Time for Molotov and Pitchfork Uprising?

Time for Molotov and Pitchfork Uprising?

Ele has not occurred but what has transpired does come a little too close for assuming any blasé reassurance, wrapped in the mantel of hesitant reluctance of mitigating actions that are having an impact in holding back the rampage of the Covid19. The experience of which and the resultant exploits, would if not stringently examined for failings shows that saps are not likely to be any better prepared to deal with the real ele or indeed the medium term after-effects of this pandemic. Unsurprisingly there is no cure yet after 5/6 months, nor is there likely to be an effective one for 2 years albeit a great deal of research is being applied to understand its driving cause that will eventually offer a vaccine to be taken up by the world but possibly even with this it will not be eradicated from the pool of viral infections.

Perusing the media over the past months, all news has stopped. It does seem that way in the UK with every day since the ‘agreed’ outbreak point in March, there has been an overwhelming coverage of the deaths and progression of Covid19 and what is being done to manage its expansion and applicable control methods. The media coverage hardly differs in other countries even though they are effectively handling the situation with some differences in control methods but are, within some countries, gaining greater success in limiting the infection rates and deaths (with the exception of developing countries like USA, South Americas, Russia, Africa, or Middle East etc) compared to the UK. In the UK 27K deaths (possible a under-representation excluding untested deaths back to Nov/Dec +) have occurred up to late April, now including those in nursing / care homes or at home and the total is fast heading towards a minimum of 35K poignantly including those key “front line workers”. It is possible that 100K deaths will be attributed to Covid19 before this phase is over, ending possible June 2021.On this basis, one could, given all the early prevarication of the government and the deliberate choices it took back in December and the preceding / subsequent early or later months (probably years as well), one states that it and as a political party has complicity failed in every aspect of statehood management.(1)

As well as killing people, to be found in the reluctantly acceptable category of those with compromised health, age, or confinements; it is also hitting those individual that are placed in the situations of having close care proximity like nurses, doctors, care workers etc; the people now, after years of disregard, are lauded by this government for being on the “front line.” None of whom, one expects, attend a working environment to be burdened with an elevated risk of being killed by the job they do; caring for others infected with the disease and themselves then being killed due to them being subjected to a higher loading factor of potential contamination virus than the general population. Also attached to this group is the great volume of volunteers, delivery transport facilities, stores, postal and police personnel etc taking on tasks to keep people safe, fed, informed and watched out for; to insure society does not collapse. They also are part of the “front line” and take risks. With some exceptions of the recent past, (military) (2) no one goes to work to unwittingly die however the assets and resources that they, as civilians in the care sectors should have relied on to undertake their tasks, have, it is now known, not been in place and has deliberately not been stock maintained; compounded irresponsibly by governmental decision to ignore emergency preparation reports to respond to such ‘expected’ pandemic outbreaks, written up over previous years, with the last one of 2016, merely put aside.

There is little doubt that the government made political choices to ignore the warnings of December to early March. It was panicked into unprepared action primarily due to the diverse dichotomy of chosen radical directions of the CDUP, the overriding self imposed pressure to conclude Brexit at any cost, with all the consuming administrative efforts applied to moving Brexit forward and concentrating the impending overall financial liability requirements to ‘soften’ the effects to the economy for a hard exit game plan. Against this rabid infecting dogma of “getting Brexit done” a diversion from that political collusion on what action to take with the new ‘seasonal flu', was manipulated, it could not interfere with their target dates of concluding a deal by June! What has to be astounding as the projected cost of finally exiting from the EU and the damaged to be inflicted onto the GDP / economy, which treasury estimated at a loss of, 6.7% of GDP at £130bn over 15 years and resulting in people being poorer from that action; is the crashing into a global recession as a result of this pandemic and the extensive cost of business and society support to mitigate the damaged in the immediate short term cost of £1.5trn. And still the illusion of getting “a good deal”, abundantly obviously to be no better than what has been in existence for 42 years, is still being pursued, without any realistic chance of success and substantially diminish expectations of obtaining replacement world trade deals. At a time when competent leadership is imperative, needed in facing up to the realism of paradigm demands exposed by the pandemic, Brexit and political obsessions; effective, intelligent and knowledgeable leadership, has been negligently vacant replaced by vacuous ineptitude.

