Monday, 29 June 2020
Sunday, 28 June 2020
Saturday, 27 June 2020
Covid19, My Latest Thoughts
Seems to be so much confusion about this Covid19 virus and not catching it but it seems simple to me. Although none of us want to get ill, the chances are that most healthy people won't get seriously ill if they catch it and many may not feel ill at all - although they can still pass it on.
At the start the Government (when the Government finally accepted that it was serious, too late) said that it was important to "protect the NHS and Save Lives". That still applies. What they meant is that they did not want everyone getting ill at the same time, in particular those most likely to need to go to hospital - people with low immunity, elderly people, people with serious underlying medical conditions. That did not mean everyone else was somehow exempt and young, healthy people could still get seriously ill. But most people who reported mild symptoms were simply told to self-isolate as were those with people in their homes that had symptoms. The main symptoms were a high temperature, a persistent cough and sore throat (one or all of them)
Had all the most vulnerable got sick at the same time, hospitals would have been over-run, especially with the lack of ventilators and PPE that the Tories had created.
We were told to stay at home but we could go out for exercise or essential shopping or to work. We were told to keep "social distancing" (should have been called physical distancing) at least 2 meters, not to gather in crowds, wash hands regularly, wash surfaces and door handles etc, wear a mask where possible. All pretty much sensible advice and easy to follow, even if some members of the Government themselves could not do that (Boris shook hands and supposedly got ill) They failed to set a good example.
At the start Boris spoke about herd immunity. That is important because ....
Unless "they" find an effective vaccine, the virus will continue, it will not just die when it gets hot or cold. Keeping pressure off the health services means slowing down the rate of infection
Already millions of people have had Covid19; like I said, many don't even know they had it, many were a little ill or very ill but recovered. Many of those passed it on unwittingly.
So eventually herd immunity plays its part when almost every one has had it and those that will die are either saved in hospital or are dead - sad but true - and others will have some sort of immunity to a particular virus, but of course it could mutate.
At the moment restrictions (wrongly called lockdown, in my opinion) are being eased.. Crowded beaches, shops, streets, schools going back, businesses reopening, travel restrictions eased. Mostly for economic reasons, not health reasons.
This will inevitably lead to a SECOND WAVE and possibly a third wave which will lead to more restrictions. Then when we've all had it, the crisis will stop.
So until then, personally, I will continue to take precautions to protect myself and others, because it makes sense, not because the government tells me to or not.
And to those that
say that the virus is not real, or not so serious, or a hoax, or a
world-wide government conspiracy to control us, I say neither virus
or plot have harmed me, I am not being controlled, I will just
continue to take sensible precautions and if nothing else, avoid the
flu.
Friday, 26 June 2020
Thursday, 25 June 2020
Tuesday, 23 June 2020
Monday, 22 June 2020
Thursday, 11 June 2020
Limitless Wisdom
Prem Rawat:
Why should you know who you are? Because between that time that you are born and the time that you go, you’re going to try to be something. You’re going to try really hard to be something. And it’s not what you’re going to achieve that you’re going to really try for—but it is to be happy; it is to be content—you’re going to try really hard to be content.
I see that in tiny little babies; I see that in grown adults—everybody is going to try to be happy. Whatever makes them happy, they’re going to try.... And not only are they going to try, (like we all do), but we’re going to look towards the outside for our happiness.
But we will try. We will try to be content; we will try to be happy—and here is the irony. Sometimes we will succeed for a fraction of a moment—and then the rest of our lives, we’re going to try to repeat that moment, hoping we would get the same thing out of it again and again and again and again and again....
And some of us will end up filling our lives with disappointment—because we are looking for that contentment through our relationships; we’re looking for that contentment towards the country: “The country will give us that contentment. That, the leaders will give us the contentment; the relationships will give us the contentment.” And when we don’t find that contentment, we end up filling our lives with nothing but disappointment.
And here’s the irony. The irony is that if you only knew yourself, you would realize that you carry in you joy that has no limits. You carry in you the mine of contentment that has no end. You carry in you the lake of serenity that nobody yet has measured the bottom of. You carry in you a tree that gives so much shade—that underneath it, to sit down is the most restful thing a human being can do.
You carry in you a sun that has the warmth unparalleled—that on those cold days, to go within and bask in that sun and feel its warmth—and feel revived. You have in you the ocean of clarity. One dip and the dirt of confusion is washed away. This is who you are. This is who you are—and this is the possibility. That’s why I am here to tell you this.
