Finally, a podcast (or is it a blogcast, since it’s on my blog?) where I’m not “reacting” to something that Olivia St Redfern has put on her Leisure Lounge series. Here are some musings about where we’re at, now we are at Level 3.
Some of my friends, especially my Natcoll students from 1999â2000, will tell you that I love doing impressions. They say Rory Bremner’s are shit hot and that mine are halfway there. It’s a regret that I haven’t been able to spring any of these on you. Don’t worry, I haven’t done any here. But one of these days âŠ
I know what youâre thinking. âDid he have six kids or only fiveâ. Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I've kinda lost track myself.
As a dual national, I hope thereâs some exaggeration or selective quoting in the Bristol Post about its report of former police officer Mike Rowland, whoâs stuck in Auckland with his wife Yvonne. Apparently, New Zealand is in âpandemoniumâ and he feels like heâs in âAlcatrazâ.
As we are most certainly not in pandemonium, the British Crown may have to ponder if it needs to reopen some of the cases Mr Rowland was once involved in due to unreliable witness testimony. Then again, if it can keep a foreign national like Julian Assange indefinitely and subject him to psychological torture as well as the risk of COVID-19 infection, perhaps it wonât need to ponder a thing.
Mr Rowlandâs not a fan of our breakfast television, either, saying that it makes Piers Morgan a âgodâ. There actually is some truth to the quality of our breakfast telly depending on which channel he has come across (I wonât name names), and I recommend that he switch to another. Go a bit further up the dial, and Aljazeera English has a whole variety of ex-BBC presenters speaking in RP that might make him feel less at home.
And Iâve my own stories about the inability to get answers from the British High Commission, so I sympathize on this note.
But given the choice between being stuck in Aotearoa and being amongst the control group that is Great Britain and Northern Ireland, where the governmentâs sense of British exceptionalism meant that it delayed locking things down, so much so that the PM himself has COVID-19, I would be quite happy to be in the land Down Under.
Mr Rowland may have missed the (disputed) Murdoch Press (which usually leans right) report that suggested that Boris Johnson’s senior adviser said it was ‘too bad’ if ‘some pensioners die’, consistent with Mr Johnson’s own position that Britain would pursue a strategy of herd immunityâand consistent with what the British government initially announced, with sycophants in full agreement.
I admit Iâve called our government âa bunch of Blairitesâ but Iâd take them over their lot, including their Mr Johnson who does less convincing prime ministerial impressions than Neville Chamberlain. Their mass U-turn had to happen as it appeared the British people figured out their lives were being put in danger and forced the government’s hand.
I realize he misses the comforts of home and I would, too, in his shoes, though equally Iâd be grateful to be alive, in a country where even he acknowledges that food is readily available and we havenât suffered the extent of panic buying that the UK has seen. If only Alcatraz were this pleasant.
Iâve heard world leaders describe the fight against COVID-19 as a war, and there are some parallels.
As any student of history knows, there was such a thing as the Munich Agreement before World War II. Iâve managed to secure the summarized English translation below.
For those wondering why the UK initially thought herd immunity would be its official answer to COVID-19, placing millions of people in danger, Iâve located the following document, which was previously covered by the Official Secrets Act.
The British PM confirms heâs been in contact with the virus in this video from the Murdoch Press, cited by The Guardianâs Carole Cadwalladr:
âIâm shaking hands continuously. I was at a hospital the other night where there were actually some Coronavirus patients & I shook hands with everybody. People can make up their own mind but I think itâs very important to keep shaking hands.âpic.twitter.com/mvPEE13udm
Iâd far rather have the action taken by our governmentthan the UKâs when it comes to flattening the curve on coronavirus, and the British response reminds me of this 2018 post.
Just because the chief scientific adviser there has a knighthood and talks posh isnât a reason to trust him, his judgement or even his âexpertiseâ if science says otherwise.
When my father went into hospital in September 2019, the doctorsâ lack of treatmentâbecause they determined he was âdyingâ and that that was sufficient reason to deny him the essentials of life and that it would be a âmiracleâ if he regained consciousness, whereas my partner and I determined he was âdehydratedâ (we were right)âI was forced to ask the palliative nurse about this so-called âpolicyâ. Dad did, after all, wake up after we demanded he be given saline and sustenance within hours, leading me to wonder just why a team of doctors were so obsessed with killing him.
