scissors and made a pretty effective mask. There’s no sewing involved so that’s good. And I watched my second conference in 2 days on dealing with racism. Yesterday’s concerned racism within the Labour Party uncovered by the latest leaked report which revealed some awful racism where there ought not to have been any (as if there should be racism anywhere) and this evenings was about a public enquiry into why BAME (Black, Asian & Minority Ethnic) communities have been hardest hit by the Coronavirus pandemic.

As unwelcome as CoVID-19 is, it has shone a light on injustices that never should have been tolerated before this and must be addressed now, along with systematic abuse from the state, political parties and society at large. At a time when society is being seen in a different light and those who were looked down upon are being acknowledged for their service its hard to hear that domestic abuse is on the rise and those very people who are giving their lives for our health are living under the threat of deportation.

Its time we took a hard look at ourselves and separated the chaff from the wheat. For all our liberated ideas we are still shockingly racist and wilfully ignorant of how corrupt our systems are. Though our empire ceased to exist several decades ago, our arrogance and exceptionalism is still awful while the received wisdom of how benificent and gracious we were, not only to those we colonised but to our own people, belongs firmly in the fiction isle. The true history is pretty bleak.

What everyone is talking about today is the damning Panarama report. The bottom line is that the government has been putting all its energy into making itself look good rather than actually taking care of frontline workers. While its true that no government could have averted the crisis and there would have been a significant number of deaths particularly among the elderly despite government intervention, any claims of success on behalf of the current government are shameful and without substance.

It rained today because all the elements came to together under the right conditions to make that happen. Its that simple. If only…

Skin & Bones

2020-04-28T06:59:00.000-07:00

CoVID-19 Day 36

Wake up — its dark.
Check the time — 4am.
Back to sleep.
Its getting light — 5am.

Its 6am and I’m checking stuff on my iPhone. My eyes are clear because I despatched the sandman an hour ago. I will be tired but am not feeling it now. Hello Monday.

My mind is at its best when I wake up. That’s when ideas spark and deep thoughts surface with little resistance. If only I could divide my waking time into parallel lines of meditation and productive action I’d have life cracked.

We double account our lives, bemoaning the time we wasted obsessing about one thing when we could have broadened our horizons; and marvelling at that guy who dedicated his life to a singular passion at the expense of a world of experiences.

Accepting a 60% failure rate is the gateway to enjoying the other 40%

If we’d spend less time worrying about misadventures, checking all the options and comparing our failures with others’ successes we’d live better lives — lives with warts and dimples, escstasies and doldrums, smiles and frowns.

Getting up is our commitment to living, where we admit there is something worth getting up for. Negotiation is pointless – it’s a done deal – it’s more about navigating the covert contracts and not obsessing over the small print. Accepting a 60% failure rate is the gateway to enjoying the other 40%.

This weird time is teaching me to seize the moment. We are not in the collision path of a giant asteroid or living though a nuclear winter but our mortal bones have become visible beneath our facile skin.

Its amazing how being deprived of one pleasure or sensation makes more vivid, that for which the edges were blurry. It forces us to analyse what we took for granted and decouple what we we thought were inseparable. Yet in the sterile vacuum where once was interpersonal space we also entertain strange ideas and invent personas we’d have dismissed ordinarily. We might look back with nostalgia to the days we learned social distancing, clapped for the carers and gave to the NHS, all without reference to true the cost of it.

Its been another day of meetings, discussions, decisions, dilemmas and unfniished business. Another day of planning ahead without a clear view of the landscape and coming to conclusions based on flimsy evidence. Boris is back — whatever the hell that means. Priti is not so much bright as a button as like a loose button — plastic and having lost the thread. No one knows what to do because the what to do is not at all clear. If only we’d been prepared and resourced it might have been clearer and simpler.

Anyway my future 4am is much closer now than my past one. I know I won’t be able to sleep through to a reasonable getting up time. Instead I will fill it up with stuff and the trade off will be feeling tired at 10pm.

There is no such thing as a 24 hour day and 16 hours of productivity is unsustainable. Not many of us will dedicate more than 10 hours to paid work. In reality the hours don’t matter because we discard most of them. What matter are the moments because its the significant moments that give meaning to our vacuous hours.

Crime Figures

2020-04-26T15:31:00.001-07:00

CoVID-19 Day 35

I’ve just corrected my last entry. I marked it down as day 24 (10 days too short). Since I started this diary I’ve written 40 articles (including this one) which is more than a week’s work in just over a month (and its not my job).

I’m looking out on an intense sunset marking the end of another day, a day where I recorded one of my own songs written in a hotel room in Atlanta Georgia. Its the longest video I’ve posted because it includes an explanation of how the song came about and what significance each verse and the chorus has. It’s an embellished story of my trip to Tennessee and the country song that came out of it.

when you have a home secretary proud of the decrease in shoplifting at a time when most shops are shut

Yesterday I recorded a song I’ve loved for 40 years but have only just learned to play. I love playing it and am pleased how the recording came out. I think it sounds professional and that’s significant, not because there’s any money in it but because it helps my confidence. For all the concerns arising from the lockdown I feel more confident and am enjoying playing more than I have for a while. Its also been a good time to improve my writing skills. I just need to improve my work rate and get reading — I’m embarrased by how few books I’ve read in my lifetime.

I sense many have settled into a new normal and I suspect that’s not specifically down to the pandemic or the nature of the lockdown. Whatever strange situation we find ourselves in we learn to adapt because that’s part of our survival instinct. The only alternative would be to go stir crazy. And new challenges inspire invention and creativity. Added to that is the built in, but irrational, sense that if we are denied what we need we will die. The novelty of discovering that we are more adaptable than we believed can be liberating and refreshing — even exciting. Unfortunately its short lived and we need to be prepared for when the bubble bursts.

Another product of this lockdown is an unhealthy dependence on those at the helm. Regardless of how well they are handling the crisis they are driving the agenda and its only natural that we look to the government as we are more dependent on their decisions than we would normally be. Cast adrift on this lifeboat, the world outside is not friendly or assuring. But while there is a benefit in having a designated leader it also limits your options. Challenging that leadership can be unsettling but there is a need to recognise that one can be both a team player and be objective.

That sense of perspective helps when you have a home secretary proud of the decrease in shoplifting at a time when most shops are shut.

