Yet another new blog

I'm watching and reading about the after-effects of Covid 19. These involve people who apparently recover well but are left with terrible after-effects that ruin their health and their lives.  Here are some people I know about:  One woman (38), a health club instructor, a Zumba, yoga and Pilates teacher, was leading classes 44 hours a week. Now she can't work. Another woman (31), a professional dancer, has contracted a severe form of Guilain-Barre. After 4 months she can walk again but her future is uncertain. A PE teacher (35) is still off work after 5 months, although he has never taken sick leave in 12 years. The first person I described here is self-employed. The other two are covered by employers' and state health schemes. I hope they all make a good recovery and suffer no long-term ill-effects - or end up on benefits long term. That's no life for anyone.  But I'd suggest that nobody of any age should take it for granted that they can "ride out" the v

I'm going to make a wild guess here.  I am the only person in the UK who read a bit about the pandemic before this one (the so-called Spanish Flu of 1918) and realised there would be a a Second Wave of Covid-19 about 6-12 months after the First Wave. I must be the only one because how else would you explain the fact that the UK government wasted the entire summer doing nothing very much by way of planning for the Second Wave? Or listening to the medical, research and public health people? Or even warning people that the pandemic wasn't over?  There is a phenomenon known among secondary teachers as "So what did you think would happen next?" Adolescents are not good at working out the consequences of their actions. So if you pour a can of juice over the guy next to you and a teacher sees it, there will be consequences. And definitely not the kind you want. But you tend to forget that in the heat of the moment.  I used to define adolescence as any age from 12 to 23. Stup

 In a way, I should be happy that the British Tories are too thick to organise themselves.  I'm reading right now about movements in the USA that are openly or covertly supported by Donald Trump and the Republican Party and their hangers-on.  Boogaloo is the new one.  You can read about it here: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/whitmer-conspiracy-allegations-tied-boogaloo-movement-n1242670?fbclid=IwAR3cwWJLptngSLlDmEUzEVU8L50VsxUfGvSn6vu870_WdUjvLbo_nDOHDuE Americans are good at making up names like this.  Apparently, Boogaloo is another right wing militia group. Some of its members were involved in the planned abduction (and murder?) of the legally-elected governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer.  Sometimes, Republican politicians fail to reveal themselves because they're too scared to declare who they really are and what they really stand for. These days Republicans like Trump are worse than any right wing militias: they are happy to unleash gun-toting nutters on their f