Orwell's 1984: From Novel to Manifesto

I wasn't aware that Boris was going to make an announcement of any kind last night due to binge watching Bulletproof2 all day, so it was just a coincidence that I started watching ordinary TV just as "ordinary" life disappeared: The Prime Minister was addressing what until 8:30pm had been a free country and telling its population that we now live in a police state.

I, all my family and all my friends, have been placed under house arrest without even being accused of a crime - we're guilty of ??? Well what exactly ???? I went out yesterday and didn't see one single person stood closer than five feet to anybody else: in my locality social distancing was more than just observed, it was respected.

Boris said it was "for own my good". Really? Confined to the house, deprived of social contact, restricted diet, no exercise except walking once a day or going for a bike ride (that'd be nice - I live at the top of a very steep hill: Chris Hoy would have issues!), unable to replace anything unless it's on his list of essentials?

My analysis of currently available (publicly anyway) data suggests that Covid-19 might end up being responsible for around 2500 UK deaths, not the 250,000 or so which could possibly justify "solutions" which as Donald Trump has said may be worse than the problem.

I don't think it should be beyond the intellect of our government to realise that Northern Italy has some of the worst air pollution in Europe (at least until the last two weeks according to European Air Quality Index), so is it not likely that after decades of breathing it, the local elderly develop respiratory problems?

Nearly all Covid-19-related fatalities have "underlying health issues" (or so we're told), and thousands die globally infected with some type of coronavirus such as influenza, so we the people of the UK have now had our civil liberties removed in what may be just an attempt to prevent one particular coronavirus, (Covid-19), from replacing others as the bedfellow of those "underlying health issues"?

I can't find any worst-case predictions for Covid-19 causing a massive increase over and above the current coronavirus situation, and we haven't been told how many ‘corona-deaths’ were of people infected with Covid-19 but didn’t necessarily die of it, just what appears to be an assumption that without Covid-19 they'd still be alive.

When we have so many unknowns, and so little reliable data, how can last night's announcement be justified? What will be the results of shutting down the economy? It's very likely that unemployment will rise dramatically, and crime will rise along with it. Mental Health issues will increase, families with dysfunctional or dangerous relationships will begin to collapse, and the elderly all this is supposed to be protecting get a worse quality of life due to isolation, so may end up with reduced life expectancy anyway.

An economic depression will definitely result in poverty, pain and death which may vastly outweigh the current pandemic crisis, and that may just re-set and re-start when our brave new world has its draconian restrictions lifted.

And what if they're not?
What if our government decides that going back to how we were just a few days ago isn't safe for other reasons? Civil unrest due to the inevitable shortages of whatever goods, services and products we've come to expect or rely on? Climate change? Maybe they'll just get to like the privilege, power and authority?

I'm sat here blogging instead of doing anything more productive, or simply playing golf in the sunshine, because isolation is "for my own good", and that's precisely what many of the vulnerable students I used to teach told me was something their abusive parents said to them as a justification for their cruelty or neglect.

None of this feels as if it's for my benefit, and that's without me thinking that the pandemic effects haven't been modelled on statistically robust data (unless of course Boris is privvy to information we've not been given), so on balance I'm already leading towards contracting Covid-19 and seeing what happens as a preference to eventually standing in front of an army tank because I want to see my daughter and seeing if that really is safer.

Post-Christmas Post

Today's BBC website carries the news that scientists have discovered that the original kilogram, the standard by which all weight is measured, has become slightly heavier since it was cast from platinum-iridium in France 137 years ago. This is apparently due to small amounts of pollution collecting on its surface, and as a result, everything else has become lighter, including us.

As Peter Cumpson, professor of MicroElectroMechanical systems at Newcastle University, puts it "It is a really tiny effect, but strictly speaking we are all slightly lighter than we were in the late 1800s."
This means that I'm now sat in a Belfast hotel room weighing less than I thought I did when I left home, even though my weight has stayed exactly the same.

Not only that, but as the distance in kilometres between here and home is based on the speed of light, which is derived from how fast light might travel between two fixed points even though Albert Einstein declared that there were no fixed points, I'm now convincing myself that post-Christmas gym exertions aren't worth the effort. After all, if each walk down the drive is actually a slightly further distance travelled, but in the same amount of time as before, surely I must have got faster as well as lighter?