Land Fill

2020-04-25T13:43:00.003-07:00

CoVID-19 Day 34

Two days ago I deviated from my usual format and gave a straight account of my day without political comment or takeaway. Yesterday my entry was pure satire. It was a reaction to a Facebook post complaining about journalists taking issue with the government on the basis that they were being negative when what we need is cheering up. A friend made reference to ‘the left’ typically following this trend and that annoyed me. The truth is that the government have only done what is right because of pressure from the public and the opposition.

It doesn’t really matter what the truth is, so long as the narrative can be successfully defended.

I took a walk before publishing the satirical piece and was seriously considering deleting it and writing something softer but met friends who reminded me that we are in a precarious position, with truth telling being particularly important at this time. When I got back I re-read what I’d written and concluded it was appropriate and not unnecessarily negative.

Then checking out Twitter and Facebook this morning it occured to me that much of what is being written at the moment is contributing little and only adding to an overcrowded information overflow. There is always space for articles that fit the inevitable gaps and remind us of forgotten gems that are pertinent to the current situation. But repetition and duplication ends up polluting the message and creating information land fill.

That prompted me to write another article entitled "Don't Unite - Resolve" (its an earlier article in the blog). Its around twice as long as my diary entries and questions the calls for unity (because they generally come from the right) but advocates keeping to the ideals that unify the left more organically. Its truth versus the narrative. We can’t beat the system by disapproving of it or joining forces with what are conservative (small C) factions or beaurocrats because that only replaces one corruptable beaurocracy with another.

So I’ve been more sanguine today. Less angry, less anxious and more thoughtful (as in thinking outside of myself). We are now in an information stalemate where new data merely replaces the old without materially adding to the pile. Its like a ledge on the side of the mountain where the past and future steeply fall away and rise respectively but we sleep on level ground. So long as the government cause us to forget or trivialise the incline and focus on the level staging posts they will have achieved their objective.

It doesn’t really matter what the truth is, so long as the narrative can be successfully defended.

Don't Unite - Resolve

2020-04-25T11:54:00.003-07:00

Joining the dots

As a consequence of the Warsaw pact unravelling in 1990 bitter rivalries that had been buried by communism resurfaced. Grievances that had never been resolved exploded resulting in ethnic cleansing and mass killings. With political restraints removed tribal blood-letting swept through the Balkans and beyond. Glasnost not only opened up political discourse it opened up old wounds for which the liberal West had no answer.

Consolidatiion of power often brings with it a faux peace. If you can get everyone to repeat the same mantra or buy into a common message you can smother dissent and if you can get the media to buy into your narrative (other than nationalising it), any dissent then becomes treachery. Many concepts around freedom, liberty and justice become distorted within such a paradigm. People develop a kind of Stockholm syndrome identifying with, and trusting, those to whom they are captive politically and economically.

You have more in common with a factory worker in Bangladesh than a CEO in the City of London

One of those concepts is unity - if only we can come together under a common cause we can fight a common enemy. But oftentimes its the dominating faction or beaurocracy within the organisation that makes the call so its of a conservative nature and calls for normalisation rather than radicalism. Radicals tend to come together behind an objective that is not homogeneous in itself but held together by common ideals. Where nation states and corporations control the flow of goods and capital and rely on economic and political stability the status quo remains in control with a narrow monolithic message.

When the Berlin Wall came down Margaret Thatcher said that where people have the freedom to choose they will choose freedom. While we would like to believe that, its seldom the case in practice. Offer someone stability and creature comforts in exchange for liberty alone and they are very likely to accept the deal. One of the planks of neoliberalism is the freedom to choose but as Tony Benn put it, "people in debt are slaves to their employers". You only have the freedom to choose when you can afford what's on offer. The freedom she referred to is largely illusory.

The interesting phenomenon we are seeing now is the media challenging the ruling power (the government) and being critical of both their policies and methods. With people being unsettled by the Coronavirus pandemic they hanker after stability and normality and unsurprisingly want to hear good news. At other times bad news would be entertaining and material for moans and groans but when life is difficult people want someone to tell them the world isn't going to end and we'll get through this. So when journalists ask awkward questions and question the competence of the government its unsettling.

There can be little sympathy for the press. If they had consistently held the powerful to account they wouldn't now be pushing back against a current of their own making. But more importantly this illustrates the inertia that will resist anyone pushing against a government that everyone, for their own sake, wants to succeed. The ether is saturated with conflicting versions of what is happening and what is to come. Social media has given us a plethora of news channels and with everyone on lock down the audience is more captive than ever. Such a scenario is ripe for the dominating forces to drive through their monolithic narrative with dissenting voices drowned amongst the flotsam and jetsam.

Those most vocal in their call for unity may well persue an agenda for change but seek to redress inequalities and injusticies without challenging the roots of either. Radicals, by definition, are less concerned with the fruit and branches which are visible to everyone, and mostly concerned with the roots that very few are aware of. This automatically puts the radicals (on the left) and conservatives (on the right) at odds but gives an advantage to the conservatives because they can more easily appeal to the masses who want sweet apples regardless of how they got them. Nature follows the path of least resistance and prefers equilibrium to inbalance.

Having said that nature also works in cycles. Success isn't sustainable unless its distributed and challenged. Unchallenged, success will overreach and be self defeating. The crash of 2008 should have brought the world economy to its knees but there was enough resilience in the richest nations to keep economies on life support. CoVID-19 is likely to pile on the pain and pull us into a world recession the likes of which we've not seen for nearly 100 years. The New Deal, delivered by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, came about because the only alternative was a nationwide revolt. We've seen some of that in the policies introduced by the Tory government because its only alternatives are sky high deaths or abandoning the economy.

We can't know how we are going to come out of this crisis but you can be certain that those in power or with influence will be planning on saving their own skins before considering the rest of us. They will be happy with general chaos so long as they control the narrative. For that they will need the majority to at least acquiesce to the government line even if they are critical of its performance. They will need the public to resist any suggestion of radical change in favour of a new normal that might look different but won't be radically changed. The current news soup can only help them.

We are up against a very powerful but loose coalition of world powers and billionaires who will move heaven and earth and stop at nothing to maintain their status. They will sow fear and prejudice and set us up against each other. You have more in common with a factory worker in Bangladesh than a CEO in the City of London though nationalism tells you otherwise. The pressure for institutional unity will be immense but the only way we will come out of this crisis, with anything to show for it, will be an international call to action between working people across the world that demands fundamental change.

After writing this I listened to Chris Hedges, an American journalist and author, on the Jimmy Dore show talking about the current situation specific to America. His analysis is insightful and unapologetic, speaking truth to power - but he is not hopeful. The latest bailout by Congress was the final part in establishing the US as totalitarian, underpinned by a feaudal economy. With the machines of dissent dimantled its virtually impossible to see unrest leveraging the government to abandon its journey to hell.

