Dismantling Science 2022 : The United Kingdom Of Complacency

Everyone laughed when Donald Trump suggested that Covid infection rates could be brought down if we simply stopped testing people for Covid.

Yet from April 2022, that’s exactly what the UK government has done. And it’s not funny any more.

The UK government has instigated the wholesale dismantling of Covid precautions, specifically the decision to end the Office For National Statistics study of infection rates and new variants, end free PCR tests, and abandon the clinically vulnerable and care homes. This is blatent perception management and without the Office For National Statistic’s ability to track new variants and infection rates, we will all be ‘living in ignorance’ as opposed to ‘living with covid.’

For an informed, unbiased and interesting exploration of the phases of a pandemic, watch Yale Sociologist Nicholas Christakis’s interview about how Covid Will Reshape Humanity. According to him, the pandemic is likely to end in 2024.

That’s 2 years away.

Lockdown 2022 : The United Kingdom Of Complacency

Welcome To Plague Island.

Like a fat, old, retired heavyweight boxer, the UK government has recently been limbering up and flexing its muscles to make another late comeback in the fight against Covid. Already on the backfoot after waiting for the financial Christmas Golden Quarter to end, it has finally implemented Plan B. This largely faux PR exercise was a package of basic restrictions which should, on the advice of the WHO, have already remained in place to protect the public. Instead the lack of basic measures has fuelled rife mass infections across the country, and given rise to the spread of the new Omicron variant.

The Omicron variant is three times as infectious as previous variants and despite the remarkable effectiveness of vaccines, it could circumvent these defences, and already government incompetence has left the UK with the highest death rate per capita in Europe.

With much of the country sick or in self imposed isolation, there are few options left on the table - except for further undesirable lockdowns to prevent more deaths. But how can anyone trust a government that openly mocks its citizens with allegations and revelations of Number 10 Downing Street parties during Lockdown 2020? This was an unforgivable act. The government will eventually have to step into the ring and hope its subjects are compliant; even if it has proven itself unfit for purpose.

Perhaps we are all trapped in a 2020 timeloop, unable to break the cycle without a pancoronavirus vaccine?

A January 2022 Lockdown is now inevitable.

Happy New Fear 2022.

Coronavirus : Perception Management

In predictable fashion Boris Johnson has thrown in the towel and declared he can’t quite be bothered to save lives any more - because it’s all a bit like hard work. He would rather ‘let the bodies pile up than have another lockdown.’

We’ll have to save ourselves.

2021 is 2020 all over again but with better perception management. We are trapped in a loop of UK government inepitude and propaganda as it literally washes its hands twice of the pandemic while whistling Happy Birthday, Good Luck and Good Night.

It’s a populist approach to ending transmission prevention with voluntary mask wearing and social distancing, but one that may come back to haunt us. We are far from out of a pandemic with only 3% of the globe vaccinated and at a dangerous crossroads with only half the UK population vaccinated during the cusp of a Third Covid Wave. The Delta Covid variant is far more transmissible and with the over 80’s vaccinated, most deaths are now in the over 55’s, young people are still vulnerable, the Long Covid victims and bereaved quickly forgotten.

But maybe people don’t want the truth.

What better way to end a pandemic than to pretend it isn’t happening. All the government cares about is a PR success and if that means using Orwellian Doublethink, then they are not afraid to use it. Success without success. Success without remorse. Let’s take a moment to reflect on this right wing media headline from June 4th, 2021: ‘Opening Up Will Make Us Healthier’ and remember the government’s own so-called Freedom Day on June 21st was recently cancelled.

Scientists have long maintained that the best path out of a pandemic is not with vaccines alone, but with physical distancing measures and masks to ensure more dangerous variations do not evolve unchecked to elude vaccines and render them useless.

So what will the government be doing while we endure a pandemic that may now never go away as ‘we all have to learn to live with it?’ Boris Johnson will be busy putting up curtains in No.11 and writing a book about his epic Covid battle that was never won, Matt Hancock will be enjoying his new bachelor lifestyle, and Sajid Javid will be the new lockdown sceptic ‘health’ secretary busy comparing Covid to Flu to shore up the ailing economy while privatising the NHS. Probably.

While people get sick and die. This all sounds strangely familiar…

How quickly we all forget. Another Summer of complaceny awaits us because by Autumn some of us will be paying for it with our lives and we will be stuck in reverse all over again.

History is repeating itself.

Welcome back to time loop 2020. Plague Island.

Lockdown 3 Part 7 : Delia Derbyshire - The Myths & Legendary Tapes

Pioneering electronic artist, Delia Derbyshire is the focus of a lovingly directed feature length docu-drama called ‘ Delia Derbyshire - The Myths & Legendary Tapes’ from BBC Four.

Starring and directed by Caroline Catz, the film recreates the non conformist life of Delia Derbyshire in her unwaivering pursuit of electronic music as a a serious artform from the 1950’s onward, long before it was accepted by popular culture. The dramatisation is accompanied by narration from Delia herself in the form of original interviews, alongside interviews from fellow BBC Radiophonic Workshop members, while Cosey Fanni Tutti reworks 267 newly discovered unheard tapes into the soundtrack.