Two things—I want to tell you this news. And here’s my point of it. What I want to tell you—I don’t want to tell you anything new; what I want to tell you is what you already know. And secondly, I want to tell it to you in a way so that it comes as news to you. That’s my challenge—that what I want to tell you, you already know—because you also have in you, unlimited wisdom.
So, in your life, in your existence, you have to feel the pain; you have to feel the joy. Something inside of you wants to feel happy, wants to feel content, rejects the idea of pain, rejects the idea of sorrow.
So then, who better to look towards, for the source of that joy, than you? The source that you carry everywhere you go? It doesn’t matter where you go in this world, the source you carry in you wherever you go?
That’s what this book is, trying to point to you—and give you some understanding of you, putting the emphasis on you! Because nobody else does. Everybody is; the emphasis is, “You must do this; you must do this. You must accomplish this; you must accomplish this; you must accomplish this.”
And I’m saying “First, let’s put the emphasis on you.” You are the foundation of this building called “you.” You are the foundation of this building called “you”—and when you are weak, so is this building. And when you are strong, so is this building.
Question: “Why does this building need to be strong?” Why does this building need to be strong—because earthquakes will come. Earthquakes will come; fire will come.
This morning I see the rain, rain, rain. Very nice—Madrid needs rain; all this area needs rain—and it’s been tinder-dry. And I’m looking at the rain, thinking about the rain, and I realize—and I still have more thinking to do about this—but water destroys everything man-made. Just, powkh, destroys it.
If the building gets wet on the inside? Forget it. Your electronics? Forget it. Water is a powerful destroyer. And it is also one of the most powerful creators—holds in it those two possibilities; it can destroy; it can create.
You, too have an immense possibility, the possibility of feeling life, of embracing life—of understanding the value of each breath that you take, the value of each day that you are alive, the value of each moment that you have.
And the day you begin to exercise, to practice the wisdom that you have within you, that’s the day you will be wise. And that’s the day you will understand the value of life, the value of being alive.
You do not judge yourself by what you have. You haven’t been taught that. You have not been taught to judge by what you have—you have been definitely taught to judge by what you don’t have. Everywhere. “I don’t have that. And I don’t have that. I don’t have that. I don’t have that. I don’t have that.”
I mean, can you imagine a storefront which has all the familiar things? No, they’re all things that nobody else has. “Oh. No, I don’t have that. Oh, I, yeah, I don’t have that—and I don’t have that, and I don’t have that, and I don’t have that, and I don’t have that.” And now here I come and I say to you, “Peace,” and you go, “Uh-uh, yeah, I don’t have that.”
But you do. You do! You have peace—inside of you! But you don’t know how to access it. You have wisdom inside of you, but you don’t know how to access it. You have love inside of you, but you don’t know how to access it. You have understanding inside of you, but you don’t know how to access it. You have kindness inside of you, but you don’t know how to access it.
You have forgotten that so much is so amazing—for you. That you come here on this earth, not alone, but with peace—that you come with hope, that you come with joy, that you come with understanding, that you come with wisdom. But these are the things that we don’t talk of, we don’t discuss....
What do we discuss? We discuss our problems. You know what’s wrong with discussing our problems, after a certain point? It doesn’t help. It doesn’t help.
If there is somebody and they’re sitting next to me on an airplane and their nose is broken—and I say to them, “Your nose is broken”—and they go, “I know. I know.” And then, fifteen minutes later, I say to them, “Hey, your nose is broken.” And they go, “Yeah, I know. I know.” And then fifteen minutes later, I go, “Hey, your nose is broken.”
After, I think, about ten times, this person is going to be looking for a new seat—because they will be convinced I’m crazy. Right? Don’t you think that would—you would find that obnoxious? And you would definitely entertain the fact that “This person may be cuckoo? Nuts? Keeps repeating, ‘Yeah, you, you know, your nose is broken. Your nose is broken.’”
If you went—if you’re in the airplane, and you, “kkch,” push the call button; the flight attendant comes and you say, “We’re flying.” And she goes, “I know. I know; we’re flying.” Few minutes later, “Ah-brring, brrung,” “We’re flying!”
But that’s what we do! Our expertise is to come up with a better way to express the problem—and still keep repeating it. What about the solution? And the solution, beautifully, lies inside of you.
That’s what, to me, this book fundamentally goes for. It does it in a very different way, using the stories, using the different analogies—but that’s its message: “That you have in you, what you are looking for.” And if you can understand that, your life will change.