I believe his pessimism is somewhat compounded by the fact that the Democratic Party itself has crushed dissent to the point that firebrands like AOC are toeing the line, mindful that if she doesn't she will certainly be shoe horned out of her seat. The caveat to this is that Chris still believes good draws to it good and holding to the truth is not pointless. What is instructive is that the bailout bill was passed unanimously.

I think the key is knowing where to place your hope and what that hope looks like. Bernie Sanders' bid for presidential candidate in 2016 and Jeremy Corbyn's bid for government in 2017 were beacons of hope that finally got extinguished in 2019 and will not be relit this coming November. Hope is always alive while we look out for each other and work for a better society but its hard to see where its coming from on a national and international stage. If we are to keep hope alive in our hearts we need to be wise who we share it with.

Hoorah for Boris

2020-04-24T10:33:00.000-07:00

Covid-19 Day 33

Its that time of the week when you ask “what day is it tomorrow?” and exclaim “thank crunchie its a day with a y in it.” You’d leave work early ready for the weekend except since you’ve only left home in the last month to do a shop or stretch your legs, that’s kind of redundant. Anyway its time to get positive, not for CoVID-19 but about everything else. It’s time to cut the government some slack and get in the spirit of all in it together.

Its reassuring to know we have a much better government than the one we had last month

Clap for Boris, which is a bit unfortunate after getting the Coronavirus too. But never mind, he’s a fighter and we love him to bits. Poor chap is cooped up with only 1500 acres to exercise in and the nearest corner shop is miles away but I hope some kind soul picks up his Happy Shopper foie gras. We’re with you in spirit Boris. We need you to get better (much better).

We are all being enthralled by the daily Have I Got Government News for You
 though we’re missing Ian Hislop‘s cheeky smile. Fortunately we’re still
 getting zany, made up and completely irrelevant bits, but from Matt 
Hancock rather than Paul Merton. The Odd one out round has been replaced by the Which one is true round but of course none of them are. Still its still fun working out which lie is the most egregious.

With only 10 years to practice, the government are doing remarkably well under the circumstances — the circumstances unfortunately being of their own making. But then no one’s perfect. They’ve never had to deal with a CoVID-19 pandemic before and haven’t really been governing either so this is all new to them. Thankfully the NHS hasn’t been overwhelmed, just the doctors and nurses and other workers in it. Isn’t that good to know.

What we should all take heart from is that they are making lots of wonderful promises like there being 100,000 tests per day in a weeks time even though its only in the 20,000’s currently. Shipments of PPE are apparently coming in even when they aren’t and getting to where they’re needed when they’re not so its reassuring to know we have a much better government than the one we had last month.

The problem is these pesky health and other front line workers keep complaining that what they’re experiencing is nothing like what they’ve being promised and that’s so unsettling for the rest of us. So we’ve got a couple of hundred workers dying because they haven’t quite got the equipment they say they need. Why can’t everyone look on the bright side? We’re enjoying the sunshine and we only have another couple of years to wait for the vaccine to be mass produced.

Little Ole Me

2020-04-23T15:35:00.000-07:00

CoVID-19 Day 32

I’ve been writing this diary for over a month now and I’m conscious I’ve largely spoken of my feelings and my reaction to news and events but not gone into great detail about what my day consists of. So here goes:

I was awake aound 5.30 this morning and was onto Twitter and Facebook before writing up yesterday’s entry on my iPhone. Writing this takes up a fair bit of time so I didn’t get up till after 7am. I wasn’t writing for all that time, however, I did grab the odd bit of shut eye. So I got up, grabbed myself some cereal and a cup of tea, tarted up what I’d written, copied it to my personal blog and put links in my Facebook timeline and one of my pages.

I then got on to working on a client’s website (that I built) for whom I also do customer support. I was working on improving the website’s visibility on Google, hoping to drive more traffic to it. We had an online meeting at 9am with the website being the main talking point. Afterwards I carried on with what I was doing which took me through to late afternoon. A Zoom meeting was scheduled for 6pm where our Big Local group would be discussing our role in the Coronavirus crisis hitting our town.

Big Local groups were set up by a charity called Local Trust which gets its money directly from the National Lottery. Our area was chosen to receive £1 million and our group was created to deliver that to community groups and businesses in the area. I was voted in as chair person 15 months ago even though I didn’t put my name forward (you had to opt out rather than in). I had never done anything like this and never saw myself as a chair yet the very first meeting I chaired I managed to introduce new etiquette into the meetings. 2019 was a tumultuous year with deep divisions in the partnership nearly breaking it apart. I managed to steer it through those trouble waters with the help of colleagues and we came out stronger for it.

At around 2pm I had a conversation with our community development worker ahead of the meeting before getting back to the website. I completed that work by 5pm and played my guitar until the meeting. The meeting went very well and we have some exciting stuff coming up — I’m looking forward to being instrumental in helping the community at this difficult time. At 7.30 we closed the meeting, I made myself a cup of tea, listened to Stafford Live and did the clapping thing at 8pm, after which I put the bin collection out and took my daily exercise.

Stafford Live is one of these online open mics. Stafford is where I come from so I did a gig last weekend and enjoyed it. The guy who played tonight said he had some songs on Spotify so I looked him up. That got me to remembering I have some songs on Spotify so I looked myself up and played the album. I never pushed it at the time because I wasn’t sure how good it was after some luke warm reviews. But its actually pretty decent. There goes another opportunity I missed.

That’s not a typical day because I don’t have typical days. But none of it was unusual. So I’ve made myself another cup of tea and am finishing this off before retiring to my bed chamber. I did dabble in social media throughout the day but not to any great extent. I have no morals to pass on and won’t clutter this with external news, I’ll just bid you goodnight and stay safe. I just need an image to finish this off — and a title.

The Finish Line

2020-04-22T23:41:00.001-07:00

CoVID-19 Day 31

I’m now stressed because I don’t know what is stressing me. I cleared a couple of items off my worry list and now I have a headache. I’m wanting to be positive but what I’m hearing is that we don’t know what is going to be the most effective way to come out of this so I’m just confused.

One thing a crisis does is focus the mind. We don’t perform well in the middle, we need a target to aim for or a hurdle to clear and often neither is in focus. Being on lock down isn’t generally helping but in this alternative bubble we do find ourselves thinking more critically about some of the things we otherwise take for granted or we get away with not paying attention to.

there are months ahead of us before we are even out of the starting blocks

Most
 of us know what we need to know about Coronavirus and social distancing
 and much of what we’re picking up is repetition. Even stuff that should
 be shocking is becoming part of the new normal. Yes, action needs to be
 taken but the landscape isn’t going to change dramatically soon. The 
curve is flattening which is what we wanted but what do we now do with 
it?

