Covid and the Tell-Tale Heart, Part II: Rats and the Sinking Ship

‘Do not adjust your mind, the fault is in reality.’ R.D. Laing Listening to Dominic Cummings speaking at the Select Committee Hearing today has left us with mixed feelings.  It’s a weird one because there is no joy in knowing that, actually, we and many others were right. We sensed this was a chaotic, catastrophic

Covid and The Tell-Tale Heart: Prelude to Dominic Cummings at the Select Committee

This is a strange day; a day when we find ourselves agreeing with Dominic Cummings. He said had better people – ‘competent’ people (Guardian) – been in charge last year, we could have avoided the series of lockdowns.  Okay, we now only kind of agree – phew! We agree that if we had better people

One Man’s Libertarianism is Our Nation’s Authoritarianism

Planned new bills were revealed in The Queen’s Speech last week. They are rather concerning, mostly because some appear to seek to curtail certain freedoms that we are accustomed to in the UK: things that are usually given in democratic countries. Apparently, the proposals are going to ‘strengthen democracy’, but that’s only really going to

The Eton Variant (The One Where Nothing Changes)

Don’t travel to Amber countries, even though there’s no ban. Don’t sit inside with others, even though indoor hospitality re-opened today. Don’t hug anyone outside of your household or bubble, even though you can do a ‘Boris hug’ (and that’s not code for, ‘Get your mistress pregnant/divorce another wife, etc’). We have a new variant

Voting For the Axe

It has taken a couple of days to begin to process just exactly why the average person votes for Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party. It is something of a conundrum for us because we Plague Islanders know just how morally bankrupt, greedy, self-serving, classist and callous he and the party are. Read any of

Things We Lost in the Fire: Part I: Planning, Preparedness, Neglect and Disaster

Introduction Things have been changing here on Plague Island recently. It’s not the big changes that we would love to see, such as a decent and compassionate government taking charge, but there are changes nonetheless. The crippling lockdown we have just (re)lived through is incrementally easing and India is now the country leading the news