Are You Being Served?

I used to enjoy mooching around the shops. Record shops and book shops were where I did most of my browsing; clothes shops less often, they were visited more usually out of necessity. Over the years my enjoyment of idly wandering the aisles of stores like HMV and Waterstones has waned. Online shopping has been one reason for that, HMV’s virtual monopoly in CD sales on the High Street, combined with the fact that they do not stock a lot of the artists I enjoy, is another. I do go to Waterstones now and then, more usually for inspiration than to buy anything as most of my reading is done on my Kindle.

 

Lakeside on a quiet day. Every day may look like this soon.

On the occasions that I venture to such shopping Meccas as Lakeside, Bluewater, or less frequently, Westfield (I really am not keen on Westfield, and go there only when absolutely necessary), I try to make it for a particular purpose. Most of the time (at least 99% of it anyway), I go to these shopping centres with family, and it is generally they who browse around the shops while I stand outside, or wander off to find somewhere to sit. By my reckoning, for every hour spent at Lakeside, I only spend about five minutes actually in shops, so it has not been much of a hardship for me to be unable to go anywhere but supermarkets and a couple of other stores since lockdown started.

 

A comprehensive list of the shops that I have visited during lockdown is Tesco, Sainsbury’s, the Co-op, The Range, and Homebase, and of those I have been to Homebase and The Range just once each. I confess to breathing a sigh of relief after every trip to Tesco, not due to any fears of having become infected, but rather because in recent years I have become used to doing frequent, small shops; I’m finding the need to do a whole week’s shopping to avoid having to top up is becoming a little more tiresome. That’s not to say that my weekly supermarket shop is a terrible experience. At my local Tesco the staff are all helpful, cheerful and have the queues to get into the store and to the check-outs very well managed. Even queuing outside is not that bad, although the recent weather has something to do with that; how wonderful it will be if we still have to do it come November remains to be seen.

 

At present, the Government plans to allow all other shops to re-open from 15^th June, although outdoor markets, like the one in Romford, pictured left, and car showrooms will re-open from the first of the month. When they do re-open, shops and shoppers will be subject to a wide range of measures that will be in place to try and reduce the incidence of infection. As well as limiting the number of people in their stores – which will inevitably mean customers queuing outside – retailers will probably have to introduce one-way systems, separate entrances and exits (where possible), and move racks and displays to create more space so that shoppers can socially-distance. Anyone who has been in a supermarket recently will be familiar with these restrictions, but where customers and staff will have to make greater adjustments will be particularly obvious in clothing and footwear shops.

 

Fitting rooms will be closed, which will take me back to the days when some shops – most notably Marks & Spencer – did not even have them. I remember one of my first experiences of buying a suit for work and trying on the jacket in Marks & Spencer but having to take pot luck with the trousers, which sadly did not fit when I got them home and had to be returned. That was in the days when most menswear shops sold suits as a single item, no mix and matching of trousers and jackets, which in my experience made buying them a somewhat onerous experience. This may lead to more items being returned after purchase, items which will have to be quarantined before they can be offered for resale.

 

When we try clothes on in a shop, we rarely think about how many other people may have already done so. It has only really crossed my mind once, which was when I tried on some trousers in M&S and found a neatly folded handkerchief in one of the pockets; it was slightly off-putting then, it would be very disconcerting now!

 

There are a lot of clothes items that I’m happy to buy without trying them on, but shoes are a different matter. Finding comfortable shoes is an issue for me, and while sometimes this only becomes apparent after a few times I’ve worn a pair, often it is obvious from the moment I try them on. I hear that shoe shops will offer customers disposable socks when trying on shoes, and will quarantine the shoes afterwards; how rigorously it will be possible for shops to accomplish this remains to be seen. I’m also curious as to how Waterstones, who say they will quarantine books that customers pick up and inspect but do not buy, will achieve this. Will they have staff chaperoning customers round the store?

We've become used to queues at Apple Stores when a new iPhone is launched, be prepared to queue everywhere else soon, just a little further apart than these people.

 

Along with a return to the days of yore when fitting rooms were not to be found everywhere, shops may also seek to limit the amount of self-service, so rather than browsing around and picking up items, and then selecting what to buy, will shoppers have to go through an assistant to view items instead? I’m not alone in being put off when entering a shop and immediately being approached by an assistant wanting to know if they can help; we may have to get used to being asked, “Are you being served?” quite frequently. Whatever happens, the shopping experience is going to be different for a while.

 

At least we have online shopping (this lockdown in pre-internet days would have been a very different experience), and we will probably see an increase in click-and-collect sales if shoppers become less inclined to just wander around the shops, or are prohibited from doing so.

 

At some point in recent years, shopping became a leisure activity. A visit to your local shopping mall became an end in itself, browsing the shops with little intent to buy became a way of passing the time. That is going to be actively discouraged; going into a shop without a specific purchase in mind is probably going to be uncomfortable and discouraged.

 

No doubt, once the restrictions are lifted, shoppers will be flocking back to the malls and High Streets after being starved of their shopping experience since late March. I’ve rather enjoyed not following family members around the shops in recent weeks, and I’m quite happy not to reintroduce that into my routine any time soon. Sometime in 2021 sounds good.

