Tag: Boris Johnson

Coronavirus 18 months in – Gareth v Boris.

Since I wrote my last blog before Christmas a lot has changed both personally and with the virus. We have moved from Crewe to a new house in Oswestry. We are still not quite sure (despite only Alyson and me being involved) how we ended up here!. The virus has ‘moved on’ as well with and is now the delta variant, under the new naming convention so as not to stigmatise India – the country where the mutation was first found. The number of new infections is doubling every 9 or 10 days and could be as high as 50,000 a day soon. Many of the restrictions we have been living with will be removed on July 19th, so-called ‘Freedom Day’. There is a mixture of moods and opinions of optimism, fear, hope, sadness, concern, joy, uncertainty, division, and a belief that as a nation/country we are on the brink of a bright future where we will end up once again as world-beaters. Those same words could describe the expectations placed on the England football team as they prepare today for the final of a major international tournament for 55 years.

1966 was the middle of a decade of growth described by the then Labour Prime Minster Harold Wilson in part due to ‘the white heat of technology’ with the economy and the country generally on its ‘uppers’. No doubt the current Conservative Prime Minster the first name politician Boris is hoping that a win for England can be framed as overcoming the ‘doomsters and gloomsters’ he referenced in his pre-Brexit election victory in December 2019 – colliding as it did with the start of the current pandemic.

The two national passions of football and politics clashed after England’s semi-final victory on Wednesday when the ex-England and Manchester United footballer Gary Neville, in his capacity as a pundit for ITV’s coverage of the match, said these words as manager Gareth Southgate and his team paraded around the pitch, applauding England fans

The standards of leaders in this country in the last couple years has been poor. And looking at that man there that’s everything a leader should be: respectful, humble, telling the truth, genuine. He’s fantastic Gareth Southgate, he really is unbelievable and has done a great job.

Unsurprisingly the comments drew attention from all side of the political divide. The left-leaning papers jumped on them as an example to show up the perceived problems of the government and much of the right-wing press criticised the ‘Corbynista Neville’. Whatever the result tonight, I get the impression, from conversations in the media and with friends, that if the choice was between Gareth or Boris as leader I am pretty certain Gareth would win by a large majority.

Some might say what does Gareth know about being a political leader, to which others would respond what do many in the present Government know about running a large organisation, such as the National Health Service. I am certainly not going to criticise former Secretary of State for Health Matt Hancock for the actions which lead to his resignation, as we are all subject to our human failings, and it is a sad situation for all the families involved. What I have criticised before in these blogs is Mr Hancock’s part in the failings during the pandemic. The majority of government ministers were elected as MPs, and appointed to cabinet because of their desire to be part of a Brexit-focused government. It is easy to say ‘no one could have done better in the circumstances’, but, as has been pointed out not just by Dominic Cummings -someone not beyond criticism for his part in the ‘Barnard Castle’ affair – but by early parliamentary inquiries, there have been serious failings. Rewriting history over the failure to protect those in care homes, the lack of provision of PPE, and the fiasco of the ‘testing and tracing’ procedures, does not deflect from the errors that have been made.

People who have experience in commercial business and doing ‘real jobs’ such as teachers, doctors, engineers, or running care or health or even large sporting bodies are, in my opinion, better placed than those whose only exposure to ‘real life’ is being a political analyst or researcher to ministers in government or opposition. I know they appoint ‘special advisors’ and have civil servants who know the systems and processes, but simply relying on your own narrow view or that of like-minded people does not lead to good leadership or good governance. Apart from a short time working for the family IT company and as an economist at The Bank of England, Matt Hancock’s time has been spent studying for an MPhil and being chosen aged 26 to be a special advisor to then Chancellor George Osborne in 2005. He became an MP 5 years later aged 31 with no more experience of the real world.

To be fair to Boris he has been a journalist. I will leave it to others to decide if that is a ‘proper job’, or whether he was a particularly rigorous in his research, and he also led London as Mayor responsible for a huge organisation, and important areas like transport and policing.

As a fan of Middlesbrough football club I have a long affinity with the work of Gareth Southgate as he came to our club in 2001 (on July 11th as it happens) from Aston Villa, signed by that other former Middlesbrough manager who also went on to become an England manager, Steve McClaren. I have an interesting ‘joint autobiography’ written by Gareth and his long time best friend Andy Woodman called ‘Woody & Nord’.

It is a fascinating read as it charts the lives of two young friends started as youth players with Crystal Palace, but whose football careers took very different paths. Nord was the nickname given to Gareth by Walley Downes a coach at Palace who thought Gareth sounded posh like the TV personality Denis Norden. Another person at Palace manager Alan Smith clearly ‘old school’ looked into his eyes and told the then seventeen year old trainee Gareth ‘Son, no f***ing chance’. It is a sign of Gareth’s character that in the book he says that Smith is one of the good guys.

Ten years later Woody had his moment of glory for Northampton as a goalkeeper winning a playoff at Wembley (saving a penalty) and Gareth played for England at a European Championship – the famous one in 1996 when he missed that penalty! As their paths diverged and Woody moved further down the leagues and Gareth continued his rise in the Premiership they stayed close friends. The book is about how their lives remained entwined with holidays together and being best men for each others weddings. The book was written in 2003 while Gareth was Middlesbrough’s captain, but that was before he and Steve McClaren lead us to our first trophy winning the League Cup, and then two seasons in Europe culminating in a UEFA Cup final against Seville in Eindhoven in 2006.

