Unrobing the Emperors and other matters of concern. An author's blog - begun in January 2016 - revealing political deception in the UK - paving the way to The Road to Corbyn (2016, Matador) and Dying to Know - Running through a Pandemic (2022, Matador). Also updates on my work in progress: 'Mine to Die', an unusual work of local history with global ethical importance.
The latest figures from the ONS are at the end of this article. Please do have a look.
Here is the blogpost I published on 7 January 2021:
'THIS PRIME MINISTER LED US INTO THE WORLD OF HERD IMMUNITY - WE ARE NEARING 100,000 DEATHS
The responsibility for our carnage lies primarily with the prime minister and his special advisor - Johnson and Cummings - who made the wrong decisions back in February last year. Their actions and inactions then are part of the sequence of neoliberal Tory misgovernment that followed.
I have spent my lockdown charting this tragedy in Dying to Know and am now back on the familiar path of finding a literary agent/ publisher. My book is well worth reading. I am the historian by academic training and I have become a fledgling scientist and economist for the purposes of my pandemic tale.
I hope you find this BLOGPOST worthwhile. It would help my path to publication for my book 'Dying to Know' if you would press the Follow button at the top of the blog post (on a full screen) - 29 followers to date. Thank you.
Here is the latest twist in this sordid story, courtesy of SKWAWKBOX today:
'Former Tory MP Matthew Parris appears on Sky to exonerate catastrophic PM - while MP Lucy Allan quietly deletes 'like' of tweet calling for abolition of NHS
'Operation Absolve Boris' has begun. The Conservative party, which can never quite disguise its contempt for the Labour-founded NHS, has sloughed off even more of the facade to start its campaign to water the idea in the public consciousness that the blame for Boris Johnson's appalling and frankly murderous handling of the pandemic crisis rests with the NHS, not the Bullingdon boy.
Johnson's 'battle' with the pandemic - with grateful acknowledgements to Martin Rowson, cartoonist at the Guardian
Former Tory MP Matthew Parris was on Sky News this morning (thanks, reader and Labour activist Val Colvin for the pointer) - and Parris not only suggested that the latest scandal of slow vaccine roll-out was the NHS's fault, he 'jumped the shark' and suggested that he
In this final part of the three-part series, I want to focus on the pieces of textile art in the exhibition that were produced between December 2018 and January 2020 - Louise's creative work between the ending of her first exhibition at the Crypt (November 2018) and the arrival of the coronavirus (February 2020).
There were seven works in the show that were completed in these thirteen months. Here they are, in no particular order:
TRIBUTE TO MONDRIAN
One of the works in Louise's Crypt exhibition in 2018 was 'My Mondrian Moment'. Louise was first introduced to the work of Mondrian in a serious way back in 2010 when Louise made the long
In this second blogpost in the series, the focus is on 'Interconnections' - for Louise one of the most important pieces in the show. Press here for the link to the first blogpost, published last week.
'Interconnections' - Louise Donovan (2021)
And here is the guide (with some illustrative fleshing out!)
Interconnections
Silvergrey–withfifteenfacemasks
With movement restricted and friends unseen, Zoom became an important
part of my life at times.This has
been a period to reflect on who and what is important in my life – and what
better vehicle
Keir Starmer attacked Boris Johnson's honesty and
trustworthiness in PMQs today, saying Johnson's pledges 'aren't worth the
manifesto paper they're written on'.
Starmer was right: whether on the pensions triple lock, the test
and trace disaster or anything else, 'Bozo' is a con artist.
I have spent many hours blog-posting on Boris Johnson and the horror-show he has orchestrated in the UK since he became PM. I have explored his inadequacies from so many different perspectives. The man is toxic and deserves to face charges for his malfeasance in public office. Here is a link to the page on my website which is well worth exploring:
Tragically for the nation, so is Keir Starmer. He has trampled over democratic rights in order to remove the threat of socialism within the Labour Party. In much the same way as Johnson eliminated any threat from
In May of this year, 2021, Cornwall had one of the lowest rates of Covid infection in the country, as it had done since Johnson and Cummings allowed the pandemic to strike with such deadly force in February and March of 2020. The infection rate in Cornwall on the 6 June 2021 was 2.8 per 100,000 people.
