Amid the COVID-19 panic, it has hardly been noticed that Carphone Warehouse went bust, with 2,900 people losing their jobs. Its co-founder, David Ross, is of course the billionaire that Boris Johnson claimed paid for his luxury holiday to Mustique, whereas Ross claimed he only organised it. Who actually paid is one of those Johnson peccadilloes, like the promotion of Jennifer Arcuri, the Garden Bridge fiasco, the Guppy conversation over beating up Stuart Collier, the Russian Influence report, the question of how many children he really has – I could go on rather a long while here – which will be discreetly downplayed by the state and media nexus.
Ross, like Branson and so many others of the “entrepreneurs” that we are taught to worship, came from a very wealthy background and had the great advantages of capital and connections to boost him up the ladder. To be fair to Ross, unlike for example Philip Green, there is no suggestion that he made his fortune from Carphone Warehouse by systematic asset-stripping. What he did do, which is typical of capitalism today, is with the other directors systematically and legally remove capital as it accumulated from the company into their own personal bank accounts. In the long term this left Carphone Warehouse unable to restructure and adapt to changed market conditions, which it needed to do, as its High Street model failed for reasons unrelated to the current health crisis. Ross also had illegally used his shares as collateral for £162 million of personal loans, for which this major Tory party donor has inexplicably never been prosecuted.
Ross had inherited a very large chunk of shares in, and the chairmanship of, Cosalt Ltd, a maritime supplies company. It went bust with £70 million debt and a £50 million pensions deficit, which ruined the lives of many employees and ex-employees. Inexplicably, after it went bankrupt its best assets were sold by the administrators Price Waterhouse at a knockdown price to… major Tory Party donor David Ross. Who thus made money from his own family company going bust and its pensioners being shafted.
Inexplicably, major Tory Party donor David Ross was not disqualified as a director of other companies by the Insolvency Service when Cosalt, of which he was a chairman, went bankrupt.
About 7% of Ross’s wealth would pay the entire Carphone Warehouse staff being made redundant for a year. That of course will never happen because it is absolutely contrary to the model of capitalism currently operating, in which the ultra wealthy view companies as sources of short term wealth extraction and feel zero connection to the workforce.
There is room to be congratulatory of Rishi Sunak’s active interventionism in the face of the economic crisis caused by the reaction to coronavirus. Many of his interventionist measures are very good, in particular in subsidising wages. It has been rightly and widely noted that to date there is not enough to support those self-employed in the gig economy, while to rely on universal credit to support anybody in crisis is plainly insufficient. But I am here more concerned with the larger macroeconomic measures. Quantitative easing as ever will merely push more money into the financial institutions for them to looad into financial instruments of zero real economic benefit.
The vast bulk of the £330 billion business bailout will find its way in huge tranches into mega-companies. The airline industry has already requested £7.5 billion, to give just one example. That is a series of simple large cheques for an overstretched civil service to write. I strongly suspect that the loans to small businesses, started today, will be slow and bureaucratic and difficult to access. They will be subject to bank interest – the bankers always win – which for a period will be paid by the taxpayer. Many of these measures when you analyse them are in the long term more transfers of money from the taxpayers to the banks.
It has been widely noted that money is suddenly magically available which was denied to industrial strategy and to the NHS for decades. But do not be fooled; this is not a conversion to Keynes by the Tories. In bailing out the airlines, Branson is not going to be asked to put back one penny of his personal wealth, and nor is David Ross nor any of the other billionaires. Those who have made vast fortunes in our ever-expanding wealth gap are not going to be asked to put anything back into the companies or system which they exploited. Massive state subsidies will predominantly go to the biggest companies and benefit the paid agency of the bankers. You and I will pay. The taxpayer will ultimately pick up the tab through what may prove to be another decade of austerity imposed as a result of another transfer of wealth from us to banks, financial institutions and big companies. The small and medium companies which will go to the wall – and a great many will – are going to provide rich pickings in a few months time for the vultures of the hedge funds and other disaster capitalists.
It is fashionable to write articles at the moment stating the Government has discovered the value of socialist intervention. I suspect history will show that nothing could be further from the truth.
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My understanding is that the self-employed will only have access to Universal Credit if they and/or their partner / spouse have savings of less that £16,000. Meanwhile millionaires and billionaires are able to ring fence their wealth and are demanding massive amounts of public money.
Companies will likely reduce or suspend their dividend payments. This, together with the stock market crash, is going to badly hit pensioners and pension funds. Those with income draw-down pensions will be particularly affected, especially if they have to sell investments while they are at rock bottom prices. The number of pension funds in deficit, and the size of these deficits, will skyrocket. The UK’s pension debacle of recent decades has just gotten a whole lot worse.
IN the US, Goldman Sachs have inexplicably awarded their CEO a 20% pay rise. I cannot see how that is anything other than criminal malfeasance, but as we all know, GS do not answer to the law, to due process, nor to the EU rules for joining the Euro……
And Boeing gave their fired chief executive a $50 million or so payout to leave….
Since the times of Thatcher we have been told the “wealth” creators are to be worshipped, as they kindly let a few crumbs trickle down to the plebs.
Now we are seeing that the real heroes in our society are the health creators, not the wealth creators.
Health creators are not doctors or nurses, Margaret.
None of that bunch know anything about healthy living, they just know how to diagnose and treat the sick and dying.
Healthy living is about embracing healthy diets, regular exercise, healthy social interactions, building healthy buildings, looking after soil the world other.
Absolutely nothing to do with medicine.
Medicine needs to become a Tier 1 subcontractor to healthy living, instead of the OEM behemoth with too much influence.
‘over’, not ‘other’.