âWhoâs next?â I asked.
She looked at me quizzically.
âWhoâs next? Is it the differently abled? Homosexuals? Jews? Iâm sorry, but the parallels are all too evident to me.â
During this time, a Dr Mark Jones in the UK came into my Twittersphere and we exchanged a number of Tweets.
Mark essentially said that this was an unwritten UK government policy, and showed me numerous examples of elder neglect and abuse in his country. Maybe I should say âour countryâ since itâs the only one I have a current passport for, having got too busy to renew my Kiwi one (not that it would have much use at present).
The reasons were financial. The fewer OAPs there were, the less theyâd have to pay out in pensions.
Therefore, it was no surprise that Dadâs treatment at a British-run rest home compared less favourably than Te Hopai, where he wound up, although in Bupaâs defence they have taken our complaints seriously, apologized, and have invited us to see the improvements.
The less generous might have branded Mark a conspiracy theorist but Sir Patrick Vallance, the UKâs chief scientific adviser, seems to advance a position directly compatible with Markâs observations.
From what I can make out, heâs quite happy for the UK to get infected with coronavirus with the expectation that 60 per cent of the Union will develop immunityâalthough from all my reading of this approach, a proportion of older people who contract it will die. It appears a callous approach to just let a disease comeâthe UK isnât closing its borders or banning mass gatherings, but instead is welcoming its microbic visitor with crumpets and tea. Yes, they are advising those who feel sick to self-isolate, and that is sensible, but it’s the rest that makes little sense.
Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson preempts this as he said without emotion, ‘Many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time.’
Even Jeremy Hunt appeared to break ranks with the government in one interview.
The likely result will be a thinning out of British OAPs.
When I first told my partner this, she was shocked, but I advanced my own conspiracy theory: âIf you begin with the premise that Dominic Cummings is out to destroy Britainâits institutions, and now its peopleâthen all of this fits his agenda.â
The new Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, after Sajid Javid found himself in a position where even he couldnât go along with what was being peddled by 10 Downing Street, making you wonder just what horrors await, will doubtless be thrilled at the savings to the UK pension fund.
PS.: Thank you, Tomas Pueyo (the man in the screen), for reacting the way you did to Prof John Edmunds’ position that the UK has given up on containing the virus and that people will die. You have spoken, silently, for many of us.âJY
When I first wrote a satirical look back at the decade, which ran on this blog in December 2009 (on the old Blogger service, as I was helping a friend fight a six-month battle with Google to restore his blog), it was pretty easy to make up little fictions based on reality. This one, covering the decade just gone, was a different matter. No matter how you did it, often the reality would be stranger than the satire.
2010 The Australian establishment, especially large portions of its media, are shocked a woman could become prime minister. They spend her entire term telling the Australian public that this is morally wrong.
Americans decide that they needed less honesty from television, so Simon Cowell leaves the US version of Pop Idol, American Idol.
Donald Trump-hosted show The Apprentice gets its lowest ratings ever. He begins planning another show and brainstorms with his countrymen on Twitter.
Long-running shows Ashes to Ashesand Lost end with exactly the same conclusion. Frustrated at years of investment in the two shows, the Anglosphere is so turned off television that they would rather form silos on social media websites to make their owners rich. Two guys in San Francisco spot the opportunity and invent Instagram.
Jay Leno unquits The Tonight Show after discovering the $30 million per annum he made prior to leaving just couldnât sustain his car collecting hobby.
Kate loves Willy, so they get engaged.
2011 Itâs revealed that Arnold Schwarzenegger does films, politics, and the family maid.
Following the example of HH the Dalai Lama, Charlie Sheen decides to impart his wisdom to the masses, gaining an extra million Twitter followers as a result. Cheryl Cole starts on the US X Factor amid much buzz, then vanishes from the show. Only her dimples remain.
Proving Apple is either a cult or a religion, Steve Jobs shrines appear all over the world after his passing. How I Met Your Mother concludes as we find out River Song is Amy Pondâs daughter.
Kate loves Willy, so they get married.