But the Man in No.10 had thought of a bright wheeze.
"We are hosting the G7 summit this year - let's run the show in Cornwall, right down at the bottom where it will be more difficult for the demonstrators to get to and where it will be easier to control them. Yes, that Carbis Bay Hotel will be an ideal site - marvellous photo opportunities for Carrie and yours truly!"
And so it came to pass.
Between the 11-13 June, the G7 weekend arrived with world leaders accompanied by around 20,000 officials flocking to Carbis Bay, near St Ives.
Plus some 5,000 police officers from across the country.
Even before the event, during the build-up, Cornwall's infection rate had risen to 81.7 per 100,00, compared to the UK average at the time of 77.4 per 100,00.
By the time the G7 was over and they had all gone home, the Covid rates of infection were now up 5,000 per cent compared to the weekend before the G7 show. Since all this infection was happening in our own backyard, so to speak, I do remember thinking 'Why on earth did you not do this show on Zoom?!?' The rate of infection in St Ives now stood at 905.7 per 100,000 people, compared to the UK average of 93.7 per 100,00.
The leaders and their immediate circle
The graphs showing this surge in infection had made their way into parts of the media. I published a blogpost about the awfulness of it all. But what is so remarkable is the
As Skwawkbox has written, an attempted attack on Skwawkbox and The Canary collapsed in chaos this week when an ‘academic’ report paid for by Mann that tried to those two publications with the extreme right – along with yet more supposed ‘evidence’ submitted by its authors – was rejected in full by IMPRESS, the UK’s independent and only Leveson-compliant press regulator.
The right and the Establishment would love to see the demise of new left media, so seeing them thrive will be the best revenge. If you’d like to annoy those who want to end the left, please watch and share this short video:
The links for those who wish to support and are able to do so without hardship are:
Louise's exhibition was called 'A Textile Art Journey Through The Pandemic And Interconnections'. It ran from Saturday 13th to Friday 19th November this year. There were 147 attendees and 22 comments were left in the visitors book. Here's a flavour of those opinions:
"A very strong show."
"I love the use of colour in these pieces. They work together so well."
"I love the shapes, the colours, and the sentiments attached to the pandemic project."
"What extraordinary work! Beautifully displayed."
"Thank you for sharing the beauty of your work. The meditative quality and the challenging thinking is inspirational."
And here is the artist herself:
Louise Donovan - April 2021
The pandemic series of nine pieces was begun in March 2020 and completed in the summer of 2021. Here they are with their story:
My Pandemic Journey - 1
About This Quilt
My Pandemic Journey 1 - by Louise Donovan.
Silver-grey and red – plain black quilting thread – triangular, spikey designs in the quilting.
The silver-grey represents normality and calmness – but within this calm the warning signs in red appear – the red squares
The Tory Party is the Nasty Party - even Theresa May, the former Tory PM, acknowledged that there was a risk it could be seen as such. Well now there is another Nasty Party on the block - the Labour Party under Starmer's authoritarian leadership. I would never vote Tory because it is a Nasty Party. I have now come round to the view that as a socialist I can no longer vote for the Labour Party because it has become a Nasty Party too. Do I want to see this country governed by leaders from a political party that now systematically targets for removal good men and women who have served the party loyally and whose only 'crime' is that they are socialist? No way. When a political party is dominated by those who behave badly and lack a moral compass, they should be shunned. The Labour Party has become rotten.
We need to start afresh - we need a new party. Let's call it SOCIAL JUSTICE.
Here, courtesy of SKWAWKBOX, are two horror stories published today which reveal how nasty the Labour party has become:
Harrow Councillor Fitzpatrick expelled by Labour after suffering ‘sustained campaign of harassment’
Pamela Fitzpatrick is a socialist - that is the only reason why she has been expelled from Starmer's Labour party
Harrow councillor – and former Harrow Labour group chair – Pamela Fitzpatrick has been expelled by the Labour party.
Fitzpatrick has commented on the news on her social media, accusing the party right and its current regime of a ‘sustained campaign of harassment’ and of expelling her in an attempt to
At the end of September, I thought it was time to take a break from my constant exposing of the UK government's failings in relation to the threat of the coronavirus. That time is over.