You are correct universal credit , housing benefit, council tax benefit all have a savings limit of £16,000 over which you get zero
I agree with C. Murray’s assessment which I would sum up in the well known slogan “It’s the economy stupid!” In order to hide the economic agenda, they exchange cause and effect and hype up the Covid-19 epidemic as the ultimate threat.
Here is an example of how well that is done:
I read a bit of German press and Italian press.
I think the readership of this site is aware of the political use of Press Campaigns worldwide. The character assassination of Julian Assange is a case in point.
No one is infallible and we can be led by the nose by the press: ‘Iraq has Weapons of Mass Destruction’, ‘Iraquis are throwing babies out of incubators’, etc.
It has been made evident to everybody that there is a devastating pandemic.
As things are, the German government has apparently not taken strong enough measures as of yet to stop its people’s free interaction because its federation-based constitution with power divided to individual regions, somewhat impedes it implementing in full, the drastic measures being adopted elsewhere. Therefore the subtle streamlined Goebbels machine – which is the main stream media – has to keep boring into the mind of the ‘Volk’ to spread the sentiment of a deadly pandemic – which is non-existent. Annual seasonal numbers for flu-related deaths has not been exceeded – no, not even in Italy. Way to go to reach the 14,000 norm.
Here is a subtle example of how the understanding of a people is being manipulated.
This is a paragraph from the ‘Stuttgarter Zeitung’ of the 22nd March but one should bear in mind that this is a line taken up by the mass media – worldwide – using similar methods to create false assumptions.
In the last of the three sentences of the quote, the newspaper springs to pushing an outright lie:
[startquote]
‘Rom – In Italien sind innerhalb von 24 Stunden fast 800 weitere mit dem neuartigen Coronavirus infizierte Menschen gestorben. Die Zahl der Todesopfer sei um 793 auf 4825 gestiegen, wie der italienische Zivilschutz am Samstag mitteilte. Damit wurden 38,3 Prozent der weltweiten Corona-Toten insgesamt aus Italien gemeldet’.
[endofquote]
For non-German speakers, what it says is:
‘Rome – In Italy within 24 hours, almost 800 further people infected with the new type of Coronavirus have died. The count of the victims has risen by 793 to 4825, as reported by the Italian Civil Protection on Saturday. This means 38.3 percent of worldwide Corona dead are reported from Italy’.
Innocent enough – or is it?
Well, the problem is that they just forgot to mention an important fact from the Press Conference held on the 21st March, given by the Instituto di Sanita Superiore and the Italian Civil Protection Organisation from where the numbers in the first 2 sentences come.
What was actually said at the Press Conference on 21st March, was that at this point in time, it is not possible to determine what the causes of the deaths were, in all cases up to the present – apart from 3 (THREE).
So, the third sentence in the newspaper is a lie. A newspaper should not add up unconfirmed causes of death and present them as fact.
Once again as during the previous press conference given earlier in March, it was confirmed that that the average age of the deceased is around 80. The average age of people testing positive is 63.
In other words the lockdown of the country serves to save the lives of people whose health is already compromised by advanced age accompanied by life-threatening diseases such as Diabetes, Cancer, Heart, Renal failure and others dangerous conditions which the patients were struggling against over a period of time. The Covid-19 virus causes respiratory difficulty and as a consequence I understand, since the I.S.S. says it, many of the deaths are in actual fact caused by Pneumonia setting in.
Sources:
Italian Press Conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VS4uGFyNu48
Stuttgarter Zeitung: https://www.stuttgarter-zeitung.de/inhalt.coronavirus-italien-meldet-fast-800-tote-an-einem-tag.1968314f-f52f-45a9-90b0-33b8b2d79ffe.html
I’m not sure the families of the deceased will appreciated the semantics …
Goodwin …perhaps a read of this excellent article from peter Hitchens might go some way to alleviating your media stoked hysteria. To put the dangers corona virus into perspective, deaths due to flu-related complications in England alone averages 17,000 a year, In 2014/15 there were 28,330 deaths – all of which passed relatively unnoticed by both government and media. Frankly some news editors should be jailed to protect the public from mass hysteria, especially those of the Daily Mail website.
https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2020/03/peter-hitchens-is-shutting-down-britain-with-unprecedented-curbs-on-ancient-liberties-really-the-bes.html
I know plenty of medical staff who are horrified at the rate of infections in London hospitals and how people go from ok to dead rapidly.
By all means point out that govts will exploit this pandemic. Please demonstrate how people will throw their liberties away without proper thought.
But please don’t downplay the virus as nonexistent. That is simple not true. Many people who comment on here, including Craig are in high risk age or health groups, you are at risk, and this won’t be something that will be an unknown media other, in 12 weeks we will all know about how serious it is. And some of the writing here will look naive at best.
What you are describing in London is exactly as described in Wuhan. Wuhan is already out of it.
There is nothing different in London to anywhere else. It is just closer to home.
” I know plenty of medical staff who are horrified at the rate of infections in London hospitals and how people go from ok to dead rapidly”
Nothing new then. From personal experience and observation that has long been the case in NHS hospitals, especially for people over 70. But now they can blame coronavirus. I’m not yet in that age group but, believe you me, if I were, I’d rather ride out the infection at home than in a hospital.
Whilst not wishing to take anything away from the good ones, many doctors and nurses are arrogant incompetents whom I wouldn’t trust ‘if my life depended on it’.
@shatnersrug
Get a grip
Seasonal viruses kill many at this time of year in the vunerable demographic.
An unfortunate fact of life
Flu kills more worldwide than this covid 19…and given there is no actual foolproof test for it…it could be flu that is actually killing the vunerable.