Reality is stranger
Facebook launches Timeline, but it actually doesnât work on the 1st of each month as no one there has worked out there are time zones other than US Pacific. Still no one thinks theyâre stupid. Google gets busted over its advertising preferencesâ manager, which actually doesnât stop gathering your preferences after youâve opted out from having them gather your preferences. None of the other NAI members seem to have a problem with their opt-outs. As far as I can tell, Google has been lying about its opt-out for two years, affecting millions.
2012 President Obama finally figures out that same-sex marriage would not bring about disasterâthat could safely be left to Big Tech, as it enjoys monopolies. As a result, Facebook has its IPO.
Forget 2011âs Steve Jobs shrines, Jesus got a new look in Zaragoza, thanks to a repair job. Not everyone is enamoured with the updated Jesus, but it saves the town and numerous businesses.
Prince Harry parties and brings a new meaning to ‘Las Vegas strip’. Got to have something to mark his grandmotherâs 60th Jubilee. The Hunger Games makes stars of Jennifer Lawrence and Liam Hemsworth, although people over a certain age thought it was The Unger Games, a remake of The Odd Couple.
Kate loves Willy, so they expect a kid.
In the real world Malala Yousafzai kicks ass and a bullet to the head doesnât stop her. If anything, it makes her stronger and grows her reputation.
E. L. James gathers up her Twilight fan fic and puts it all into a book, called 50 Shades of Grey. Remember, this is where Boris Johnson is mayor: the London Olympics use the Kazakh national anthem from Borat. High five! Google gets busted over bypassing the âDo not trackâ setting on Iphone Safari browsers by The Wall Street Journal. Despite trying to look innocent, it stops this the same day. Several US statesâ attorneys-general decide this was such a gross violation of privacy that they fine Google a few hoursâ earnings.
2013 Jennifer Lawrence brings publicity to her new film, Silver Linings Playbook, by falling at the Oscars.
Miley Cyrus mainstreams twerking, which showed how far society had already descended. Her Dadâs âAchy Breaky Heartâ release in 1992 wasnât considered a cultural high-point at the time: the apple does not fall far from the tree.
Edward Snowden exposes mass surveillance on US citizens and even US allies. There is mass panic over the collection of data and the private sector pushes back, ensuring encryption of usersâ private information ⊠actually, nothing happened, and the NSA continued with its data collection while the Obama administration charged Snowden with a crime and tried to extradite him from Russia, where he had more freedom of speech.
HM Queen Elizabeth II evens things up with Helen Mirren by winning a BAFTA for playing HM Queen Elizabeth II.
Kate loves Willy, so they have a kid.
In the real world RIP Nelson Mandela.
2014
Ellen Degeneres broke Twitter with a selfie, but since everyone knew why, no one recalls if the fail whale went up.
The world got a reminder not to upload private stuff to the cloudâas celebrities found out the hard way when their intimate pics were leaked. En masse, the world stopped uploading images to the cloud and to social media while they waited for Big Tech to fix things with their privacy ⊠actually, nothing happened, and people uploaded more photos, in the hope that hackers would find them and release them.
Scotland decides to stay part of the Unionâfor now. Of course they could trust London not to do something silly like leave the European Union.
Bill Cosby makes Mel Gibson look respectable.
Jay Leno decides heâs made enough for his car collecting hobby and leaves The Tonight Show, though he might still unquit. Watch your back, Jimmy.
Kate loves Willy, so they expect another kid.
In the real world Youâve heard of the website You Park Like a C***? An American exchange student in Tübingen wanted to be featured on Youâre Stuck in a C***. RIP Robin Williams, one of the funniest actors on Earth.
2015 Volkswagen, trying to outdo its links to Nazism and allegations of labour relationsâ corruption, recalls tens of millions of diesel vehicles to see how far its brand would stretch. The US plans to fine VW way more than Ford or GM when they cheated on emissions, because, foreign.
Donald Trump hits on an idea for a new reality show where he runs for president. Casting begins.
Steve Harvey named the wrong winner at the Miss Universe pageant. At this point, being âHarveyedâ is a fairly innocent term.
Jon Snow is very much alive and continues fronting the news on Channel 4.
Kate loves Willy, so they have another kid.