These Are A Few Of My Favourite Things – Part Two – Films

I don’t go to the cinema very often. Last year I went to see Bohemian Rhapsody, but before that, I think that my most recent visit would have been to see The Incredibles, which was released in 2004.

It isn’t as though I gave up going to the cinema, I have never been an avid moviegoer, and if I’m honest there are not that many films that have made a huge impression on me. In the days when it used to be years between a film being released and it appearing on TV, cinema-going made sense if you wanted to see new releases. Since the advent of films on video and DVD, and even more so nowadays with streaming services, the period between a film appearing at the cinema and being able to watch it at home has been compressed; actually going to the cinema is only really necessary if you want to be among the first to see a particular film.

The films that I am listing here are not, in the grand scheme of things, cinematic masterpieces. Call me a philistine if you wish, but this list doesn’t include anything deep, meaningful, profound or particularly influential. Of the British Film Institute’s 100 Greatest Films of All Time[1], I have seen precisely seven, and none of them features here.

The first film on my list, while not especially deep, or meaningful did cause a major stir when it came out, and I did actually go to the cinema to see it. I was never a great fan of Monty Python on TV – too hit or miss for my taste – but when their third film, The Life of Brian, was released in 1979, it was immediately apparent that we were in the presence of genius. Littered with memorable lines, of which "He's not the Messiah; he's a very naughty boy," is the most quoted, hilarious set-pieces (the stoning, Biggus Dickus, and the Crucifixion scene), The Life of Brian is 94 minutes of sheer pleasure (unless you consider it blasphemous of course). Apart from the controversy that the film provoked, it generated a lot of good television debating it – Michael Palin and John Cleese discussed it with Malcolm Muggeridge and the Bishop of Southwark, and Not the Nine O’Clock News featured a sketch lampooning the criticism that is as funny as the film itself. The joy of The Life of Brian is that you can watch it again and again, and laugh afresh at lines you know as well as the back of your hand.

Keith Waterhouse is one of my favourite writers, and he made something of an industry of his greatest creation, Billy Liar. The tragic-comedy story of a day in the life of undertakers’ clerk and would-be comedian/script-writer Billy Fisher first saw the light of day as a 1959 novel, which spawned a film, a stage play, musical, and TV series. Released in 1963, the film of Billy Liar belongs to the British New Wave "kitchen sink drama" movement, but unlike contemporaries such as Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, or Look Back in Anger, the gritty realism of a young man’s quite mundane life in a Northern city is offset by humour and the fantasy of Billy’s day-dream life as President of Ambrosia. And because Waterhouse co-wrote the screenplay with long-time friend and collaborator Willis Hall, it is as faithful to the book as a film can possibly be. It was shown on TV a few weeks ago, and it engrossed me as much as it ever did.

Tom Courtney as Billy, and Julie Christie as Liz in Billy Liar

Super-hero films have become cinema’s biggest money-spinners in recent years. The Marvel Cinematic Universe dominates and their long-term rivals, DC, don’t really have characters with such enduring appeal in my opinion: except one – Batman.

Batman has always been my favourite super-hero but the 1966 film was too comic (in the humorous sense), and Tim Burton’s series of films started well but declined alarmingly with the George Clooney vehicle, Batman and Robin, the subject of much derision. The first two of Burton’s films, with Michael Keaton in the lead role, were great entertainment, but it wasn’t until Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy that Batman got the treatment that the character deserved. Batman Begins – the origin story – lacks the glamourous villains that we associate with these sorts of films, but it’s brooding, dark and absorbing. The Dark Knight is a film that I’ll happily watch over and again, and as good as Christian Bale is as Batman, the late Heath Ledger’s performance as Joker is exceptional. And as I’ve written before, Batman and Joker have a symbiotic relationship which this film exploits to the maximum.[2]  I came late to the third film– The Dark Knight Rises – and it was a good few years after it was released before I saw it. It rounds off the trilogy neatly, and as much as I’d like another Batman film from the same people, this left me satisfyingly wanting more but not at the risk of any deterioration in quality.

If the Batman movies are films that I can watch over and again, then Terminator 2: Judgement Day is one I will watch over and again. It’s on so frequently that it is often the case that I’ll be scrolling through the channels on the TV and see that it’s on, and no matter how much of it I’ve missed, I’ll watch however much is remaining. Terminator 2 is good, old fashioned hokum and its charm has not been matched in any of the subsequent films in the series (especially not Terminator: Salvation). The success of the first film and that of Arnold Schwarzenegger demanded a sequel, especially one where Arnie could be a good guy. Terminator 2 does what it says on the tin and it’s none the worse for that. Independence Day, starring Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum, or the Men In Black films (Smith again, with Tommy Lee Jones) are a few more I’ll happily watch any time, either completely, or just in part, but none of them is quite up to Terminator 2’s standard.