I have an original signed photo of Gareth holding that League Cup in 2004. I have the same replica shirt as it is one that I am willing to wear, given that it doesn’t have a betting company logo on it. The picture was presented to me when I was made redundant in 2007 after the Co-op took over the company I was working for. One of my sales manager’s partners ran a sports memorabilia company and gave me an authenticated copy.

After the match in Eindhoven Steve McClaren left for England and Gareth was appointed manager of Boro. He had two seasons of mid table finishes (including an 8-1 victory over Manchester City managed by the former England Manager Sven-Goran Eriksson). Following relegation the next season Gareth was replaced in October 2009 by another soon to be international manager, Gordon Strachan.

I have always had a soft spot for former players who have been our manager and like the fact that generally our Chairman Steve Gibson sticks with them, even after many others have started losing faith. I have a vivid memory of sitting in the away end at the Ricoh Arena in Coventry the weekend before Gareth was sacked a few days later – ironically after a mid-week match when we beat Derby and were in 4th place. It came to light that Steve Gibson met Strachan(a former Coventry manager) at the match and discussed the job with him, even as Gareth was managing the team that day below where they sat.

It is not too much of an understatement to say that Gordon Strachan’s time with us was an utter disaster. He criticised Gareth and the team and brought in a whole new team of former Scottish players, some of whom were ok, but others didn’t fit. To be fair he walked away less than a year later, when Boro were 20th in the Championship, without any compensation admitting he had failed.

I had wondered if ‘Woody and Nord’ were still friends but saw an interview this week on ITV with Woody, now managing National League side Bromley FC out of a wooden hut, while his best friend was giving the team talk at Wembley, and was pleased to see that they are still best mates.

Gareth still lives in North Yorkshire and used the nearby Middlesbrough training facilities and had two warm up friendly international matches at the Riverside Stadium. It may be a pipe dream but I hope Gareth comes back after his international career has ended and manages Middlesbrough in the Premiership again and brings us more success!

A large part of Gareth Southgate’s success is his willingness to surround himself with good people and to listen and learn from them. I read an article by one of the team, former Olympic Athlete Matthew Sayed who pointed out that many people in leadership roles surround themselves with like-minded people who in effect become an ‘echo chamber’ telling them what they think you want to hear, and in reality they only know the same things that you do. Gareth has people from other sports, business people and tries to learn what they do to bring success. Sayed states.

“One source of these ideas is the FA Technical Advisory Board, an eclectic group that has been advising on performance in regular meetings since 2016. Members (all unpaid volunteers) include Sir Dave Brailsford, a cycling coach, Colonel Lucy Giles, a college commander at the Sandhurst Military Academy, the Olympic rower Kath Grainger, Manoj Badale, a tech entrepreneur, the rugby coach Stuart Lancaster and David Sheepshanks, mastermind behind the St George’s Park national football centre.

At first, football insiders were horrified by this group, with negative articles appearing in the British press, on why they are not “footballing men”. But this is why the group is capable of offering fresh insights on preparation, diet, data, mental fortitude and more. This is sometimes called “divergent” thinking to contrast it with the “convergence” of echo chambers.

“I like listening to people who know things that I don’t,” Southgate told me. “That’s how you learn.”

It is clearly a winning formula at the moment. He has also appointed a diverse group of coaches who he relies on to get advice during games. You will often see him discussing something with his assistant, former Chelsea & Crewe Alexandra coach Steve Holland, immediately after a goal, or other key moments.

Whatever the result in the final, most decent people will judge this campaign as progress Even if we lose in an awful way or one person makes a similar mistake to Gareth’s 25 years ago, getting to a final is a huge step forward. One last quote from ‘Woody & Nord’ serves as a pointer to how Gareth will deal with it. In a section where he talks about not loving the game as much as he did in his youth, and giving everything for Middlesbrough in every game he is part of, to improve our position to the highest it can be he writes:

” Cynicism has coloured my view of the professional game . The attitude of some of the players, the behaviour of clubs, even the fans. Nothing appals me more than those endless and mindless phone-ins. Some guy, reacting to a defeat that afternoon, thinks the manager should be fired. Someone else agrees and in no time there is a bandwagon rolling. Spare me all of that. But the nonsense is everywhere. I’ve played with blokes who are happy to pick up the money, with others who have given everything and been treated dismally by their clubs. Fairness doesn’t come into it. Supporters call for loyalty from the players, but it’s a one-way street, expected from players but not reciprocated.”

Sport can be a joy and in good times can bring people together. Football can provide real health benefits and opportunities for young people from deprived backgrounds to make the big time. But recent stories about the greed of clubs in the failed European Super League, the ridiculous wages and transfer fees some of the current England team are on at their clubs and the racist and hateful social media comments, are the darker side. We saw at the start of Euro 2020 with the incident involving the Danish player Christian Eriksen collapsing on the pitch, that many were saying that some things are more important than the game. But even in the sleepy market town of Oswestry we have already seen the other aspect, with a fight between youths at a pub in a local square after the semi-final. Sadly, I can predict that if the result doesn’t go England’s way this will be repeated in a lot more other places. Gareth will want to celebrate the good things and learn and move on, but he knows there will be some for whom winning is everything.