2016 The Chicago Cubs win the World Series, as detailed in Greyâs Sports Almanac. In November, the unthinkable happens: Wellington has a massive rainstorm, followed by an earthquake that triggers a tsunami warning, followed by flooding and extreme fog that leave the city cut off from the rest of the country. Summer would be called off while citizens figured out what to do. The UFO invasion does not take place, though with local body elections, certain candidates were replaced by replicants.
Kate loves Willyâand Harry loves Meghan. Not a bad way to mark HM the Queenâs 90th birthday.
In the real world The UK votes to leave the European Union: Nigel Farage is overjoyed, but Boris Johnson and Michael Goveâs body language and facial expression reveal their dismay, and their words donât match. I discover first-hand that Facebook is forcing downloads on people with the guise of âanti-malwareâ, even though this claim is dubious, and Facebook admits data are transferred back to the mother ship. I spend two years finding a journalist with the guts to write about it. Potentially millions have already been affected stretching to the beginning of the decade.
RIP David Bowie.
2017 With the approval of the US audience, a massive, multi-channel series débuts, starring Donald J. Trump. It shows a dystopian America that elects a game show host its president, and warns us what can follow. This four-year experiment is expected to culminate in 2020 with an election special, which determines the seriesâ fate for a renewed batch of episodes.
Kendall Jenner can do anything. She can solve riots with cans of Pepsi. Forget flower power.
Kate loves Willy, so they expect another kid.
2018 Kanye West became Donald Trumpâs biggest fan and joins the cast of his experimental four-year show. He plays an unhinged character who believes slavery was a choice.
Harry loves Meg, and tie the knot. Meghanâs Dad, however, was too busy pursuing a career in modelling to attend.
Taylor Swift gets the voters out, and the public hasnât seen anything like this since David Hasselhoff brought down the Berlin Wall.
Kate loves Willy, so they have another kid.
2019 To keep the ratings up for his long-running show, Donald Trump gets jealous of Greta Thunberg, as she didnât have to fake her Time Person of the Year cover.
He heads to the UK for the D-Day commemorations, and bonds with HM the Queen, telling her, âMy Dad was German and my Mum was Scottish, too.â
The British attempt a remake of Donald Trumpâs show. They search for a man who is born in New York, cheated on his first two wives, has five kids, funny hair, used to espouse more liberal views, before trying to sell ethnonationalism as part of his schtick. They find him: Boris Johnson, best known for his earlier work on Little Britain USA. Within weeks heâs already cheated on his partner Carrie by giving everyone in the UK a weak pound.
Harry loves Meg, and this year, they didnât need Kate and Willy to provide the baby news.
I often find myself in accord with my friend Victor Billot. His piece on the UK General Election can be found here. And yes, Britain, this is how many of us looking in see itâlike Victor I have dual nationality (indeed, my British passport is my only current one, having been a little busy to get the Kiwi one renewed).
Highlights include (and this is from a man who is no fan of the EU):
When reporters with their TV cameras went out to the streets to ask the people about their concerns, their motives, their aspirations, they recorded a dogs dinner of reverse logic and outright gibberish. BoJo had screaming rows with his girlfriend, made up policy on the go and hid in a commercial fridge. Corbyn however was seen as the weirdo. âI donât like his mannerisms,â stated one Tory convert as the hapless Labour leader made another stump speech about saving the NHS. âBritainâs most dangerous manâ shrieked a tabloid headline.
Corbyn made a honest mistake in thinking that people may have been concerned about waiting lists at hospitals. It turned out that voters are happy about queues as long as they donât have any foreigners in them, or doctors with âforeignâ looks at the end of them.
The Murdoch Press machine: predictably, business as usual.
and:
A curious aspect of the election is how the behaviour of the leaders seems to be measured by a new matrix of values. The more boorish, and arrogant, the better, in a kind of pale reflection of the troglodyte Trump in the midnight dim of his tweet bunker. BoJo, a blustering, buffoonish figure with a colourful personal life and the cocksure confidence of an Old Etonian, can be contrasted to the measured and entirely decent Corbyn with his Tube pass and allotment. Perhaps this is an inevitable side effect of the growing rage and alienation that bubbles under the surface of society, providing the gravitational pull towards the âstrong manâ who will âmake our nation great (again)â in a world of other people who arenât like us.
I shan’t spoil the last paragraph but it all builds up to that nicely.