It looks like the forced recalibration of the broken and otherwise irreparable global monetary system has just begun, all on the back of a potentially engineered pandemic. The pandemic itself will not be the place holder in history, rather the opportunist, gIobaIst directed, political reaction to it will. Fragile economies and corporations will go bust, once buoyant businesses will be seized by the banks for pennies on the pound, airlines and utilities will be nationalised. Throughout all this the bought and paid for media have been acting like ringmasters of hysteria, ensuring it all goes to plan. If you are in any doubt about this scenario being played out, take time to look up ‘Event 201’, an international exercise in October 2019 simulating the effects of a pandemic, the virus chosen for the event? you guessed it, coronavirus.
I rather suspect you are correct.
The Mighty Wurlitzer is at work again. We are presented with fake hospital scenes on TV, fake social media videos featuring people collapsing on the streets, the deliberate promotion of scare-mongering web-sites and youtube videos while claiming that such sites are being deplatformed. The virus data is being presented by the W.H.O, CDC and media in ways that are clearly designed to be misleading and the WHO and CDC ABSOLUTELY know this. And the way we have implemented and restricted testing also appear designed to prevent the accumulation of useful data, and obfuscate the true characteristics of the disease.
Civilization itself cannot exist without truth. And truth is under attack from every quarter these days.
The only way that such measures can be ‘socialist’ is by actual acquiring the companies rescued, or acquiring shares of these companies to the nation. This is called Nationalisation. But the alternative term ‘bailout’ without control is exactly what you describe, transfer of money from the taxpayer to the rich. Brown did the same thing when he bailed out the banks but without controlling their behaviour or benefitting from the nation.
“he bailed out the banks but without controlling their behaviour or benefitting from the nation”
With all due respect, bailing out the banks and benefitting the nation were mutually incompatible aims. Either you transferred wealth from the nation to the banks or you didn’t. If you didn’t transfer at least some wealth the banks would have been bankrupt. I agree that Brown might have opted to transfer less wealth, in which case the cost ot the nation would have been smaller. But it would still have been a cost rather than a benefit.
You are right on the nail, Craig, have touched the matter with the point of a needle again. rem acu tetigisti It’ll all just be trousered by the usual suspects.
Has anyone else noticed the Chancellor bloke sounds just like Blair, close your eyes and it could well be him, his adenoidal diction, intonation, phraseology the lot, did they go to the same schools, the same voice coach? It’s quite eery. Just as Margaret Thatcher sounded just the same as Ted Heath but for a slight increase in pitch. Will we ever be rid of this sinister clique? They just regenerate, like an evil version of Dr. Who.
Wow! I just went and listened (with eyes closed) to a recording of him speaking and you are absolutely spot on! He sounds EXACTLY like Blair, even down to the slight accentuation of the letter ‘S’. Haha, definitely uncanny, thanks for bringing it to notice Tony! Not really any benefit in recognising it, but hugely entertaining nevertheless!
I do not see the similarity with Blair, more like an Etonian six former made good, He is the pliant apprentice coached and nurtured by Cummings to appear wholesome and untarnished by any past.
Blair appeared exceedingly ‘wholesome and untarnished by the past’ at first. Before it became apparent that he was in fact anything but wholesome. But the comment related to their speaking voices. In a Blair soundalike competition Sunak would beat past master Rory Bremner by a considerable margin!
One of the hardest lessons to learn, for most of us, is that some of those who sound kind, friendly and caring are in fact heartless psychopaths.
“Will we ever be rid of this sinister clique?”
Not until enough people stop believing the lies. Right now, most people still believe that “their party” has the right ideas and “the other party” is the evil one. Only when people begin to understand that parties (all parties, any parties) by their very natures can never be part of the solution will we ever be rid of them.
This is a spiritual battle we are in. A battle for souls, truth, morality, free will, and the right to exercise one’s conscience. And we have guides: men like Ghandhi, or Buddha, or Jesus Christ. I hesitate to express things this way because I don’t exactly believe in God or the Devil – or at least not the way they were explained to me when I was a child. However I think now that God may or may not exist as an actual being; but if he doesn’t, then he must exist as an ideal and that ideal embodies the principles by which humans must organize society if that society is to lead to fulfillment for its members. And right now the world is ensnared in lies. The devil’s lies if you like.
There must be an end to war, theft, and corruption, and above all an end to the idea the end can ever justify the means, or that violence should be used to compel people to behave as you wish; an end to power as an ideal, and a recognition that wielding power over others is intrinsically evil.
.Germany has said they will not allow any foreign takeovers of German business during this period.
I wish I could say that a single UK politician would stand up and say the same for Britain. Unless of course the takeover were requested and not as a result of banks calling in the liquidators.
There really is mass insanity being infused into the people.
One Scottish nurse has said that folks going ski-ing at Glencoe last week should be charged with ‘attempted murder’. Now I am not a nurse, but I have 55 years of knowing what makes a body resistant to disease and what makes it prey to opportunistic pathogens.
A healthy diet, healthy exercise, sunlight and social contact makes you happy, relaxed, free of stress and in possession of a functioning immune system.
Cooping yourself up indoors, vegging out, eating preprepared meals from Tescos, drinking IrnBru, six packs of Heavy and glueing yourself to the TV is going to stress you out, deprfess your immune system and make you susceptible to illness. And we all know that the vast majority of CoVid19 ‘cases’ are loaded up with several other illnesses when they present.
So I want to see charges of attempted murder brought to those who say that enforced incarceration is healthy.
It is not, it is absolutely the opposite of healthy behaviour.
And telling children and the U40s to submit to such nonsense should see disbarment from any medical services employment.
Treat people like adults and tell them to take exercise, but to maintain distances of 3m from others. Walk, cycle, go for a run in the Campsies, whatever.
But do not booze up in front of the telly eating junk food.
Rhys
It seems to me that you are ignoring that this is a highly contagious disease. The way for dealing with infectious diseases is isolation not spreading germs around. Each person who gets infected does not only endanger themselves but places a strain on the health service and transmits the disease to others. Carelessness kills.
