I’m still not right. I have a slight muzziness, slight nasal congestion and, when it comes to doing stuff around the house I am suffering from long covid!
A gloomy day, thick clouds and drizzly rain. I went to meet up with my fellow writers. Sorted Johnson out. Sorted Putin and Ukraine!!
Back home I’m playing some Buffy St Marie and reading Jasper Fforde.
Meanwhile, out in coronaland, our resident clown is thanking his lucky stars!! Yipppeeee!!!! A war!! He can now go and practice being Churchill again. He’s already got the obesity and slouch to an absolute T. Forget Sue Gray. Forget the MET report and being a criminal. Forget the lying and incompetence. He can make up silly slogans again!! Putin Must Fail!! He can do lots of great photo opps. We’ll see in flak jackets, camouflage suits and at some time he’ll probably don a Busby and starts marching about with one of those big gold sticks!! He can be trusted to read autocues!! He’ll love it!! We might be stuck with him for years to come!!
Out in Ukraine another lying dictator is calling the tunes. The story differs depending on which propaganda you are partial to!
Our Daily Express tells the right-wing view of plucky Ukraine standing up against a ramshackle, spent Russian force. Starving Russian troops foraging in supermarkets. Russian troops surrendering on mass, abandoning equipment. A Russian army with no strategic backup, stalled on the streets. Massive losses of personnel and equipment. They crow about downed planes and blown-up tanks. There are protests in the streets being cracked down on by Stalinist-style bastards.
Other views have Russian troops advancing on all fronts, cities being taken, a 40-mile column or armour and artillery heading for Kyiv. vicious fighting, missiles landing and the capital being surrounded. More troops and equipment being held in reserve and the Russian people largely believe that Putin’s doing a good job!!
The truth is out there.
Zelenski is coming across as a ‘real’ leader. He’s not running away. He’s staying there with his people. He’s putting out broadcasts explaining what people should do and what is going on.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a leader like that?? You know, one who could explain things coherently. One who actually had a plan? One who knew what they were doing?? Instead, we have a clown!! I think Johnson, with three helmets on and seven flak jackets would have been out of there on the first plane!! He would have a string of sound-bites and blithered and blathered. We’d see him appearing in planes, tanks and trenches all hundreds of miles from the action!!
As for the Covid-19 situation – I don’t know but I’d really like to have had a proper leader, someone who consulted with scientists and experts, weighed things up with intelligence, talked it through with his cabinet, came to a reasoned strategy, went on TV to explain that reasoning and strategy and tell us clearly how to proceed.
Unfortunately, we don’t have that. We have a clot who made a decision based purely on saving his own skin, without regard to science and with no idea where it will lead. We are the first in the world!!
There has been no TV broadcast, explanation or advice. It’s just ‘YIppppeeee!!! Freedom Day!!’
A few days ago the rate was around 40,000 cases a day. Yesterday it was 83,000. Today it has shot up to 99,485 new cases with 269 deaths.
Nothing to worry about. Move on!! There’s nothing to see here!!
What is required is some good science and a leader capable of handing out great practical instructions. Why do some people not catch it? Does it infect the penis and testicles as it does in monkeys? Do we still need compulsory jabs for care workers and the NHS??
Shouldn’t there be a real scientific debate and sound political guidance rather than celebratory self-adulation and populist pronouncements??
All restrictions are gone!! Get on with it. We trust you to do the right thing even if we aren’t telling you what the right thing is!!
Hmmmmm 99,000 is a big jump. Are they sure this Omicron is going away? Are they sure it’s not as serious?
Stay safe!! At least we haven’t been blown up yet!! Not with a bang but a sneeze!!
Yes, crazy corona UK. Here in Spain quite relaxed but masks on indoors still. It is not just a cold and think still needs monitoring but hey UK ready for next crisis.
Hi Georgina. I think that sensible, not too restrictive, measures are called for. But we’ve got a fool who simply only cares about hims4elf.
Opher – I thought you’d express glee at watching Babushka Boris squirming like a child at the dispatch box today as he faced questions from opposition politicians on dirty Russian money underpinning the U.K, and specifically, contributing to the nasty Tory Party’s coffers. It was obvious to all that the selfish, self-serving narcissist that is the clown, is back from his European tour…the attempt at being a statesman, mere illusion for the press. Ignoring questions, repeating tired, worn out standard lines, or straining the truth will not let him wriggle off the hook. The Russian money scandal is set to run for a while yet. I hope it significantly damages the Tories at the ballot box.
