SLOWLY CHOKING TO DEATH

I was trying to get myself to do the right thing and contact a doctor.  I am a bit confused about what one is supposed to do nowadays.  So I started by going to what is euphemistical called "my surgery's" web site.  I'm reading through lots of stuff which sounds like promotional sales talk like "we are working hard to care for you, and to keep our staff and patients safe", and "Your health and wellbeing matters to us".  Then I came across this:

"For your protection and ours, if you are invited to the surgery for an appointment, you MUST provide your own face covering, a mask, scarf or something smilar [sic]. We are no longer in a position to issue face masks to patients."

This is where I stall.  I know some people ridicule and belittle me for getting upset about things like this.  I have to try to understand how to cope with that attitude.  Am I little (meaning a bit pathetic) and stupid?  If that were the case, is it something I can do something about?  I think what they think they mean is that I need to be "brave" and walk into the thing I am frightened of.  That makes sense when working on a ship and you have to do things that hurt or are frightening.  I could, I suppose, ignore what I perceive to be a threat and carry on.  But my experience in life is warning me of something bad here.  So I think some more.

It is ridiculous that they come up with phrases like "Your health and wellbeing matters to us" because they are supposed to be a medical centre and they are stating the obvious.  Maybe they think some people don't know they care and they feel the need to reassure them.  But there are other possible motives such as that they are lying.  I think most people are aware of the problem when someone says "trust me".  It begs the question "Why wouldn't I?"  Some would suggest I am being paranoid but I am not - I am simply trying to understand what is going on.

When their focus of attention goes from the patients' health to their own bank balance that might cause them to perceive the need to reassure their patients that they care about them.  If someone wants me to write some software I negotiate a fee because I cannot go around writing software for no pay.  Once a fee is negotiated I pay full attention to the quality of the software.  If I am "incentivised" to write the software as quickly as possible to maximise my profit then the quality of the software is compromised.  The same applies to medicine.  So the very wording on the surgery's web site does not inspire me with confidence, and actually does the reverse.  People sometimes feel they don't know how to detect scammers and I think herein lies some of the clues.  When someone spends disproportionate time and effort trying to convince you they care about your wellbeing you should get suspicious.  The significant word in the last sentence being "disproportionate".

Having clarified some of what causes my alarm bells to start ringing I then encounter that statement saying I have to provide my own face covering.  That is absurd to the point of being insane.  When I read irrational insanity coming from someone I am relying on to have expertise that I don't posses, it becomes an affront, let alone very worrying.

There are multiple issues at play here.  The first being that they are the medical experts and should know exactly what benefits there are from wearing what sort of masks in what circumstances.  Their expressed requirement indicates no such consideration, awareness, or knowledge.  They are simply mandating "a mask, scarf or something smilar [sic]"  As a complete non-expert it has become clear to me that there are important practical differences between different materials used as masks, let alone other issues such as how they fit.  Can I turn up with a motorcycle helmet on?  If that sounds ridiculous (as it is meant to) then by what criteria am I supposed to judge an efficacious mask.  If I turn up on a warm day like this wearing my lovely woollen winter scarf wrapped around my face and sit in a waiting room I will overheat and risk passing out.  If I could acquire an N95 mask I will suffer breathing difficulties, and I might pass out.  (I have COPD and high anxiety - "For people with COPD, face masks are in fact intolerable to wear as they worsen their breathlessness." [Kyung SY, Kim Y, Hwang H, et al. Risks of N95 Face Mask Use in Subjects With COPD. Respir Care 2020;:respcare.06713.  doi:10.4187/respcare.06713])

Then there is the issue of supply.  Where do I find a mask to purchase?  If there is an outlet with an adequate supply why can the surgery not get a supply for their patients?  It would make more sense, if cost were the issue, to purchase the available supply and to sell masks to patients.  Of course, given that that is not the reason, they would risk instigating an unnecessary problem of dissent and criticism if they charged patients at the door for equipment they were demanding they wear.  All of which should soon illustrate, even to those who haven't considered the issues yet, that any of these possible arguments presented so far, are irrational and vacuous.