If England do win, which will be fantastic, there will be some politicians who will frame it as a victory for us leaving the EU and one in the eye for Brussels. In the same way that the success of the vaccination scheme has been framed. It should be acknowledged that the willingness of our government to put money into the research, and to commit funds to orders for any vaccine has been a huge success. But please, spare me the view that this would not have been an option if we were still in the EU.

Turning back to the current situation of the pandemic. Politicians and scientists are divided on what will happen next. For every view that we need to ‘learn to live with it’, there is one that states it is still too early to release everything. In my view the lessons of the last 18 months have not yet been learned. Those who are vulnerable will still suffer. Those who can afford to self-isolate and are in relatively stable and well-paid jobs, live in good housing. with good support structures will survive, and even flourish. Those who have few of those things will not. There is a reluctance from the government to provide the support needed. The issue of ‘long covid’ and large numbers of people who won’t die but have long-term health effects caused by the virus will need even more of our limited healthcare resources, over a long period of time.

The rush to get ‘back to normal’ and go on expensive overseas holidays is not a right, but a luxury open only to those who can afford it. Even the idea of a ‘staycation’ has lost its original meaning. That of enjoying days our and time spent at home, rather than as now ‘of having to only go on holiday in this country rather than overseas’.

What has not happened yet is the sharing of the vaccine more widely with countries who can’t afford them. It is true to say ‘no one is safe until we are all safe’, but the reality is that the recent G7 summit in Cornwall whilst announcing the sharing of over a billion doses, missed the opportunity to extend that to the 11 billion which the WHO says are needed to vaccinate 60% of the world population by mid-2022. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicted that the $50 Billion dollars needed to do that, will be dwarfed by the $9 Trillion of increased global output that would result from it. The other side of the argument we all need to face up to, is that if it comes to a choice between vaccinating children in our country who don’t appear to suffer severe effects of the virus, or giving it to the most vulnerable populations in other countries, we need to choose the latter. It is a hard political sell, which is why we need good leaders who understand that, and work to change opinions by actions rather than ‘playing to the gallery’, or being an ‘echo chamber’ of those who think the same way.

Few people enjoy a good sporting occasion more than me, and it is hard to keep focus on the 95% of the rest of the world population, many in our own country, who aren’t as well off as me in terms of actual real wealth, or in terms of education and opportunity to achieve a basic standard of living.

An estimated audience of 33-35 million of us are expected to watch the final on TV and that’s just in this country. That figure is less than 5% of the 785 Million people worldwide who don’t have access to basic drinking water and less than 2% of the 2 billion who use a water supply contaminated with faeces. A sobering thought for all the people throwing beer in the air when England score. Come Monday morning whatever has happened, the sun will rise, and set later in the day. Sure we may have made some minor sporting history and a few individuals will have achieved ‘greatness’, but in the end will anything of real significance have happened?

Keep safe everyone, but please let’s also keep some perspective.

Coronavirus week 39 – Advent hope or Christmas cancelled?

It is 20 weeks since I did my last blog, or ‘CoronaDiary’ as it was named for the Swansea University project that it became part of. It seems a long time ago but serves to show how time passes quickly after I decided that the time had come to stop, with things apparently starting to ‘slow down’, ‘getting under control’, ‘living with the new normal’ or any number of ways of describing life in late summer/early autumn. There was also a possible vaccine in development.

I started several times to write another instalment as events and key points in the story of this year were reached, but each time my enthusiasm to finish them waned. Due in part I suspect to not wanting to repeat the same themes I had visited before, but mainly due to the fact that we too were doing some of the things we hadn’t been able to. We were fortunate to be in a situation where we could take a week away to each of the Norfolk coast, Cornwall and North Yorkshire. In addition we enjoyed days out walking around the Cheshire countryside and Alyson managed some open water swimming at a nearby lake in Shropshire. The project I am working on with the accountancy practice in Sale was reaching the critical ‘go-live’ point, and Alyson was getting more NHS 111 home-based call centre shifts.

Deaths – a change of measure but still increasing quickly..

I had set myself the target of writing another blog when the official figures for the number of coronavirus deaths reached the level they were at my last blog, as the government reassessed them, just after I published it, in light of some ‘mis-recording’. On 12 August, the total fell by 5,000 overnight from 46,706 to 41,329. Until then a death was recorded for anyone who had tested positive for Covid-19 at any time, regardless of the cause. So someone who had died of a heart attack or in a car accident but had a positive test 10 weeks before was added to the virus statistics. It would take another 11 weeks to get back to 46,513 at the end of October – an average of 71 deaths per week. Just over 7 weeks later we have surpassed the grim figure of 60,000 to reach 68,307 – an average of 3,113 per week. The other measure of all deaths where coronavirus is mentioned on the certificate is likely to be over 80,000 by the end of the year.

Key events I could have written about…

There have been some major issues and milestones in the time since my last blog. Ones I have had strong feelings about are;
– The exam results ‘fiasco’
– The on-going story of migrants drowning whilst crossing the channel, and my idea of requisitioning unused cruise ships anchored off the south coast to give them decent accommodation.
– Introduction of the tiers system of restrictions
– My (and many others) perception that GPs are hiding away
– Schools and universities returning to full-time teaching
– A study I read on how the virus circulates indoor via ‘aerosol particles’
– ‘Circuit-breaker’ or second national lockdown
– President Trump catching Covid-19, US Election & refusal to accept the result
– Announcing the vaccination program earlier than planned on the day the report into the Home Secretary Priti Patel’s bullying behaviour was published.
– The seemingly endless Brexit negotiations/deadlines and extensions.