170,000 have died as a consequence of this man's self-belief
Here is an extract from my post published on Saturday 2 October:
We are now in the stage of virus 'management' where the question becomes 'What is an acceptable level of yearly excess death from this virus?' Johnson seems to have settled on a ceiling of 50,000 deaths per annum - see my earlier blogs, using this link here. Our present rate of deaths in hospital from COVID-19 have risen through September from a 7-day rolling average of 106 (1st September) to 135 (7 September) to 138 (14 September) to 144 (21 September) and are now down to 131 (28 September), under the 137 deaths a day which Johnson has decided is an 'acceptable' ceiling figure.
However, I did not cease my recording of the statistics that the Office for National Statistics (ONS) make public. These figures give me now at the beginning of November good reason to be even more
In my blogpost a week or so ago, I explained the change in the policy of Jacinda Ardern's New Zealand government - and I highlighted the tone of carping criticism that I had identified in British media responses to these latest developments in the admirable measures adopted by New Zealand against the coronavirus. Here is a link to that blogpost - press here.
Jacina Ardern - PM of New Zealand
Last Tuesday, 25 October 2021, that same begrudging and critical tone was evident in an 'i' article, headlined 'Ardern admits Covid policy will create two classes of people.' The No.10 'nudge' unit seems to be at work again, making sure the media besmirches all those who represent a threat to Johnson's GB project. The 'i' grey box that highlights a key point in any article reads:
'Concerns have been raised that the country's approach will disproportionately impact on its indigenous Maori population (emphasized in the 'i' text)in which vaccination remains low.'
This assertion is misleading. As you will see in my last blogpost (the link is above), the take-up of the vaccine in most of the Maori population is broadly similar to the non-Maori population. The sector of
A proper government response to massive wealth accumulation could easily fill social care funding gap, increase pay for public sector workers by 15% to reduce Universal Credit reliance, reverse the £20 a week cut to UC, solve the housing crisis, reverse education funding cuts – and more. One Labour MP is making the arguments the party’s leader refuses to even raise
Jon Trickett MP
A landmark new report by Labour MP Jon Trickett has examined the way that wealth works – and is abused – in the UK and concludes that the case for a wealth tax is overwhelming.
‘The Nature of Wealth in Britain: How Wealth Wields Power and the Case for a Wealth Tax’ notes the enormous increase in the wealth of the richest in this country during the course of the pandemic so far, as millions of others have struggled and fallen into poverty – and that the number of billionaires in Britain is at an all-time high as wealth becomes ever more concentrated in the hands of a few.
And that increase in wealth for a tiny minority is to the detriment of the country as a whole. Trickett points out that the syphoning of
Skwawkbox has produced this post today. I share it with you without further comment. You can join up the dots yourself - and mourn - and decide which side of the divide you place yourself.
Remembering Aberfan: 55 years since 113 children and 28 adults killed as slurry landslide crushed school and homes
On this day in 1966, 113 children and 28 adults were killed when 110,000 cubic metres of colliery ‘spoil’ slid onto Pantglas Junior School in Aberfan school after heavy rain. The slurry ran 640m down the mountain above the school, on its way demolishing two farmhouses and killing all their occupants, before crushing and burying a large part the school along with nearby houses.
The heap had been built by the National Coal Board (NCB) over a natural spring. Residents had been complaining for years about the danger, but had been ignored by the NCB.
The acting head at the time described what he saw:
The Girls’ Entrance [of the secondary school] was approximately two-thirds to three-quarters full of rubble and waste material…
I climbed onto the rubble in the doorway… when I looked directly in front of me… I saw that the houses in Moy Road had vanished in a mass of tip-waste material and that the Junior School gable-ends, or part of the roof, were sticking up out of this morass. I looked down to my right and I saw that the Moy Road houses had gone.
The scene was of utter devastation:
Local people began desperately digging for survivors, using garden tools and bare hands and soon aided by miners arriving from the nearby pit. No one was found alive after 11am. The children who died were aged between seven and ten. School meals clerk Nansi Williams had used her body to shield five children. They all survived but she was killed. According to reports at the time, she was found by rescuers still holding a pound note she had been collecting as lunch money.