Wednesday, 10 June 2020
Statues, Colston and Hussein
Warning that NHS Waiting List could reach 10 Million by the end of 2020
Tuesday, 9 June 2020
So what exactly has protesting accomplished? (Copied)
So what exactly has protesting accomplished? (Copied)
👉🏾Within 10 days of sustained protests:
Minneapolis bans use of choke holds.
👉🏾 George Floyd’s murderer was originally charged with 3rd degree murder. He is now being charged with 2nd degree murder.
👉🏾The other three officers who stood on scene and did NOTHING to help Floyd are being charged with aiding and abetting 2nd degree murder.
👉🏾Breonna Taylor’s Case has been reopened.
👉🏾Louisville, KY’s mayor is ordering an outside review of the entire city police department.
👉🏾Dallas adopts a "duty to intervene" rule that requires officers to stop other cops who are engaging in inappropriate use of force.
👉🏾New Jersey’s attorney general said the state will update its use-of-force guidelines for the first time in two decades.
👉🏾In Maryland, a bipartisan work group of state lawmakers announced a police reform work group.
👉🏾A seminar scheduled in December for KC police that trains cops to kill without hestitation was cancelled.
👉🏾Los Angeles City Council introduces motion to reduce LAPD’s $1.8 billion operating budget.
👉🏾MBTA in Boston agrees to stop using public buses to transport police officers to protests.
👉🏾Police brutality captured on cameras leads to near-immediate suspensions and firings of officers in several cities (i.e., Buffalo, Ft. Lauderdale).
👉🏾Monuments celebrating confederates are removed in cities in Virginia, Alabama, and other states.
👉🏾James Miller resigned from his role in the Defense Asvisory Board at the Pentagon in response to the Secretary of Defense’s support of LEOs clearing out White House protestors with tear gas so Trump could take a publicity photo.
👉🏾Defense Secretary Mark Esper said he will oppose Trump’s threats to deploy federal troops to stop protestors across the US.
👉🏾Street in front of the White House is renamed "Black Lives Matter Plaza.”
Military forces begin to withdraw from D.C.
Then, there's all the other stuff that's hard to measure:
💓The really difficult public and private conversations that are happening about race and privilege.
💓The realizations some white people are coming to about racism and the role of policing in this country.
💓The self-reflection.
💓The internal battles exploding within organizations over issues that have been simmering or ignored for a long time. Some organizations will end as a result, others will be forever changed or replaced with something stronger and fairer.
Globally:
🌎 Protests against racial inequality sparked by the police killing of George Floyd are taking place all over the world.
🌎 Rallies and memorials have been held in cities across Europe, as well as in Mexico, Canada, Brazil, Australia, and New Zealand.
🌎 As the US contends with its second week of protests, issues of racism, police brutality, and oppression have been brought to light across the globe.
🌎 People all over the world understand that their own fights for human rights, for equality and fairness, will become so much more difficult to win if we are going to lose America as the place where 'I have a dream' is a real and universal political program," Wolfgang Ischinger, a former German ambassador to the US, told the New Yorker.
🌎 In France, protesters marched holding signs that said "I can't breathe" to signify both the words of Floyd, and the last words of Adama Traoré, a 24-year-old black man who was subdued by police officers and gasped the sentence before he died outside Paris in 2016.
🌎 Cities across Europe have come together after the death of George Floyd:
✊🏽 In Amsterdam, an estimated 10,000 people filled the Dam square on Monday, holding signs and shouting popular chants like "Black lives matter," and "No justice, no peace."
✊🏽 In Germany, people gathered in multiple locations throughout Berlin to demand justice for Floyd and fight against police brutality.
✊🏾 A mural dedicated to Floyd was also spray-painted on a stretch of wall in Berlin that once divided the German capital during the Cold War.
✊🏿 In Ireland, protesters held a peaceful demonstration outside of Belfast City Hall, and others gathered outside of the US embassy in Dublin.
✊🏿In Italy, protesters gathered and marched with signs that said "Stop killing black people," "Say his name," and "We will not be silent."
✊🏾 In Spain, people gathered to march and hold up signs throughout Barcelona and Madrid.
✊🏾 In Athens, Greece, protesters took to the streets to collectively hold up a sign that read "I can't breathe."
✊🏾 In Brussels, protesters were seen sitting in a peaceful demonstration in front of an opera house in the center of the city.