Honourable mentions must go to some films, most of which I saw at the cinema that were in some way groundbreaking:

• Star Wars (the first one that came out in 1977, and is now number four in the canon) and Alien were science fiction at their best. I’m by no means a Star Wars fan, and I have a feeling that if I watched the original film in the series again now, I’d not be as impressed by it as I was back then.
• The Long Good Friday (1980) was a gritty British gangster film that bridged the gap between the superficially gaudy but impoverished 1970s and the emergence of the more affluent, aspirational decade that followed it. Rightly, it marked a period of success and popularity for its star, Bob Hoskins.
• I remember little of The Accused (1988), but distinctly remember being very much impressed by Jodie Foster's Oscar winning performance.
• The much-lauded Blade Runner is a film that I could, perhaps should have included in my list of favourites, except it flatters to deceive, and as good as it is, there’s just something missing.
• The Warriors - I think I only went to see it because there were calls for it to be banned. It was really rather innocuous.
• Airplane! - Ridiculous and hilarious, surely one of the most original comedies of the 1980s - and don't call me Shirley.
• Finally a film released in 1977 that I loved the music from but, until about eighteen months ago, had never seen, believing it not to be my 'thing.' That film was Saturday Night Fever. A lot grittier than I'd expected and with music that took me back forty years, it was a surprise and a delight.

My preference is for films that offer escapism that I can watch again and again, which applies to all of the above, in spades.

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[1] See https://www.bfi.org.uk/greatest-films-all-time

[2] See https://rulesfoolsandwisemen.blogspot.com/2014/01/elementary-my-dear-batman.html

The Last Minute Hero

I have mentioned in a previous blog that when I was at school back in the 1970s and doing my ‘O’ Levels, I came to the conclusion that no matter how hard I worked I would be very unlikely to pass French. It made sense to sacrifice the subject and concentrate on the ones I was better at. Looking back, passing French would have been much more beneficial than say, Physics but the name of the game was passing exams, not acquiring knowledge for future use.

The French exam came in at least two parts – it may have been three, I really can’t remember more than fifty years on – and one part was Spoken French. This was an absolute fiasco for me. While the written exam was bad enough, at least my lack of knowledge and preparation would not come to light until the results came out a couple of months later. In a spoken exam with an external examiner sitting opposite me and expecting some sort of coherent responses to his questions, my inadequacies were exposed immediately. In all of the spoken exams that particular examiner sat through, I doubt that the phrase “Je ne sais pas” was ever used so liberally.

Sure enough, when the ‘O’ Level results were published, I got the lowest grade of fail in French, although since my shortcomings were well known to my teachers, I was also entered in GCE French, where I scraped a Grade 3, the equivalent of an ‘O’ level pass (goodness knows how!) My experience in the subject was ample proof of the aphorism, “Fail to prepare and you prepare to fail,” even if it was my choice not to prepare.

It may be a solely British trait, although I suspect not, but in this country we do love the bumbling, unprepared amateur who comes along and wins the day against the professionals, be it in sport or any other enterprise. Look at Ealing Comedies like The Lavender Hill Mob, or Passport to Pimlico, or The Titfield Thunderbolt, and it is ordinary people with no discernible talent for something, ‘giving it a go’ and succeeding (to a point). Look at Four Weddings and a Funeral, which opens with the bumbling  Best Man, Charles (Hugh Grant, premiering the role that he has reprised in pretty much every film he has made since) turning up late for the wedding, forgetting the rings, and delivering a witty and well received speech with not a shred of apparent preparation, and then bedding the glamourous and enigmatic American, Carrie (Andie McDowell).

In sporting fiction – especially the comics that I read as a kid – there’s a trope of the match between the team of highly skilled, highly trained, somewhat earnest and humourless professionals taking on a rag-tag team of under-prepared amateurs, who turn up having had no training, with no plan and lacking the proper equipment, and win. Quite often this win is achieved by the late arrival of one superstar talent whose preparation is even more lacking than the rest of his team. In borrowed and mismatching kit, this last-minute hero secures victory with the winning goal, try, wicket, or runs as appropriate to the sport.

The victory against seemingly superior opposition, and against insuperable odds is not confined to sport. Books, films, and TV programmes all have stories of derring-do in which the hero – preferably someone who has retired from their profession, or is totally unsuited for the role, having no expertise in the matter in hand – is plucked (preferably, reluctantly) from their now mundane existence and thrust into a position where they must save the day from whatever existential threat the family/team/community/planet, is facing. And of course, he (or she) triumphs.

All the better if our ill-prepared hero wins the day single-handedly against some villain who possesses a vast army of minions, incredible, advanced technology, and a superiority complex. Better still if our hero has character defects (cowardice, stupidity, phobias, addictions, etc), which they overcome in the process of their victory. Overcoming their own demons and finding redemption is as common, and as critical, as their defeating their adversary in these stories.

Perhaps the frequency with which we see, read, or hear stories of (fictional) heroes who have no specialist knowledge, or particular talent for something, but do have plenty of good old fashioned grit and pluck, triumphing over some well-equipped, knowledgeable, foe is why we have developed a mistrust for experts in recent years.

Michael Gove once said that people have ‘had enough of experts,’ although he rowed back on that slightly, saying that his words had been taken out of context. I tired of that being wheeled out as a justification or in mitigation for a comment a long while ago. Even in context, the remark is usually as egregious as it was allegedly out of context.

What Gove says that he meant was that “people have had enough of experts from organizations with acronyms that have got things so wrong in the past.” Amounts to the same thing really, as no expert is infallible, but on balance, I’d rather trust an expert than a layman in connection with their particular subject; I've got some plumbing repairs necessary, which I'd rather trust to an expert, qualified plumber than to an enthusiastic amateur, no matter how much common sense they may have. 

And, so it seems, would Michael Gove as two years after expressing his mistrust of experts during the 2016 EU referendum campaign, he was lauding them in work on climate change that had been done for him in his role as environment secretary. Naturally, it helps if the experts support your position.

