Outside of my window, the aimsir here in Dún na nGall has taunted me today.
It would be a day for throwing the bivi bag down on my favourite spot on An Dubhais for a night out.
For the mountaineering types amongst you, I’m protected from the elements by a smashing bit of kit from the Bundeswehr.
Our gallant allies in Europe…
Waking up there is rather special and I’m not that far from home and a World Class Breakfast.
For now, I can only look out at my Derryveaghs.
Thankfully I’m holed up with two people who are precious to me.
I know that not everyone is as lucky.
The bean chéile has adjusted to an online mass every morning and the Big Fella is interacting with his gal and his pals via the laptop.
The major downside is that our girls in Dublin cannot visit.
I look forward to my government approved 2 km walk every day with my son.
The craic, as we say here, is mighty.
As a journalist, in the first rough draft of history business, you quickly realise that you’re living through an epochal change when there is only ONE global story.
Of course, within that, there is a myriad of localised narratives.
Here on my island, the response to Covid-19 has shown up the suicidal atavism of political unionism.
Snarlene and her pals have resisted implementing a 32 County approach and instead have put the Border over saving lives.
In taking their lead from the British government in London they have squandered precious time.
Quite frankly this will cost lives.
As usual Brian Feeney is on the money.
This week the Brits managed to build just THIRTY ventilators.
The NHS has been forced to contact a sex fetish site for Personal Protection Equipment.
Unbelievable?
Then read about it here in Newsweek.
That is a storyline worth of In The Thick Of It with Malcolm Tucker ranting and swearing at terrified civil servants.
However, it is too tragic for that.
When the Brits were offered to join the EU ventilator purchase scheme they refused.
Then Perfidious Albion lied about it.
Obviously, they think that a blue passport has magical powers.
When my son took a flight from Seoul to London Heathrow on the 29th of February, he wasn’t checked in any way when he landed in Britain.
He then connected to Dublin.
Put simply he should have been temperature checked in London.
Instead, he wasn’t asked a single question.
Unimpressive.
Thankfully the South Koreans have been the gold standard for dealing with Covid-19 and they took on board the WHO advice of “test, test, test!”
The Brits were outliers in their response from the get-go.
If they had kept with the “take it on the chin” approach, then millions would have died.
As it is, they have squandered precious weeks in the battle against the virus.
I’m increasingly getting the feeling that all will be changed after Covid-19 has passed over the land.
That’s certainly how I think at the moment.
What is happening right now is the law of unintended consequences on steroids.
However, it will take time for it all to be readily discernible.
For example, just looking over the hedge at the Brits I’m detecting a change on how they view the family that supplies their hereditary head of state.
The behaviour of Charles Saxe-Coburg by going on a contagion tour to the Scottish Highlands was a case in point.
It was not lost on many of his subjects that this useless Dauphin received a Covid-19 test without delay.
It is difficult to resist drawing parallels with the societal changes that happened in Europe after the Black Death.
It is generally accepted by historians that the 14th-century pandemic fatally subverted the feudal order and put in place the building blocks of the capitalist revolution.
Now Covid-19, although thankfully not as fatal as bubonic plague might do the same for the globalised neoliberal world order.
It is my hope that enforced solidarity will be a virus that proves fatal to unfettered capitalism
So far, all of the rem dies to our situation seem rather similar to socialism.
It is hard to underestimate the long term political consequences for a political leader when they are shown to be stunningly incompetent.
The current occupant at Number Ten has quickly found out that the Covid-19 crisis is one situation that he cannot bluff his way out of.
I suspect that this is a new experience for him.
The buck stops with him, probably for the first time in his life.
So far, his handling of the crisis has been a calamitous public spectacle.
It is worth remembering that the UK is the 5th biggest economy on the planet.
When they were the global superpower in the 19th century they boasted that Britain was “the workshop of the world”.
Now, faced with a pandemic apparently this is the best that they can do.
This week the Brits managed to build just THIRTY ventilators.
Quite frankly people will die in the UK who could have been saved.
Rember the survival checklist.
All the threes:
Three minutes without air.
Three seconds without HOPE.
Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine.
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2 weeks of hell I’ve had with covid. Thank god I’m getting over it now. It is horrendous. You wouldn’t wish it on a single soul. HH
We will all have choices to make when this is over. Will we choose to retain the Status quo that has shown ordinary people nothing but distain, derision and a deliberate lack of care, or use our votes and our pounds to reward those who would better serve our communities and our families. We all now know without doubt who the absolute bastards are: politicians, the ‘captains’ of industry, media moguls, consultants and so on. Let’s ensure every single one of them pays their fair share of taxes, or imprison them if they don’t. Let us put a cap on CEO wages across the board (excuse the pun) and scrap bonuses altogether. We should then reward essential workers (we all know who they are now too) with higher and fairer wages. There are only so many CEO positions in the world anyway so where are they going to go if the are unhappy, and who gives a damn anyway?
As a former Time Inc employee, I was somewhat reluctant to click on a link to a Newsweek article. However, these are strange times when habits of a lifetime are up for grabs.
Although, I’d heard the outline of the story online, the details were shocking.