It seems like the lockdown has been fairly well accepted, loo rolls are not hard to find in the smaller shops and there is a sense of being in it together. There doesn’t appear to be a sense of unrest but I’m not sure whether that’s assuring or concerning. Long standing stress is unhealthy but so is getting comfortable with a bad situation (which can simply be an accommodating strategy that makes us feel better but actually leaves us just as stressed).

The flattening curve doesn’t mean we are getting over the crisis, it simply means that it’s getting worse less severely. It’s a kind of managing phase rather than panic phase, a little like managing the water rations in the lifeboat rather than trying to get off the sinking ship. We should think of it as climbing Everest, being half way up but not in the middle of a blizzard.

We should not be thinking of hunkering down and getting through this but taking charge of the moment with an eye on the summit and planning the decent. Anyone who’s done serious running will know that you don’t make getting to the top of the hill your goal, you imagine yourself on the other side.

Winning the peace is more difficult than winning the war. Getting through this crisis should not be our aim. In the bigger challenge of saving our planet from a climate catastrophe and saving society from the wolves, there are months ahead of us before we are even out of the starting blocks.

This shouldn’t depress us but should make us mindful that kicking off from the starting block is the most critical part of a sprint. Those seconds waiting for the gun can make all the difference between winning gold and walking away with nothing. But it’s not even the best starters who win, you don’t get the medal till after you’ve crossed the finish line.

String Theory

2020-04-21T23:52:00.001-07:00

CoVID-19 Day 30

Today, for me, has been about search engines, key words and figuring out how to get people we don’t know who are asking questions we are not privy to find a website they were unaware of. Then asking a developer how long a particular part of the program is going to take to be ready for release. How long is a piece of string? This is the same day we discovered the shipment of PPE from Turkey that was apparently delayed on Sunday was actually a figment of our imagination when that news was announced. We are also discovering that no one has a clue how many people are dying each day from the Coronavirus.

will people collectively demand knots be tied in the piece of string,
the length of which is otherwise indeterminate

On
 other matters I’ve been getting answers to questions (or part answers) 
that have been bothering me for days and raising ancillary questions 
that have lost me sleep. The difference between this and the sham daily 
press conferences is that I’ve not been misled about Google searches, 
development work or finances I’m dealing with and no one has been 
withholding information either for the sake of it or with a devious 
agenda while the government information is spin that is neither open nor
 honest.



It’s
 exhausting living in a state of suspended animation where you are 
looking for information to string together what is going on in your 
personal, local, national and international life when some of the normal
 lines of communication have been taken away. With human interaction 
drastically curtailed we are waste deep in communication effluent, 
processing the detritus, seeking out clear water. In reality we were fed
 this garbage before and though we knew we were swallowing crap there 
seemed little we could do about it.



This
 time has focused my mind on how I deal with the information I have to 
hand that personally affects me. Apparently less than 10% of those 
surveyed said they want to go back to normal after this crisis. The 
question is, will people collectively demand knots be tied in the piece 
of string, the length of which is otherwise indeterminate.

Sleepless in Morecambe

2020-04-20T11:21:00.004-07:00

CoVID-19 Day 29

I was up really early this morning. I needed a drink and wasn’t going to sleep through. My mind was buzzing and I decided to write. I’d listened to Glen Greenwald last night, the journalist who was instrumental in getting the Wikileaks story supplied by Edward Snowden, published. He’s stood up to South American dictators and certainly risked his life in holding truth to power. He was encouraging left wing activists to stay with the programme despite being shafted over and over again.

I have a feeling its going to be a week of sleep walking

He was speaking to Americans but I could see the parallel here in the UK so I wrote my piece here on Medium. Its called Hard Lessons for the Left. That took me over 2 hours. I had planned to write for a short while then go back to bed but that never happened. I finally published the piece in Medium on this blog and copied snippets and links into Facebook by 9am when I had a scheduled meeting. That turned out to be a 4 hour meeting with gaps.

Otherwise its been a slow news day after yesterday’s explosive revelations in the Sunday Times. So I’m watching Rishi Sunak deliver tonights Have I Got News For You (not the real #HIGNFY of course, just one that’s not funny and contains no news). Unfortunately its impossiblke to watch for more than a few minutes.

But on the real news front you should know that while councils have given out grants to businesses in line with promised funding by central government, it looks like the government may not honour their commitments. If this isn’t remedied even councils that have done all they can to mitigate the drop in funding they’ve seen over the last few years, will be desperately short next year.

I have a feeling its going to be a zombie week, most of us satiated with information we can make little sense or use of while health workers and care workers continue to put their lives on the line, volunteers slave away meeting people’s desperate needs and the government lie through their teeth about what they’ve done, are doing and promise they will do.

Hard Lessons for the Left

2020-04-20T00:57:00.000-07:00

Home Truths and Family Feuds

Let’s not kid ourselves that the recently leaked Labour report is the kryptonite that will automatically kill the power of the Labour right and that of the residual Blairites. The report was to be submitted to the EHRC as part of the investigation into alleged systematic antisemitism in the Labour Party. Labour lawyers managed to stop it being submitted and then it was leaked. You don’t have to be a conspiracy geek to figure out that this action would effectively have buried the report (which is probably why it was leaked) and its hardly surprising that Labour HQ would primarily go after the leakers rather than the sabateurs named in the report.

To be fair the party machine should have been expected to attempt to lock down the report and disallow any official dissemination of these revelations pending an investigation and to comply with those instructions is proper. But we also should have expected the membership of those named to have been suspended prior to an investigation as would have happened if they’d been accused of antisemitic activities.

the corrupt establishment is corrupt …
That’s why a new movement is needed

Many of us came into the Labour Party inspired by the vision of Jeremy Corbyn and, thanks to the activities of Momentum, we were buoyed by the numbers. Here was a case of herd immunity — the neoliberals would have a hard time suppressing half a million activists in the largest political party in Europe. But scandalised as they were, they were quick to attack and very nearly succeeded in quashing the rebellion on their first attempt. The infamous Chicken Coup was scarily close to shutting Corbynism down within a year of its emergence.

