David Craig, on August 8th, 2020(weekend blog)
Party time in Beirut?
Firstly it might be worth mentioning that the next few months are really going to be party party party in Lebanon’s capital Beirut:
Of course, ordinary people won’t be partying too much. Almost 200 are dead and about 300,000 may have had their homes damaged:
But for Lebanon’s billionaire political leaders and their bankers the good times are coming. After the Beirut port explosion, hundreds of millions, or even billions, in international aid will pour into Lebanon. And almost all of it will be stolen by Lebanon’s already billionaire, utterly corrupt, utterly incompetent, self-serving, self-enriching rulers and shoved into their already-bulging offshore bank accounts by their ever-helpful, equally corrupt bankers:
Meanwhile Lebanon’s (IMHO) monumentally corrupt president has pledged “swift justice”. But at the same time he has rejected widespread calls for an international probe, telling a reporter he saw it as an attempt to “dilute the truth”. No doubt Lebanese police investigators will be much more amenable, than international investigators, to reporting the ‘truth’ that suits Lebanon’s looting and pillaging ruling elites.
Hooray for Lebanon! Hooray for Lebanon’s billionaire rulers!
Heatwave – I blame our useless government
Yesterday was so hot that it made me and lots of other people really angry/furious/outraged (delete as appropriate)
This is obviously all the fault of our hopeless joke of a Prime Minister – Bo Jo the clown Johnson – and his evil, quarantine-breaking dark lord side-kick Cummings. By spending so much time on getting Brexit done, they have let the sun get totally out of control. So now we will have record temperatures this weekend with no attempt by our hopeless politicians to make provisions for it.
Boris, you were warned that there could be a heatwave. In August 2003 the UK experienced heatwave conditions lasting 10 days and resulting in 2,000 deaths. During this heatwave, a record maximum temperature of 38.5 °C was recorded at Faversham in Kent. So you should have known that there would have been another heatwave some time in the future.
Moreover, Britain’s weather forecasters were predicting this weekend’s heatwave as recently as last week. But has your useless government planned for it? No! If you’d listened to the science, you’d have known it would be hot this weekend. Then your government could have taken action and the country wouldn’t be in the dreadful mess it now finds itself in with millions at risk of losing their lives on Britain’s ‘beaches of death’ and in Britain’s ‘back gardens of death’.
I went to the shops yesterday and the shelves had been stripped of sun-tan lotion and other PPE (pink-skin protective equipment):
Moreover, you can’t get a paddling pool (PPE – paddling pool equipment) for love nor money. I asked the assistant when they would be getting any more PPE (paddling pool equipment) and they said they didn’t know. A paddling pool is surely one of the most basic items every household needs whenever there’s a heatwave and there aren’t any available! Why didn’t your government have a national stockpile of paddling pools available for emergencies like this weekend? After all, it’s only 17 years since the disastrous 2003 heatwave. There should have been national emergency stocks of paddling pools all around the country. Maybe even in damp, gloomy, ever-rain-swept, miserable, ever-whining, benefits-dependent Scrotland?
My question to you, Boris, is why? Why are we in this awful mess? Why haven’t you organised emergency flights bringing paddling pools direct from disease-ridden China? OK, I realise that being Made in China all the paddling pools would have leaks and be useless:
But even a leaking, useless paddling pool from China is better than nothing at all.
I am furious at your Government’s incompetence, Boris. We the British people expect our government to protect us from everything so we don’t have any responsibility for our own decisions. And what do we get?
- hot weather
- the sun out of control
- beaches of death
- back gardens of death
- no pink-skin protective equipment (PPE)
- no paddling pools (PPE)
Boris, after this totally predictable hot weekend and your government’s failure to put in place proper planning, you and your useless government are destined for the dustbin of history.
Sir Keir would have handled it differently. He is going to tell us how … very soon, very soon indeed. Perhaps.
Category: 
There’s not much to be done now but make fun of the government and at least we all get a good laugh from it. Whilst reading, I thought of the government spending £10billion on paddling pools and then found they all leaked but you got there in the end.
I read today that masks must be worn in funeral homes. I assume that includes the corpse. I think I might change my will to specify this. It will be the only time I will be prepared to wear a mask.