In case you believe that this is just another more serious form of flu then it seems to me that you have not been following the events in Italy where deaths surpassed those in China, and where the dead remain unburied.
SA…Stop watching Sky/BBC fear porn. It’s highly infectious.
grafter
Stop looking at conspiracy websites that tell you this is just another flu.
I am perfectly aware of what is going on in Italy. I also follow what has happened in China, South Korea, Singapore.
Tell me that China, Singapore and South Korea are all dropping down dead.
In China and Korea they got over it with draconian lockups. Moreover the chines could build a new hospital and equip it in a week. We can’t do that in two years.
Do you trust the WHO?
No, in Korea there was NO draconian lock ups. Go and do your research.
They did not lock up ANYONE. They tested everyone with symptoms, then tracked them to make sure they were not potentially infecting others.
There has been NO LOCK DOWN AT ALL in South Korea.
Rhys
You are quite right. Their policy was aggressive testing and tracing and isolation of contacts. Apologies. But please read my comment about an analysis by a group below.
SA…If you believe China built and equipped a hospital in a week then I can introduce you to a man with a bridge for sale. All they did was build a warehouse to put beds in.
Spencer Eagle, have you seen any British hospitals lately?
Stay calm about the virus but worry more about the mass panic.
Suggest you read this:
https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/
Have to agree. This is the most useful thing I’ve seen.
Agreed Rhys. The holiday mentality will soon wear off and the overweight Sky/BBC watching brain dead sheeple may begin to see light. Won’t hold my breath though.
” A healthy diet, healthy exercise, sunlight and social contact makes you happy, relaxed, free of stress and in possession of a functioning immune system. ”
The sort of stuff you get from the anti-vaxx movement.
It’s not the going out and getting exercise which is dangerous it’s gathering in large groups which is what the nurse, and others, have rightly been complaining about.
Have you ever been on a ski mountain?
Where do they gather ‘in large groups’?
You can easily say keep 2 m apart in lift queue lines and lift ticket purchase linees and you can limit chairlifts to one person if you are that paranoid.
There is NO requirement for ‘social gathering’ going ski-ing and if you had ever been ski-ing regularly, you would see that the risks are absolutely minimal.
Going on tube trains in London, cramming into night clubs in Glasgow, that is dangerous.
Going up a mountain has as near to zero risk as anything on earth.
Going to a skiing resort entails air travel through airports, staying in cosy chalets, having meals with others apres ski transport to and from ski slopes. All of these activities involve getting together more than 2 m apart, it is not the skiing activity.
Of course travelling in the tube must be one of the worst places to get infected, but at least some of it is essential.
Nothing is essential, except for breathing (regularly), adequate warmth, drinking (occasionally), and eating (even more occasionally).
“Going to a skiing resort entails air travel through airports, staying in cosy chalets, having meals with others apres ski transport to and from ski slopes.”
In Scotland?
Queuing for the ski lift and in the bar or restaurant afterwards to name but three. You can skip the bar but you’ve still got to eat.
https://www.stylealtitude.com/images/queuesweb.jpg
Wasn’t it on a skiing trip that Covid-19 made an early outbreak in Europe?
It’s astonishing how stupid and irresponsible people are being – insisting on their god-given right to infect themselves and others, overload the healthcare system due to their selfishness, and end up having all of us on compulsory lock-down because of their idiocy. And they advocate it right on this blog, when taking a break from passing on BS disinformation from cranks online.
“And they advocate it right on this blog, when taking a break from passing on BS disinformation from cranks online”
Exactly, and that amount of BS is incredible in some websites that claim to be independent media but instead full of crackpots.
How about taking your own food supplies or eating when you get home? It’s perfectly possible to queue a safe distance apart, it just makes the queue longer.
“Wasn’t it on a skiing trip that Covid-19 made an early outbreak in Europe?”
Not in Scotland it wasn’t.
Rhys, you may not last very long
Hey – what’s wrong with IrnBru? 🙂
Suspect you will be proved correct.
I am personally most amused by the fact that, having got Brexit done, Boris was instructed, against his better judgement, to implement a major shutdown of the UK by Emmanuel Macron (according to the Beeb)!
( https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51997717 in case you missed it)
Boris got Brexit done? Not yet, no trade deals have been made with anyone, nor are any likely to be made in the next 6-12 months. Brexit will likely be postponed if not cancelled.
As to Macron, he is just saying to Boris, we do not want your germs thank you.
Brexit might be postponed? You mean we might have to reapply to join? Can’t see it being wise to have a referendum under the current climate.
There’s a problem with modern capitalism, to be sure, and it’s encapsulated by the kind of thing described above. However, I believe it goes much deeper than just “capitalist are greedy” (which, I’ll allow, most are). It goes to the social and demographic changes that have occurred in western societies over the past fifty years. The German economy, for instance – historically, the most powerful on the continent – was always characterized by the presence of a huge, vibrant and fecund middle layer of businesses, not of the order of the BMWs and the Volkswagens, perhaps, but still large enough and plentiful enough to be able to anchor commerce in the smaller provincial cities and employing over generations members of the same families in their industries. Crucially, most of those medium businesses were themselves family owned and run, and taken in the round, these factors created – to some extent, at least – a loyalty to the town, the business and the people which is sorely lacking in the modern capitalist. Sadly, this kind of business model is on the wane everywhere, and I suspect the reason for it is socio-political and partially religious, as the family unit breaks down and with it religious observance and the accompanying loyalties, while the personal fulfillment of the individual becomes paramount. What remains are “major donors to the Tory Party”.
The cash-rich Vulture Capitalists are preening their feathers ready to strip the carcasses from the stock markets.
Craig,
“It is fashionable to write articles at the moment stating the Government has discovered the value of socialist intervention.”
