More lessons from COVID19

You have to be careful what you write not to add more to the mass of disinformation, so this is basically comment and observation on the political aspects of all this.

Our leader of the opposition Jeremy Corbyn has stated to the Prime Minister Boris Johnson, that much of the emergency action he is taking to mitigate the economy and protect workers is coming out of the last Labour Manifesto, the one which the voters rejected.

At times of crisis Socialism and strong Government intervention is the only way as it has been previously in wartime. The economy has to be directed towards the production of essential goods and the supply of essential foods. In wartime the Government would be paying a huge conscript army, now they are having to pay people to stay at home.

Elements of commerce, such as Richard Branson (Virgin), and Tim Martin (Wetherspoons) and Mike Ashley (Sports direct) don’t like it, but they and many others have been the robber barons of commerce, accumulating smaller companies, and behaving in a generally socially irresponsible manner to there workforce.  They won’t escape, the virus is for everybody, it is a very democratic virus.

What we have seen is Governments take strong and unprecedented action to close down non essential industries, restrict travel abroad and at home because of a very real and present emergency.

I hope that after this has passed, (and it will) they can learn from this, that they can act just as strongly against the biggest danger of all, climate change.

Lessons from COVID 2019

I had practically forgotten this blog exists, so rarely have I used it in longer than recent time, however events prompt me to put a few scribblings out, which I think deserve a bit more posterity and presence than Facebook ephemera does.

Whilst the corona virus call it what you will (the name is a product of linguistic hegemony and social construction anyway) has caught Governments and Society off guard, it is an entirely natural phenomenon, and in the scheme of things inevitable given the concentration of populations, and travel patterns led by easy availability of cheap air travel. The encroachment of human society on the animal world has also made this more possible.

What it has done, apart from revealing some of the worst of human herd behaviour, has forced Governments into recognition that they do not control the waves as it were. Eventually they will all be forced into taking similar actions because that is what circumstances demand. The fact that here in the UK and elsewhere popular institutions have acted before Governments as a means of logical self preservation shows that ultimately Government is a reflection of society rather than a model or leader of it.

Anthropologists and Sociologists will be loving this, and although there is already a flurry of self publishing and blogs like this, the long term studies and books will be written when academia settles back into normality, probably with a technological shift which has been quickened by the events, just as wars have led to changes in industrial process and ultimately led to health reform in the form of socialised medicine.

Capitalism has been dealt a blow, make no mistake, look at the stock exchange that outdated and artificial barometer of capital that represents the triumph of notional financial capital over real fixed capital, supply and demand etc.  Panic buying instincts have led to there own market adjustments as wholesale retail recognises that there are physical limits to supply and therefore take rational (reasonable rationing) action.

Maybe this may signal the decline of populist governments as the blustering  demogogues prove to be as powerless as the mythical King Canute’s episode with the waves. (Ironically Canute ruled the waves rather well as the King of a mighty trans European sea power)

As Alec Douglas Home once said in answer to his political critics “events, dear boy, events”