So why now…

The recent excitement over the new vaccines, the hope that brings of a ‘light at the end of the tunnel’, allied to planning for a small family Christmas get together was shattered by yesterday’s Government Briefing. Our Prime Minister, the only one in the World known mainly by his first name, Boris announced a new ‘Tier 4’ for London and the South East plus severe restrictions on ‘Christmas bubbles’ and the time they are allowed to meet. It seems like another one of the many ‘key points’ in the pandemic, coming as it does with the fact that a ‘new strain’ of the coronavirus that is much more effective at transmission is circulating and spreading rapidly through the population. The disease is called Covid-19 because it was in late December last year that the WHO office in China reported a ‘new type of pneumonia virus’ being reported in the area around the city of Wuhan. Whilst there is still some dispute about where it originated, the virus has been traced back to cases in mid-November. The first anniversary of the discovery of what we now call SARS-CoV-2 seems like a significant event to record in my blog.

For those with an interest in the science, the new variant is being referred to as SARS-CoV-2 VUI 202012/01 and the more detailed description of the mutation is as follows;

This variant has a mutation in the receptor binding domain (RBD) of the spike protein at position 501, where amino acid asparagine (N) has been replaced with tyrosine (Y). The shorthand for this mutation is N501Y, sometimes noted as S:N501Y to specify that it is in the spike protein. This variant carries many other mutations, including a double deletion (positions 69 and 70).

US Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, Emerging Variants Briefing December 2020.

It is this variation in the ‘spike protein’ that scientists think accounts for its ability for increased transmission by better binding to cells in people who get infected by the virus. It remains to be seen if the symptoms are more severe or if it is resistant to the vaccine, but the early signs are ‘hopeful’. What will certainly be the case is that the number of infections will rise and given the pattern up to now, many people will need some treatment in hospitals. This is the factor that may lead to ‘Lockdown v3.0’ and more damage to mental health and the economy.

In recent weeks I have been leading four sessions on the season of Advent with our church Bible study group and there are some themes which resonate with the current situation. As we approach the end of an extraordinary year and try to look forward to 2021 it seems an opportune moment to write down my personal thoughts and feelings. This blog has always been for my own reference, but I continue to be grateful for all the comments it attracts as each one is published.

Advent – the season of waiting – 2020 theme ‘Hope’….

It is only in the last few years, after 50+ years of being part the ‘Methodist Tradition’ through my church membership, that I have understood the ‘true meaning’ of Advent. For many it is ‘just the few weeks before Christmas’ but it is so much more than that. It is a time of ‘waiting’ and ‘anticipation’ during which we are called to lament/repent for all that has gone before and wait for the arrival of the long-promised ‘Light of the World’ to arrive in the form of a small child. Our fellow Christians in the Church of England, or ‘the Anglican Tradition’ recognise this in a more formal way. In the build up to Christmas they don’t sing ‘traditional carols’ and for them Christmas starts on the eve of the 25th December. It lasts for 12 days until Epiphany on the 6th January.

This year in the ‘real world’, the commercial one and the one that the church has hijacked from the original pagan ‘winter festival’, after all the upheaval of Covid and the challenges and illness and death, there has been a desire to ‘go early’. When I worked in retail pharmacy we would have started to plan for all the Christmas stock arrival earlier in the year. Indeed, during my time as Managing Director of our ‘Pharmacy Sundries’ subsidiary company, January would see me and the sales team attending trade fairs in the UK and Frankfurt in Germany, to meet suppliers from all over the globe to purchase, and in some cases ‘design’, the gifts our stores would sell during the ‘Christmas Season’. Stock would be ordered, shipped from China or India or wherever the suppliers were based, duty paid, containers received and unloaded at the warehouse, and delivered to the shops by a small fleet of vans ready to fill the shelves. There was always a tension between the warehouse wanting to get stock out (and our small company to invoice the larger one!) and the shops saying it was ‘too early’. In the end together with the retail marketing team for the shops we agreed a rough policy that, whilst stock could be delivered during September the, ‘big reveal’ would happen after the solemn celebration of Remembrance had taken place on November 11th. After that it was ‘all hands on deck’ to shift as much as we could. On a really good year our shops would be calling the warehouse in the second week of December pleading for us to send more – the items we had chosen that they were sceptical of selling were flying off the shelves. In the last week it might get to the point that shoppers were so desperate for a gift that even the stock we had left from previous years would look like the ideal gift for a family member!

It seems that a lot of people after the year they have had decided to ‘go early’. There was a rush to put up Christmas lights and decorations not just earlier but in bigger volumes than before. Around our estate there are so many whole garden displays and inflatable characters they can probably be seen from space! Goodness only knows what the electricity bills will be like in January. Shops have sold out and many Christmas tree growers have shut as all the stock has gone. There is an understandable desire from people wanting to celebrate and have something to look forward to. I confess to liking it, but it can get a bit wearing listening to hours of the old pop Christmas favourites from the 70s and 80s.