In many areas this has shown the incompetence of so many political placements many of whom were responsible for and supported the construction of policies by which the economics and social structures have been taken apart and the ingrained structural competence resilience that had traditionally resided in the local civil authorities had also been eviscerated laughingly placing the decline of such, caused by the government dogma of austerity from 2010, onto local authorities. In practice too little experience resided in government or local authorities not to be able to effectively grapple with the logistics and implications of cabinet pronouncement scrabbling to ‘catch up’ on strategies, who themselves were blasé ignorant of the hollowing out that had been done to the whole administrative and social support systems, under their watch, across the whole range of the UK civil structures now exposed by this avoidable (?) pandemic.

The level of incompetence demonstrated by the UK cabinet members, prior to and displayed during this time ought to be inspiring for anyone who may doubt their own abilities, or not to aspire to think they could do a better job, reveals that intelligence nor experience nor comprehending diligence, are perquisite to having political authority. At least the ordinary wo/man, the left behinds, the front line workers, will have ordinary life experiences to call on and may be graced with, that rare commodity, common sense of the common wo/man not unhinged with character flaws of duplicity and practice deceits to back up their political class. Throughout all this the initial imperative was to keep the policy of the political agenda to achieve Brexit no matter what happens, "the will of the People". It was to be delivered and not to be overridden with the pandemic.

Now, that the activities that the government have been forced into are based on the advice taken seriously, from the past derided "experts". It is now used as a shutter to hide behind the delayed miss- management of action and using the adopted meme; “Stray Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives”, which the public understandable have taken up, with outstanding supportive displays, is useful in strengthening the “lockdown” methods but it is still a cynically calculated diversionary tactic to suppress / disguise the destructive policy record of the CDUP which was aimed at all the “Left Behinds”, “The Front Line Workers,” “Social Care” and local authorities. It is all  very well falling in with the governments new strap line of  diversion emphasising saving lives and the NHS etc and the extensive use of new found pious "experts"  but be in no doubt these are but elements of camouflage to protect the CDUP primarily for their near destructive measures foisted onto the NHS and social structures.It does seem strange that the independent (?) experts are letting themselves be used as the potential sacrificial shield when clearly there has been a great deal of political re-interpretation of the technical advice and objectives, clouded with ‘Spads’ guidance. One would think that there is some advantages to the government to prolong the PR strap lines and emotive attachments behind it all, for it covers over the stalling Brexit negotiations, offering an excuse for a forced hard Brexit (in June) to be blamed on the pandemic (fighting it) and the EUs’ intransigence in not giving in to a “good deal”. This is particularly precarious as there is no intention / indication as yet, of seeking an extension to the dead line time by the zealots.

As yet in the media, being overwhelmed with pandemic exposures, it does stand out that too little has seriously and persistently been investigated in asking the dangerous questions; given the cost of terminal Brexit was estimate to damage the UK economy by a sum of £130bn, (Bloomberg) on its own, now with Covid19 to reduce the global trade prospects prompting a recession, which is forecasted to hit the UK economy hard as well and the expanding ongoing damaged to commerce from the ‘fight’ against the pandemic; the GDP of the UK will shrink by 35% in 6 months. What will the UKs projected economic situation be, come the next 5 years, how are these issues and expansive consequences to be financed, can it be financed with more hyperbole and bluster? Bearing in mind the CC (Liquidity Crises) and promoted austerity has not gone away, the cost of that is still languishing on the public purse!

Being outrageous: This virus is killing the wrong people, one does not see noted capitalist, CEO’s, captains of industry, financiers, bankers, politicians, economist, celebrities or the harbingers of self-righteous hubris rentier cadre, being ‘taken out’ and not enough of them (currently) to inculcate a re-positioning to a new responsibility to or for the “sense of place” for those remaining to make any difference for attitudinal change; perhaps. No, for all them it will be business usual, eventually. Businesses; the larger ones will get their hands on the ‘money tree’ for a bail-out to help secure their shareholder value and dividends. Many smaller ones will not survive this closure as indeed many people will also be impoverished and employment for many unknowns will dissolve. The cost of mitigating the impact on the economy will be excruciating est. at some £1.5trn. it will be an exiguous contemptuous  argument whether this expenditure balanced against quality adjusted life years (QALY) est. at £30K PP by Public Health England (PHE) can be value for money. As the government has found, it is easier to close businesses activity and cohere the public to assist in extracting it from the policy failures of government and from any excoriating analysis of 12 years of dogmatic ideological direction, aiding the collapse of the economy, than it is to resurrect it. All this to be conveniently hidden under the panic of the pandemic and all the money plucked from the magic tree to fund all the distressed disbursements. But it will be far more difficult to have everything started up and reach pre Covid19 or Brexit end days when trade and the markets go in a negative direction.

