There’s an important distinction to be made between slavery and racism.

Throughout recorded history nations have both subjugated other nations and used slaves to work in fields, manufacturing enterprises, homes and to build major infrastructure projects like monuments, walls…

Perhaps the biggest difference between ancient slavery and racism, wars and poverty were once the biggest drivers of slavery. Some cultures even allowed their own subjects to temporarily designate themselves as slaves to pay off debts; and no, I’m not imagining a cosy relationship to their owners. The point is that slaves could be found anywhere in ancient societies, from any group internal or external to the nation. Think of the ‘caste’ system, it was never restricted solely to the Indian subcontinent…

I’m most past examples though, routes existed out of slavery: time passing, money earned, special rewards given to loyal servants; and of course as time passed, wholesale integration of slaves into a nation’s society perhaps as second-class citizens, and an absorption of indigenous cultures by the previous incoming masters.

It all took time.

You’d perhaps think we’ve not had time for the natural order of things to establish itself. But this is not how things have worked from the 18thr century onwards, and will never work again.

In the last couple of thousand years – at least until the 18th century – the term racism wasn’t specifically linked to slavery; indeed the word ‘racism’ itself is only around 120 years old. Yeah, I found that quite surprising.

So whilst slavery seems inextricably linked to imperialism and conquest it’s not the biggest driver.

Will it be enough when the slaver statues are torn down, the streets and public buildings are renamed, the physical remnants of past imperialist glories are defaced and sanitised in boxes?

No.

Concentrating on the superficial leads us down a dangerous path. It engenders antipathy in the minds of those who support and run the government, it increases the increase in the number of ad-hoc (Statutory Instrument/Executive Order) laws designed to further erode our rights.

It’s important to note at this point that I’m not a protester. I’m not militant. I’m not a lot of things, not yet anyway. I hope I’m judged by a lifetime of fairness but we’ll have to see, I’m not done yet.

I tried to buy a copy of ‘Antifa: The Antifascist Handbook’ online last week, found only one place outside eBay which seemed to have stock. A week later my money was returned. I then concluded I should cast my net of learning a little further…

Racism isn’t something that’ll disappear overnight as the statues are either quietly removed or boxed in and newly-minted protesters go back home. It’s more insidious than ‘modern’ slavery, the rise of fascism, and especially of inverted totalitarianism.

We can’t talk about it without awkward silences, we can’t draw attention to it without the perpetrator becoming at least the verbally combative or worse, indignant that we’d challenge what they learned from parents and peers.

Well, actually, we can and we should. Must?

Forget only looking to the past and trying to fix that by erasing it, the fact that right-won’t politicians and commentators are along for the self-righteous ride should be enough to get us thinking.

If you’re not willing to go out into the streets then vote. Vote in whatever way removes the right and the far right as a political and cultural influence. Vote to have anti-racism taught in schools.

Don’t waste the next opportunity you come across to change our future for the better. And don’t, after 4/8 or 5/10 years have elapsed make the mistake of thinking the grass is greener on the side the right occupies, it isn’t. Despite the extraordinarily effective propaganda machines the right use, we can see for ourselves it really isn’t.

And yes, I’m looking.

There’s no point in asking, you’ll get no reply

Oh just remember I don’t decide

I got no reason it’s all too much

You’ll always find us out to lunch

– The Sex Pistols, July 1977

Yesterday I responded to the English Prime Minister’s tweet about the Covid-19 track and trace system, asking simply how we could be sure, if called, that the caller was indeed a representative of the government’s system.

I don’t expect a reply.

It got me thinking how to attempt to engage with public figures when the subject could be even loosely described as contentious.

I recently emailed my MP to express my revulsion at the way his party had rallied around Cummings, especially given the sacrifices we ordinary people have made since the UK lockdown began.

I got a reply asking me for my contact details and address – for ‘data protection’. I replied with my ward, and that I only wanted to know he’d seen the email; why was I asked for details when I used words plain enough that it should have been obvious I didn’t want a reply.