Jeremy Corbyn’s second win sealed the future for Corbynism and because it was so unusual and so forceful it caught the media and the political class on the hop. Him being relatively unknown, it wasn’t too tall an order to present Corbyn as disloyal, unBritish and left of Stalin and make it stick. But when Theresa May threw him into the spotlight and people got to know the man, they grew to like him. Given 2 or 3 more weeks campaigning a Labour victory in the 2017 elections would have been irresistable. The law mandated that he be given equal air time and a fair crack of the whip while more exposure for Theresa (Maybot) May only made her look worse.

Even in 2017 we were aware of opposition to a Corbynite Labour government from within Labour HQ, Iain McNicol directing clandestine efforts to blunt the election campaign. The leaked report merely fills in the blanks. More damaging was the open hosility by right wing Labour MP’s who were more than happy to go to the press with stories of bullying, ineptitude and power grabbing by those close to Corbyn. Some even openly criticised the party leader while campaigning to be re-elected as Labour MP. Its hard to argue that a Labour government wasn’t emminently possible or likely in 2017 if it were not for the shameless antics of the Parliamentary Labour Party and Labour HQ.

The Labour defeat was rightly claimed as a victory for the left. We removed May’s majority effectively making her a lame duck PM and insured that Jeremy Corbyn, those who supported him and the radical Labour manifesto wasn’t going to be assigned to the bin of history. By 2019 Labour had been transformed from a Tory-lite centrist party to something that, at least in appearance, was a left of centre true opposition. But the poisonous right had worked their dark magic so well they managed an historical defeat that meant Jeremy would have to resign and those around him would be dispersed.

The Labour Left are still reeling, the leaked report rubbing salt in the wound. Once the new elected leader was announced it was expected of the left to draw a line under the past and get behind the new leader even while the right were still laughing in our faces. The hollow call for unity didn’t wash and with the Covid crisis hightening everyone’s stress, the leaked report only intensified the feelings of those who so enthusiastically campaigned for a Corbyn led Labour government. As an opposition we have been underwhelming against a miserably incompetent government. It hardly inspires socialists to fight for what seems a nominally socialist party.

Many have left the party, not only disheartened by last year’s defeat but lacking any hope of Labour being a force for socialism. Five years feels like a lifetime when, in that time you gone from being vaguely political to a socialist activist to feeling like an unpaid leafleter. Its not just a case of getting back on the wagon. This wasn’t a relationship that didn’t work out and there are plenty more fish in the sea. This project began decades ago when an internationalist, anti-fascist, anti war, socialist became member of Parliament for Islington North not long after Thatcher reformed this country for the worse with her disastrous moneterism and toxic neoliberalism.

I for one shouldn’t be surprised having long held the belief that all institutions are either corrupt or tend towards corruption. As Michael Walker of Novara Media has beutifully put it, the officials running the Labour Party around 2015 enjoyed a relatively small party of largely non-activists. Corbyn has never been an existential threat to Jews or anyone else in this country apart from the Labour apparatchiks who had a very lucrative and cosy lot and were not going to give it up easily. A massively increased, enthusiastic and largely socialist membership must have terrified them.

Does that mean I should have learned my lesson and now give up on a party that doesn’t appear to have any aspirations of forming a socialist government. That is a question I’ve asked myself and could have been pursuaded had I listened only to those with that view. Those saying we should stay and fight were not particularly convincing and even given that there is no credible alternative, why should I give myself to a hopeless cause just because its the only one in town? There has to be a better reason — some light at the and of the tunnel — some residual glow that tells me there are embers of hope and not just a heap of potash and charcoal.

Glenn Greenwald has put it beautifully, in an interview with acTVism Munich when talking about the Bernie Sanders campaign in the Democratic primaries:

"Yes, there are villains responsible for Bernie Sanders not being the Democratic nominee but that’s the whole premise of … the populist movement generally that the … establishment is corrupt. They’ll do anything to cling to power. So you can’t launch a campaign that’s designed to wrench power out of the hands of a corrupt establishment and then when you fail, whine afterwards that the corrupt establishment is corrupt … That’s why a new movement is needed."

Just as the the Sanders campaign got many things wrong, so did the Corbyn team and Corbyn himself. Its clear from the report that he and Jenny Formby threw Corbyn allies under the bus in order to appease the JLM and LFI and gave in to pressure to accept the IHRA in its entirety when its own author warned against it being a definitive document. Jeremy’s right hand man, John McDonnell, abandoned the Labour commitment to honour the referendum and so helped seal Labour’s fate in 2019.

Even if Labour had won in 2017 the entire establishment would have moved heaven and earth to bring it down, using every dirty trick in the book. If the revelations of the leaked report had come out earlier, what would that have done to the Labour Party? Those of us on the left might have fought hard and made sacrifices but in other ways we had it easy. The Left was crushed in the 1980’s and it took 30 years to rise from the ashes. The Corbyn movement has been shafted but not crushed. We are down but not out. The 2019 manifesto is our stake in the ground, the leaked report our whip. Around the world progressives are comparing notes while the coronavirus has created a crisis from which there is no return to normal.

The Chartists, Tolpuddle Martyrs, Peterloo and the miner’s stike teach us there is no easy path to victory. We won’t walk into the halls of power just because we have half a million people behind us. We certainly won’t win by complaining about our lot or joining a circular firing squad, shooting those who stray a little from our radical positions. We are not innocent bystanders or collateral damage. We are wounded, fallable soldiers who maybe missed the odd target and with our own instances of friendly fire. We haven’t been led by donkeys but they are not saints either.

Look around and be thankful. The last 5 years will not be washed away easily and we’ve already been vindicated. The next 5 years are going to be tougher and some of the fights will be closer to home. But we stand on the shoulders of giants, some of whom literally gave their lives for justice and a fair society.

Taken to the Cleaners

2020-04-19T13:02:00.000-07:00

CoVID-19 Day 28

My day started with the question, “What am I going to eat?” I had little more than eggs in so I made an omelette with a few non-foody things in it. Sorted. The sky was blue again. Again. It has rained once since the lockdown started and then for only a few minutes. We’ve seen the sky cloud over but that was just to let us know that we are not in a Truman show. It all adds to the strangeness as if there was someone in control of this which, it would appear, is not true.

What is obvious is that the government certainly isn’t in control — of anything. The coronavirus might be novel, invisible and strange but its not mindful. Its not trying to outwit anyone or deliberately target certain types. While being more potent than we probably thought, its not omnipotent. Its nothing more than a string of information wrapped in a coat of grease. It relies on host cells to multiply which is why its difficult to fight. Its also very vulnerable to the most simple of cleaners, household soap — nothing fancy or modern. Its less effective in small doses because that gives our immune systems a fighting chance.