✊🏾In Denmark, protesters were heard chanting "No justice, no peace!" throughout the streets of Copenhagen, while others gathered outside the US embassy.
✊🏾 In Canada, protesters were also grieving for Regis Korchinski-Paquet, a 29-year-old black woman who died on Wednesday after falling from her balcony during a police investigation at her building.
✊🏾 And in New Zealand, roughly 2,000 people marched to the US embassy in Auckland, chanting and carrying signs demanding justice.
💐 Memorials have been built for Floyd around the world, too. In Mexico City, portraits of him were hung outside the US embassy with roses, candles, and signs.
💐 In Poland, candles and flowers were laid out next to photos of Floyd outside the US consulate.
💐 And in Syria, two artists created a mural depicting Floyd in the northwestern town of Binnish, "on a wall destroyed by military planes."
Before the assassination of George Floyd some of you were able to say whatever the hell you wanted and the world didn't say anything to you...
THERE HAS BEEN A SHIFT, AN AWAKENING...MANY OF YOU ARE BEING EXPOSED FOR WHO YOU REALLY ARE. #readthatagain
Don't wake up tomorrow on the wrong side of this issue. Its not to late to SAY,
"maybe I need to look at this from a different perspective.
Maybe I don't know what its like to be Black in America...
Maybe, just maybe, I have been taught wrong."
There is still so much work to be done. It's been a really dark, raw week. This could still end badly. But all we can do is keep doing the work.
Keep protesting.
WE ARE NOT TRYING TO START A RACE WAR; WE ARE PROTESTING TO END IT,
PEACEFULLY.
How beautiful is that?
ALL LIVES CANNOT MATTER UNTIL YOU INCLUDE BLACK LIVES.
YOU CANNOT SAY 'ALL LIVES MATTER' WHEN YOU DO NOTHING TO STOP SYSTEMIC RACISM & POLICE BRUTALITY.
YOU CANNOT SAY 'ALL LIVES MATTER' WHEN BLACK PEOPLE ARE DYING AND ALL YOU COMPLAIN ABOUT IS THE LOOTING.
YOU CANNOT SAY 'ALL LIVES MATTER' WHEN YOU ALLOW CHILDREN TO BE CAGED, VETERANS TO GO HOMELESS, AND POOR FAMILIES TO GO HUNGRY & LOSE THEIR HEALTH INSURANCE.
DO ALL LIVES MATTER? YES. BUT RIGHT NOW, ONLY BLACK LIVES ARE BEING TARGETED, JAILED, AND KILLED EN MASSE- SO THAT'S WHO WE'RE FOCUSING ON.
🖤🖤🖤BLACK LIVES MATTER🖤🖤🖤
IF YOU CAN'T SEE THIS, YOU ARE THE PROBLEM.
Share for those who think we're not making a difference. "Be the change you wish to see in the world."
The time is now. We are the change 🙏🏽🖤
I didn't write this but it's bang on so am sharing it.
Monday, 8 June 2020
A Short History of Boris at Oxford University
"Johnson’s Oxford days are now usually mentioned in connection with his membership of the hard-drinking, posh and sometimes destructive Bullingdon Club, but in fact he was a vessel of focused ambition. Arriving in Oxford from Eton in 1983, he had three aims, writes Sonia Purnell in Just Boris: to get a First-class degree, find a wife and become Union president. That post was “the first step to being prime minister”, said the 1980s Tory politician Michael Heseltine. At speakers’ dinners, a 20-year-old Union president would find himself or herself sitting next to cabinet ministers and other useful contacts.
"Most students arrived in Oxford barely knowing the Union existed, but Johnson possessed the savvy of his class: he had run Eton’s debating society, and his father Stanley had come to Oxford in 1959 intending to become Union president. Stanley had failed but Boris was a star. Simon Veksner, who followed Johnson from their house at Eton to the Union, tells me: “Boris’s charisma even then was off the charts, you couldn’t measure it: so funny, warm, charming, self-deprecating. You put on a funny act, based on The Beano and PG Wodehouse. It works, and then that is who you are.”
"Johnson also came equipped with the peculiarly intimate network that an upper-class boarding school confers. Ordinary schoolchildren spend eight hours a day with their classmates but boarders live together, and often have inner-class family connections going back generations. Johnson arrived in Oxford knowing dozens of people, whereas some state-school kids knew precisely nobody.
"He didn’t let his degree — Classics — interfere with his Union ambitions. In 1980s Oxford, studying was almost optional. A common workload for arts students was one essay a week, often penned during an overnight panic, then typically read aloud to one’s tutor. When I reread my old essays while revising for finals, they were so pathetic that I wanted to write to my tutors to apologise.