Thankfully I haven’t had a followup.

This evening I involved myself in a chat on Twitter about the toppling of the Bristol slave trafficker’s statue into the River Avon. After earlier seeing @wefail’s offer of a replacement statue I’d offered the brilliant artist my opinion that the statue should have a diving helmet – to indicate how far the current Home Secretary is out of their depth and to symbolise more recent Bristol statue-related events.

(I really should cut the number of words!)

In the later reply elsewhere I didn’t see who I was tweeting, and had a bit of a squitty moment on seeing the vacant job holder’s name, and so I deleted my tweet, replacing it with something very similar indeed but without the offensive offending offensive name.

It got me thinking. I’m basically decent, inoffensive, and don’t wish to bring unnecessary attention on myself by a careless misunderstanding – whether mine or someone I mention on social media. I mean, I’ve been a party to the reactions of the followers of people with more charisma than I; charismatic person says something hateful, demonstrably untrue, and their cult piles on. Not pretty.

So, I need a strategy, a plan to make it obvious I’m doing what I believe is right, targeting the right people, whilst being careful to minimise the chances of being misunderstood.

Aside from withdrawing entirely from social networks I don’t really know where to start, but that’s not an option, what we’re all seeing now demands more of all of us.

Ok, of me.

Incidental, the English Prime Minister doesn’t, at least in my eyes, represent the 4 countries of the Union, moreover I’m having a hard time thinking he represents even his own people.

Also incidental, yes, the post title and the song lyric is indeed as clever as I get with puns and stuff. I’m impressed how prescient the band were, but then again, reporting on their times must have been easy; citizen journalists before their time, innit.

“Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

— George Santayana

Now, I’ve got a great admiration of what I’ve read of Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás’ quotations over the years. I know little of the man or of his wider works and that, I think, is how it shall stay; I’m honestly not much more curious than trying to fit his words to modern-day events.

I’m not sure I wish it were thus, but it is.

Anyway, the one at the top of the page is perhaps most relevant to today, but in a way I’d not really considered previously.

I’m not clever enough to create a plan that asserts authority over others in a way they cannot see, that blinds them to the loss of their freedoms and those they’re taught to despise. Neither, I think, are those who are in power here and in other places throughout this mad world of ours. Nevertheless, whatever it is they are doing, and for whatever reason they are doing it, it’s working.

I have to say though that choosing the insidious beginnings of populism/nationalism, fascism, all the other -isms from 1930’s Germany as a blueprint to govern, though lazy, though utterly abhorrent to me, is completely understandable; it worked.

But for fuck’s sake, given what they could have done with the power handed to them, why‽

I (perhaps we as a family) needed a distraction from the frustrations of politics and from the mental anguish of coping with the restrictions imposed/self-imposed during the current coronavirus pandemic, so I ordered the Harry Potter Trivial Pursuit game.

An aside: we have a typical board games Compendium. Only my youngest daughter (daughter 2) and I really spend much time with it. Chess is our game. She’s a keen student, a shame I’m a novice-level player and no teacher isn’t it! But we enjoy the contests, and that’s all that matters.

Honestly and perhaps selfishly, I didn’t want to play from the compendium (or jump into Minecraft despite daughter 2’s multiple asks), so bought the new thing.

My daughters have read the Harry Potter books and watched the films multiple times (understatement!), bought many and disparate forms of merchandise, and lived the franchise. Ok, ‘franchise’ is a rubbish word to use but I’m writing this in the early hours of bin day so yeah…

My wife isn’t particularly interested, but she knows enough that, after a visit to London’s and especially the pilgrimage to Kings Cross Platform 9-3/4 last year she booked us on the UK Harry Potter Studio Tour earlier this year, you know, during a time we could do things, go places, see people, drink Butter Beer…

If’s an amazing experience; if you’re even a casual fan it’s something I can recommend without hesitation. Go early, it takes literally (not figuratively hours to get round. It’s well worth saving up for too, it really is. (And the shop is nowhere near as tightly-packed as Kings Cross’s.)