Those who remember Visual Arts Trends, a publication created and edited by my friend Julia Dudnik-Stern in the late 1990s and early 2000s, might recall that I didnât have kind words about the Rt Hon Tony Blair and his government. In those pre-Iraq war days, one reader was so upset they wrote to Julia, who, to her credit, defended my freedom to express a political view.
It was actually quite rare to attack Blair, Mandy, the Blairites and Labour thenâthe fawning interviews given to Blair by the likes of Sir David Frost, and so many of the British media establishment made their 1997 campaign relatively easy. They shrewdly pitched themselves, light on substance and heavy on rhetoric, and that may have been what I was calling out. For once, I donât recall too clearly, but I can tell you that I do sweat, and did so even when the Falklands were on.
How times have changed. In 2019, an independent study has shown that Labour largely gets negative press coverage in British newspapers, while Conservative gets positive. As covered in The Independent, Loughborough University researchers assigned negative scores to negative articles and positive scores to positive ones, to arrive at an index.
In the period from November 7 to 27, 2019, coverage on Labour scored â71·17 in the first week, â71·96 in the second, and â75·79 in the third.
By contrast, the Tories received +29·98, +17·86 and +15·87.
Tonight, Colin Millarâs thread made for an interesting read, where the Rt Hon Jeremy Corbyn is damned if he does, and damned if he doesnât.
There is a possibility Jeremy Corbyn will be Prime Minister of the UK by the end of next week. There is no better time to highlight how, no matter what Corbyn does or whatever position he takes, his critics will attack him – even if they totally contradict themselves (thread).
Corbyn's problem? He's both too centrist. He's also too much of a fringe figure. Both are argued in the same piece by Tom Peck: https://t.co/OZH41FavKm
Now, I’m sure I’ve shifted my position on things, but generally not in the same year. And yes, Labour itself hasn’t had the best comms in the world.
However, the UK population, and, for that matter, we here in New Zealand, look at the state of news in the US and think we somehow are above the phenomenon of âfake newsâ. But itâs very clear that we arenât, and I have insisted for years that we arenât. This may be uncomfortable for some, but the truth often is. I can only imagine some are all right with being lied to, just as they are all right with being surveilled by Big Tech.
There seems to be little outrage in a week when an article by the UK PM saying that his countryâs poor are made up of chavs, burglars, drug addicts and losers emerges, and that poverty is caused by low IQ. In a separate story of his, admittedly older than mine for Julia, he says that children of single mothers are âill-raised, ignorant, aggressive and illegitimateâ. One wonders what our former PM, Sir John Key, raised by his mother, makes of that.
Just like 1997, one side is being given a free pass by the British media, whether you like them or not. Are ‘we British’ smart enough to see through it? History suggests we are not.
Ken Clarke has been around long enough (indeed, as the Father of the House, he has been in Parliament for longer than my lifetime) to see through political shenanigans, and Bojo and Brexit are no exception. (Yes, Minister is also instructive.)
Ken Clarke nails Boris Johnson's oh so transparent strategy 👏
1. Set conditions which make No Deal inevitable
2. Make sure blame is attached to the EU & Parliament
3. Fly a flag waving general election before the consequences of No Deal become too obvious pic.twitter.com/hoNKc9hysv
Subsequently, Jacob Rees-Mogg, who lives in a dream world detached from understanding others, inspired even more rebellion, and with the PM’s speech, it played out exactly as Clarke predicted. Not predicted: Iain Duncan-Smith picking his nose.
Johnson is acting like the schoolboy who hasn’t done his homework and is trying to hide it in a myriad of excuses. The UK doesn’t even have a negotiating team, according to former Chancellor Philip Hammond, and the PM’s claims of ‘progress’ are a mystery to those in Brussels. There is only so much nationalistic bluster will get you if you don’t actually do the workâeven if you voted leave, you would expect this government to have advanced your interests even slightly. It appears that that was never its aim. It feels a bit like the last days of Mao: keep it messy in a hope to hold on a little longer.
Jennifer Lawrence brings publicity to her new film, Silver Linings Playbook, by falling at 
Ken Clarke has been around long enough (indeed, as the Father of the House, he has been in Parliament for longer than my lifetime) to see through political shenanigans, and Bojo and Brexit are no exception. (Yes, Minister is also instructive.)