We have a vacuum and nature doesn’t like vacuums

We
 know how to deal with viruses in general and CoVID-19 is a virus. 
What’s different is that we don’t have a vaccine because there is no 
such thing as a general vaccine. We know how to protect health workers 
but, as Matt Hancock so pithilly put it, we don’t have a wand to magic 
the equipment out of thin air. And that’s what we are dealing with. We 
have a government that has made no preparations for such an event (which
 it planned for 4 years ago but did nothing about). And even when it was
 clear what needed to be done, what needed to be done wasn’t done.



The
 truth is that we have something which calls itself a government but has
 no clue how to govern. The Sunday Times published what many feel is an 
explosive story of incompetence and negligence on behalf of the Prime 
Minister, but its been clear for the last month that that has been the 
case. The General election of 2019 made clear that Boris Johnson could 
not be trusted in anything he said and when confronted would either 
deliberately hide the evidence (e.g. a mobile phone) or hide himself in a
 fridge. The media knew then that his cabinet couldn’t organise an orgy 
in a brothel.



Talk
 is, that Michael Gove is being lined up to replace Boris should he be 
forced to step down which leads some to suspect there is more to the 
hand wringing than just cottening on to Boris’ incompetence. It seems 
that whenever something is happening that the public really ought to be 
aware of, the press deflect with a non story. Then when there’s little 
that can be done they drop a ‘bombshell’. Maybe someone is in control or
 maybe its a certain class that manoevres to maintain the status quo. 
What is certain is that we are not all in this together.



Now
 we are hearing that a consignment of PPE from Turkey has been delayed. 
With warnings that many places would run out this weekend it was vital 
they dropped today but they are not going to and we don’t know why. I 
don’t believe there is any conspiracy here. While the ruling class have 
managed to maintain their status for millenia its not through guile, its
 just that they have their hands on the levers and they know which ones 
to pull. You don’t need to be a genius to ensure you survive a tsunami 
while others perish, you just need to ensure that they live on the beach
 while you live in the mountains.



When
 it comes down to it, the press are not the Tories’ friend, they are 
just on the same side. Boris is expendable as is Michael Gove. All that 
matters in the end is that the ruling class maintain their status. 
Everyone else can go to hell. But just as world powers can be humbled by
 a microscopic virus that can do little more than find a cell to 
corrupt, so they can be overthrown by seemingly insignificant humans. 
The main killer with CoVID-19 is viral load, where the victim is not 
just exposed to the virus but overwhelmed by loads of it. That’s why 
those on the frontline are so vulnerable.



What
 an ineffective media does is lesson the load of public opinion on those
 in charge. By delaying judgement on the government they have 
effectively done that just as the government have tried to protect the 
NHS by flattening the curve. We have also seen the dismantling of 
collectives such as unions which further protects the government from a 
loaded attack. But what is most disappointing at this time is the lack 
of effective opposition from what is Her Majesty’s official opposition.



Ideally
 we would have a good government and an effective opposition holding it 
to account. A poor government with an effective opposition might still 
be functional. What we have is a useless government and no real 
opposition. We have a vacuum and nature doesn’t like vacuums.

Fit for Heroes

2020-04-18T15:02:00.000-07:00

CoVID-19 Day 27

I walked and walked and walked today. It wasn’t my allotted daily exercise though I guess that got covered. I needed to deposit some cheques and the bank isn’t nearby. The walk there was very pleasant — the walk back, less so as my feet began to rub and one or two joints began to complain. I’m obviously not in shape so there’s something I need to tackle.

I had planned to do less social media today. I think I probably did less though I wouldn’t call it a success. I’m not sure what’s best for me at the moment in this respect. It doesn’t get me down but while I was walking I kept finding myself reaching for my phone as if I needed to keep track when I didn’t. Well this diary keeps me posting on Facebook, my blog and here anyway. It can take up considerable time depending on what I’m writing about or how easily the words come to me so my commitment to this virtual life isn’t in doubt.

We cannot allow them to be painted as heroes
on cardboard cutouts,
once again we must demand a land fit for heroes
and an NHS fit for purpose

As
 well as posting me singing (which I recorded yesterday) I also recorded
 a song for the virtual May Day event being organised by the Trades 
Council. I was going to play in person but, of course, that was 
scuppered by CoVID-19 so its all going to be online with recorded 
messages. Mine is a song I wrote some time ago. I wrote it walking to my
 breakfast club job, feeling a bit glum. Its a song of hope (I wrote it 
to cheer me up) which found inspiration in the prospect of ushering in a
 Labour government. The leaked Labour report that came out last week 
explains why our optimism (in the short term at least) was misplaced.



Yet
 we must always maintain hope because without it we are left only with 
despair. So in spite of what we are being faced with day in day out, we 
must believe that a better future is possible and that the work we are 
doing towards that will not be fruitless.



There
 is so much confusion and so many voices amidst the utter incompetence 
of the government, the tragedy of lost lives in the care industry and 
ruptures within the Labour Party, that when we look to forging the 
future we are in danger of ceding the narrative to malignant forces. The
 only antidote is for us to develop a common left narrative and at least
 a loose coalition of left groups to press that narrative.



The
 good people of Britain won’t save the NHS or truly honour its staff 
through charity or applause (as noble as they are) but through a 
fundamental shift in policy that brings services back within the NHS and
 restores responsibility to the secretary of state. There is a deep 
sickness and corruption within established politics and the mainstream 
media that must be openly challenged.



There
 is certainly an appetite for this but it will be challenged fiercely by
 the powers that be. The government itself pays lip service to the 
heroic efforts of our frontline workers with no intention of following 
through with concrete changes. We cannot allow them to be painted as 
heroes on cardboard cutouts, once again we must demand a land fit for 
heroes and an NHS fit for purpose

Taking the Lead

2020-04-18T04:21:00.000-07:00

CoVID-19 Day 26

You don’t need to want to be a leader but you do need to want to lead when you are one. Someone has pointed out that so many politicians are sociopaths, you can only conclude that there is something natural about politicians having sociopathic tendencies. Its that naked thirst for power that would concern a balanced person and ring alarm bells. But in the world of politics the bells are muted by pragmatism and process.

There are many politicians who are driven by service while others are careerist but don’t have an agenda that’s focused on rising to great heights. Many genuinely want to use their position of privilege and influence to help those they represent while others want to steer politics from inside the machine (technocrats). Some set out to lead while others find themselves thrust into the position. But you can’t lead unless you are motivated by being one.