Me? I’m a big fan. I’ve seen all the films multiple times, find something new each viewing. I even started to read the first book, felt the need to pause as I found out Vernon is a… (ok, I’m an engineer, it’s all good stuff this!)

Incidentally, I’ve not had the inclination to read anything other than bedtime stories to the girls in recent years, but wax a voracious reader as a child:young adult.

The game arrived yesterday and so around teatime I played a round with, ok against, daughter 2.

It gets Baz’s seal of approval both as game and as that distraction. There are questions that my wife in the other room answered (gleefully!) or are obvious to a fan of any level, or need a knowledge only multiple viewings/readings can bring, or are downright sneaky in their apparent simplicity.

Who didn’t play, and why?

My wife’s not interested in games much which, though puzzling, is ok. (This is a judgment on her character!)

Daughter 1 (the oldest) is a newly-minted lockdown teenager, with all the personal issues attendant. (I’ll bring her round to a session eventually, see if I won’t!)

Ruby dog, though she appreciated a tiny piece of my pastrami sandwich, her achievement unlocked after patiently nuzzling my knee under the table for a while, wasn’t even worth interested in the unused game wedges in the box on the floor beside our dining room table,

Mollie cat, who didn’t even attempt to cross the table after her teatime; perhaps she’d learned that interrupting me during my working hours wasn’t profitable, dunno. But today is indeed another day.

So, as distractions go, this game, oh yes, it is most definitely one.

Um…

Yeah.

Ah…

Daughter 2 beat me.

Which, though I expected her to, was nice.

Result.

Here are 2 comments of mine in the village Facebook page, responding first to the dilution of the government’s lockdown message, and then (indirectly for obvious reasons) to a couple of arseholes stating that care homes and the old should be left to it whilst the rest of us just get on with our lives.

[First, this:]

Whatever’s said, like everything else that’s gone before here, it’ll be unclear and thus open to interpretation. It’ll result in the broadening of what people wish to be the scope of their personal freedoms and will dilute the core point of *all* that’s gone before, that we’ve got to look after each other in the midst of the most deadly pandemic in living memory. And so, entirely unnecessarily, more people will die or have their lives blighted by the long-term effects of this virus.

Track and trace is months too late and shoddily implemented, the request made to the >10,000 people entering the UK every day to self-isolate is by this point risible. The sooner we’re treated like adults by the government the better.

[And, responding to said arseholes, this:]

For anyone here to even *suggest* it’s ok for people you don’t know to die simply to benefit the economy is morally indefensible. To bring cherry-picked statistics ignoring *old people* to the discussion, well…

The current official death toll – spread over just 2 months is 31,587 – which already exceeds the average annual rate by quite some margin.

From this:

https://www.itv.com/news/2020-02-06/how-does-the-wuhan-coronavirus-compare-to-seasonal-flu/

‘Although flu might not seem like a deadly illness, on average it kills around 17,000 people in England a year.

Public Health England told ITV News: “The number of flu cases and deaths due to flu-related complications varies each flu season.

“The average number of deaths in England for the last five seasons, 2014/15 to 2018/19, was 17,000 deaths annually.

“This ranged from 1,692 deaths last season, 2018/19, to 28,330 deaths in 2014/15.”’

4 weeks in…

Nobody I’ve spoken to so far quite understands the concept of being paid to work from home and that the responsibilities continue despite being physically displaced. I’ve not been furloughed, nor am I on holiday,

The responses I’ve had so far range from ‘are you actually doing any work?’, all the way to compete disbelief that I’m taking this seriously, with an implication that I should be doing other things during the day instead of after work.

It’s hard work trying to get across that I’m a bit stretched attempting to process the situation, trying to do my best to assist the girls with a home schooling plan, and… trying not to be scared my loved ones could be affected in any way by this horrendous virus. (My wife’s already had it, we think, she’s not been tested though of course.)

It’s just hard work.