My view on a larger scale is that history had ( and – is in 2020 )about to repeat itself.
https://blog.effectivelearning.net/crash-virus-crisis/?fbclid=IwAR1ZhVATG2-5CMuFGQRUVwmcBopdkJtGx9VhHj5FsvJuXB1zFth60Sa9zHA
Good piece. Thanks.
I see that Easyjet are paying a dividend of £170M+ to shareholders – including £60M to Sir Stelios. Meanwhile, customers like me are told that we can’t have refunds for cancelled flights, but we can rebook for a later date without paying an arrangement fee, but paying any difference between old and new tickets. I just want my money back, please, as who knows when travel will be available?
Breach of Contract. Take them to court (when the courts re-open), if they don’t do a pre-pack first.
I see those luminaries of compassion, human dignity and peace on earth are one of the early beneficiaries of the CoVid19 hysteria:
https://www.salisburyjournal.co.uk/news/18213122.porton-leading-way-developing-coronavirus-vaccine/
So what has Porton Down used THIS time to get Boris Johnson to bung them “£20m?
Did they threaten to smear a more virulent strain all over England if Boris did not bung them millions??
Well????
Rhys – I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that Port Down invented Coronavirus – and then they started filling their trousers when the effect was more than they bargained for.
No, James: Coronaviruses are natural viruses in nature, but there has been extensive research done in labs the world over to understand how they work and, one assumes, how to weaponise them.
The Pirbright Institute in Woking is arguably the UK leader in this research, but you could certainly imagine Porton Down tapping into their expertise to develop the weaponised versions.
I would wager heavy money that someone engineered Swine Flu virus to be more virulent before releasing it in China in 2019. There are many stories about how drones were used to spread the virus. I am not saying they are definitely true, but I am very minded to believe they have validity.
Suggests that US Trade War with China includes biowarfare, which is so illegal I do not know how to start saying so. There were talks last year of up to 200 million Chinese pigs being potentially affected, which would be one hefty bit of compensation the US might have to pay out if the ICC ruled them guilty of war crimes.
I would wager heavy money that someone engineered Swine Flu virus to be more virulent before releasing it in China in 2019.
Any scientific evidence for this postulate. Wagers don’t count as evidence.
Wagers not wagners
Speculative scenario:
If one wanted to wage bio-warfare using a virus, it would probably require creating a less deadly version of it to be released earlier in populations considered ‘assets’ and which confers immunity against the weaponised version later released among the target population before the mass of them are infected with the first virus (thus developing immunity.)
Such a plan would leave signature patterns of infection and a leave a record of this distributed throughout the population, easily interpretable after the fact, which could defeat the usefulness of an illegal weapon. And presumably the aggressor could also fall victim to its own weapon through mutation of the virus after release, which could also defeat the usefulness of the weapon.
That’s bad news because all of their phones were ‘unlocked’. Expect 3 and iphones.
IANA Doc nor Angel, but I recommend sleep, darkness, not even the least pinpoint of light in your bedroom or sleeping area after 11pm, use a small penlight torch to navigate or small pluuged in nightlights, for halls, etc. melatonin is good for the immune system, it’s average levels so below eye-level rather than in your face, but don’t blunder around in the dark and end up in casualty with a broken leg, split head, if you’re up for the loo. Eat more protein. Meat, dairy, fish, less, carbs, or both well-mixed together, well-chewed, of course take a daily or every other day, multivitamin, and cod liver-oil. Fruit and veg aplenty, wash everything soak ’em and scrub ’em with a nailbrush, kept just for that purpose, it’s hard work, but worth the effort to cook better meals. Every and fourth or fifth day one iron tablet, to help oxygenate the blood. Don’t let food touch the exterior of the packaging it’s in. Rise early, catch whatever sun you can, an hour, half-hour, ten-minutes even on your face at least, don’t strip-down to your vest, keep warm, wear layers, but allow to open up at the neck from time to time to ventilate, don’t overheat your homes, keep fresh air circulating. Look after yourselves, it’s the only way you can can help others. Simple good-living, booze is basically a poison if taken to excess, cut it right down, you can live without it, keep it for special occasions. Keep your spirits up, almost all will get through this stronger, there is such a thing as society, be polite, be nice to people help people, even people you’d normally avoid, like the err plague, dislike, but don’t put yourself at risk. Others will seek advantage and profit from this, make it instead an opportunity to make the better society, the happier inclusive place, all of us really want, all of us need, be the good example.
Today the sun will rise in the east and descend in the west, what is new in this scenario?
This is England, held together by antiquarian empirical rules laws and regulation. Every election is an invitation to cheat and the voting system is unfair and disproportional.
This is England , same as it ever was.
PROTECT THE NHS is the motto on Liar Boris’s podium. You’ve got to admire his chutzpah! More hilariously fraudulent than the Big Red Bus with £350 million per week for the NHS if we Leave the EU.
Section 76(2)b of the Emergency Powers in the Coronavirus Bill being debated in Parliament today gives him the power to appoint himself Prime Minister for Life.
There’s a list of other worrying issues here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pWHi1hYPV1nvO0LZvhJOf0MFwDt6YVfm/view
It really doesn’t, because the Bill has a sunset clause (length TBD) and, in any event, does not interfere with the supremacy of Parliament.
Leaning again. ‘To be determined’ is an unhealthy and unhygienic habit.
Los’s comment, like mine, was based on the bill as it currently stands. The government’s bill had a 2 year sunset clause, but it was announced earlier today that that would be amended to 6 months. Given how pathetically weak the UK parliament is in relation to the government, it’s anybody’s guess which it will be. All of which I summarised pithily as “TBD”. What else would you have me say?
As you no doubt know, there’s no ‘sunset’ clause on large parts of the bill. And this 330 page document pre-dates the current crisis, whatever that actually is, given various conflicting official reports and data. This bill is a wish list for ripping up civil and human rights. It’s bullshit. An excuse to write democracy out of the law.