"Michael Gove, a Scottish fresher in 1985, told Johnson’s biographer Andrew Gimson: “The first time I saw him was in the Union bar . . . He seemed like a kindly, Oxford character, but he was really there like a great basking shark waiting for freshers to swim towards him.” Gove told Gimson: “I was Boris’s stooge. I became a votary of the Boris cult.”
In an essay for The Oxford Myth (1988), a book edited by his sister Rachel, Johnson advised aspiring student politicians to assemble “a disciplined and deluded collection of stooges” to get out the vote. “Lonely girls from the women’s colleges” who “back their largely male candidates with a porky decisiveness” were particularly useful, he wrote. “For these young women, machine politics offers human friction and warmth.” Reading this, you realise why almost all Union presidents who become Tory politicians are men. (Thatcher’s domain was OUCA, where she was president in 1946.)
"Johnson added: “The tragedy of the stooge is that . . . he wants so much to believe that his relationship with the candidate is special that he shuts out the truth. The terrible art of the candidate is to coddle the self-deception of the stooge."
”Tory MPs now backing Johnson’s candidacy for leader may find the essay interesting. Gove, who wore a kilt in debates, was such a gifted speaker that he could even make a compelling case to a student audience against free choice in sexual behaviour. He was unusually ideological by Union standards, a Thatcherite meritocrat. As Union president in 1988, he wrote a paean to elitism in the Union’s house magazine: “I cannot overemphasise what elitism is not. It is not about back-slapping cliques, reactionary chic or Old Etonian egos. It is a spirit of unashamed glamour, excitement and competition . . . We are all here, part of an elite. It is our duty to bear that in mind.”
"Amid all this Oxford politicking, there was one notable absentee: David Cameron. He got his First, and amused himself in posh dining clubs, but felt no need to do anything so vulgar as burnish his CV with student politics. After all, he too was distantly related to the Queen, his father chaired the establishment club White’s, and his cousin Ferdinand Mount headed Thatcher’s Policy Unit. Cameron went straight from Oxford to the Conservative Party’s research department, where he later encountered his successor in the Bullingdon and future chancellor, George Osborne.
"Rees-Mogg arrived at Oxford at the same time as me in 1988. Almost immediately, Cherwell nominated him (as it had Gove before) for the traditional title of “Pushy Fresher”. The paper printed a photograph of him speechifying in his suit, above the caption, “What more need we say?”
"Studying the picture, you realise: Rees-Mogg hasn’t
changed. Like Johnson and Gove, he even has the same hairstyle today.
They were almost fully formed at 18. School had given them the
confidence, articulacy and know-how to bestride Oxford. They also
already knew what they wanted to be when they grew up. If most students
back then had had to guess who would be ruling Britain in 2019, they
would probably have named Johnson, Gove and Rees-Mogg."
The Bullingdon Club
(1) the Hon. Edward Sebastian Grigg, the heir to Baron Altrincham of Tormarton and current chairman of Credit Suisse (UK)
(2) David Cameron
(3) Ralph Perry Robinson, a former child actor, designer, furniture-maker
(4) Ewen Fergusson, son of the British ambassador to France, Sir Ewen Fergusson and now at City law firm Herbert Smith
(5) Matthew Benson, the heir to the Earldom of Wemyss and March
(6) Sebastian James, the son of Lord Northbourne, a major landowner in Kent
(7) Jonathan Ford, the-then president of the club, a banker with Morgan Grenfell
(8) Boris Johnson, the-then president of the Oxford Union, now Lord Mayor of London
9) Harry Eastwood, the investment fund consultant
Three cheers for the anti-racist protesters that wore masks and destroyed the statue of Colston
Sunday, 7 June 2020
Black Lives Matter, Street demonstrations and the Second Covid19 Wave
Thursday, 4 June 2020
UK Government must think the people are dumb: Brandon Lewis speaks nonsense
Brandon Lewis on BBC Breakfast Time "“As the spread in our communities is now much lower, the marginal impact of anyone coming into the country (with Covid-19) is much higher – that is why this is the right time to do it.”
It comes as Boris Johnson prepares to tell a summit of world leaders that vaccinating the world against deadly diseases, including Covid 19 is “the most essential shared endeavour of our lifetimes” as he calls for "humanity to unite" by entering a "new era of global health co-operation".