“…[COVID-19] tests carried out across the UK, excluding Northern Ireland. – Priti Patel, UK Home Secretary [a Conservative politician].”

Link.

Another article:

‘Speaking at the daily Downing Street coronavirus briefing, Priti Patel [a Conservative] was asked twice if she would apologise about the lack of PPE being provided to frontline workers. “I’m sorry if people feel that there have been failings,” she said. “I will be very, very clear about that.”’

…

‘Speaking to Sky News after the press conference, the [Labour Party] shadow health secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, said: “It wasn’t really an apology, was it? It was one of those half-hearted apologies where you use the word ‘sorry’ to give the impression that you are apologising but you are not actually in reality apologising.”‘

Link.

Let me get this straight, the Home Secretary (a Conservative) can’t read numbers, and is very, very clear about something it appears she cannot sympathise or empathise with, and cannot ensure it is fixed. If Amazon (for example) can figure it out why can’t a national government‽ Logistics, pure and simple.

By the way, the graph indicates things are improving, right? Look carefully at the vertical scale, it’s logarithmic; equal height divisions for 100 – 1,000 – 10,000 – 100,000 – 1,000,000. It’s disingenuous and thus completely reprehensible!

Oh yeah, the resistance to quoting the number of dead and affected nurses, what’s all that about then?

Back to Priti Patel:

In a radio interview about her refusal, four times, to appear before a select committee to discuss the [Conservative] government coronavirus response, she said there was:

“politicking going on”.

Link.

Am I allowed to opine that she’s out of her depth here? Not just regarding the government’s response, but in her inability to even pretend to be concerned about the people her and her government’s indecision and ineptitude affects.

I bought some noise-cancelling headphones to be prepared well in advance of working from home, or so I thought. Delivered the weekend before the UK government advised non-essential workers to work from home if at all possible. Luckily I can work from home, and I’ve got an understanding employer.

I had just enough time to set them up and not feel silly in audio video calls. Well, not too silly.

Being honest, my initial impression of listening to music, even close to top volume, they seemed a teeny bit ‘dull’ compared to my Bluedio Revolution R+, but it’s hen I discovered I’d set Amazon Prime Music to equalise the volume of all tracks. Yeah, that’s better.

Before buying the new ones I’d read up on noise cancellation and honestly didn’t expect much. I was wrong. Dead wrong. I *also* listened to a few of the tracks recommended to bring out the best (or worst?) in headphones. You know, tests.

I really don’t know what prompted me to search YouTube just now for ‘headphone test’ but I’m so glad I did! The very first one I tapped on both reminded me of my advancing years (high frequency hearing loss) and, well…

Headphones on, darkened room, here it is; listen to the end!

Ultimate Headphones Test (The only 10 minutes you won’t waste on YouTube today.)

Advisory: read the comments if you must,

Warning: sweary stuff later.

I’ve been working from home. Until today I was doing pretty well at it too, motivation high, reasonably productive despite the relative isolation, but I hit a productivity brick wall today.

No matter, I’ll have a good old-fashioned moan, I’m sure it’ll help!

I know they mean well, but when my oldest daughter’s high school sends out informative messages they do so in the most amateur way imaginable.

Today’s email arrived with a typically useless subject, this is the shortest by a comfortable margin:

“JWa”.

The body text is even more abbreviated than usual:

“Please find attached information

Regards”.

And the attachment is:

“KIT 2.docx”.

Yet again (yes, I complained about the previous messages) there’s an almost impenetrable wall of text to extract both meaning and relevance from. To be fair though, at least this time there’s white space between the paragraphs!

/me takes a breath

Meanwhile, my youngest daughter’s primary school is exclusively posting on Facebook, despite having a similar messaging system to the high school. Anyone without Facebook is left high and dry. Yes, I asked if they could also use the system to email so I can forward to my wife, who’s not on Facebook.

But at least the primary school’s messages are written by someone who knows how to communicate effectively!

/me takes a big breath

My wife came home in the early hours of early Thursday morning from her night shift, she’d apparently gone pale, had developed a too-high temperature and the week-old cough had escalated somewhat. Her employer generously let her come home.

