Day: 16 July 2020

By Derick Clapton I live in a smallish town in West Germany and am a musician. Needless to say work has been pretty hard to come by but luckily I have been able to continue some of the teaching and we are back to some type of normalcy, face to face without a mask, after having utilised Skype in less than optimal circumstances. I have also benefited from a emergency state loan some of which may have to be paid back, any of the funds not paid back will be subjected to tax as income. I am one of the lucky ones. I have a few English friends who are not as fortunate. One - an Echo winner of a few years ago - has seen his income dry up almost completely as he does not teach, lives in a different state where his loan is much less generous and has only a few recording opportunities. The rest were cancelled long ago. Another works for an orchestra which tours the world. At the moment they are trying to find ways of possibly giving concerts locally in the near future. Needless to say a full compliment on stage is impossible and the restrictions still being enforced mean the audience would be reduced to a figure of around 25%. The Government's decision ...

By Laura Dodsworth According to Michael Gove, wearing masks is good manners. Nicola Sturgeon says they are a sign of ‘solidarity’.  Matt Hancock has admitted they are to ‘give people more confidence to shop safely’. The emotionally manipulative and coercive language around masks focuses on what they represent – showing you care. Who wants to be impolite? Who wants to be derided for not caring?  While very few people are wearing masks on the high street, online mask shaming is in your face. Covidiot. Selfish. Get over it. Mask up. Granny killer. “Just been to the supermarket and I’m amazed at how many older folk are not wearing masks! I’d be pushing my trolly round Aldi in a hazmat suit. Mental.” That’s more self-congratulatory than mask shaming, but it got me thinking. I’m stocking up at the shops on things I like to buy in person before I switch to online shopping on the 24th July. I don’t enjoy shopping anyway, but add in a queue on the pavement, hand sanitiser in the doorway, stewards checking we don’t get too close to each other, and then a mask inside, and the retail experience has been finished off for me. I also went to Aldi, stocking up on washing power, and thought about how few people were wearing a mask – almost ...

Could This be Boris's Poll Tax Moment? Good comment from Scotty below yesterday's update. I wonder if he's right? I feel slightly more optimistic about the mandatory muzzle edict after having a day to digest the news. Something is telling me that as this ramshackle shitshow of a Government lurches from one idiosyncratic, trigger-happy ruling to the next, a great fire of utter resentment for them will start to burn across our land.From bizarre quarantine orders to the locking down of Leicester, to the continued assault on the high street and small businesses by this dehumanising, rotten command to suffocate on our own exhalations as we traipse around these places. Add to that the inevitable nastiness that is already present on the likes of Twitter, but will invariably spill out into wider society as we enter a new shaming culture perpetrated by hysterical muzzealots.Your average punter will become very pissed off with it all, very quickly I’ll bet.I feel this will gradually precipitate a trickle of scepticism towards these oppressive measures within the general public, and the flock will start to slowly thin. People previously cowed into silence may soon find their voices. Organised “boots on the ground” protests and crowd-funding appeals for legal challenges may suddenly see their numbers and coffers swelled respectively. Those suffering from mental health and ...