Stifling Dissent

Smirky Patel uses the #COVIDー19 virus as an excuse to attack legitimate protest. This is the sort of thing that happens in Hong Kong.

She will blame #blacklivesmatter for a new spike in the pandemic. Better than blaming Bojo? And she expects to get away with this tripe? 

Organisers were shown handing out face masks and urging social distancing but Patel turned a blind eye to that fact.

Blindness to facts is a big part of her job of course.

Postmodernism

Postmodernism regards Marxism as a totalising narrative.In effect they reduce Marxists to the role of Max Bygraves "I'm going to tell you a story". This is false.

Indeed Lyotard's denunciation of Marxism as a "grand narrative" has been seen as a totalising narrative in its own right.

Postmodernism grew out of a frustration born of the failed French revolution of 1968 when philosophers concluded they were not only unable to change the world but even  to explain it. And this frustration came about because of the historic betrayal of the French Communist Party which had power in its hands but chose to hand it back to De Gaulle.

It would make sense to try to bring postmodernists down to earth because the real social issues which led to the explosion of working class anger in 1968 still exist and not just in France. The outpouring of anger in the USA at the present time ought to teach them a lesson. 

Socialists can relate to that very real anger but racism is a consequence and by-product of capitalism and Socialists treat it as such.

George Floyd

"Violence Flares Across America" and "Peaceful protests across America" are both true but you can guess which story the media chose to go with.

The police and the national guard can easily turn a peaceful protest into a "scene of violence" without any help from protesters. Then the media can report it as such.

The photo shows the killing of George Floyd. There is a widespread perception in Minneapolis that the police are trained in restraining suspects in this potentially lethal way. The denials from police chiefs are not particularly convincing. If the perception turned out to be true, it is the police chiefs who should be in prison so it is no surprise that they would deny it.

The next photo shows one of the many peaceful demonstrations. The National Basketball Association joined in the protest.

 ABC reported that some police officers knelt in solidarity with the protest.

It is clear that Trump has no solution to police racism apart from brute force and ignorance. Brute force and ignorance are more causes than solutions.

American Socialists have supported the protests. The article in The Socialist is here

After detailing the repeated failures of the Democrats to tackle the problem, they say:


"As Malcolm X famously declared: "You can't have capitalism without racism." Capitalism is a system built off the backs of slaves and the genocide of indigenous peoples. It will not end racism of its own accord. We need a new party run by and for working people, free of corporate influence, that can dedicate itself to fighting against all forms of bigotry and against capitalist exploitation. 

Such a party could help build a fighting anti-racist movement out of the recent protests.

To win, the movement must put forward a bold programme that challenges the racist foundations of capitalism and unites the working class by fighting for the gains we all need - a living minimum wage, affordable housing, universal healthcare, an end to discrimination and violence."

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Derek-McMillan/e/B009FUXHWY

100 words and 101 words

https://101words.org/ 
is a great website for very short fiction.

http://www.100wordstory.org/
is another.

Now it comes to counting the number of words in your flash fiction.
Simple?
All wordprocessing programs come up with varying totals.

I went to https://www.wordcount.com/  and they confirmed my story was 100 words

I went to https://wordcounttools.com/ and they made it 108.

Other sites had various figures between 100 and 108.

https://thewordcounter.co.uk/
concluded that the same story actually had 93 words.

Incidentally I could get https://wordcounttools.com/
down to 100 words by stripping out all the punctuation.

Flash fiction? It's a piece of cake.

NEU Press Release

NEU calls on Government to step back from the brink and stop 1 June school reopening
 