Give that we are supposed to believe there is some medical rational for wearing a mask and given the budget for the surgery including the property, staff, equipment, and services, in what way could they possibly justify not supplying masks for patients?  I can't see any other reason except the pretence of cost.  If they presented the justification that it was about the cost then not only is that ridiculous and unacceptable but there is a contradiction in that they say they don't care what sort of face covering you use.  If it doesn't matter what sort of face covering you use then there is no suggestion of any significant cost if they supply cheep paper masks.  Surely no one can make coherent sense of this.  They say "We are no longer in a position to issue face masks to patients."  Why not?  Were they providing masks for patients previously?  That sentence implies they were, so I really want to know what has caused the change.

Then there is the issue of power, control, and hierarchy.  What they are saying really is that, quite regardless of any efficacy, they demand that you wear a mask to symbolise your agreement to do whatever they demand.  They are actually demanding evidence of my subservience to them.  This is exactly what was going on as the Holocaust gained traction in Nazi Germany.  Wear this colour triangle.  I do worry that people may think I am making a mountain out of a mole hill, but actually I am trying to figure out what this is all about.  I am not particularly concerned about this one issue in isolation; I am concerned to put the various pieces of the jigsaw together to begin to understand the bigger picture.

When someone phoned me from the surgery some years ago saying that my daughter needed to come in for her vaccinations I asked which ones.  Their response was "all of them".  I enquired further saying she had had some vaccinations so which ones are they talking about.  It got to the point of me asking the nurse(?) what vaccinations are on her medical records and I was told that was irrelevant because their records were not complete.  I suggested I come in and discuss these (apparently VERY important) issues with the doctor.  The nurse{?) reacted by saying "I can't deal with people like you." and put the phone down.  If no one can deal rationally with the question of vaccines then who is going to tell me, with any real knowledge, authority, and integrity why they can't supply masks?  They have made it explicitly impossible to trust them.  They have created a layered structure of hierarchy where the people at the bottom (you understand that hierarchy of wealth that we have acculturated - it used to be that the doctors and nurses were at the "top of their profession" and the likes of managers were "lower" in the hierarchy) - the medical staff -do not know or understand the reasons for the orders and edicts being handed down to them.

I understand to a significant degree how all this junk happens psychologically and sociologically but I do not know what to do about it, nor why so many people fall so enthusiastically into ridiculous compliance to keep their job when the rules and edicts are evidently stupid even to them.  This situation is declining rapidly and hanging on to notions that things will get better is delusional.

I genuinely believe there is no way out of what is befalling us except via a most terrible holocaust.  Although I could wish people could effectively wake up and begin to push back against the insanity, all the evidence suggests they cannot or will not do that.  It was only six months ago we had a general election and the Labour Party went to the trouble of presenting an exceptional and detailed manifesto and a costing model which clearly outlined highly practical ways to stop the decline.  The majority of people did not read that manifesto.  Instead they preferred to vote for a well known liar and charlatan called Fucko the Clown.  Fucko the Clown and his circus presented no plans of any scope or substance - just "Get Brexit Done".  It was clear to me they were aiming for a dictatorship at the time, and the evidence is unfortunately continuing to support and strengthen that interpretation.

I will not be attempting to steel myself to walk into this particular battery cage today.  I prefer to sit here bleeding and in pain.  I am far too distressed and poorly to attempt to see a doctor today.

Afterthought:  Having re-read this muse I feel a lot of people might summarise it in their mind as a "mask, don't mask" issue related to medical health.  It is not.  The questions and issues around the medical efficacy of masks is a totally different subject and I would like to feel confident in the experience and integrity of experts to advise me on that matter.  The above reveals the utter incoherence of the actions currently being taken by medical centres up and down the land.  It is about the difference between someone informing and helping me, and someone ordering me about for their benefit at my expense.