The problem with experts is that they cannot be infallible, especially when predicting the future, hence the mistrust that Michael Gove had in those experts who he believed had got things wrong in the past. Most mistrust of experts is born out of them saying things with which we don’t agree, or which are unpopular and don’t support expectations, not because they are necessarily wrong. 

We are all experts at something or the other; for instance, I once actually had a job where my role was described as Subject Matter Expert. This did not mean that I knew absolutely everything about the subject, nor did it make me infallible, but I was right an awful lot more often than I was wrong. Experts may deal with facts which are immutable and thus not open to challenge, but they usually have to use those facts to interpret, extrapolate, and predict. These are not always exact sciences; hence experts don’t always agree and don’t always get things right.

In the face of expert commentary that we don’t like, we are sometimes asked to use what our Prime Minister has recently described as “"good, solid British common sense." I don’t think that Britain has a monopoly on common sense, nor that British common sense is better than German common sense, or New Zealand common sense; in fact, recent events seem to suggest that the quality of British common sense has declined recently.

A belief that common sense is an adequate substitute for know-how, or having faith in those with expertise, can be exacerbated by a failure to recognise one’s limitations. Common sense can be used to justify making a decision that flies in the face of expert advice that we find inconvenient. In extremis, this leads to the form of cognitive bias known as the Dunning-Kruger effect in which people of low ability overestimate their ability and are unable to recognise their lack of ability. This can lead to some outrageously counter-intuitive statements and actions on the part of the afflicted.

Depending on circumstances, it can be startling to watch people make decisions based not facts, but on a hunch, preferring to trust their own gut feeling because they do not understand the evidence-based conclusions reached by experts in the field or because those conclusions are inconvenient. When this happens and the outcome is neither life-threatening, dangerous or otherwise costly, then it matters little – it can even be mildly amusing - right now, however…

These Are A Few Of My Favourite Things – Part One – The Albums

No raindrops on roses nor whiskers on kittens; No bright copper kettles nor warm woollen mittens, but these are a few of my favourite things.

In idle moments I have sometimes wondered which records I would take with me if I were ever invited on to Desert Island Discs, not that I ever will be. The castaways on Desert Island Discs are asked to select eight tracks. I’ve chosen eight albums instead.

Over the years this selection has changed from time to time, but there is a pretty consistent hardcore and if I were to have to settle on eight records, this would be my list. The factor that made me come to the conclusion that these albums would be my desert island discs is that they reside in my head to the extent that it’s almost as easy to listen to them in my mind as it is to put the CD on.

Selling England By The Pound - Genesis

I know that I am not alone in thinking that this, the band’s fifth studio recording, is the quintessential Genesis album. I discovered prog rock at school, in the Sixth Form in the early-mid 1970s, or perhaps I should say that I was subjected to it at first. My first exposure to albums like Close To The Edge (of which more later), In The Court Of The Crimson King, and Foxtrot was not auspicious. Selling England By The Pound (SEBTP) was slightly different; more accessible and with better melodies, closer in form to the sort of light classical stuff my parents might play at home. It was possibly the first album I heard that contained music that actually provoked an emotional response: it gave me goose bumps, and made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. It still does, and if you don’t get that sort of reaction when you hear Tony Banks’s piano introduction to Firth of Fifth, or Steve Hackett’s guitar solo in the same song then that’s a shame.

Close To The Edge - Yes

What is this noise? That was my first reaction on hearing Close To The Edge (CTTE). As we had only four resident albums to go with the record player in the Sixth Form block, CTTE was on pretty heavy rotation; constant exposure meant that it wheedled its way into my head, and stayed there, becoming a firm favourite. Like SEBTP, CTTE is the fifth studio album produced by this band (the albums were released within a year of each other), but while the Genesis line-up was consistent for many years, Yes always seemed to be in a state of flux, with members coming and going at will. CTTE is my favourite Yes album (just, Fragile is hard on its heels). What CTTE and SEBTP have in common (to my ears) is variety within a structure – the tracks fit together, similar but different, but whereas SEPTP is clearly a collection of separate pieces, CTTE has always been a single piece with the title track and And You And I all one, and just Siberian Khatru standing alone. And, like Selling England, Close To The Edge – especially the title track – gives me goose bumps. Roger Dean’s artwork for the album is instantly recognisable and adds to the sheer glory of this record.

Dire Straits

The first, eponymous, Dire Straits album blew me away. I had heard of their single, Sultans of Swing, from work colleagues, and when I heard it for myself could not think of anything to compare it to. The album, which was released in 1978, has become a bit of an afterthought in the wake of Brothers In Arms which came along in 1985 and from which Money For Nothing became one of MTV’s most played music videos. Where Brothers In Arms was slick, highly accomplished and had lavish production values, Dire Straits (the album) was raw, exciting, and different, redolent (for me) of East End pubs and Soho clubs.