Four prominent members of the Government’s own scientific advisory body have broken ranks to express worries about the safety of wider primary school opening on Monday.
SAGE members Professor Peter Horby, who is chair of the Government's New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG); Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Institute; John Edmunds, professor of infectious disease modelling at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Calum Semple, a professor in Child Health and Outbreak Medicine have all expressed fears about the easing of lockdown.
On the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, Professor Horby agreed with Professors Edmunds' and Farrar’s concerns, saying that SAGE has always been very clear that test, trace, isolate must be fully running BEFORE lockdown is relaxed. The system needs to be tracking most new cases, he said, following them up within 48 hours.
Professor Horby added that SAGE does not have a good handle on the role of children and schools in transmission and stated that returning to another lockdown would be much worse than delaying another two or three weeks until contact tracing is fully up and running.
Professor Edmunds said “There are still 8,000 new infections every day in England without counting those in hospitals and care homes… If you look at it internationally, it’s a very high level of incidence.
“I think many of us would prefer to see the incidence driven down to lower levels because that then means that we have fewer cases occurring before we relax the measures.”
Professor Farrar tweeted: “Covid-19 spreading too fast to lift lockdown in England. TTI [test, trace and isolate] has to be in place, fully working, capable [of dealing with] any surge immediately.”
Professor Semple said: “Essentially, we’re lifting the lid on a boiling pan and it’s just going to bubble over… We need to get it down to simmer before we take the lid off, and it’s too early.”
He also said that levels of transmission and hospital admissions are still too high. "I think a political decision has been made to tie in with when school was due to start, were everything normal, but it’s not normal."
National Education Union joint general secretaries Kevin Courtney and Mary Bousted said: “This public break by four prominent of the Government’s SAGE committee changes everything.
“No-one can now confidently assert that it is safe to open schools more widely from Monday.
“All four of these members of SAGE agree that there must a lower number of cases and an efficient system of contact tracing working before there is a relaxation of lockdown measures. Both these measures are included in the NEU’s Five Tests.
“Opening schools more widely runs the risk of increasing the R rate and therefore the level of risk to staff and to parents.  
“That risk can only be mitigated if contact tracing is running successfully.
“We have made that case strongly to Government – and we have been supported by the BMA and by the Independent SAGE group in our concerns.
“Government replies that it is following the science. But this public break by senior members of SAGE, including by the chair of the NERVTAG committee, undermines that claim.
“School leaders, their staff and pupils’ families deserve better than this.
“Even at this late stage, we call on the Government to draw back from wider opening of primary schools from Monday.
“Instead we urge them to engage in talks with the profession and the unions, including the NEU, about how to open schools more widely once the contact tracing system is shown to be working.”

Mondegreen

I misheard the word Mondegreen at a meeting of singing with friends which seems appropriate.

According to Wikipedia

"A mondegreen is a mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase in a way that gives it a new meaning. Mondegreens are most often created by a person listening to a poem or a song; the listener, being unable to clearly hear a lyric, substitutes words that sound similar and make some kind of sense. American writer Sylvia Wright coined the term in 1954, writing that as a girl, when her mother read to her from Percy's Reliques she had misheard the lyric "layd him on the green" in the fourth line of the Scottish ballad "The Bonny Earl of Murray" as "Lady Mondegreen".

Lady Mondegreen subsequently became the patron saint of misheard lyrics.

One well-known Mondegreen is from Purple Haze by Jimi Hendrix. "'scuse me while I kiss the sky" became "'scuse me while I kiss this guy."

Possibly the weirdest I have come across is "Sparing his life for his pork sausage tea" in Bohemian Rhapsody.

This should read "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States and the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all."  One of my pupils told me she routinely pledged allegiance to an "invisible" nation when she lived in America.

Finally, I must mention the hymn "Gladly my cross-eyed bear."

http://worthingflash.blogspot.com send your flash fiction to worthingflash@gmail.com You do not have to live in Worthing. The blog has writers from all the continents....still holding out for someone from Antarctica.

Hypocrisy

People are shouting 'Hypocrite' at Dominic Cummings in the street. This is unfair. There are hundreds of Tory MPs who voted to cut the NHS and now applaud it. Surely they should not be left out. It must upset them. 

--

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Derek-McMillan/e/B009FUXHWY

TUC get off your knees

The surge in union membership should impel the TUC to get off its knees and sort out this Eton mess of a government.

 I have already mentioned 10,000 people joining the NEU in a week. The abject failure of the government to provide PPE even for front line NHS staff means the Tories have blood on their hands (not for the first or last time). They cheerfully threw 100 NHS staff under the bus. The TUC should be burning with rage and taking this government warmly by the throat.