CLAPPING FOR ATOS

Clapping is the new school star chart.  It is a form of social coercion.  As soon as I heard the first clap for the NHS I knew what was happening.  It has taken ten weeks for NHS workers to begin to combat the collective pathos of the clap and to feel brave enough to attempt to point out that it has some inherent problems.  They need respect and decent working equipment and conditions.  Clapping has been encouraged by the privateers and the neoliberal oligarchs.  It creates a false environment where workers are under more pressure to not complain.  It is putting them on a precarious, and cheap, pedestal.

Until the intentional deconstruction of the NHS, nurses and doctors had serious respect in society.  They worked hard for it too.  It has been a deliberate policy to downgrade them and to create a degree of discontent in the population.  This weakens their position in society and facilitates the narrative of privatisation.  Were there any meaningful appreciation of their role their pay would have immediately risen.  Their working conditions and, significantly, the tools of their trade, would have been upgraded and reinforced.

I understand completely that for many individuals it is like signing a petition - it seems the only thing they can do to show their support.  I don't object to that at all.  It's why I forgive Jeremy Corbyn for joining in - but at least he makes it overtly clear they should be paid better.  Have people learnt nothing from the hijacking of Remembrance Sunday and the social coercion to align with the official authoritarian militarised state by wearing a red poppy.  It took people with guts, genuine insight, and some serious creativity, to come up with the White Poppy initiative to oppose the hijacking of what should be, and is for many, a profound reminder of the sacrifice of so many people and the tragic death and destruction of war.  Seeing the likes of Thatcher and Blair, both overt war mongers, at the Cenotaph should really give most people a clue as to where the problem lies.

If you like war, if you believe in violence as a way to deal with life, that is your prerogative and I am not complaining about that here.  I am complaining about the social coercion which is deliberately fomented and manipulated by nefarious individuals for their own ends.  They are preying on the naive and innocent peace loving people.  It is predatory and oppressive.

This is why I find it so worrying that the next kudos cart is clapping for bin men.  When did we stop knowing they are doing an invaluable job?  We stopped as neoliberalism infected society with Thatcher's selfish ideology.  We stopped when we started respecting stock brokers and bankers as role models for success.  We stopped when we became immersed in a society of individualism and began to aspire to selfishness because it denoted success.

Neoliberal ideology has even usurped charity and turned it into a revenue siphon to extract money from well meaning people into the pockets of offshore privateers.  Charity given to the NHS goes in at the top; part of it goes off shore via secretive corporate trust funds, some of it goes into the pockets of extremely well paid executives like Simon Stevens, what is left is shared out to well paid 'business' managers to keep them on side, and none of it goes to underpaid staff.

Unfortunately the majority in the UK do not appear to understand what these rapacious vultures have been building for the last forty years.  Most people think the NHS is what it once was, and are still being told it is: a collective common resource provided by the people for the people; but it is no longer that.  Of course the people that do the work are valuable and doing a good and important job.  But clapping them in this somewhat mishandled crisis will not improve the NHS.  It will not improve the working conditions - as this government has already shown, if you have been paying attention, by, for example, maintaining the freeze on nurses pay right in the middle of this crisis.
One thing this clapping could achieve is to heighten the population's awareness of the crimes being committed against humanity by these pirates and privateers.  But I see little sign of that, or that it will adversely affect the people and corporations orchestrating this robbery.  Clapping is one thing, but it needs serious anger at the crimes against these invaluable and heroic workers, and it needs real action.

If we are not careful we will find ourselves clapping weakly for the unemployed, the disabled, the homeless, and eventually the suicide victims of the broken welfare state.  It could yet start with clapping for Atos.  You think that sounds ridiculous - just wait and see.  The population is being quite deliberately psychologically manipulated - and you are one of the chickens.

MURDER HORNETS KILL MORE THAN COVID-19

I was going to use the headline:
41 DEAD AS MURDER HORNETS RAMPAGE CHINESE PROVINCE
But having written this perusal around the manipulation of figures I decided "MURDER HORNETS KILL MORE THAN COVID-19" was even more indicative of how ridiculous headlines can be.  It is true, because murder hornets did kill more than Covid-19 in Shaanxi.  It is true, but it is so extraordinarily misleading that it is, effectively, a lie.  These things can be fun to play with, but they are becoming a death knell for humanity due to social media, psyops, asymmetric communication, and an intellectually and emotionally damaged population.