Even though BoJo and his current cohorts now, are being given a ‘free pass’ by a large part of the audio and written media, some of which verges on sycophantic coverage by the usual suspects, this is matched by him being given a relatively high public popularity rating akin to a societal Stockholm syndrome (3) the root of which he will not resist to cultivate while the free pass works. This may come under a bit of strain for although the ‘loyal opposition’ are being a little soft on interrogation of the cabinets / government calamitous policies, their reticence is in the cause preferential unity, at a time of national / public concern due to the pandemic ethos of ‘all being in it together’ (LOL) but the public may not be so forgiving or relaxed when the financial cost become due, total deaths enumerated and expectations of a better future do not materialise. A great deal of ink has been laid down by some independent printed media, some being searingly factually critical of the handling of the pandemic and the wasted decade at the hands of the CDUP. Surprisingly even papers like The Times and Financial Times have had excoriating criticising reports and although well researched the government attempts to fabricate a different ‘understanding’ for public consumption. This is just symptomatic of the daily pantomime on TV of the parade of political representatives shimmying answers to written question, questionnaires of which are not allowed to forcefully confront the prepared answers. (Shades of BoJo hiding from and banning his MPs from Radio 4 hard interviews)

There is a vague notion being expressed that after this period of turmoil and all the diverse exposures of the real state of the nation and the weakness of the ‘economic resilience’ of much of the population, (the left behinds, front line and support workers etc) that “things” will change. That something must change is a given; again lots of independent media and academic coverage suggesting directions is on offer, (4) to which one would say that in the interim there will be a subtle social psychological shift, only. This will be evident until a vaccine is found and the pandemic is relegated to the ‘been there done that’ now move on period perhaps over two years. However, the desire for humans to get back to ‘normality’, if the majority of a population achieve it, will tend to expunge the aspirations of societal transformations in favour of acceptable lassitude. The expectations that the mistakes of dogmatic policy, increase poverty, social divergence, inequality, under resourced negated civil structures, financial usury, self serving hubristic governance and laissez-faire economics might be challenged, to become predicated on the prior importance of obtaining the best health, wealth and security of people, could be a faithful expectation. If this is the ‘something’ of the change required, it may, perhaps should, become the principle focus of all government policies generating a much fairer distribution for a ‘good fair society’, to correct the gross inequalities that have been unenthusiastically (for the government) uncovered over the past decade+. But so far they have got away with it all!

Attached to the above and due to the effects of the international closing of trading slowdowns which is having such a surprising and fast profound impact on global movement and access to goods; is the notion that globalisation will be changed or curtailed as western countries, like the UK have realised that they are no longer in a position of a strong productive or economic strength, now depended on the productive and cheap labour capacity of developing nations (China, India?) , so that it cannot, as a current example, produce / support its own PPE  for Covid19, telecoms, nuclear energy, steel or transport . There is a growing examination of the financial usury attached to being a dependent financial hub and its use of unfettered globalisation. There is an expectation that some effort may be made to bring back, ‘in house’ as much productive ability as possible to develop a bedrock of sustainable self independence and in doing so realign the financial rewards to better reflect the “worth” of all labour and the (up to now) dispensable front line workers. Unfortunately globalisation as is understand by most people, is something to do with trade and the transportation to the acquisition of material goods not made in a recipients country, but it is predominantly about the fast easy movement of capital, its singular use and the undemanding secretion of it from regulatory ‘eyes’. Proponents of globalisation want to keep it that way, this also makes it difficult to pin it down to attach fair equitable taxation to help meet some of the cost of the support structures of the source country responsible for providing the profitable extraction.

