Day: 12 May 2020

The press is having fun today about the apparent "confusion" in Boris's exit plan, with some papers flagging up new rules which weren't included in his speech on Sunday. For instance, he originally said we could play sports from tomorrow, but only with members of our own household. That's now been amended to one person from another household as well. Matt Lucas did an amusing impression of Boris getting in a bit of a muddle that went viral. (Are we still allowed to use that word?) Boris's response to all the noise about this, as set out on the front page of the Telegraph, is to urge people to use their common sense. This plumber interviewed by Channel 4 News last night seems to have got the point. "Boris is leaving it up to us a little bit," he said. "What do you want, a full handbook to tell you what to do?" The editor of the programme must have spat out his almond milk latte when he heard that. Needless to say, much of the mainstream media thinks Boris is being wildly reckless, accusing him of putting our lives at risk. He's running down the mountain like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music, not inching his way down like an experienced climber. (If only!) The Mirror, for instance, ...

Below is a press release put out by Tichys Einblick, a German magazine, translated into English. The author of the leaked document, which was written on April 15th, is Stephan Kohn, a senior civil servant in the KM4 section of the Ministry of the Interior, which is tasked with the protection of essential infrastructure. The document, which was written for internal consumption only, is over 30,000 words and runs to over 80 pages and, to date, there is no English translation. However, the German-to-English translator Paul Gregory has written a good summary on his website, along with a brief outline of the attempt by Ministry officials to discredit Kohn since the leak. To date, Kohn has been suspended, but not fired. German speakers can download the document here. If anyone wants to translate the whole thing into English we will publish it on this site, but be warned: Google or DeepL probably won't do a good enough job because of the technical language the AIs won't be familiar with. The lockdown and the measures taken by the German federal and central governments to contain the coronavirus apparently cost more lives – for example of cancer patients – than those actually killed by it. This is the result of an internal analysis by the "Protection of Critical Infrastructures" unit in the ...

Emotion words. The role they were playing in the media/political response to the COVID-19 outbreak first became apparent to me on Monday, 27th April. That was the day Boris Johnson returned to work following a period of convalescence from his COVID-19-related illness. Speaking outside No. 10, he announced that he was (as his press team no doubt suggested he put it in order to resonate with the salaried classes) “back at his desk”. His statement contained all the usual Churchillian allusions. We were thanked for our “effort and sacrifice” and our “sheer grit and guts,” particularly in relation to “collectively shielding our NHS”. Ultimately, though, strip away the rhetoric and what were we being given? A pretty bleak message. Continue staying at home, obey the lockdown and wait for the government to tell you when you can pick up whatever pieces remain of your lives, jobs, careers and companies. No sense of a timeline (however “phased”) for ending the lockdown; no sense of an ending to this period of unprecedented economic national self-harm; no sense of the certainty that our economy – and the people and businesses who make that economy tick – need in order to get back to generating the wealth and prosperity that publicly-funded institutions like “our NHS” need in order to do their job. How should ...

by Thomas Andopelo Here in Spain, a full seven weeks of house-arrest has now “relaxed” into a British version of lockdown, the primary concession being that people are now allowed out for a walk or to do something sporty. And what better way to stop the virus in its tracks than to insist that the under 70s exercise this right only between 6 am and 10 am or 8 pm and 11 pm - thus ensuring they are all out on the street together? Such evidently absurd stipulations have convinced me that, for the politicians at least, Covid-19 has targeted brains rather than lungs. Nevertheless, there is widespread approval, and the traditional Spanish attitude of treating laws more like suggestions is noticeably absent. The pervading attitude here appears to be that if we lock down for long enough the virus will eventually get bored. It is as if, metaphorically speaking, we have all climbed up a tree to escape from a tiger, which is now pacing around below. Given time, everybody expects that it will get fed up and wander off somewhere else, never to return. No-one wants reminding that at the foot of the tree is our food and water and after being stuck up the tree all day we are getting muscle cramps and feeling very thirsty. (Nor ...