The Underfall Yard – Big Big Train

The Underfall Yard was my introduction to Big Big Train, and to be honest if I had discovered them at an earlier stage in their career, I’m not sure I would have persevered. The Underfall Yard was their first with David Longdon as lead singer, and his Peter Gabrielesque vocals were an instant attraction. Comparisons with Genesis are obvious, even apart from Longdon’s vocals, but BBT have their own sound that includes much brass (live, they employ a five-piece brass band), violin, and that prog stand-by, flute. For any Genesis fans who wanted a new proggy album by the band after they went poppy, this is the closest we’ll ever get. If you can listen to Victorian Brickwork or the title track without getting a little emotional, then I’d be surprised. This album does what all good music should, it stirs the soul. Since the album was brought out in 2009, BBT have released six further studio albums; all are good, but this is great.

Hand. Cannot. Erase – Steven Wilson

Steven Wilson is one of the most prolific men in music. His band Porcupine Tree (sadly now defunct) were my way back into prog rock in the early years of the 21^st century. Apart from his many side projects and work remastering classic albums by bands like Yes, and Jethro Tull, to name but two, he has released a number of solo albums, of which Hand. Cannot. Erase is by far his best. It is based loosely on the life and death of Joyce Carol Vincent, a young woman who, having cut herself off from family and friends, died alone in her north London bedsit in December 2003, but whose body was not discovered for two years. Like much of Wilson’s work, the album can best be described as melancholic. Ironically perhaps, the stand out track has the happiest title, Perfect Life.

Milliontown – Frost*

I cannot now recall how I discovered this album, but what I do remember is that it was played at least twice through immediately it arrived. From the swirling, and sometimes frenetic, keyboard driven opener, Hyperventilate, to the sprawling twenty-six minutes of the title track that closes the album, the whole thing is a joy. Frost* fit into one of prog’s many sub-genres (neo-prog in this case) although I find it difficult to really care about genres, and does it really matter, when Milliontown’s composer, Jem Godfrey, has written for Atomic Kitten and won an Ivor Novello in May 2006 for the bestselling single of 2005, "That's My Goal", for The X-Factor's Shayne Ward?  It’s all just music; genre matters less than whether you like it or not. Two more Frost* albums have followed, but this is streets ahead their best.

The Nightfly – Donald Fagen

“I’m Lester the Nightfly, hello Baton Rouge”

Donald Fagen and Walter Becker were the core members of Steely Dan, a band with an ever changing cast of session musicians. This, Fagen’s first solo album, was released in 1982; it’s jazzy, bluesy, and sultry, evocative of smoky music rooms. The lyrics are thoughtful, nostalgic and perfect to listen to with a nice glass of your favourite tipple, the windows open and the curtains sighing gently in the breeze of a summer evening. In the title track, Fagen is Lester the Nightfly, the late-night DJ on WJAZ, chatting to an audience of insomniacs and lunatics, and it’s perfect.

The Lexicon of Love – ABC

The Lexicon of Love, ABC’s debut album released in 1982, is a lush offering of strings and guitars, and although I don’t think that it achieved songwriter Martin Fry’s ambition of fusing punk and disco (there’s not even a glimmer of punk in this album to my ear), it fitted perfectly into the new-wave, synth-pop explosion of the early 1980s. In the days when album length was still largely dictated by the limitations of the vinyl LP, The Lexicon of Love comes in at a very spare 37 minutes and 25 seconds, and there is not a second wasted. For my money, this is the perfect pop record, and if I could take just one of my selection to my desert island, this would be the one. I never tire of it, and if The Look of Love isn’t the most perfect pop song ever written, I don’t know what is…unless it’s Show Me…or Poison Arrow…or Tears Are Not Enough, or…

The Truth Is Out There

The writer Alan Moore (Watchmen, V for Vendetta), has said, “Conspiracy theorists believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth is far more frightening - Nobody is in control.” I am inclined to agree with him.

Time magazine’s list of the top ten conspiracy theories includes such classics as Area 51 and the Aliens, 9/11, and of course, the Moon Landings.[1] The Moon Landings theory is the only one that might hold water, except that the Americans went to the moon six times (alright, claim to have gone to the moon six times). If you fake one landing you might get away with it, despite the number of people you would need to have complicit in the hoax, but six is beyond credible. Unless – and I’ve not seen this suggested – it was only the first one that was faked.

Apollo 11 on the moon. Picture: NASA

The USA contributes more than its fair share of conspiracy theories, but Britain does quite nicely (perhaps it’s to do with the English language?) with Paul McCartney’s alleged death in 1966 being the most popular, followed by the frankly bonkers idea that the Royal Family - among others - are blood-drinking, flesh-eating, shape-shifting extraterrestrial reptilian humanoids, hell-bent on enslaving the human race. Other apparently reptilian would-be overlords are George W. Bush, Henry Kissinger, Bill and Hillary Clinton and Bob Hope, allegedly. Why Bob Hope, I wonder? It’s no coincidence that the most popular conspiracy theories have emerged during and since the Cold War. That, and McCarthyism in the US during the 1950s, seems to go hand in hand with the birth and nurturing of these theories.

Bob Hope - not an alien reptile.

A major proponent of the reptilian infiltrator theory is David Icke, who I remember from his football playing days with Coventry City and Hereford United (his career was cut short by rheumatoid arthritis), and his time as one of the hosts on Grandstand, the BBC’s foremost sports show. At some point in the 1980s, Icke began his journey from journalist to conspiracy theorist. He now appears to be one of the world’s major promoters of conspiracy theories.