According to the Press Release : “This is a life story told through sound, using both Delia’s own pieces of music alongside a soundtrack constructed from samples chosen with musician and performance artist Cosey Fanni Tutti from Delia’s attic tapes. It explores the fantasy of a collaboration, an exchange of ideas across eras between two fascinating musicians. It celebrates independence and imagination and looks at how, when that energy is evoked by women and creates a spark, the pattern seen throughout history is that it is often dismissed, ridiculed or downplayed. A cinematic exploration of a legendary musical figure, written and directed by Caroline Catz, who also plays Delia.”

Available To Watch on BBC Four now :

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000w6tr

Coronavirus : A Deadly Anniversary

It's hard to believe this nightmare began over a year ago - weeks and months before the official UK Lockdown date of March 23rd, 2020.

The anniversary of this pandemic is a memorial to the inaction of a UK government who paid no heed to the WHO's earlier dire warnings on and before March 12th, 2020, despite the virus raging through Italy, France; and inevitably to these shores. At the time there were those of us who were shocked by this, and took cover in self imposed lockdowns as the government downplayed the dangers to ringfence the economy. It was only weeks later, on this date on March 23rd, 2020, that the government finally decided Herd Immunity was simply bad PR, and their hand was forced to do something.

Quite what, they weren't sure…

So let's take a moment to remember the 122,000 people who lost their lives through no fault of their own, caught in the cross fire between history and a year of government incompetence. Let's also remember the relatives, doctors and nurses, who have suffered needlessly.

We will remember you - and not this date in history - but the weeks leading up to it.

Lockdown 3 Part 2 : Can't Get Adam Curtis Out Of My Head

Watch Adam Curtis’s new documentary TV Series ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’ from February 11th, 2021 on the BBC iplayer.

Can humanity find a new vision of the future before it’s too late?

Described as an ‘emotional history of the modern world’ this groundbreaking new TV series attempts to dissect modern life over 6 episodes and reveal how we reached this pivotal moment in history. According to press releases it concerns the strange roots of modern conspiracy theories, the history of China, opium and opioids, and the history of Artificial Intelligence. Adam Curtis had this to say about his new series in a recent interview : “What I want to say to people is: we made the world the way it is; it didn’t just happen. And if we did that, we can make it different.’

https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2021/cgyoomh

Watch the trailer and read the full BBC synopsis below:

Synopsis Courtesy Of the BBC:

“We are living through strange days.

Across Britain, Europe and America societies have become split and polarised not just in politics but across the whole culture. There is anger at the inequality and the ever growing corruption - and a widespread distrust of the elites.

And into this has come the pandemic that has brutally dramatised those divisions.

But despite the chaos there is a paralysis - a sense that no one knows how to escape from this.

This new series of films by Adam Curtis tell the story of how we got to this place. And why both those in power - and we - find it so difficult to move on.

The films trace different forces across the world that have led to now, not just in the West, but in China and Russia as well.

It covers a wide range - including the strange roots of modern conspiracy theories, the history of China, opium and opiods, the history of Artificial Intelligence, melancholy over the loss of empire and, love and power. And whether modern culture, despite its radicalism, is really part of the new system of power.

And the films are told in a different way - they are an emotional history of what went on inside the heads of all kinds of people.

Because in the age of the individual - what you felt and what you wanted and what you dreamed of were going to become the driving force across the world.

What was forgotten in that age was that much of what we feel is also formed by the society around us. Above all by the power structures.

And now those structures are decaying - everywhere - their weakness and uncertainty makes us feel empty and frightened of the future.

That is what is paralysing us - and blocking us from imagining different kinds of societies and a better future.

Can't Get You Out Of My Head is an epic history that shows how and why that happened. How we made this particular world. And that it was not inevitable.”

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New to this? Adam Curtis’s previous documentary ‘Hypernormalisation’ is available to watch online below:

Lockdown 2 Electric Avenue Part 1

Part 1. Things to make and do in Lockdown : Meet the new AFX Station.

If you've ever been tempted to buy a Novation Bass Station, then now is the perfect time thanks to a collaboration with AFX Twin, which sees the artist reinvent the classic Bass Station II.

Embossed with the famous AFX logo, this alternative collectors monosynth comes complete with an inbuilt 'AFX mode' and presets from artists such as Noyze Lab, Perplex On, Richard Devine, r beny and Lightbath.

Check out the tech specs here :

https://novationmusic.com/en/synths/afx-station

Consume And Die

Are you bored and quite literally dying to shop again?

The UK Prime Minister, that most trusted of public servants, wants you to shore up the ailing economy by encouraging you to risk your life visiting the high street for cheap paper thin clothes at Primark, that you wouldn't be seen dead wearing in a month. Well, you might be, just give it a few weeks. That new cough is never going away.

The Pandemic is far from over. Don't believe me?

The UK already has the highest death rate in Europe with over 40,000 dead and no means of identifying how prevalent Covid-19 infections actually are in our society - without an adequate track and trace system. So when you're next advised to safely reduce your physical distancing to 1 metre, or perhaps even 1.4 metres, against all scientific evidence to the contrary, remember this : A scientific study has already found that reducing physical distance to 1 metre DOUBLES your chances of infection. In other words, for every metre apart, transmission is halved.

Reducing Physical Distancing Doubles Your Chances Of Infection :

Man, this government is killing it. And everyone you know.