The 'headline' for this blog post was gleaned from the most dramatic single statement I could find in a Wikipedia article about the Asian giant hornet, or vespa mandarinia, which is currently being called the Murder Hornet in Click Bait Press.  The actual statement was "In 2013, stings by Asian giant hornets killed 41 people and injured more than 1,600 people in Shaanxi, China."  The first thing to consider is that that is an extreme case so we can deduce that the situation is probably far better than that.  It is also in a particular location where the wasps are relatively common, and it is likely that people go looking for them because they like to eat their larvae.  The second thing that comes to mind is a comparison with the distorted and dramatised figures relating to Covid-19 deaths.  Covid-19 appears, by all accounts, to be significantly more dangerous and deadly to humans than giant hornets.  But it still remains extremely difficult to get any clear or meaningful idea of the significance and impact of Covid-19 from the persistent click bait headlines distorting the very meaning of the information presented.

Shaanxi province has a population of 37.33 million, so 41 deaths equates to 1.1 deaths per million per year.  That extrapolates to 85,800 deaths in the world population in 10 years or 858,000 deaths per century.  Assuming the human population might rise then one could speculate that over 1 million people could die of killer wasp stings in the 21st century.  Of course with this kind of manipulation of figures one could attempt to reduce the target population to specific named areas where more deaths have occurred.  Maybe 20 of those 41 deaths occurred in a village of 2,000 people raising the 'deaths per million' rate to 10,000.  It's not long before you arrive at a figure of 100% of people killed by killer wasps die.  It is equally true to say that there is a very high probability (not one I am about to work out now) that 0% of people you know will die from a wasp sting.  I wonder what quantum probability wave function collapse might tell us about this - or what this might tell us about probability wave function collapse.

Maybe I could find a way to justify the headline "Quantum physics predicts everyone will die from Killer Wasps".  Or better still "Science predicts everyone will die from Killer Wasps".  All I have to do is write a small article explaining that in multiple universe theory there is one universe where that is true and I can claim the headline is factually correct and get some lucrative advertising revenue from my click bait science article.

Taking this to extremes it is true to say "Murder Hornets kill more than 10 times as many as Covid-19" or maybe "Murder Wasps 10 times more deadly than Covid-19".  I just have to explain in the text that 3 people have been reported to have died in Shaanxi province from Covid-19 whilst vespa mandarinia killed 41 people in the same province in 2013.

Warning: Stay Alert in Click Bait World - It's Dangerous Out There.

LOCKDOWN, DON'T LOCKDOWN?

Somehow the narrative is still distorted.  People are rightly criticising the government for relaxing the lockdown.  But they talk about it in terms of it increasing the spread of the virus and consequently being a threat to people's health.  Those are important factors, but the implication is that the lockdown should continue.  There is something wrong with that assumption, and it is that the lockdown was correct in the first place.  I'm not suggesting there should or shouldn't be a 'lockdown', but it is clear the government's version of 'lockdown' was a complete shambles and a failure.

The idea of a lockdown is part of a bigger plan to test, trace, and isolate (amongst other responsible things).  It is also important, if you want to protect people, not to throw them in front of a bus to prevent them being run down by a bicycle.  Money, for some good reason, is a dirty word in our culture.  People actually need money to live.  It is too often banded about as some sort of superfluous gift from heaven.  But it is absolutely necessary, it is vital, to have money to live in the UK.  Cutting off someone's money supply, or revenue stream, can kill them.

For an individual it is better to take some risk to get money to live than to take no risk and no money and die.  Any lockdown should be planned to provide the resources necessary to survive.  A lockdown can't work successfully without that provision.  That is the equivalent of shovelling people into concentration camps, but in this case into their own homes as opposed to expensive 'concentration' camps.  What can then follow is the perception that the prisoners are expensive and non-productive.  A government that can execute an un-planned lockdown cannot conceive of how to fund it.  This inevitably leads to what the Third Reich called "the final solution".  It wasn't planned, but they had painted themselves into a corner.