The theme for the Advent study we chose this year was ‘Hope’ which seemed appropriate for the year and is one aspect of the season along with joy, peace and love. As churches we have readings about John the Baptist and the Old Testament Prophets foretelling the arrival of The Messiah, the story of Mary and the journey towards Bethlehem. Many of us light four candles (and many ministers refer to the classic sketch on The Two Ronnies!) coloured red in an Advent wreath of holly, lighting the fifth white candle in the middle on Christmas day to represent Jesus. .

In many of our times of study we referenced the difficult times we have had during the pandemic. We would lament people we have lost, pray for support for those going through difficult times, missing friends and family contact, particularly those who know people in care homes or have not been able to attend the funeral of a family member. We have given thanks for the key workers helping us through difficult times. More recently we have given thanks for the God-given skills of the scientists for developing the vaccines, the hope that brings and the ability to start ‘looking forward’ in anticipation of a better 2021. Many of the Christmas cards we have received, had a handwritten note to reflect this hope too.

Watching Boris, Professor Chris Whitty, Chief Medical Officer and Sir Patrick Vallance, Government Chief Scientific Adviser on Saturday evening announcing the new ‘Tier 4’ measures, and limiting even more the Christmas travel and bubble arrangements, it would have been easy to find a new low of depression, and lack of optimism. Sunday morning’s news headlines on television and in the print media could be summed up as ‘Christmas Cancelled’. During the summer and into the early autumn with infection rates falling, deaths levelling-off to a figure that we could probably live with, health services opening, people going back to work and children to school, things appeared a little brighter. Despite having to take a lot of measures on our holiday in Norfolk and again when we went to the lodge in Great Ayton, North Yorkshire, and the early figures for the ‘second wave’ seeming not to be as high as the first, my optimism was still there.

It was whilst ‘attending’ (via You Tube) the live streamed service from Methodist Central Hall Westminster (MCHW) on Sunday morning that I decided to write this blog. MCHW of course is now in Tier 4 so the chances of a few people attending the church physically on Christmas Day has gone. The reading was about Mary and her willingness to carry the child that would become our Saviour. We sang Joy To The World and O Come All Ye Faithful and accepted the challenge from Rev Gordon to take up whatever challenges we will face in the coming months. Both Gordon and Rev Tony who leads the service said that although we were in lockdown, Christmas itself wasn’t cancelled. Tony said he had received a humorous text about there being ‘only 370 more sleeps to Christmas’ but he wanted to state that wasn’t true. I posted the image below on my Facebook page on Monday and it attracted many likes…

The commercial ‘winter festival’ may have been curtailed and many would not be able to see family and friends, but nothing is going to stop Christmas being Christmas for Christians. It brought to mind this tweet from earlier in the week reminding us that other religions had their celebrations ‘cancelled’ at even shorter notice – in some cases the evening before the big family gatherings.

Admittedly, some replies pointed out that Easter was ‘cancelled’ at the start of lockdown and, as happens on social media these days, there were plenty of racist comments, but the point was the same one I had made the night before Eid. ‘Imagine the uproar if they cancelled Christmas…’

The most striking interview I saw on Sunday morning was with Rev Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show. It appeared to me that the leader of our national church was shaken by the events of Saturday and, like many of us, struggling with an inner voice that was saying to him ‘I am really not sure that my faith is strong enough for this…’. But he found another inner voice and rallied to assure us that Christmas would indeed happen on the appointed day. He also talked movingly about the ‘hole in the celebration’ left by those who can’t be with us, either because they have died or are alone in a place we can’t travel to. He encouraged us all to celebrate the great festival by remembering those who have died, talking about them, and for those who are isolated to pick up the phone and speak to them. He encouraged the vulnerable not to attend church but to call one of the many phone numbers with services, carols or prayers being broadcast.

Some of the many people with a spare place at the table are the family of our school friend Clare who died in November aged just 61 from motor neurone disease diagnosed five years ago. Clare is the first of our contemporaries that we have kept in touch with for over 50 years to go. It is as much a sobering reminder of our own mortality as it is sad. It was also our first (and probably not last) ‘virtual funeral’, we watched the live stream whilst listening to the music chosen by Clare herself on You Tube.

As I sang along watching the service from Westminster to O Come All You Faithful I remembered the Christmas of 2016 when my dad died. We were celebrating at a cottage on the North York Moors with Alyson’s family. Dad was on end-of-life care in a nursing home nearby, and died the day we were leaving the cottage. You can read about that in the blog that I wrote at the time . I asked the minister if we could sing the hymn at dad’s funeral as he was a long-time member of the church choir and hadn’t managed to sing it that year. Rev Ruth said that it was a great idea and all we needed to change was the last verse usually sung on Christmas Day from ‘Yea we greet thee born this happy morning’ to …that happy morning..’. Alyson’s dad who was 90 and not in good health gave a short speech during Christmas Day lunch suggesting that this might be the last one he had with us. He died later that year in October.

So we had two Christmases in a row with spare places at the table. Such is the ‘circle of life’, we have lost Alyson’s mum since, but this year we have two small boys born to our nieces since. They represent the joy, love and hope of the Advent season.

Final thoughts and looking to the future…

There will be three households with us on Christmas Day, but only four people – Alyson and I, and our two sons who are single-person households. We will social distance as much as we can and maybe even eat outside. Other than that we have several ‘Zoom’ catch-ups planned with other family members and friends. We had one last weekend with my brothers and cousins (my older brother lives in San Jose California, 6 miles from the global Zoom HQ so was supporting one of his ‘local businesses’!). We have had one ‘virtual Christmas party’ with the head injury charity I am a member and trustee of. Ready-made meals were delivered along with a box of crackers, hats and gifts. We played charades, told jokes from the crackers and even tried to sing some carols. A great time was had by all who attended.

