Second Wave

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. Stupidity isn't curable but normally by the age of 23 young men (the usual culprits) have met a decent woman (or man) and they stop acting like eejits because they want to hold on to the partner and he or she doesn't like this kind of behaviour. 

Having seen how people are behaving in a pandemic, I reckoned adolescence is probably ages 12 to 40. And it doesn't just apply to men. Then when I see how Westminster politicians are behaving, I realise there probably isn't an upper age for adolescence. 

The most unpleasant sight in politics is watching politicians who can't - just can't - get over party politics and work with politicians from other parties for the sake of the country - any country. Whatever the emergency, they go on bashing away at the behaviour of the "enemy": how else can we explain the media's determination to go on delivering personal attacks on opposition  politicians? Keir Starmer is a bad guy who knew about Jimmy Savile's crimes and didn't prosecute him (not true): Mark Drakeford in Wales and Nicola Sturgeon in Scotland get scant cooperation from Westminster because they are not from the right parties, while opposition politicians go on attacking them. And does Westminster even know about power-sharing in Northern Ireland? Or is it just hoping the Irish Problem will just go away? 

No point asking about statesmanship or working for the common good. Not these days. 

So we stagger on through another crisis with some people still refusing to consider that Covid-19 might actually be a real thing until they or someone close to them dies of it. With pub and club fans unable to live without a drink or a night out for as much as a fortnight. Whatever the infection rates.  

Now that Westminster has offered some sort of plan, we can expect lots of protests from pub and restaurant owners in England that they have invested "millions" in their trade and it's now collapsing. I would so like 5 minutes of these people's time so I can tell them how lots of us have made plans and invested millions in education, in medical and scientific research, in new technology, in hospitals, in farming and fishing, in whisky, in tourism, etc.  

We've invested our time and expertise in building up our communities since the Tories trashed them in the 70s. 

Let me tell them what the poor have always been told: put money away for a "rainy day". What, you didn't do that? And now you and your pub, club or restaurant want a handout from the state? Funny how everyone turns Socialist when it suits them.