If there is power in unions (and there is) it needs to be used. It needs to be demonstrated. No more pussyfooting around.

PS The discrepancy in the figures is explained by a decline in male union membership being offset by more female members - in fact, more than offset.



 




Derek McMillan

Truth Twisters

Pride of place must go to this tweet from the UK Civil Service. There will be an inquiry into who sent this tweet but no inquiry promised into #Cummingsgate

The Daily Mail is hilarious. They have so far given Boris the support they lavished on Mosley but this was too much even for them.

The Daily Mirror has a good summary of the situation:

This was not the action of a father doing the best for his children. This was the action of someone who ordered everybody else to stay at home and then bent the rules when it didn't suit him. He is unapologetic and arrogant.

The anger has even got some Tory commentators turning on Cummings. The main fear of Tim Loughton MP was that his constituents in Worthing would be encouraged to flout the rules and "do a Dom". He was not alone in pointing out the sacrifices other people have made, not attending the funerals of loved ones for example.

However, there are many other issues about the government's flawed handling of the C-virus pandemic. Dom's disaster should not obscure the dire situation in care homes and the continued shortage of PPE in the NHS.

When this lousy pandemic is over, the Conservatives ought to face a reckoning. They have made generous handouts to the rich but left many families with precisely no money coming in.








Derek McMillan

Dominic Cummings

Should Dominic Cummings resign over his bending of the lockdown rules?

I appreciate this makes him a hypocrite but isn't that a qualification for a politician?  Surely the rules are just for the plebs and not for the cognoscenti.

Dominic Cummings has been an eminence grise for the prime minister while being a bete noir for everybody else. The reduction of every issue to a pithy little slogan is his stock in trade. Who can forget "Take Back Control" or "Get Brexit Done"

And if he did resign, wouldn't that leave Boris Johnson a bit like Sooty without a hand up his back?






Derek McMillan

"Show not Tell" a totalising grand narrative.

Every publisher will tell writers that their work must "show not tell". This is based on an early years' phrase "show and tell". It is a grand narrative but is it actually true or does it limit writers to producing work which is the same as the model writer and not something of their own?

That demon Dickens used a lot of adjectives in his work. He didn't "ruthlessly excise" adjectives as some publishers have demanded of writers.

And as for that awful Austen. What can we say about her? Do her novels "show" or do they "tell" in a witty and amusing way?

I think a publisher who tells writers to "be yourself" is much closer to the truth than one who has a set formula which they want writers to follow.

What do you think?

Derek McMillan

Tory Retreat

The Tories were hell-bent on charging foreign NHS staff to use the NHS. They have been forced to retreat on this issue because of a wave of public anger which even affected their own ranks.

Already the Tories are retreating from their position on widening the opening of schools. This is a recognition that many schools and local authorities will not open up schools if it is unsafe to do so. 

Keep them on the run.

Trade Union resistance to Johnson grows.

https://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/30782/20-05-2020/johnsons-reckless-back-to-school-plans-threaten-everyones-safety This link is for an article in The Socialist calling for action from the unions to stop the reckless plans of the government over re-opening schools too soon.

10,000 new members joined the National Education Union in a week. This reckless government must not be allowed to get away with re-opening schools before it is safe to do so. 

Already individual heads in Crawley have backed the union stance of not re-opening unsafe schools. What is the matter with the rest of them? Liverpool and other councils are refusing to open schools until it is safe to do so. I would ask the same question: what is the matter with the rest of them?

Meanwhile, the press continues to mislead. The support of the ASCL (Formerly the Secondary Heads Association) for the Conservatives is being headlined as "a trade union supporting the government". It is an association of secondary heads. It is primary schools which are being forced to re-open and the National Association of Head Teachers represents many primary heads (many are NEU members too)
And what have they said?
"It’s important to reiterate that school leaders will still need to make individual decisions about whether it is safe to open their school.
It remains the case that if a school does not have enough staff to care for pupils safely (even based on the new ‘reduced provision’ approach’) then, subject to a risk assessment and consultation with the chair of governors, a full or partial closure may be necessary. Schools will need to keep this decision under daily review and should inform their local authority if they are not able to open."