I heard from another friend that the company he works at had a ‘Zoom office party’ that started at 8pm and for some people went on until 6am. Apparently, the ability to drink and not have to drive home led to some problems with people saying and doing things that they would regret when reading the ‘chat’ the next day. So it seems a virtual party can be as good or bad as a real-world one!

I like to think I have always been generally an optimistic person, trying to see the positive in both situations and in people I meet. Alyson thinks I am a bit too laid back and even naive, and reminds me that earlier in the year I was still hoping that we would be able to get a sunny holiday overseas and was one of those who said it would be all over by Christmas. I try to find hope in the vaccination program but recognise that our governments record for ‘ramping up’ the testing capacity could induce pessimism that our ability to vaccinate the estimated 16.5 million people aged over 60. To get this done before Easter, considering the five weeks to achieve full immunity, will require an average of two million vaccinations each week. There have been half a million people vaccinated in the two weeks since 90-year-old Margaret Keenan became the first person on 8 December. We need an eight-fold increase in that rate if we are to reach the Easter target.

As I reflect on the end of a very strange and difficult year, my faith is strong, and my optimism remains at a high level. The hours of daylight are increasing from today, and I am looking forward to 2021

 

 

 

 

Coronavirus week 19 – That didn’t last long…second wave starting

A short heatwave but signs of another wave of infection.

According to one of the weather forecasters I heard, to qualify as a heatwave there needs to be a period of three days of higher than average temperatures, but ours this week was only one day. It was 20-21 degrees on Thursday and reasonably sunny, by Friday afternoon it was 35 but by the evening it was cloudy muggy and raining and on Saturday it was back to 21 with a cool wind and some showers.

At the end of my last blog I suggested that I may not do another for a few weeks as things appeared to have reached a ‘steady state’, with falling numbers of deaths and a ‘levelling off’ in the number of infections. That idea didn’t even last for 24 hours. It wasn’t that a couple of people were kind enough to comment on my Facebook post saying that they enjoyed reading them; it was watching Channel 4 News on Monday evening.  It’s a way of getting updated on current events that I get the most from. All day ‘rolling news’ is a great thing, something we never had in ‘the good old days’ when there were only three or four terrestrial television channels. The problem is that even  BBC News 24, whose coverage I also enjoy, only touch the surface of a story. I don’t want to sound like a ‘grumpy old man’, but programme makers appear to think we are incapable of listening for more than 90 seconds, or in ITV’s case, that we also need the chance to win a £150,000 prize of gifts we probably don’t need.

Anyway, it was watching the news on Monday evening that there were so many items I wanted to write about, many of them linked to each other or to coronavirus. Hence this blog with all the topics originating with the items on that edition.

Holidaymakers returning from mainland Spain complaining that there were more cases of the virus on one caravan park in Shropshire, than the whole of the Balearic Islands, and they felt safer in a country where everyone was obeying the rules on social distancing and hygiene. By the evening, the islands had been included. Transport minister Grant Shapps went to Spain but had to isolate when he came back on Wednesday. I admit to thinking that I would go if insured, and suffer two weeks quarantine or extend the holiday as I was sure there would be extra capacity. By the end of the week, however, as local lockdown was declared for large parts of Greater Manchester, Lancashire, and West Yorkshire, like others I suspect, I was more doubtful.  I listened to arguments about having to declare whole countries as giving a simpler message than trying to exclude certain areas, and had to agree. Whilst the Canaries are further from mainland Spain than Venice is from London, it would not be difficult to get around the rules by taking a flight from the mainland to the islands and return from there. There is also the danger of catching the virus and having to be in hospital in a foreign country possibly for a long time where the care may be excellent, but my Spanish is almost non-existent.

Despite early criticism there appeared to be more acceptance later in the week when the rates of infection in Belgium (which had one of the highest rates in Europe in the earlier part of the pandemic), and Luxembourg, were rising very quickly. It seems a ‘second wave’ is starting to spread across Europe.

In the UK cases were definitely rising with average daily cases approaching 800 at the end of the week. The fact that average daily deaths was still falling to about 60 at the end of the week, could point to two things; that the lag between cases and serious illness is not showing yet, or that it is mainly younger people getting infections and they don’t generally suffer with the more life-threatening symptoms.

Boris says ‘get on your bike’…

Boris encouraged us (like Norman Tebbit in 1981) to ‘get on our bikes’, but this time not to look for work, but in an effort to fight obesity. The web site handing out free £50 vouchers to get bikes repaired crashed due to demand. Not surprising for £2.5million of untargeted benefits. Many would be snapped up by those who could well afford to repair the bicycle that had lain neglected in the garage for years. It all seemed a bit of a headline-grabbing gimmick. Boris has previous on this topic. As Mayor of London he encouraged people to use a Transport for London (TfL) scheme for hiring simple bicycles parked in many areas in the city to travel to other areas. Registered users could take any of the 5,000 cycles from any of the 315 docking stations in central London to any other for a relatively small fee. This was in 2010 and proved successful. The original bikes were sponsored by Barclays bank with a blue highlight. The scheme was transferred to Santander bank with the current ones mainly red and there are now 11,000 bikes and 800 ‘stations’ spread across 40 square miles of London. 