David Icke

 Currently, Icke is among those touting conspiracy theories about the coronavirus.  He recently had his YouTube channel deleted for spreading COVID-19 misinformation, or as I’m sure he would label it, the truth. He has also been removed from Facebook, although his Twitter feed is still active.

Like so many conspiracy theories, this one is predicated on the idea that ‘they’ want to control and enslave ‘us.’

‘They’ are – among others – the Bilderberg Group, the Illuminati, the Freemasons, George Soros, and lately, Bill Gates. Generally, we are talking about the so-called ‘elite’ for whom the rest of humankind is simply fodder.

Supposedly, ‘they’ are using the coronavirus to control ‘us’, with both the virus itself and the measures that ‘they’ have put in place to supposedly inhibit the virus’s spread. This theory seems to have a good deal in common with the chemtrail theories that were once very popular. Throw 5G into the mix, and what was actually the missing piece in the chemtrail theory falls into place.

So far as I can see, this is the way it works. Bill Gates, either on his own, but more likely in conjunction with others, has created a flu-like virus called COVID-19. The virus is released, creating fear and despondency, killing hundreds of thousands of people. Governments rush to impose restrictions on people’s liberties (lockdowns), taking away many of their rights – temporarily, they say - in the name of controlling the virus by controlling the liberty of the populace. These restrictions will, however, stay in place long after the virus has gone. In this way, ‘they’ use governments to control ‘us’ in the guise of protecting us.

Simultaneously with creating the virus, Gates and his cronies have developed a vaccine. This vaccine has a dual purpose. Aside from making Gates and the big pharmaceutical companies even richer than they already are (and we know that they are already seriously rich), it is the next step in controlling us, because the vaccine comes equipped with nano-technology. Once inoculated, every human is carrying the seeds of their own enslavement.

On their own, the nanites are harmless, benign. In fact, some branches of the conspiracy theory would have you believe that the vaccine is nothing more than a placebo, since COVID-19 is actually a hoax, that there is no virus, and that the numbers of people dying from the alleged coronavirus are merely normal flu victims, the urgency and severity of the flu that is going around simply being overstated by governments. The whole point of the exercise is to get the world’s population inoculated, at which point the next stage in the process is initiated.

5G is key to the next stage. The conspiracy theorists who believed that chemtrails were seeding the atmosphere, and subsequently the population, with chemicals that would be used to control us always had it in mind that there would be something that would activate the chemical cocktail. Usually, this was some sort of radio wave or microwaves. Then along came 5G and that became the trigger. Once inoculated and seeded with nanites, 5G activates them and allows governments to subdue, subjugate, and control their populations. Presumably, dissent is dealt with by instructing the nanites to kill the subject.

Conspiracy theories are rarely consistent, usually because as soon as one strand is challenged, the advocates have to come up with some other set of circumstances that supports their theory, thus the coronavirus/5G conspiracy theory has other strands in which 5G is spreading and accelerating COVID-19, or is, in fact, the cause.

The Bill Gates angle in this theory is amplified by the false allegations that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is also the Center For Global Human Population Reduction. The picture that purports to prove this has been digitally manipulated. It’s true that Gates has spoken about limiting population growth, but not by killing off vast numbers of people.

According to David Icke, the ‘false’ pandemic is being driven by turning other patients visiting hospitals into coronavirus patients. His claim is – like all such – completely unverifiable. There’s no original message, none of the parties is named, the hospital isn’t named, and there’s no explanation of what alternative treatment was sought by the patient after leaving the hospital. A broken foot is not something you can just shake off, or treat at home, after all. 

For conspiracy theorists, denial of their theories is proof that they are right. This works on the basis that their theory wouldn’t be denied if it wasn’t true, especially if no proof is offered to show it isn’t true. Of course, it’s sometimes difficult to prove a negative, to prove that the conspiracists are wrong, but on the occasions when proof is offered, the conspiracists turn this to their advantage by making some wild claim that allows the rebuttal to reinforce, even if it slightly alters, their theory. It’s easy to be flexible when the only proof you need offer is the product of your own febrile imagination.

Many conspiracy theories – the earth is flat, NASA didn’t go to the moon, even the Royal Family are alien reptiles – are, to quote Douglas Adams in another context, “mostly harmless.” That isn’t the case with the coronavirus/5G theories which, whether it’s activists burning down 5G masts or assaulting telecom engineers, or spreading the virus by denying its seriousness, is potentially killing people.

The truth is out there, but it doesn’t belong to the conspiracy theorists.

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[1] http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,1860871,00.html

A Feast of Contradictions

There has never been a time in history when we have had the opportunity to be better informed about the world around us and the events that affect us than today. Yet there has also never been a time when we have been so misinformed either. The plethora of news sources that are available to us constantly contradict one another; sifting the wheat from the chaff, fact-checking stories and dismissing the fake news is harder than ever.

During the 2016 EU referendum campaign it was possible to read convincing cases for either side of the argument, which was why many of us had such a hard time reaching a conclusion as to which way to vote, and why the outcome was as close as it was. The news stories that we hear and read about coronavirus are equally as contradictory, but while the EU referendum had one of two possible outcomes, there are multiple possible consequences of the current pandemic.