It comes down to the difference between leadership and control

You
 don’t need to be power hungry, just comfortable in the role and driven 
by having people follow you. What is strange is that there are those who
 want to be in a position of power but don’t relish taking the lead. 
They want the accolades that come from being the figurehead but not the 
responsibilities that leadership brings. Such a person is likely to be a
 bully, given to mood swings and with a fragile ego. True leadership 
finds satisfaction in achievement rather than plaudits, expressions of 
appreciation rather than favours and apprentices rather than copyists.



It
 comes down to the difference between leadership and control. The 
Dickens character, Uriah Heap, illustrates this. His whole MO (modus 
operandi) is to be in control, whether that be manipulating his employer
 from below or plotting a takeover. His end game isn’t to lead the 
company but to control it and use it as an instrument to enrich himself.
 Even where there is no financial gain to be had some seek to take 
control to make them look important and win friends or admirers.



In
 these unprecendented times there seems to be an absence of leaders. 
There are many who present themselves as such but the evidence would 
suggest they have done little more than act out the role. It appears we 
might have only done slightly worse had they come through The X-Factor 
or Love Island. Its impossible to pin the blame but with a brush stroke 
we might be able to cover the usual suspects like the press and 
corruption in the echelons of power. There are certainly individuals and
 groups who benefit from chaos.



Things
 are bad enough as they are but if we are to come out of this with 
anything remotely constructive that doesn’t line the pockets of the rich
 and screw everyone else, some kind of true leadership needs to emerge 
from somewhere.

When You Ain't Got That Swing

2020-04-16T23:40:00.001-07:00

CoVID-19 Day 25

I had an extended Twitter conversation this morning (much longer than usual) with someone I’ve been following for a while and whom I tend to agree with on most things political. Where we’ve diverged is on who we supported in Labour’s leadership election. There wasn’t a great divide in the elections as many members weren’t particularly energised — none of the candidates were very compelling.

A pendulum must swing its full arc before returning to the normal
so must we experience the extent of our grief or disappointment
sometimes before making a constructive journey
back to the point of equilibrium

With
 so many people calling for Labour’s first female leader (though Harriet
 Harman stood as interim leader after Ed Milliband resigned) I’ve been 
surprised that so many women voted for Kier when there were 2 women 
leadership candidates. This Twitterer voted for Kier Starmer who she 
felt would be the most electable when it came to a general election. I 
had certain reservations about him and voted Rebecca Long Bailey.



Although
 a Starmer leadership was pretty much on the cards it still came as a 
hammer blow when he won the ballot, for many Corbyn followers. It wasn’t
 just about Kier it was grief over saying goodbye to the leader we’d 
pinned all our hopes on. However many Corbyn supporters voted for Kier 
and some with enthusiasm (though I never understood why). The tweet I 
initally responded to was one she’d liked. He was disappointed that 
there had been so much negativity and I was trying to explain why that 
was.



I
 wasn’t being concilliatory but neither was I being intentionally 
confrontational. I was merely justifying the anger and trying to 
explain that you can’t simply dismiss someone’s behaviour because you 
have difficulty accepting it. One argument was that there was a crisis 
out there with people dying, so why were we crying over spilt milk. But 
when tempers are short it serves no purpose to point out the illogic or 
inappropriateness of someone else’s feelings unless you are actually in a
 live situation where immediate focus is critical.



There
 are times when its necessary to behave irrationally so you can work 
through your feelings. A pendulum must swing its full arc before 
returning to the normal so must we experience the extent of our grief or
 disappointment sometimes before making a constructive journey back to 
the point of equilibrium. I am not the best me when I make sacrifices 
unwillingly unless I can rationalise why I’m doing it. And in that case I
 am using my negative inertia to power my positive movement. You will 
make best use of your enemy when you harness their energy. When it 
dissipates its lost.



We
 so often fail to undertsand grief because we don’t grasp the 
fundamental nature of it. Its a way of coping with loss but it isn’t 
reserved for when someone dies. You can mourn for all manner of losses 
including losing the hope that your child will ever marry or live the 
kind of life you imagined for them. Its selfish but its not invalid even
 when another thinks of it as trivial. A child can mourn the loss of 
their favourite toy and its as real as your grief even though its 
consequences are not profound.



There’s
 a grief in isolation, in not being able to enjoy your usual activities 
and pleasures. Its the stuff of life and yet we don’t recognise it most 
of the time because our coping mechanisms are so practiced. Its 
situations like this when you have to face losses that are strange and 
unfamilar. You have to remember that you are not being punished (because
 depravation is used as a punishment) or you have to accept that it can 
be a gift (even when its a punishment). It has echoes of the past where 
child motality rates were such that a young death in the family was 
almost inevtiable. “God giveth and God taketh away” was not simply a 
theological truth rattled out at a funeral, its was an understanding 
because everyone knew it first hand.



The
 deaths we are experiencing due to CoVID-19 are not normal but with it 
come the removal of the props that separate us from life’s normal cycle.
 We generally live in a world unequipped to deal with nature’s 
capricious stealth but sometimes its good to find ourselves in an 
armlock, battling forces we wouldn’t normally engage with. In these 
times we need to give ouselves and others a little more grace and take a
 little less umbrage.

Hope in Hell

2020-04-16T11:41:00.002-07:00

CoVID-19 Day 24

Today was hopeful if I can be permitted to describe it as such. My meetings were either positive, helpful or forward looking. It’s important when in such a dire situation that hope isn’t extinguished. Laughter and grief often play off each other, one framing the other giving meaning to our existence.

I learned about networking via LinkedIn and was reminded of the importance of clear communication and the value in openness. Futures are built on trust while fortunes are often castles with no foundation. Don’t underestimate how much people generally want your best, instinctively understanding that successes are made for sharing.

we must come together with the common interest, not of picking up where we were
but demanding that things be different

Today a 28 year old mother died before her baby could be delivered. She was a black nurse and her colour is important. While CoVID might be colour blind statistics are not. We need to understand why black and coloured medics are dying non proportionally. We are all connected but we are not in this together and the virus is not a leveller. Coronavirus might generally be unpredictable in which victims it takes but it does appear that foreign and black workers are more likely to be put in harms way.

What this virus has exposed is years of neglect, contempt for those like cleaners and care workers, who actually run the country, endemic racism and needless austerity just as 2008 exposed massive corruption and criminally in the finance industry.