Irrespective of which reports one reads, the war in Ukraine is spiraling. As more and more images and video footage emerge it becomes clear how wide-spread and indiscriminate the Russian forces are being in their destruction as they press on with Putin’s murderous invasion. Significant losses on both sides are inevitable. The EU nations continue to supply lethal and non-lethal weapons to Ukraine, but they will not secure Ukranian air-space with a no-fly-zone. Their argument is that it will drag NATO into a direct war with Russia. Meantime Ukraine is flattened, its people being killed, and there is threat of ‘wiping out’ the Ukrainians. Sanctions aren’t going to stop a bullet, nor will they stop the invasion. Some say WWW3 has started, that the world is already at war, and that NATO, and the U.S should commit with force to beat back Putin. I’m just glad I’m not the one having to make these huge global decisions. I say, let there peace on Earth.
Interesting to see China not imposing sanctions on Russia: could be the beginning of a very special friendship. Having watched the Russian invasion, and seen the global response, I wonder if China will reconsider making any move on Taiwan? But if they did, how will the world’s nations then deal with that…China’s share of global trade is around 15% (Russia’s around 2%)? applying sanctions will severely disrupt home economies.
I too was wondering why the lifting of Covid restrictions didn’t come with science atatched, and why Vallance and Whitty have been absent from the podium. (Indeed, both doctors have now been returned to normal duties.) When the clown P.M decided to appease his backbenches to gain their loyalty, little did we know that the red-meat he promised them was going to be letting the virus rip. A few thousand more people can die, as long as it saves the clown’s skin. Bravo Babushka Boris!
DN
The corruption in the Tory Party is so deep, yet the general public seems oblivious and not bothered. It’s as with Trump – the lies are so constant that they become accepted.
Teflon.
The truth is indeed out there, Opher. But we can’t contact the people who know it, because they’re under cover. The least biased news reports I’ve been able to find come from al-Jazeera. At least they seem to have enough honesty to stress that they can’t be sure the numbers they’ve been given are accurate.
You’re pro-UN, Opher, so what do you think of the Security Council resolution?
I’m hoping my Ukrainian friends are OK. Some of them (Crimean Tatars) were in a part of South Ukraine that has already been taken by Putin – and they had to move out of Crimea because they couldn’t stand life under Russian rule. I hope they are in the far west of Ukraine by now.
Zelenskiy is an interesting guy. He tells things like they are! And he’s brave. Trouble is, in 1941 you could have said exactly the same things about Stalin. Who in 1932-3 murdered Ukrainian people by deliberately destroying their agricultural economy.
As to COVID, the new cases figure I’m seeing for today (at Worldometers) is 44,017. Maybe the lorries carrying the test kits have been delayed, and that’s why the figures are unreliable at the moment 🙂
The UN is restricted by lack of real power. It was interesting to see the abstainers though!! They have their reasons!. Interesting that China was not one of them.
The UN is the moral force of the world!!
I think the stats on covid are unreliable because Johnson doesn’t want any more stats on covid. It’s not about science or facts, it’s about populism and his job.
As I recall, the Chinese did abstain. The Russia supporters were the expected culprits – Belarus, North Korea, Syria and Eritrea. Eritrea has the worst human rights record in the world, worse even than North Korea! What was interesting was to see several faraway countries you wouldn’t expect to take much interest in a European war – Argentina, Chile, Indonesia, for example – vote for the Western point of view.
But I think it’s a good thing the UN doesn’t have “real power,” at least not of the military kind. If it did, some dictator would take it over, and that would be disastrous. The power to shame is enough.
I took a look at the UK national COVID dashboard. Interestingly, over the last complete week (19th to 25th February) 16% of reported cases were in Scotland, and 6% in Northern Ireland – both way over their population percentages. In any case, I think the data is still there, it will just take longer from now on for all the cases to come in and be allocated to the right days. It’s worse in other countries, like Spain and Sweden.
It is a remarkably small number. Perhaps the world is slowly becoming more civilised??
Of the 5 two are deeply involved in the conflict and the other three are aggressive rogue states. I was surprised that China took the stance of abstaining.
The info I was getting from the world site showed a big jump in covid cases. Johnson is now trying to hide it all up so there is no reliable data.
Yes Opher, the current political system is starting to lose its charm. For many people, in many parts of the world. Isn’t that good?
Lukashenko and Assad are both under Putin’s thumb. The other two are in essence absolute monarchies.