Ultimately it is always going to be a challenge to create a fair social structures, for humans are inherently cognitively insular, selfish, and un-empathic, of limited global tangential awareness and are unlikely to find a solution to the curses of their existence; population excretion, ceaseless productivity prescription, providence, abusive misplaced paternalism, class tribal preference, survivalist greed. Although it is thought and hoped that things will change as a consequence of this Covid19 and some social historians would indicate to examples of transformation as a result of previous pandemics, but they did not of themselves bring great societal change. They were of their time and occurrence, in ignorance, with no organisation to promote or conscript a reordering of wealth distribution. The closest one would suggest that came close to some redistribution, primarily on the basis of the ‘supply and demand of labour’ was the Black Death. (The 1348 bubonic plague; when 40/60% of UK Pop Est. at 1M died, out of a Pop of 2.5M). The last serious pandemics of the 20^th century being the: 1918 Spanish flu (with 280K UK deaths) followed by, 1951 Asian flu, and 1968 Hong Kong flu. And in 2015 according to Public Health England (PHE) some 24K excess deaths were attributed to flu virus then, affecting most people over 75 years old. Seems familiar?

With restricted exception, these episodic eras did not create any great immediate shift in redeployment of resources and even though the Spanish Flu was the most dangerous in death total globally, of the 20th century, any suggested changes to how society operated and managed its wealth creation and distribution, was of limited effective duration and had more to do with the consequences of rising impoverishment after the 1^st world war and progressing to the 2nd. The financial power and affluent control still resided in the hands of established structural authority that had no persuasive reason to adopt munificence for the masses and could contentedly control any inadequate dissenting outbreaks, which it did.

Without doubt there have been improvements in the living standards of western society since the mid 20^th century (less so in the UK) and what had been gained has not been as a result of enlightened voluntary willingness to instigate civil social, structural and economic improvements. It has been achieved by organised pressure and hard fought democratic resolve against the established vested interest. The occasional labour marches, strikes, racial and frustrated riots together with the exposures of the proletariat to the callousness of industrial / commercial ‘planning’, were an anathema to the authority’s insularity but persistent organised and politicised action did  have a gradual effect. To the extent that much of what passes for social structures and safety nets are now taken as disregarded, normal, to being undervalued.

To some extent the progress that has been made on all social economic fronts has been one of suppressive maintenance. It has been derived by hard articulate argument and evident necessity in the cause of securing the foundations of established order (for instance after the wars) and in this it has been the minimum that government could be compelled to give over (this has always applied to the CDUP and asset affluent). Ever since a labour class could conscripted together into a working unity, there has always been intent to use it at the most efficacious cost to the holder of assets, capital and power. Where the labour attempted to obtain gain:- block recognition, a fairer recompense for work contribution, resist overall exploitation including on the grounds of race and gender for  better, safer condition, it has been meet with strong opposition often by authorities using force and constructing laws to punish and bind labour to its own ends.(5)

One has often made these observations before; society generally prefers to labour in peace, quiet and agreeable security. So long as it has acceptable comfort it will go with the flow of a majority norm and resist any irrational exuberance that has the potential to upset the norm, until that is, it is stressed incidentally, deliberately pressurised, or sectarian cohered by (malign?) manipulation for a secreted purpose. If these distortions makes their position less acceptable, undermines an indistinct perceptive comfort status, then it does tend to react and object with slow simmering to vocal (strikes?) output or flash violence. Over decades government have been adept at constructing and implementing legal constraints to control such “discontents” and being in the UK, a democracy, banning or only allowing parades, marches, rallies etc. under guidance to occur; providing they are “peaceful” and safe for the participants or objectors. What government do not want is for protestations in whatever form to interfere with the rights of “others”, generally the rights of the productive economy to make progress and also not interfere with the majority being uninvolved, going about their daily business. What disruption that do occur, that does create inconveniences or is likely to be injurious to the state, the government looks to implement creative legislation to quash the dissenting drive and with time rely on the natural lassitude of the population to accept the standing situation with platitudes of political considerations. For this reason government esteem and bear agreeable peaceful demonstrations. They cause no trouble and have little lasting effect other than creating a great deal of political verbosity, often sterile and at least offers a vent for occasional government aimed un-popular frustrations.

Society can have as many peaceful demonstrations as the proletariat want and repent at leisure in the peculiarity of their fraught situations, even if some are aware of the strangulating noose on their democracy and the long term degradation of their situation compared to the deserving asset holders, it is likely to make no difference! In this context, as has been amply covered by element of the independent media, the poor have got poorer, the rich richer and remain unaffected by financial downturns over recent decades; usually doing much better than any of the “left behinds” or “front line essential workers”. It cannot have escaped the notice, one hopes, of the observing proletariat, that even just in the last 12 or 24 years that their living standards have been slowing eroding. And it is still astounding that the unnecessary enforced austerity policies of the CDUP from 2009 did not elicit much in the way of outrage and up to now in the year of the Covid19 from which one can see beyond to the penury to financial desperation that many people are to suffer. The only time in the last decade was there anything like outright public demonstrable angst, were the marches / rallies to object to Brexit (exceeding by far, any that were for it) and the organised events of Extinction Rebellion; both of which caused the establishment to take surreptitious fright. One reason for its anxiety was for what it had wilfully done to the country, the other because of the discomfort widely reported, inflicted to the public heart of London. Little has changed from those demonstrative actions, to now be faced with the exposing and escalating, public to individual personal and economic impacts of this pandemic.