The functionality of a lockdown is to mitigate the risk of a high death toll from the virus.  If it causes more death than it prevents then it is clearly a bad idea.  Continuing the lockdown, without the rest of the plan in place, is already proving to be more harmful than the problem it was supposed to mitigate.  The government seem to present an image of being almost hard done by, and elicit the most extraordinary sympathy from some of the least educated people in society.  They appear as if they are ordinary individuals who have been unfortunately presented with a very hard problem.  That is not reality.  The government is a massive organisation with almost unlimited resources to prepare, plan, and execute sophisticated social management.

It should now be clear that the government is populated almost entirely by ministers who were motivated to enter politics because of the rich pickings available.  When confronted with an urgent task they are like a drunk captain in charge of a ship in a storm.  In maritime law it is correct to relieve the captain of his command in those circumstances.  These politicians, motivated by wealth, have occupied their time rearranging laws to dilute their own responsibility and to make their job of acquiring wealth easier.  This is exemplified by how they undermined the fabric of the NHS to channel funds to offshore accounts.  They forgot to maintain the ship, and they casually ignored the navigation charts, whilst they revelled in the opulent benefits of the country's wealth and resources.  They are not looking after their 'customers'; they are robbing the bank.

The members of the current government simply do not have the available neurological pathways to conceive of a way to deal with this crisis for the benefit of all.  They are drunk on their own success, and are incapable of understanding that the way to have people remain at home is to fund that move.  Funding it correctly, so that they can test and trace and eliminate the largest part of the problem quickly, so that people can return to work, is simply not something they can think of.  Their first insane thought is "Who will pay for it?"  Really - that is how stupid they are.

The individuals perpetuating, and even fuelling, the crisis of this pandemic do not have to worry about the devastating consequences to the social condition of the UK.  They have plenty of resources to leave the wasteland or simply live in expensive gated communities protected by intelligent and weaponised aerial drones backed up by militarised private security forces.  Take a look at the favelas in Rio de Janeiro alongside the most opulent communities protected as described above.  Take a look at the city of Hebron and its disconnected society in the occupied West Bank of Palestine and how the poor and unwanted population are handled by the Israeli government and their forces.  Then ask why the British military and police are sent for training to Israel.

Any lockdown is only beneficially functional if it is part of a coherent plan.  Simply locking away the plebs whilst hoping that will stop the virus is completely unserviceable.  Given that the government are incapable of handling this crisis, other than to look after themselves, then perhaps another way to create a lockdown would be as a proactive and organised assault on the government.  A national strike maybe.  Somehow take action that is directed in such a way as to produce the necessary response from the government.  But, in truth, I don't see that happening.  The plutocrats have such powerful control over the medium of communication that they can, and do, distort any communication for their own benefit and to the detriment of the people who want to communicate.

I am a problem solver but I cannot solve this problem.  All I can do is keep examining it and attempting to understand some of the inherent issues and contradictions.  There is one fundamental reason I can't solve this problem, and that is because the solution has to be a collective endeavour.  But the public debate about 'lockdown' or 'don't lockdown' is obscuring the underlying problems that this government is creating, by incompetence or design, of not working effectively to mitigate the problem of the pandemic.

NO HOPE FOR HUMANITY

I was talking with my daughter when out of the quiet evening sky I heard the sound of prisoners rattling tin cups against the bars of their cages.  Pots and pans being banged and jeering noises behind the cacophony.  Then it dawned on me.  This was not a prison riot, it was the collective neurosis acting out some bizarre ritual of solidarity with the public display of the collapse of civilisation.  People were stepping outside of their isolation cells to clap and cheer to an audience which was themselves.  Like a distortion of an orchestra playing on the deck of the Titanic or a disturbing inversion of Jewish prisoners singing on their way to the death camps.

This sycophantic pathos, this kowtowing to the angel of death, this obedient display of appreciation for the tortured circus animals, is disturbing in the extreme.  I wondered what the third world war would look like with modern technology and the sixth domain of operations and here it is.