The same employer that refuses to test all-but those admitted to hospital with advanced symptoms of COVID-19 (or at least a coronavirus.) So the same people tasked with looking after sufferers are without adequate protection and testing.

So, instead of being tested to see if it is or isn’t a coronavirus, my wife must self-isolate for 2 weeks while I attempt to work, look after my wife, the girls, shop… and try to stay sane whilst wondering how we got into this mess. I’m not feeling sorry for myself, I’m angry that we’re letting this happen.

And then the news that there’s no shortage of masks, it’s a regional supply issue, that the government missed a deadline to apply for European ventilator aid, that a private company offered thousands of ventilators sources from overseas – but were ignored, that approval for proctor ventilators was due this week and its spun as ‘ready for manufacture’, that politicians, royals, celebrities and sports players can get tested, and consultants get fitted for and trained on the use of the ‘good’ masks but there’s no plan whatsoever to keep nurses and ordinary doctors safe‽

/me gives up, takes another breath

For yesterday evening we were urged on the regular and throughout social media to stand at our front doors at 8pm and clap for the NHS, for the wonderful people staffing it in these extraordinarily difficult times.

Apart from making the nation feel better about what’s going on…

…I wonder, when what’s going on is teetering on the edge of being controllable, what the FUCK did clapping at the door actually achieve‽

We’ve either been brought up to believe the NHS is both a wonderful thing and inviolate or saw its formation. It is wonderful and it should indeed be inviolate! But the latter has been eroded over the last 10 years by those evil nasty party Tory twats, you know, the same ones who won the popular vote in the last election? FFS, the popular vote to the tories!

As with my last post here, I have to say that no-one who voted Tory deserves for them or their loved ones the fate intended by the special advisers – the pre-lockdown ‘strategy’ that its ok for government to do nothing and send out the message to be ready to watch one’s loved ones die to protect our economy.

When we emerge from this pandemic, for we shall, I’m certain our rights will have been permanently eroded. That’s the easy bit to reconcile.

I’m scared of the unknown. I’m frightened for my family, for my job, and for humanity; what was once certain now isn’t.

“This is something you won’t want to read, but please read it anyway; it’s worth remembering next time you vote here in the UK.”

https://www.thecanary.co/trending/2020/03/24/former-tory-adviser-uses-130000-austerity-deaths-to-argue-against-coronavirus-shutdown/amp/ (Link opens in new window.)

I said this on Twitter and Facebook yesterday, but it’s a bit insular isn’t it. Expand it to the right wing of politics everywhere and I’m still unable to grasp how anyone can think this way; the depth of their conviction – and their ignorance of facts staggers me.

Right now as society shifts as the covid-19 coronavirus spreads and our liberties are necessarily restricted, I can’t process a lot of things, and haven’t really felt able to use the word ‘evil’ without at least attempting to understand the rationale behind past decisions made. But, restricting my thoughts to the UK, the lack of humanity in Conservative party official policy through my entire adult life is telling.‬

From Thatcher onwards, the ability of Conservative politicians to ignore their own people – constituents who put them in power trusting in the state’s nominal duty to protect – really does baffle me. The obvious absence of that humanity leads me to an inescapable personal conclusion.

If you even once attempt to justify a past vote for the UK Conservative party by picking a single current example of ‘a good thing they’re doing right now” or one at any point since Thatcher, rather than shun I’ll make it my business to educate you. The complete lack of actual knowledge I’ve observed since ‘Brexit’ became a thing and since voters here decided to jump to the political and social right, it burns. Voting for a manufactured personality, in blissful ignorance of all the evidence of detached privilege, incompetence and a singular selfish purpose, it burns.

This is not fine. (Think of precedent.)

So what if I’m crap at this ‘politics’ thing, at least my conscience will be clear for having tried.

---

I’m publishing the post now (3am!) but might come back to flesh it out another time, when I can process what the fuck is happening.