In a week of mixed messages I had one alert from GOV.UK announcing a ban on buy one get one free offers on unhealthy food, and the next one reminded me that I could go to the pub or restaurant and taxpayers will give me 50% off any meal. This is for as many times as I like. So presumably I could get a first course with chips, followed by a chocolate brownie/ice cream / sticky toffee pudding (with extra chocolate sauce) for 12 days (it’s only Monday-Wednesday) from 3rd to 31st August. All washed down with a nice glass of wine or beer – but don’t worry the discount is not off those and they don’t contain many calories. Even HMRC were putting out Tweets about the offer – even if they couldn’t bring themselves to think people might want other European or even British menus…?

The idea of making it a requirement to put calories on all restaurant menus is a good one, but many pubs and fast-food sites do that now. The problem appears to be the ‘education’ needed to allow us to make the healthier choices.

Channel 4 News had an interview with chef Jamie Oliver (who also has years of campaigning for us to make more healthy choices. He made the point that the good quality food is more expensive, and those with less money can only afford the ‘less good’. Rather than taxing sugar, he suggested that perhaps we should be subsidising healthier food.

It could be that this approach to obesity, exercise and healthy eating was related to Boris’s own experience of Covid-19 and the realisation that his own health may have meant not seeing his fiancee and young child? There are many in the Conservative Party who decry the so-called ‘Nanny State’ (itself a posh expression), but a government that claims to have been ‘following the science and experts’ appears in the past to have paid more attention to the food and drink industry lobbyists than ‘health experts’ when deciding policies. Like tobacco before it, the ‘curse of sugar’ needs mass cultural and social change if it is to be effective.

What it doesn’t need is ‘fat-shaming’ and judging people by their apparent excess weight. The majority of our population have some problems maintaining a healthy diet. No one wakes up one day and finds themselves several stones overweight.  The busyness of our lives and availability of cheap food make it hard to change. I have the luxury of a good income, the space to own an exercise bike, and a pleasant area go out for a run. In my case I have made a conscious decision to change, and am currently about a stone less in weight than I was at the start of March. I also know it will be a struggle to keep this way once we get back to eating out again on a regular basis.  I often wonder how people in poverty-stricken countries who have to walk miles to get clean water or a meagre amount of food to take back to a house with no electricity, would make of our kitchen cupboards and American-style double refrigerators. As if that wasn’t enough for them to take in, imagine trying to explain that we then pay a membership of £360 a year for the privilege of driving, three or more times a week ,to a large warehouse full of bicycles that don’t move and treadmills. All in an effort to lose the excess body mass we have!

The next item of news last Monday was one on rehabilitation from the after effects of having Covid-19, or one of its variants dubbed ‘Long Covid’, as the fatigue and memory issues and muscle weakness can last for months (maybe even years, we don’t know yet). The item showed a group using a gym closed due to lockdown, and sharing experiences with people who have been through the same thing.  This is just like my journey after brain injury, when I found the charity that brings together people from all parts of society and background to share with each other. Access to physio and rehab services across the country is patchy at best, but so vital. All of this should have happened years ago. There is a small charity that works with people who have been in intensive care for long periods of time. Patients may be physically well, but the mental effects can last a very long time.  If this step of physio is missing or not done thoroughly, there is more of a cost to the country in terms of lost working days and productivity, as well as actual treatment, medicines, and care in old age. It makes no sense health wise or economically, not having these services readily available for everyone.

The final two articles on the Monday evening news was one that US president Trump’s security advisor had tested positive, after a trip to Florida ,where there is a rise in cases of Covid-19.  Then that Brazil’s president Bolsanaro has been reported to the International Criminal Court, by an umbrella group representing health worker unions and social care organisations, for ignoring and mishandling the crisis. Their claim of crimes against humanity amounting to genocide are unlikely to be taken on by the ICC but demonstrate the strong feelings in the country.  There was an interview (on BBC news!) with a doctor in a hospital in Sao Paulo stating that they had people turn up at hospital still claiming it was all false and a hoax – but when they ended up in intensive care they say ‘doctor don’t let me die and tell my family to take care!’ 

Other news last week.

  • We watched Jimmy McGovern’s powerful drama imagining the life Anthony Walker a young black man killed aged just 18 in 2005. He wanted to become a barrister. His mum asked the writer to show him qualifying against all the odds, marrying his (white) girlfriend at the time of his death, having a child and saving his best man from a life of crime by taking him to live with his family after becoming destitute. It brought me to tears. 
    Anthony’s mother, Gee Walker, has setup a trust in his name and as a Christian she believed this was part of Anthony’s legacy.  This will be something that is hard for those without a faith to accept. But I believe, as his mother hopes, that despite not becoming a civil rights lawyer and going to America, Anthony’s legacy through the work his mum does, and the effect of this drama, means more people could be touched. Some small comfort to his brave mum.
  • Late Thursday evening health secretary Matt Hancock announced that Greater Manchester, East Lancashire and parts of West Yorkshire were told to go into a ‘local lockdown’. This was due to a ‘spike in cases’ from people going into each other’s homes. There was some confusion and a great deal of contention from the Muslim population as it was the eve of Eid one of the major feasts of Islam. One leader likened it to cancelling the Christmas Day at 9 o’clock on Christmas Eve, although another did acknowledge that when the original lockdown was imposed many Christians had to miss Easter Day celebrations.
    Writing as someone who is doing project work for a company in Sale, there was concern that some members of the team who had only returned to work because their parents could look after the children again, may have to go back on furlough until the lockdown was over.
  • Another member of the team at the company developed some symptoms and was relieved when their test came back negative – but they had to wait over 3 days for the result.
  • One report from Manchester showed a street where many of the rainbow posters drawn to put in windows to celebrate the NHS Heroes were faded and torn….perhaps a sign of how quickly we forget?
  • One of the most worrying statements last week was from Professor Chris Whitty as he stood next to Boris Johnson at a Downing Street press conference on Friday announcing that the opening of face to face beauty treatments and bowling alleys was to be delayed for a further two weeks at least. He said