“It really doesn’t, because the Bill has a sunset clause…”
Yeah, like the PATRIOT Act. Which is routinely renewed by the rubber-stamp Congress.
Complaining that Parliament is weak – which it is – is not the same thing as saying that Johnson could make himself PM for life. He might be able to get Parliament to, but the coronavirus bill wouldn’t allow him to do that on his own.
unless, of course, Parliament was prorogued.
Proroguement does not affect the operation of the sunset clause (or the triennial acts, for that matter), and in light of Miller II the PM couldn’t prorogue Parliament just to stop it from doing something he didn’t like.
the sunset clause only covers a few of the sections in the bill – most, the most draconian,are due to be inserted into law for ever – watch today’s UK column
https://www.ukcolumn.org/ukcolumn-news/uk-column-news-23rd-march-2020
I’d like to put Ross, Green, Branson, et al, on a desert island, with no one else there (i.e. no populations to exploit) and say “right, let’s see you create some fucking wealth now! “
They would soon become trillionaires by selling each other futures and derivatives.
Just point out that CarPhone Warehouse has not gone bust but just closed the 500 or so stand alone shops it once had. Probably of little comfort to those who are about to be made redundant (been there) but there it is.
” Ross, like Branson and so many others of the “entrepreneurs” that we are taught to worship ”
Speak for yourself.
But woe betide anyone who knowingly or accidentally defrauds the DWP of tuppence ha’penny. They may even make a TV documentary about your nefarious practices. My late father used to say “it’s an ill divided world” In my 67 years I’ve seen nothing to counter that assertion.
That’s from a famous Lancashire song, whose name I forget:
“….this world is ill divided,
those that work the hardest are the least provided….” I think that EP Thompson cited it in the Making of the English Working Class.
Re it’s an ill devided world
It’s by Mary Brookbank, see :https://www.draiocht.ie/blog/entry/them_that_work_the_hardest_are_the_least_provided
The Chancellor’s intervention measures went down like the Titanic with the ‘quiet man’ who is now ‘turning up the volume’ once more with his own intervention advocating that paying people being compensated because of government action will encourage them not to work. Sir Iain Duncan Smith was the man who once said he could live on £57/week if he had to. Well, I suppose most people could if they lived in their father-in-law’s two million pound mansion. Like many of his cohorts he possesses a chequered History and dubious CV and it’s really all we can expect from people like him. I always wondered what a Conservative like him was doing paying a visit to that Easterhouse estate all those years ago, now we know he was laying the ground to attract future working class votes and it seems that his ploy worked.
I never know whether a comment I write is going to be deleted or not these days. But I’ll try.
As well as the billionaires and multi-billionaires who benefit when those on zero hours employed by them suddenly have no source of income there is an even bigger danger from the effects COVID-19 is having on society. It was touched on by Matt Hancock this morning when he said the government will impose regulation to ensure people abide by the guidelines, He talked about the military taking a greater role and late last week was talking about the threat in jargon that was war-like, for example, “Your NHS needs you!” This erosion of civil liberties and the inculcation of new laws led to such events after 9/11 as people being banged away indefinitely or for very long periods, and changes in Coroner law whereby an inquiry can take the place of an inquest. We never get these liberties back when the crisis is over, That is what Ron Paul claimed in one of his more recent articles.
http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2020/march/16/the-coronavirus-hoax
For pointing this out Facebook, through some government-funded “Independent Fact Checker” called PolitiFact, has had his article deemed Fake News, at least the part relating to deaths from coronavirus, though it tries to make it look like the article is fake news. And the following bullshit is attached to the article without permission from the Ron Paul Institute..
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/mar/18/ron-paul/ron-paul-wrong-say-no-basis-coronavirus-death-rate/
I call it bullshit because, as you will observe, there are millions of deaths from flu worldwide every year. Ron Paul is right. What this PolitiFact does is work on percentages. Percentage wise more people are likely to die from coronavirus but the numbers are going to be low, much lower than flu deaths.
Which begs the question “Why more focus on COVID-19 than flu – or car-deaths – or hundreds of other lethal illnesses?” It has panicked the world!
But John, you just don’t understand!
Covid-19 is less infectious than ordinary flu, and also less lethal – that’s why it is so much greater a threat.
It’s worth mentioning that Ron Paul is a medical doctor.
I believe he is/was an ophthalmologist who probably knows noting about epidemiology. Would you want him doing your heart transplant?
“I never know whether a comment I write is going to be deleted or not these days”.
No doubt it has occurred to you already; but I recommend keeping a “log” on your local computer where you write all your comments. Then, when it’s finished and (if necessary) polished, paste it into the remote blog.
Instant “Collected Essays”! 😎
Thanks Tom. I do keep a log of sorts, screendumps of comments I make, and sometimes of moderators’ reasons for exclusion. Thanks for the advice. Unfortunately I know of one former commenter, who contacted me personally, who has vowed never to come back to the blog. I find this sad when Craig believes so much in the right of free speech.
Yes.
Meanwhile across the pond arch Reaganite Professor Paul Craig Roberts is openly advocating nationalization for all big businesses who are currently whining about needing billions in bailouts. David Stockman, Reagan’s former budget director just says let ’em go bankrupt.
Either approach seems to me preferable than AGAIN bailing out the scumbags that created the problem and, as you say Craig, robbing the poor and middle class to feed the rich.
Yes. Who cares about a couple of million unemployed?
Failure in the public sector is punished by privatisation, but failure of the too big to fail private sector, is rewarded by unconditional bailout. That is what capitalism is about.
Tell that to Arriva/Northern. They gave their rail franchise back for naught, and are still negotiating with DfT about the contractual penalties they owe.
The only criterion for the state saving businesses is that the state earns a return on their money.
