Something Rotten in the State of Primark

 

Something really strange is going on in UK politics.

It was only a wet weekend ago that that nice Jeremy Hunt persuaded us all (well, most of us) that something ought to be done to rein in, even if only a little bit, the stupendous waste within the National Health Service, the cost of which was spiralling out of control. I’m not suggesting that he was universally loved, particularly by the Jo Brand (“Chuck battery acid in their faces”) School of Socialist Nursing. But, by the end of the run-off in the election for the Conservative party leadership last year, he looked, compared with Boris the Bear, the more cuddly option. Very Jeremy.

But now look what has happened. Just a few months on, there is a nasty flu-like illness going around which has been bumping off some coffin dodgers. What is our new no-nonsense government doing about it?

The first thing it is done has lain down at the feet of Neil Ferguson of Imperial College, whose track record for getting things wrong in the field of epidemiology is rivalled only by Tim Flannery’s track record for getting everything wrong in the field of climate change. On the basis of some dodgy code which Professor Ferguson has not been prepared to release (“Well, yeah, I wrote it a while ago, and it’s not really documented, and there are some rather furry bits around the edges”) the country has been reduced to a “lockdown” in a way that neither Napoleon, nor Hitler, nor Strictly Come Dancing has been able to manage.

Nobody, I think, seriously suggests that ruining the country’s economy in this way is likely to reduce the death toll from Covid-19; at best, they are looking at “flattening the curve” (aka

Derring Don’t

I have said, umpteen times, to those in my vicinity, that one of the most objectionable parts of the “lockdown” throughout the Western world is that it deprives people of sunlight, and there is quite a lot of evidence that sunlight is a surprisingly effective weapon against the coronavirus, Covid-9.

Part of this evidence is from the homeless, in Los Angeles and other places, where extensive random testing has demonstrated that a significant proportion of these people, who spend all of their time out of doors, have been infected by the virus, but they have shown few if any symptoms. It is similar to, more scientifically rigourous, evidence from Ireland.

If this be right (and I’m not suggesting it is for certain – merely that it is more probable than the absurd notion of governmental policy about “beating” the virus) then locking people who live in cities down into their apartments is the very worst thing you can do, since making people stay indoors deprives them of the vitamin D that they would otherwise get from sunshine. It is hardly surprising that the countries who have locked down their people most firmly are the countries which have suffered the worst from this quasi-flu.

Normally, government is distorted. Instead of doing what the people want, government tends to do

Heaven’s Gate, but hopefully Not Quite Yet

In self isolation right now, pending the results from yesterday’s swab tests. I am fully expecting that they will tell me that I do not have COVID-19, but just a nasty bout of flu. So seriously annoying, but unlikely to be fatal.

One of the more annoying things is that my brain continues to be complete mush. I can manage a movie, or a bit of social media.  But legal work on something really complicated? Oh no.

I thought I might revisit Heaven’s Gate. It’s not easy to get hold of a Blu-ray for less than about $60 around here, but rather to my surprise, I found that I could rent it in High Definition on iTunes under my nose for just

Apropos of Hachette’s Disgraceful Conduct

I do not ordinarily buy books according to who the publisher is. Indeed, if I ever take note of who the publisher is, it is after I have already bought the book.

But if I did, I would blacklist Hachette, who recently backed out of a deal to publish Woody Allen’s book Apropos of Nothing.

Happily, but ironically (we are just about to come to that) I was able to buy the e-book from Amazon and read it on my Kindle[1]. It is an excellent read, particularly if, like me, you rather enjoy Jewish New York humour. Unsurprisingly, Woody Allen is self-deprecating and funny. Also, it turns out, he is remarkably generous about many of the people that he has worked with in the movie business.

The first half of the book is

Hello, Sweden? May We have your Scores, Please?

EuroMOMO has released this week’s figures. Again, really interesting.

In Sweden, like most European countries for which there is data, there has been no excess number of total deaths this past week. All the usual caveats apply – in particular, it is still very early days for the Covid-19 virus.  But, despite the impression that some news outlets would like to give, the streets of Europe are not crowded with carts loaded with Covid-19 corpses.

And neither has Sweden, with its comparatively relaxed “business as usual” policy, turned dark blue.  Even though it has been affected to more or less the same degree as eg the UK. According

Dead Opposite

Now, here is something weird.

The European Mortality Monitoring Project monitors, week by week, how many recorded deaths there are in a couple of dozen European countries. Here is the result of the last few years. Unsurprisingly, there are always more deaths in the winter, when lots of people get the flu:

See the point? This winter there have been less deaths than usual, not more. And no recent spike.

That is bad news for Mad Greta and Extinction Rebellion, of course. People are not being killed by climate change.  But also bad news for those who would like us believe that the morgues are already overflowing with dead bodies.

It is early days for Covid-19, of course. And yeah, yeah. it might be regional, with Covid-19 hitting some places much more than others.

Still, it might be worth keeping an eye on EuroMOMO’s website. They update