We cannot carry the weight of the tragedy in each life lost, upon our individual shoulders but somehow we must come together with the common interest, not of picking up where we were but demanding that things be different. The death of the 28 year old heavily pregnant nurse so struck me I couldn’t comment on it. I had no wish to retweet the story or add my mark. It was horrible.

Waves

2020-04-14T14:24:00.003-07:00

CoVID-19 Day 23

Following the sinusoidal Easter weekend with its positive and negative highs, intense analysis and introspection, its perhaps not surprising that my morning began dark. "What is the point of all this" was the overriding feeling especially after a conversation wading through a bleak financial landscape. My first response was to put on my shoes and head for the beach but instead I picked up my guitar.

I decided to record a song I enjoy playing then post to the internet and hopefully lift someone's day. My beach walk would have been better served by turning my brain off and just taking in the time and space. Instead I tried writing a song by repeating nonsense in a beat I wouldn't normally compose in. I got back feeling as stressed as I left. I'd not wound down but I was ready to apply myself and got down to it.

just as an aggressive parasite will kill its host,
the neoliberal elite may well have strangled their golden goose

At midday I had a long phone conversation around housing and urban gardening, talking about local economies, regeneration and holistic progress in areas of depravation and low expectation. CoVID-19 could be the game changer, the dividing line between the past acceptance of a failed economic model and the future prospect of demanding a more inclusive and sustainable one. It ended in voicing a desire for programmes that would leave a legacy rather than a huge footprint.

That remained with me in a mood of cautious optimism. A subsequent conversation that I was tempted to postpone further, lifted the mood as it went much better than I'd expected. I'm now weary but its late enough to consider bed without the complication of waking at a ridiculous hour.

I'm still in a precarius position, not knowing how I'll come out of this crisis. And from what I'm picking up there is likely to be considerable distress in communities across the nation and the globe in the coming months. The little resilience we had in 2008 is now looking more stretched and any prospect of a bounce back has been pretty much scuppered by the dismantling of the forces of moderation over the last few decades.

It could be that while it will, as ever, hit the poorest and weakest most this could fatally wound the neoliberal agenda of Reagan and Thatcher that has effectively reduced us to a feudal system and just as an aggressive parasite will kill its host, the neoliberal elite may well have strangled their golden goose. Meanwhile the government continues to betray the nation while her Majesty's opposition implodes.

Tomorrow is Wednesday and its only the first day of our working week. What happened to the last four days.

Day of Reckoning

2020-04-13T10:40:00.000-07:00

CoVID-19 Day 22

Wow, its been an information bomb site today. I joined the Labour Party in 2016 when Jeremy Corbyn was heading for his second win as leader after the infamous ‘chicken coup’ where members of the shadow cabinet resigned one by one after the referendum went Brexit. I’d registered with the party the year before to vote for him as leader and Tom Watson as deputy (how I regret the latter vote). When Theresa May called the snap election in 2017 my heart sank. With Labour well behind in the polls and the Parliamentary Labour Party having done a job on Corbyn. But I really enjoyed the campaign and we were buzzing after the election even though we lost. Jeremy had been magnificent and we’d robbed May of her majority. We came tantalisingly close to gaining power but it wasn’t to be.

The one who we adore and love, captivates us with her charms
Reassures us with her rhythmic presence and terrifies us in her capriciousness

There
 were rumours of the General Secretary throwing spanners into the 
campaign while some MP’s made it no secret that they were fighting for 
their seat but not the prospective Labour Prime Minister. Watching some 
of the Labour faces when the exit poles were announced was very telling —
 clearly this wasn’t what they were hoping for. Now we know they were 
hoping for another leadership contest that a narrow defeat wasn’t going 
to give them. And there are many more grizzly, lurid and shocking 
revelations that confirm what some of us have been saying openly — that 
we were robbed in 2017, not by the Tories but by our own party machine.



The
 fury of party members is palpable but while many are leaving in disgust
 it’s also galvanising members of the left, now armed with evidence and 
no longer having to fight our small corner. Disingenuous calls for unity
 are bouncing off our growing demand for action against those whose 
hunger for power and influence was at odds with winning a Labour 
victory. Whatever your feelings for those you openly fight against, 
betrayal by those who should be your allies and friends is bitter and 
deep.



However
 as bitter the pill is, the bile of truth is more palatable than 
poisoned honey. Those of us who’d barely dipped our toes in the water of
 politics entered the Corbynite world with some naivity but that was the
 charm that won the country over and nearly gave us victory. 
Unfortunately it was also our undoing. We’d hailed a new leader from the
 back benches who didn’t do politics like the pros. But he was up 
against a hoary machine, lubricated with the oil of cynical, seasoned 
and seedy politics. Though they didn’t get their way in 2017, their wet 
dream played out in 2019. In retrospect it seems Labour’s best effort 
for many decades was not enough for the Corbyn dream to come to 
fruition. The loss in 2017 turned out to be a mortal wound.



I
 took the realisation, that such devastating revelations had a silver 
lining, with me on my daily walk and found inspiration in the tide. I 
stood on the water’s edge as the sea came in with gentle waves that were
 barely perceptable except they’d periodically wet another inch of the 
sand. And over the next few minutes small waves would splash the rocks 
and I’d have to stand back. Then I walked along a stone jetty and 
watched from another angle. The thin layers that made up the shallow 
waves were like skirts covering fleshy sands like they were being 
dressed and so this poem got written on my iPhone:

The naked sand is clothed with an indigo dress
Sequins shimmering and skirts cascading
The bay queen will soon be regaled from Neptune’s wardrobe
And crowned as the sun withdraws to its chamber

For now she takes her throne
In subtle, graceful steps, with little pomp
Another day she will raise her army
And take the rocks by force

Shouting down all who would oppose her
Then retreating with magnanimity and poise
And while the mountain king pushes out his vaunted chest
She dances with the moon in regal beauty

The one who we adore and love
Captivates us with her charms
Reassures us with her rhythmic presence
And terrifies us in her capriciousness

The Bay Queen

The Bay Queen

2020-04-13T08:53:00.000-07:00

The naked sand is clothed with an indigo dress
Sequins shimmering and skirts cascading
The bay queen will soon be regaled from Neptune’s wardrobe
And crowned as the sun withdraws to its chamber

For now she takes her throne
In subtle, graceful steps, with little pomp
Another day she will raise her army
And take the rocks by force

Shouting down all who would oppose her
Then retreating with magnanimity and poise
And while the mountain king pushes out his vaunted chest
She dances with the moon in regal beauty

The one who we adore and love
Captivates us with her charms
Reassures us with her rhythmic presence
And terrifies us in her capriciousness