But and this should be a big but, how much better should the past decades have been had people realised that they were being ‘short changed’ from their efforts, that the there has been a great shift of financial and asset resources from the working classes to the financial and ‘rentier’ classes who have been, just in the last decade alone consistently bailed out from the corruption of their own excesses. The transference excesses with QE, shifting corporate and private commercial debt onto the public debt is picked up eventually by reduced public expenditure, higher taxes, or a form of indirect sequestration eroding the capital worth of the parsimonious / saver.  Why has there never been any great recognition that the whole economic system has been perverted to consistently degrade the worth of the proletariat, all the honest Front Line, Essential, Volunteer, Hard Workers, the Left Behinds of the very bedrock that the whole financial edifice system needs to draw from and to survive.

It cannot be right that the political class and its establishments, corporate / media backers, continue to manipulate the democratic ideals to its own egocentric ends. And in ignorance of this the proletariat can have as many peaceful marches, rallies, demonstrations, it likes or is allowed to prescriptively have and nothing will change. Not this time, despite the “Front Line Deaths” so far of 49 to 150 people or unrecorded many more (6) due to Covid19. The best their sacrifice to their job could achieve will be a commemorative plaque on the wall of the National Memorial Arboretum!

Perhaps at the event of the real “Big One” will it force a political redirection to “change” but it could come to pass commencing now if only people would take to the streets in resolute anger at what has been done onto them and “Take Back Control” with their Pitchforks and Molotov’s. That is all they can lay their hands on!

GodAllahTetragrammaton; Praise the lord and pass the ammo.

In this age of heightened emotive sensitive’s and the obsequious deference being paid to anyone who is unfortunately given unexpected offense too, albeit oftentimes unwittingly due one’s own lack of understanding of the moral, sociological, cultural, religious, gender background etc, etc, of the sensitivities of a recipient or any whom take virulent objections with above issue; one would like to offer ones profuse apologies should anything in this article give such unintentional offence. This too any that has had the misfortune to read it and to those that may never read it; just in case.

Anyway by the time any of this matters, one will have gone home.

© Renot

304201066

(1)  www.thetimes.co.uk/article/coronavirus.

       www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/18/how-did-britain-get-its-response-to-coronavirus-

       so-wrong.

(1) www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/17/pandemic-coronavirus-economy-benefit

       payment-workers.

 (2) Iraq invasion 179 deaths.

 (2) Afghanistan war 454 deaths

 (2) Falkland's war deaths 255.

 (3)  www.britannica.com › science › Stockholm-syndrome

“Psychological response, wherein a captive begins to identify closely with his or her captors, as well as with   their agenda and demands”.

 (4) Breadline Britain: by Stewart Lansley & Joanna Mack.

 (4) And The Weak Must suffer What They Must?: by Yanis Varoufakis

 (4) Them and Us: by Will Hutton

 (4) Injustice: by Daniel Dorking

 (4) Chronicles: by Thomas Piketty

 (4) The State We’re in: by Will Hutton

 (4)Whoops: by John Lancaster

 (4) Going South: by Larry Elliot & Dan Atkinson.

 (4) www.theguardian.com/global/2020/may/03/we-have-faced-our-toughest-test-for- decades-but- we-will-build-a-better-tomorrow

 (4) www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/03/the-promise-of-an-oxford-vaccine-reveals-how-a-new-britain-could-thrive

(5) Luddites 1799-1813

      1820 Scottish rising

      1831 Merthyr Rising

      1834 Tolpuddle Martyrs

      1926 General Strike

      78/79 ‘winter of discontent’

      84/89 Miners strike

(6) www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/nhs-workers-died-coronavirus-frontline

                 (the enthusiast media of BoJo & Brexit)

(6) www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/16/doctors-nurses-porters-volunteers