Deputy head Dai Beynon had used a blackboard to shield himself and five children from the avalanche, but he and all the class’s 34 children died. Five of the adults killed in the disaster were teachers at the school. Years later, survivors of the disaster reported that they felt unable to play outside as children because they were too aware of the grief of parents who had lost their children and felt guilty about being alive.
It took the authorities more than two hours to turn off the water pouring from two mains broken by the slide, during which time the slurry continued to move through the village as the mains poured out millions of litres of water.
Shamefully, the NCB and the government of the day resisted local people’s campaign for the removal of the remaining spoil heaps – and when they were removed, they took a forced contribution of £150,000 – a huge sum at the time – from the Aberfan Disaster Memorial Fund. The money was only repaid more than thirty years later, with the Welsh government – not Westminster – adding further funds to compensate for the wrong.
The Charity Commission initially banned the disaster fund from providing financial help to bereaved families, saying that doing so would breach the terms of the fund’s trust. This ban was only lifted after legal challenge, but the board tried to impose a £500 limit. The fund said it was going to give £5,000 of the £1.75 million ultimately raised to each family.
The board backed down – but said that the Charity should interview each family before giving any money,
to ascertain whether the parents had been close to their children and were thus likely to be suffering mentally
Some in the media also disgraced themselves. One reporter was heard asking a child to cry for her dead friends as it would make a good picture.
Nine NCB employees were censured by the inquiry that followed for their . None were dismissed or demoted and the NCB was never charged. One of the employees criticised by the inquiry was later promoted to the board.
NCB chair Lord Robens offered to resign – but only after obtaining assurances from the relevant government minister that his resignation would not be accepted. The NCB offered bereaved families just £50, though this was later raised to £500 in what the Coal Board described as ‘a good offer’.
The public inquiry found,
that the Aberfan disaster could and should have been prevented… the Report which follows tells not of wickedness but of ignorance, ineptitude and a failure in communications. Ignorance on the part of those charged at all levels with the siting, control and daily management of tips; bungling ineptitude on the part of those who had the duty of supervising and directing them; and failure on the part of those having knowledge of the factors which affect tip safety to communicate that knowledge and to see that it was applied.
The report had been given to the NCB ten days before publication, allowing the Board to prepare its ‘spin’ in advance.
The people of Aberfan would likely disagree about the wickedness.
Following the trails left by SKWAWKBOX, I very quickly became an advocate of Jacinda Ardern's zero-COVID strategy in New Zealand. Their elimination strategy, following WHO guidelines and explicitly rejecting a herd immunity strategy without a vaccine as 'unthinkable'. It has given New Zealand the lowest COVID-19 mortality rate in the OECD, a high level of freedoms, and above-average economic performance. If New Zealand had experienced the same mortality as the UK (around 2000 per million), New Zealand would have had 10,000 deaths. Instead NZ has suffered 28 deaths (5 per million).
We all need heroes - Jacinda Ardern is one of ours
There have been occasional leaks, but the protective media dyke-wall that has surrounded the UK's policy of herd immunity from the very beginning of the pandemic remains intact. Stories about NZ's success and experiences are not for trumpeting. I first picked up this new development in the NZ story earlier this week in the 'i' when they carried a small article focusing on a Maori leader's criticism of Jacinda Ardern and her treatment of the indigenous peoples of New Zealand. The last sentence of the
My thanks to Steve Walker and SKWARKBOX for the original post, fuelled with rage. Here it is:
Johnson says wage growth more important than life length or cancer outcomes
My thanks to Gary Barker for such a brilliant cartoon depicting this man's destructive pathology
Psychopathic Tory PM says ‘never mind’ life or heath – wage growth ‘most important metric’
Tory PM Boris Johnson has said – in a televised interview – that wage growth is the ‘most important’ and people should ‘never mind’ cancer outcomes or life expectancy.
Press and listen:
In a country where cancer outcomes are poor compared to other similar countries and around 166,000 people a year die of cancer even before the Tories allowed the pandemic to swamp the NHS and where life expectancy is falling for the first time in decades, particularly among poorer people, Johnson is certifiable.
on If you really want to annoy the likes of John Mann, watch and share this video