"

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Derek-McMillan/e/B009FUXHWY

Derek McMillan

Daily Telegraph misleads the public without actually lying (just bending the truth)

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/19/bma-drops-opposition-schools-reopening/ 

Disingenuous mendacity from the Daily Telegraph. The BMA supported the five tests proposed by the National Education Union. The Daily Telegraph says this means they support the re-opening of schools on 1st June. 

And the little words "if it is safe to do so" belie everything the Tory newspaper is saying. If it were safe to re-open schools on 1st June, the NEU, the BMA and the local authorities would be fine with that. The lying Daily Telegraph is simply trying to mislead. 

As you would expect the Daily Mail is even worse. The Daily Mail is socially distancing itself from the truth.

NEU on Re-opening Schools

The National Education Union almost certainly just made history for holding the biggest trade union meeting ever. Almost 20,000 people registered for the Zoom webinar that just finished, where members of the NEU were able to ask the General Secretaries and President questions that were answered live.

There was an expectation that the re-opening of schools would be gradual and measured. We do not think that the government is acting in a measured way. Its approach is reckless.

Most schools are already open. 
The NEU believe:
The government should publish its scientific advice.
It should survive interrogation from independent scientists.
Testing, tracking and tracing would need to be in place.
We would need "R" to be falling.

The checklist for members is endorsed by the GMB, Unite, Unison and the NEU.

 The document from the unions

The UK is not mirroring Denmark. Denmark has social distancing. The DFE does not insist on social distancing.

Denmark has much smaller groups. 15 pupils in UK classrooms cannot socially distance.

Denmark has provided money for the cleaning of schools and has clear guidelines.

In Denmark, a local official has to sign off on re-opening..

Countries with similar levels of infection are not re-opening schools. 

You have an absolute legal right not to work in an unsafe environment. This cannot be overruled by the Government.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Derek-McMillan/e/B009FUXHWY

Oh Mr Gove!

The i newspaper this morning revealed in an exclusive story that the Health and Safety checks are a figment of Boris Badenough's imagination.

 Meanwhile this morning's Mirror castigates Gove for a similar piece of disingenuous mendacity:

Well done to Liverpool, Hartlepool and Wales for not buying Boris's lies and for refusing to be rushed into re-opening schools until it is safe to do so.

A pity other Labour councils have bowed the knee to the Prime Minister on this issue.
Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer - as the old song has it!

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Derek-McMillan/e/B009FUXHWY

Pity the Billionaires

OMG. Those poor billionaires. My heart bleeds for them. I was on the verge of organising a whip-round for Branson when I noticed that the government has already done so by letting him off the tedious business of paying tax.

Write to your MP and Councillors

I have written to my MP, County Councillor and local councillors. The basic message has been:

I am concerned about the proposal to open schools next month. The BMA has supported the five tests proposed by the National Education Union. I believe that it is not yet safe to reopen schools.

Reception Class children are notoriously bad at social distancing.



Yours sincerely,

Derek McMillan

It is easy to write to these representatives. Getting an answer you like is different. The website https://www.writetothem.com makes it automatic. A brief message is all you need.

The five tests are quite clear. The text of the BMA letter supporting the five tests is below. You might need to enlarge it with CTRL and +

Hated by the Daily Mail

"Hated by the Daily Mail" is a badge of honour. If they were saying "Hurrah for the NEU" that would be the time to worry! 

Two Daily Mail headlines:

Profiteering

Thatcher's children are alive and well. For them there is no such thing as society, So when things like Dettol wipes are not available in the shops, they will kindly deliver them to your door.

The only thing is, when they were in the shops they sold for £2 which seemed steep.

On Amazon, they are available for an eye-watering £18.

On eBay, £18 plus £4 postage and packing.

The Prime Minister keeps invoking the war as an analogy with the C-virus. During the war profiteers could look forward to several months in prison with hard labour. Just a thought.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Derek-McMillan/e/B009FUXHWY