The plutocrats have dissolved the fabric of society, like gallium embrittles aluminium, destroying the inherent strength and integrity, whilst leaving it with all the appearance of being intact.  They tested the system in 2016 with 'Exercise Cygnus' and were completely satisfied that all they had to do was to sit and wait for the next inevitable influenza pandemic.

They had established that there were not enough hospital beds, there were not enough ICU beds, not enough ventilators, not enough testing and tracing capacity, not enough Personal Protection Equipment, not enough trained staff, not enough joined up procedures and protocols, and, pertinently, the health service would collapse.  And incidentally there was no capacity to cope with the cascade of corpses, but that wouldn't matter at that stage.

This was clearly good news for the architects of the controlled demolition of the UK.  So much so, they kept schtum about the findings and, rubbing their bloody hands with glee, proceeded to do nothing but sit and wait.  No wonder they were so keen to stop Corbyn from repealing the Health and Social Care Act 2012, which would put responsibility for the people's health back where it belonged, with the government, with the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care.  Currently the government is not legally responsible for people's health anymore; it is only responsible for providing a health system - whether it works or not.

The doctors and nurses and porters and cleaning staff are underpaid, undervalued, and the majority are struggling to eke a meagre living whilst many have to resort to debt and food banks.  They are on the front line like soldiers in the First World War.  They are decent people who have been wilfully betrayed by their government and the facade of a National Health Service which is infected with the likes of Simon Stevens.  Stevens, who is the CEO of NHS England, works for private insurance company interests and not for the benefit of either the NHS staff or the population that has been deceived about the ethos and meaning of those three letters which are deceitfully still emblazoned on private ambulances and private hospitals - the NHS.

Clapping like trained seals in the streets for the victims of abuse who are still struggling on because they have no choice, is a bizarre exhibition of delusional madness.  I know 'the people' don't know they are cheering the slaughter of innocents by plutocrats waging their own wars for their own interests and entertainment, but that is the reality.  Of course the fact is we are stuck in our homes attempting to reduce the catastrophe that is befalling the UK.  Of course the health carers and auxiliary staff are heroes under these circumstances.  But to be corralled into vacuous clapping by the architects of this disaster is abhorrent.  It is dim witted and ignorant.

I recall an advert, many years ago on the television, of cartoon pigs skipping with joy as they promoted some brand of sausage.  What I would suggest to these cartoon pigs, these clapping seals, these somnambulised troglodytes, these voluntary anchorites, is go back indoors and read about the intentional and planned privatisation of the NHS "by stealth".  Start with Oliver Letwin's 1980 book "Privatizing the World: A Study of International Privatization in Theory and Practice".  It's a shallow and pernicious self aggrandising pretence of sociopolitical economic theorising, but it appeals to neoliberals who are interested in how to run pyramid marketing scams and corporate scale Ponzi schemes.  He then teamed up with John Redwood to co-author "Britain's Biggest Enterprise: Ideas for Radical Reform of the NHS" in 1988.  A pathetic and appalling piece of economic theorising based on limited and prejudicial anecdotal nonsense.  But highly influential amongst right wing politicians gagging for favour from their plutocratic sugar daddies.  You could then put your feet up with some popcorn and soda and watch "The Great NHS Heist" by Drew McFadyen and Dr Bob Gill.  When you have finished that you might want to extend your education by watching "The Dirty War on the National Health Service" by John Pilger.  Once you get the gist of things you might want to brush up on what neoliberalism is really about by watching the exceptional four part series by BarakalypseNow called "This Is Neoliberalism" on YouTube.

If you do begin to realise the scale of this political manoeuvring, this cynical materialistic manipulation by a bestial cabal of self serving psychopaths, the betrayal of humanity itself by these toxic horsemen of the apocalypse, you may just begin to get angry.  And next time you step outside your door to make your presence known you might weep for the sacrificial lambs who are caught up in this manufactured crisis.  You might scream your fury at this government for an unforgivable crime against humanity.  You might promise each other you will never rest until these criminals are held to account and locked up for life.  You might commit to opposing this materialistic culture and vow to never let it happen again.

Or you might just clap because who wants to be the first to stand out from the crowd.