On 1^st May, Boris Johnson said that Britain had passed the peak of the coronavirus pandemic, and was “on the downward slope.” He said that Britain had avoided the tragedy seen elsewhere in the world. At that point there had been over 26,000 COVID-19 related deaths in Britain, one of the worst death tolls in Europe. Today (6^th  May) Britain’s death toll is in excess of 32,000 and the worst in Europe; only the USA has had more deaths than we have so I am unclear as to what the tragedy was that Johnson was pleased we had avoided, unless it merely not emulating the number of deaths on the other side of the Atlantic.

We have been assured throughout this pandemic that the Government is following ‘the science’; I would be more reassured if I was clearer on what this rather abstract concept is since other countries have adopted different approaches while also apparently following ‘the science’. We have also been told that it is too early to make comparisons with other countries – Johnson said as much last week – yet, when our figures were well below Italy’s, that was exactly what was being done. It’s likely that comparisons are futile since not only are the figures for deaths in the UK probably inaccurate – that 32,000 could be as many as 13,000 higher – comparing them with other countries that have calculated their figures by different methods is thoroughly misleading.

Then we come to the possible second wave. An Imperial College London projection suggests that coming out of lockdown will result in a second wave of infections deadlier than the first in Italy, yet former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, speaking on LBC radio, says that advice he has received from Patrick Vallance and Jenny Harries left him “optimistic” the UK can now avoid a second wave. Since we seem to be following a similar path to Italy’s these stories are contradictory in the extreme. They expose the possibility that no one really knows what they are talking about.

There has been much contradictory talk about testing. Supporting the notion that anything can be proven with statistics, Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced that the Government’s target of 100,000 tests per day had been met last week. Then it was revealed that the target had only been met because the figure included some 40,000 test kits that had been sent out in the post; the number of tests that had actually been conducted was therefore much lower. The self-imposed target has not been met since.

When it comes to testing there is a good deal of righteous indignation about who is being tested. Michael Gove’s daughter was tested on the grounds that it was to enable Mr Gove to not be limited to working from home. Broadcaster Piers Morgan has been tested after displaying symptoms, and the question has been asked as to how vital testing either of them actually was. Morgan’s test was justified on the grounds that broadcasters and journalists are essential workers. On that basis is Nigel Farage a key worker? The former UKIP MEP and now LBC radio host was visited by police after complaints about him breaching lockdown restrictions after he travelled to Dover to report on migrants arriving there. Last week Farage travelled to another part of Kent to record a similar video monologue about illegal immigrants. I hold no brief for Farage, but given the crowds of people sunning themselves in parks, holding barbecues and parties, and generally not following lockdown guidelines, I question what harm Farage filming himself riffing on what he perceives to be the evils of illegal immigrants, was actually doing. At least it seemed that he was observing social distancing guidelines, albeit that his journeys to the South Coast to do so were not strictly necessary.

There are anti-lockdown protestors in the UK and the USA wearing masks while claiming that COVID-19 is a hoax. There is opposition to the NHS tracking app that is being trialled on the Isle of Wight on the grounds of Government snooping and control, some of it tweeted from smartphones which have logged as much, if not more data about the user than the NHS app will. Unless the protestors are free of smartphones, home broadband, bank accounts, supermarket loyalty cards and the like, they have already given up vast amounts of data about themselves, voluntarily, and not even in a good cause.

Boris Johnson’s much-publicised bout of coronavirus is another contradiction. There are the inevitable rumours that he never actually had it. Then there were stories that despite his illness, he was in good spirits and able to read important documents; now there are stories that he was at death’s door, and that contingency plans were made for his death. I’m confident that he did have coronavirus, but as I’m sure many people have worked with colleagues who have had convenient illnesses at times when they were due to undertake tasks they wanted to avoid, I can understand why some hold the opposite view. How badly ill Johnson was only he and his doctors truly know, and while I understand why the seriousness of his illness might have been understated – for morale purposes, perhaps – it’s another example of the contradictory stories that have been such a feature of this crisis.

Finally, the lockdown. We locked down too late; we locked down too early. It was too strict; it wasn’t strict enough. It hasn’t been effectively enforced; the police are enforcing it too rigidly. While Jacob Rees-Mogg has warned that the lockdown will not be eased “overnight” his Conservative colleague Iain Duncan Smith has said that it’s time to “unlock the lockdown” saying that we should trust the common sense of the British people. Rees-Mogg has said that the British people had imposed on themselves a stricter lockdown than the Government had called for (it’s been patchy, but I agree with him to some degree). If the British people have sufficient common sense, they will continue to observe a personal lockdown where possible, even if the official one is relaxed.

 

Drivers queue at KFC in Swansea after the fast-food chin re-opened its drive-through 

But, trusting the British people to display common sense is the biggest contradiction of all. Someone should remind Iain Duncan Smith that he’s including people who phoned 999 because KFC ran out of chicken and have been queuing at the same restaurant chain in droves since they reopened their drive-throughs.

Another New Normal

Six years ago, I wrote a blog about bereavement called The New Normal. I doubted then that I had invented the expression, it’s just a combination of three mundane words after all. From some cursory research, it seems that the first recorded use of the expression is from 1918, in an article by Henry Wise Wood in the National Electric Light Association Bulletin, an American publication in which he wrote of “the new normal” in the wake of The Great War.

Since then the phrase has been used to describe life after 9/11, and after the global recession in 2008. When I wrote my blog about bereavement in 2014, I was not consciously aware of the expression, but it is the way of things that words, phrases, and expressions worm their way into our subconscious and pop up as though they were original thoughts.