Just need someone to sort Time out and I can convince myself that I'm getting younger as well...

Money Talks

I've just arrived in Crawley to deliver a day full of assessment workshops and am happy to discover that not only is there apparently no recession here, the local authority has such a cash surplus that it must surely be reducing the business rates and community charges for the coming year. Not convinced? Well the local paper is carrying the headline that West Sussex county council has spent over £100,000 making information videos on such important subjects as "how to wash your hands", and "how to use a mobile phone". Therefore, simple logic suggests a surfeit of cash, as they surely can't think that this kind of thing is in anyway necessary. Can they?
For example, any user of the national rail service could have told them that 90% of the population already know how to "get on train/switch on phone/call someone/use loud voice to tell that someone you're on a train .....".

New Bond-Style Super-Villain Reveals Himself!

As someone who uses lots of trains, the news that Dr Sang-Woo Kim of the Sung-Kyunkwan University in Seoul, South Korea has discovered a way of charging mobile phones by talking into them strikes me as more of a threat to Western civilisation than anything the late Osama bin Laden could have dreamt up.

At the moment, the technology can convert 100 decibels (about the same level as a busy road) into 50 millivolts of electricity, which isn't enough to charge a phone.

But give it time, and then won’t using public transport be fun? If, like me, you're irritated by sitting near an overly-loud, mind-numbing ‘I’m on a train . . . hello? . . . no, I said I’m on a train . . . ’ conversation, how's travel going to be remotely tolerable when there's a carriage full of half-wits screaming into their Nokias because they forgot to charge them up overnight?

Forget al-Qaeda, the electronics department of Sung-Kyunkwan University needs flattening.
Now!

Wanted: Party Organiser for Charlie Sheen!

Many of you will do something nice for your mum this weekend, but I very much doubt that you think it qualifies as deserving of a medal. Unless of course, you're Prince Andrew. He, like me, has just spent a day in Northern Ireland. Whereas I was running a series of college workshops and visiting the HEA ICS Subject Centre, he was there as part of his role as unpaid trade ambassador, something for which he's received his latest honour for personal service to the Queen, the Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order to add to his earlier honours for the same thing, the Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order and the Royal Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter.

Now I don't want to sound churlish, but how often has he been in the crush to get a seat on a north-bound train out of King's Cross, or spent the night in a Travelodge/Premier/Holiday Inn? His "business", as far as I can see, is all first-class and five-star, and while he might not receive a salary, he's unlikely to have paid for anything either.

Ten years travelling the world "representing British interests abroad", whatever that means, is not something most people outside of unelected dictatorships would consider worthy of a chest-full of medals, and is for most us, something we'd have preferred to have been an April Fool joke.

What about the Sanity Clause?

Having spent most of yesterday waiting in King's Cross station for some semblance of information as to when a train was going to travel North, I was struck by how little anybody seemed to care about the cold, the lack of anything to sit on or even how much of a wasted afternoon hundreds of people were having. What seemed to be the most irksome aspect of the experience was generally agreed to be the lack of information: the horrible waiting without knowing when it would end, certain only that when it did, there would be some sort of mad priority scramble where the winners got to be packed like erect sardines for the next 2 hours sweating & exchanging viruses, while the losers waited on the concourse for the next melee to take place.

Deep down, we were all aware that the next service wasn't going to sneak off without any of us noticing, but information, any kind of information, would've given us the illusion of control without having any effect at all on how long we were going to be stuck there. Is too much to ask that "damage to overhead lines at Huntington" had been accompanied by some sort of estimated repair time, even one possibly met ahead of schedule? This would not only have made those inconvenienced by the delays feel a little better, but the subsequent dispersal of the expectant throng (for what turned out to be 5 hours) would have made the station far less crowded, and therefore more comfortable for the non-East Coast Main Line travellers.
Or is that just madness on my part?

With a reverential nod to 1935's "A Night at the Opera"
Groucho: It's all right. That's, that's in every contract. That's, that's what they call a sanity clause.
Chico: Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! You can't fool me. There ain't no Sanity Clause!