Boris and his crazy gang are too afraid to return to “normal” because it means that they will have to face up to what they have done, so far better to keep the plate spinning act going. Of course, this is only possible because of the huge numbers of gullible people who are prepared to follow the rules and act as an unofficial police force for the rule breakers.
This is so true:
Personal responsibility for ones actions have been slowly eroded over the past thirty to forty years.If the outcome of an individual decision does not have the expected outcome,the immediate response is that it must be someone else’s fault and I am due some compensation.Everyday we make choices and decisions which should be based on the facts and information available.Even if we are very careful in our decision making,there are no guarantees in life and the sooner we realise this the better.The end product of the loss of personal responsibility is the shambles we see today in society in general and politics also.Our society is largely infantile in its response to lifes inevitable challenges,which compared to the past are minimal.My father lives and served in two world wars.People were exposed to TB,Polio,Diptheria etc but accepted the limitations and got on with life and took what sensible precautions were available.I find it quite embarrassing to see the timid and fearful reaction of so many to what statistically is a minor ailment for the vast majority and the needless trashing of economies by politicians who should know better.I was never a believer in conspiracy but the co ordination of events around the world have made me think.Damn convenient on lots of fronts.
I was saying what Hardcastle writes only yesterday to a member of my family who will be a qualified doctor this time next year. That very bright young person just didn’t get it, having been born, raised, educated in total safety from any incurable infectious disease, certain types of meningitis being perhaps the sole exception. I pointed out that as a child my father’s generation was in imminent danger of dying from diptheria, TB, pneummonia, scarlet fever, tetanus if a deep wound was sustained, and polio as well as the routine, but nevertheless potentially fatal, childhood diseases of measles and whooping cough. I had the latter two myself as a child, although by that time vaccination against diptheria was routine. My siblings and I were forbidden to attend the cinema, eat anywhere other than home, or go in the sea during the routine summer outbreaks of polio. My mother understood that dreadful disease’s mode of transmission and took all sensible steps to prevent us children becoming infected. I am old now, but mine was the first generation of parents who, because of the advent of antibiotics and a wider range of vaccinations, did not need to fear losing our children to virtually any infectious disease, although we almost all were acutely aware of how fortunate we were. My children’s generation of course is the one whose members have frequently refused essential vaccination of their children, on the grounds that such procedures cause autism and other developmental problems for which there is absolutely no scientific or medical basis. We have to remember that all the Western politicians currently in a state of panic and ordering entire populations to incarcerate themselves, to abstain from associating with their own family members, to fear for their very lives every time they leave the house, all were born and have lived in what is an essentially entirely safe environment as far as infectious disease is concerned. They are profoundly shocked by the realisation that covid-19 can be easily transmitted but cannot be cured by any known medication. AIDS shook people for a while, but whether or not to engage in activity likely to result in its acquisition was a personal choice and in due course treatments were developed anyway, so another bullet was averted. Ebola remains largely fatal, but until or unless it finds its way here, it can largely be disregarded. I find it very interesting to watch objectively the antics of the politicians, whilst remaining fairly fatalistic myself. I’ll be sensible, because I don’t want it, but other than that if I get it so be it. I’ll survive or I won’t. I have the supreme consolation of knowing that if any of my beloved grandchildren get it, being young they will almost certainly be fine. Having said all the above, I DO have consideration for front-line doctors and nurses who ARE in imminent danger of becoming severely ill through sheer volume of viral load as they get up close to plague patients for hours at a time and for that reason we should all exercise reasonable care. I don’t know what the answer is to this other than truly effective PPE. In this context, I wonder why we are not establishing two separate types of hospital – the general hospital for all “normal” conditions, where patients can attend for all the usual investigations and treatments, and separate establishments entirely for covid-19 patients. I recall when there was “the hospital” and then there was “the ISOLATION HOSPITAL” for those with severe infectious diseases. I’d have thought that we currently have sufficient vacant buildings which could be converted to exclusively covid hospitals, or even large existing general hospitals could be modified, with entirely separate entrances and interior access between the two sections prevented by a physical wall. It is not acceptable that people are dying for lack of treatment for cancer, heart attack and so on because they cannot have access to the general hospital.