Every bail out should be evaluated ex ante and post facto for ROI.
Investing in investment bankers has zero ROI.
Does it? A number of the 2008 bail-outs earned positive ROI even without taking into account the impact on tax receipts and unemployment benefits.
Corrupted and corrupt. Best to return to his roots and go fishing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ross_(businessman)
Note that he liked being down with the boys – the footballer Lineker, a millionaire and paid in the salary range £1,750,000 – £1,754,999 by the BBC. The cricketer Flintoff is also now considered to be a celebrity.
The Carphone Warehouse board is/was chaired by Milord Livingston of Parkhead, BT, Cameron crony and minister, Dixons, Trustee of Jewish Care, etc etc.
https://www.dixonscarphone.com/en/our-business/corporate-governance/board-of-directors
It’s a common characteristic of these once lauded entrepreneurs, having created the outfits, to then flog them off and go off with the proceeds. . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Livingston,_Baron_Livingston_of_Parkhead
Spot on there.
….’changes in Coroner law whereby an inquiry can take the place of an inquest’…. You refer to Dr David Kelly.
I repeat Milton Mayer. The Germans 1933-45. ‘They Thought They Were Free’.
https://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html
‘ “What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. ‘
I was replying to John Goss.
PS Just had a delivery of dog food to save me carrying it. The driver was Stilyan, a Bulgarian, So was the employee in the bank I spoke to this morning, Lara. Both were efficient, sensible and got on with their jobs.
I would say that almost half of the shop premises in this town have closed down now, probably for good, including the multiplicity of coffee shops. In the silly Seventies and Eighties, it was the place to come for the yuppies to buy their designer clothes and shoes. Anthea Turner was a visitor amongst other minor slebs Their PR outfits told us. All ephemeral.
Actually, Mary it is more complicated than that.
Some very successful entrepreneurs are very successful at founding- and growing businesses to a certain point, but thereafter different leadership is needed. So they cash out and found another one. I have met several like that. I have also met several who are great at coming in to inject systems into dynamic young businesses which need a bit more financial discipline. They come in between years 3 and 7 and stay 3 – 5 years. You might call such folk private equity ,you might call them business owners, call them what you will. They identified their niche and maximised their returns.
It is only when you get to £500m net worth or more that people start getting more cynical.
The growers of SMEs have to remain close to their markets, and so earn an honest living. Which often includes selling the business after working really hard to grow it.
It’s cute that you think that socialism is ever not a mega wealth transfer.
It’s like the NHS: This should be the time when British people realise that the last thing they should want is to put a (Tory) government in charge of the NHS. (And they would if they ever read about any foreign country other than the one country that unequivocally has an even worse system than the UK: the US.)
If you lean any further, you will fall over.
2008 was not a ‘transfer of wealth?’*
The wealthiest did not quadruple their wealth in the last ten years?
*Is the polite phraseology, theft is a more honest characterisation.
Yes. Did my comment say anything to the contrary?
(Whether the 2008 bail-out was a bad idea is a different matter. It certainly should have been bigger and designed differently. But, as I noted above, taking it out on the billionaires quickly loses its charm when people start queuing outside job centres.)
“Taking it out on the billionaires” would not necessarily increase unemployment. Quite the reverse. I well recall that, before Mrs Thatcher came to power, the older generation used to complain bitterly about the overmanning and featherbedding that marked the public sector. This reached its logical conclusion in the USSR, where the was no unemployment. Everyone who was willing had a paid job, even if it was only an obvious sinecure and paid barely enough to live on.
It is privatisation that leads to massive job losses as the wealthy owners and managers “cut out the fat”. If their firms were confiscated and nationalised, employment would substantially increase.
A lot of the arguments actually centre around how much slack you allow in systems for rare events like this one.
YOu know: the NHS has been stripped of all fat whatsoever by accountants never considering having to manage an epidemic. All they cared about was elective surgery and A&E. It was predictable, reasonably, in terms of numbers.
Now you have a situation requiring far more ICU beds and the accountants are emperors with no clothes on. They ran the NHS down so it cannot cope.
But if you retained 100,000 ICU beds all the time a lot of folk would complain about paying too much in taxes.
The British have always had a problem accepting that you have to pay for reliable quality.
I have my own bitter personal memories of the early 1970s. For instance, the day when a colleague and I were instructed to install a new minicomputer in a publishing firm’s offices.
We arrived at 0800 sharp, but were not allowed to touch the equipment until the quorum required by trade union agreements had assembled. There were eight or nine of them, and they were all there by about 1100. (Then, of course, they went off to lunch and came back mid-afternoon).
Those hard-working specialists stood and watched with interest while my colleague and I wrestled the large, heavy cabinets full of delicate electronics up the steps, across the hall, into the freight elevator, to the computer room; and while we did every single task necessary to the installation.
Meanwhile they drank cups of tea, read papers, and conversed. We had to beg them humbly not to smoke, as cigarette smoke tends to crash disk drive heads.
As I think I have said before, everyone ought to read Tom DeMarco’s superb book “Slack”, which makes exactly that point with copious examples.
“…the NHS has been stripped of all fat whatsoever by accountants…”
A human being with zero percent body fat dies. A normal lean adult has about 10% (male) or 15% (female).
“It’s cute that you think that socialism is ever not a mega wealth transfer”.
Your remark makes the same fallacious assumption as most “global warming” graphs.
It all depends where you set your starting point.
Socialism is a “mega wealth transfer” if, and only if, it comes as a revolution to a world in which immense differences in wealth already exist.
However there is abundant evidence – ask any honest sociologist or anthropologist – that all “primitive” societies are run on more or less socialist lines. It makes obvious sense. In a small community, every member is an important contributor and deserves to be looked after so she can go on contributing. Any freeloader or con artists sticks out like a sore thumb and will soon be reprimanded, put on notice, and – should his bad behaviour continue – be thrown out, or even just killed.