The life we have to look forward to after coronavirus is being described as another “new normal.” That expression, together with the single word “unprecedented” as in, “we live in unprecedented times,” is becoming so overworked that there is little chance of anyone slipping it into an article or a conversation and genuinely thinking it is their own original thought, not for a long while.

What we consider normal may never return, but we are fortunate in having today’s technology while we face this pandemic. In particular, the internet and contactless payment methods have made our lives more tolerable. Had this pandemic struck in the days before those technologies were available it’s difficult to imagine how we could have coped.

Being retired, the question does not arise, but my job – at least at the end of my working life – would have enabled me to work from home, and my wife worked from home for a few years before taking redundancy in 2019. Much of Britain’s workforce faces many and various stresses and strains at present. For essential workers, and especially those who use public transport, there are necessary precautions they must take to safeguard themselves from infection. There are those whose jobs have been furloughed, those who have been laid off, and those who are on precarious contracts. These people ought to be at the heart of government thinking when weighing up how to loosen the lockdown.

For government, balancing the health of the nation with its economic wellbeing is a delicate task.  An increase in unemployment is going to be one inevitable consequence in the aftermath of the government’s response to coronavirus, although it has to be said that the government are making a small contribution towards addressing this with the news that 50,000 people will be needed to fill out customs forms in the wake of Britain leaving the EU in January 2021.

Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove announced this week that these agents would be required due to Britain’s more complex trading relationship with the EU come January next year. Training sufficient customs agents will require the creation of an online “customs agent academy” according to Mr Gove. It would be an ambitious undertaking at the best of times, and while it’s not entirely clear whether this represents 50,000 new jobs, retraining existing employees, or a combination of the two, it is especially challenging while the country is in the grip of a pandemic.

In addition, the EU has said that Britain must immediately start building customs posts in Northern Ireland. This is in response to Boris Johnson’s January announcement that he was preparing to impose full customs and border checks on all European goods entering the UK after Brexit. The Telegraph said at the time that Johnson was planning “a radical departure from pre-election ‘no deal’ planning that prioritised the smooth flow of goods into the UK from Europe. Whitehall departments have been told to prepare for imposing the full panoply of checks on EU imports to the UK.”

Implementing such a programme – which rather implies that a trade deal with the EU was not going to be forthcoming, even before coronavirus cramped negotiators’ style – will be challenging in the highly probable event that there are at least some lingering restrictions to mobility and with some form of social distancing in place come next January.

There have been suggestions that Britain should apply for an extension of the Transition Period, which would need to be done by the end of June, which is to say in eight weeks’ time. Former Tory cabinet minister Sir David Lidington, who was Theresa May’s deputy, thinks that a six-month extension is inevitable. Michael Gove, however has dismissed calls for an extension; he insists that it is “plain prudence” to adhere to the current timetable. Not since Gordon Brown’s flirtation with the concept has prudence been so carelessly dallied with.

I can perfectly understand that strict adherents to the cause of Brexit must be frustrated that Britain remains even now a member of the EU; I can appreciate that using COVID-19 as a reason for extending the transition period will be seen by many people as just another excuse for dragging our feet. I can see that many ardent Brexiteers will feel that even if a delay is agreed because of coronavirus, that will not be the end of it, there will be something else that pops up after that to further postpone Britain’s departure from the EU.

I can also see coronavirus having a terminal impact on the EU itself. The arrival of coronavirus in Europe was met, not by increased co-operation between member states of the EU, but by a collective raising of drawbridges. Britain, despite having been a proponent of increased border controls in the past, has kept its borders open to a much greater extent than the other 27 EU members. Self-interest, and a widening divide between Europe’s wealthier northern states and its poorer relations in the south, is pointing towards a financial crisis in the union that could contribute towards its ultimate demise as anything other than as a trading bloc.

Given that even some staunch Tory Brexiteers have accepted in the past that a no-deal departure from the EU would cause problems in the supply chain and impact the nation’s short-term prosperity, and that some of Brexit's benefits might not become apparent for another generation – Jacob Rees Mogg  suggested that it might take fifty years – hurtling toward a no-deal Brexit now does seem like a negligent policy of self-harm. If the EU comes out of the coronavirus mortally wounded as an institution, or at least significantly scaled back towards a more user-friendly trading alliance, Britain could retain the trading benefits of the union, but lose the add-ons that the Leave campaign wanted rid of and without the actual pain of leaving.

We are fortunate that Brexit did not happen in January this year. Road hauliers, supermarkets and government ministers all admitted last year that a no-deal Brexit would probably lead to delays in stock reaching the shops, and some shortages. The empty shelves we experienced in supermarkets a couple of months ago had more to do with excess demand and panic buying than it did with interruptions in the supply chain. Imagine how much worse matters would have been had the supply chain been interrupted or disrupted by new customs checks on imported goods?

Still, for those who enjoy invoking the War-time spirit, the possible introduction of rationing would have made their experience even more authentic. I wouldn’t rule it out come next January if Britain’s divorce from the EU is on the terms of no-deal. Mind you, French President Emmanuel Macron recently said (about the failure to reach agreement on an economic response to the pandemic), “What’s at stake is the survival of the European project.” If rifts that seemed to have been exposed become wider, then come January maybe there will be nothing for Britain to leave anyway.