However, one other thing that’s sunk in over the last few months – and cemented when I watched the film The Post this evening – is how vitally important a free press is in uncovering & bringing to light the stories that governments would prefer to bury. This is especially so in the U.K when the national public broadcaster seems complicit in feeding only government approved soundbites & PR announcements in detriment to the public good.
The same applies online to those willing to risk attack by right-wing forces in defence of the public’s right to know.
Thank Ghod for the truth sayers, internet bampots and all those who understand the true calling of journalism. – The truth and nothing but the truth, warts and all.
Btw Having taken up hiking (& cycling) since I hung up my fitba boots – and recently completed iconic hikes around Patagonia (including the W trek in Torres Del Paine) I can’t recommend it highly enough #BhoyOnHike
Very sensible for Celtic to announce ST deadline to be extended to 31st May by which time, hopefully, things will be clearer and the world will be a safer and healthier place.
I liked the bit about hillwalking. Really good for you physically, mentally and for the spirit too.
Didn’t like the rest of it at all.
I suppose your son was tested in Dublin then?
I suppose Ireland built thousands of ventilators. Scotland too? They were only asked for five or six days ago.
An independent Scotland would be bankrupt upon bankrupt right now.
When youre drawing your last hacking breath with no ventilator remember to save enough wind to curse and blame the SNP. You’ll die happier.
If you survive remember to thank Boris for all that he did to help you.
People ARE dying and you want to play a tit-for-tat blame game.
WHAT A COMPLETE PRICK YOU ARE!!!
Oh dear! It’s charger the rude nationalist. Using this pandemic to camouflage SNP vast shortcomings.
The SNP Mess Ups don’t stop so the criticism won’t either.
Get back in your kennel. Behave like a dog you’ll be treated like one. Dumb Nonentity.
I had the disease months ago. ill for a month. You know nothing of it. Boris’ NHS fixed me.
Well Jackie, the arrogant, Westminster loving, unionist. So you had the disease MONTHS ago. Where were you out of curiosity to have the disease MONTHS ago?
It only appeared in Britain on the 31st of January.
I’ve just re-read the shite you’ve written above. You really DO have a brass neck describing anyone as rude. Crawl back under your stone. If Boris will move over to make space for you.
Scotland was bankrupted over 300 years ago. Wankers like you shuold just fuxk off over the border.
Phil
Some very good points , an excellent read.
My own view is , if I were in charge of travel, testing as people disembark from flights, is all very well but I would prefer these tests be done at the other end , it is so unfair to flight crew and passengers, to allow travellers to board flights whilst having symptoms , just my take on it.
Again Phil thanks for your efforts, you are a must read during these dark days.
Totally agree
All we heard at the start was ‘We will do it’ – for big business that is, including a £200 BILLION QE that was quietly pushed through. Business thi and business that.
While on Health
PPE – back of the queue. In Aberdeen we are pleading without DFS gore companies to donate eye protection
Ventilators – back of the queue, takes over 2 weeks to get the first one built
Test kits – back of the queue despite WHO saying weeks ago Testing, testing, testing
As for the Vaccine – I’d bet back of the queue also
We were told the measures were to flatten the curve. What was the original Do nothing curve, the predicted curve with the measures and where are we against either ?
From a NHS front line worker
Should say ‘oil companies’ not ‘out DFS gore companies. Bloody predictive text !
Hopefully, when all this is over, the people will rebel against this inept government. I might be wrong in my assessment, but ever since Maggie the Milk Snatcher first came to power in 1979, the UK has been about personality politics. Who can forget the newspapers castigating Michael Foot for turning up at the Cenotaph looking as though he was auditioning for the part of Paddington Bear, by wearing a duffel coat… At least the man had the decency to commemorate the memory of the war dead! Then there was the hammering of Neil Kinnock, as the media labelled him the “Welsh Windbag”. Even John Major was labelled as the “grey man”. Blair?.. it was painted as New Labour, when in actual fact what we got was neo-conservatism in a sharp suit!
Now, almost 25 years up the line, we have Boris the Buffoon “running” the country with his cabinet of boring nobodies, like the bastard creation of a Comic Relief sketch which resembles a cross between Dad’s Army and Yes, Minister!
Instead of spending a fortune on maintaining our nuclear threat, which no body with an ounce of intelligence would ever dream of using, get that money where it should have been spent in the first place- the NHS, the police, and HMRC which, in their infinite wisdom, the british government fragmented into Revenue Collection, UKBA- the Border Agency that ultimately checks the passports of arrivals into the country, and Border Force which has the responsibility of rounding up illegals and overstayed, and attempting to deport them back to their country of origin.
With any luck, Covid-19 will e the death knell of personality politics, and we see a return to politicians that GENUINELY want to serve ALL of the citizens of this country – not just the ones that cast their vote for these idiots that appear to be intoxicated by the exuberance of their own verbosity!!
My understanding of the ‘2km’ rule was that you can’t be further than 2km from home, so you can take the 2km guideline and use that as a radius from home to have a more substantial walk.
Have you not cut that hedge yet🙄
Not for the first time the U.K. has been let down by a Tory Government. In this instance, spectacularly so. The swinging cuts they made in the NHS are now coming to a deadly fruition. Severely understaffed, seriously underpaid nurses and ancillary workers and lack of investment in medical infrastructure have the country on it’s knees. What price ideology? HH