Leaving to one side that you think sociologists or anthropologists are ever authorities on anything. There’s a reason why “primitive” societies are so egalitarian: they are all equally at the brink of starvation. By logic of biology there can be no inequality if the total amount of food (and other resources) produced is only just enough to feed everyone.
Anyway, I’m not sure why you think that primitive society – whether a real historic society or some hypothetical version thereof – should be the benchmark against which to judge anything. That kind of Hobbes/Locke/Rousseau thinking has been overtaken by Rawls decades ago.
Finally, you are mistaken if you took my comment to imply criticism of wealth transfers or socialism. I just meant to point out that any system that involves (relatively) large sums of money being taxed and/or spent by the government by definition involves “mega wealth transfers”. Whether that is a bad thing or not remains to be seen. It is certainly the case that increasing the size of these wealth transfers increases the benefits of rent seeking/lobbying, resulting in more money ending up in the wrong pockets.
(For a nice historic analogy: think of how the increasing size of the Roman Empire meant that near-permanent civil war became all-but inevitable. As the empire got bigger, the benefits of trying to take control got bigger too, while the costs of trying to do so stayed the same.)
A certain amount of rent-seeking may well be an acceptable price to pay for a more equal society. And too much inequality may well facilitate rent-seeking in ways that create fascinating feedback loops. But it is uncontestable that socialism (i.e. the democratic kind, without nationalising everything), by definition implies large wealth transfers.
“Coronavirus: The Hammer and the Dance
What the Next 18 Months Can Look Like, if Leaders Buy Us Time”
This long paper is an effort by a number of people, explaining a lot about how this virus has disseminated and how various governments dealt with it. It also suggests that a policy of mitigation will not get over the infection, may serve to prolong the course of disease and its remedy with more costly consequences. The authors admit that not all factors are known but some of the known factors are: that the rate of passing on the infection is about 2-3, that means that each infected person passes the infection onto 2-3 others, leading to exponential rise in cases, and also that crude mortality rates is not the only measure of the potential danger of this disease. One of the crucial factors is that if the number of cases explode, even if they only affect 25% of the population, that 20% of cases will need hospital admissions and 5% will need ITU facilities. This translates to 17 million infected people, 3.4 million admissions and 170,000 ITU beds during the active phase of infection. (my figures for UK but they provide figures for US). Given that the total ITU beds in UK is just over 4000 and that these usually run at a capacity of 80% it is very clear that even buy doubling the number of ITU beds many patients will not be adequately treated.
“Understand the True Problem: Testing and Tracing
Right now, the UK and the US have no idea about their true cases. We don’t know how many there are. We just know the official number is not right, and the true one is in the tens of thousands of cases. This has happened because we’re not testing, and we’re not tracing.
With a few more weeks, we could get our testing situation in order, and start testing everybody. With that information, we would finally know the true extent of the problem, where we need to be more aggressive, and what communities are safe to be released from a lockdown.
New testing methods could speed up testing and drive costs down substantially.
We could also set up a tracing operation like the ones they have in China or other East Asia countries, where they can identify all the people that every sick person met, and can put them in quarantine. This would give us a ton of intelligence to release later on our social distancing measures: if we know where the virus is, we can target these places only. This is not rocket science: it’s the basics of how East Asia Countries have been able to control this outbreak without the kind of draconian social distancing that is increasingly essential in other countries.
The measures from this section (testing and tracing) single-handedly curbed the growth of the coronavirus in South Korea and got the epidemic under control, without a strong imposition of social distancing measures.
https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56
not all of them are as irresponsible as it might seem with the examples mentioned here.
https://www.spiegel.de/international/business/when-larry-fink-met-greta-investors-join-in-calls-for-corporate-sustainability-a-2599da4e-a03c-4882-888c-920e0d33474a
while the NHS is overstretched right now and thousands of ex-nurses have been called upon to help i imagine most of the billionaires are self-isolating in some sunny tax haven, entrepreneur worship has become fashionable (not by me) for what are just circling sharks, it is always the ordinary person that is called upon to clear up the mess in a crisis, the same people that get forgotten about afterwards while the entrepreneurs, sorry sharks move in for the kill.
indeed Jones, and well educated and trained foreign nurses who want to help us out of a shortfall have to go through hoops, sit 2 skills tests, wait 7 weeks and pay 1170,- for the privilege. (today’s ipaper)
It is rumored that it was Cummings plan to stretch the peak to achieve herd immunity and in the process cull thousands of elderly pensioners. Maybe it is also his plan to re recruit pensioned off nurses and doctors for a few toxicly dangerous weeks of work with old or non existent PPE equipment to add to the overall death.
Hilarious on here to see the earlier comments from some who attempt to defend the rotten system.
The coronavirus is going to do less harm to us than the responses to it will. Already, human rights are being cast aside as though they were mere luxuries. Elections have been cancelled. Jury trials have been abandoned. The right to assembly has been repudiated. The tech giants are busily ramping up censorship of so called misinformation. The police have been granted the power to detain anyone on suspicion. And the corporate media so called journalists, such as Piers Morgan, are demanding fascism in everything but name.
Piers Morgan [is] demanding fascism in everything but name.
Must be a day ending in y…
Owen Jones? Jonathan Freedland??
Morgan is fairly mild by their standards.
The one thing that has puzzled me recently over the thoroughly unlikable Richard ‘Branston’ is how he managed to avoid the #MeToo movement? You would be hard pressed to find any group photo from the 80’s and 90’s in which hand wrangler Branston is present and not grappling an unwilling female aloft in his arms. Many of those photos have been mysteriously disappearing from search engines. It must have cost him many millions in gagging arrangements to smother potential complainants.