“I think what we’re seeing from the data from ONS, and other data, is that we have probably reached near the limit or the limits of what we can do in terms of opening up society.

“So what that means potentially is that if we wish to do more things in the future, we may have to do less of some other things.”

He expanded to say that if we are to get children back to school in September we may need to close some other places (pubs perhaps?) or put new limits on what people can do and who they can meet.

It really does feel this week that we are not in a ‘steady state’ anymore….!

How was week 19 for us?

After weeks of training and struggling with IT and ‘HR’ Alyson finally managed to book a few shifts on NHS 111 service…but only as reserve. She responded ‘I don’t want to be a reserve I want to be on the first team!’ Her wish came true on Friday when she was given just 20 minutes notice that she was working an 8-hour shift. This was due to late cancellations by two other people on the shifts. The deal is that people are supposed to get 24 hours’ notice. So, she managed to cancel one and worked 4-8pm. It was a tough shift, not only with the types of call, but using the systems for the first time. Reflecting afterwards Alyson felt that she had helped people at a difficult time, and knew that the next shift(s) would be better.

We both signed up as volunteers for vaccine trial in conjunction with the NHS and a pharmaceutical company. Unlike last week’s attempt we both passed the age & health requirements.

After the very warm day of Friday we went to Coventry for a ‘socially distanced picnic’ in a large park to meet up with Alyson’s sister and brother and their families in  Coventry. It was good to see everyone again including our two boys and our nieces. There were three generations and one of our nieces is expecting her first child in October  – she works in a hospital so was concerned about getting too close to us, but I think she enjoyed the day. The only member of the family who couldn’t come was our nephew who returned from the Spanish Balearic Island of Majorca so was self-isolating in his London flat.

On Sunday I attended my now weekly Zoom service at Westminster Central Hall Methodist Church. It was great to be part of a ‘congregation’ of over 1,100 people sharing in worship. Rev Howard Mellor gave an amazing sermon on the ‘original picnic’, the feeding of the 5,000, a miracle told in exactly the same way in all four gospels. Howard pointed out a small word that I had not noticed before – grass! Despite the disciples only having meagre rations of five loaves and two fishes, and thinking that was not enough to feed the crowd, Jesus managed to make it sufficient for all the people (more than 5,000 when including the women and children) and ‘still there were 12 baskets left over’. All this in an area which, because of the grass, was clearly a place of abundance where crops could grow. Howard’s message to those of us hoping to be modern day ‘good disciples’ was however little (in terms of skills and gifts) we think we have, if we give it to Jesus, he can help us achieve so much more than we ever believed.

Stay safe and let’s see if there is enough for another blog next week!

Coronavirus week 18 – the long wait for a vaccine

Will it be the scientists or anti-vaxxers who stop us getting a vaccine?

For the first time in the last 18 weeks of lockdown I found myself agreeing with Boris Johnson. He was visiting a GP surgery in London to promote the importance of flu jabs in the upcoming winter. Referring to the opponents of vaccinations he called them ‘nuts’. Ever since (the then doctor) Andrew Wakefield persuaded many parents 20 years ago not to give their children the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine following some ‘research’ linking it to autism and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), the use of vaccines has been called into question. 

Researching the claims by (now struck off doctor) Wakefield I learned the following facts from the General Medical Council (GMC) fitness to practice hearing of 2006 published in 2010.

  • A good study will include many participants, and Wakefield’s study included only twelve children.
  • Wakefield lied in the Lancet paper when he wrote that the participating children were referred independently after being diagnosed with IBD or other major gastrointestinal issues. In fact, many of the children were chosen specifically by Wakefield, and others were recruited with the help of the same lawyer who was paying him to conduct the study.
  • Even before publication of the study, Wakefield was working on patenting his own version of a measles vaccine, which he would sell at a great profit as a supposedly “safe” alternative to the MMR vaccine. The father of one of the children in Wakefield’s study was a cofounder of the planned business that would market this product.

The problems caused by Andrew Wakefield were in the news last August. Children who didn’t get vaccinated as their parents listened to him and not their doctors were now students, and an outbreak of measles was happening leading to serious side effects. The UK along with other parts of Europe has lost its status of being ‘measles free’.

The cofounder of Microsoft, Bill Gates and his wife Melinda are an example of people who have acquired enormous wealth, but are trying to use that to help others. They have been victims of terrible social media attacks and conspiracy theories as a result of pledging literally billions of dollars to vaccination programmes for children. They are partners of Gavi a global alliance of the WHO, UNICEF,  The World Bank and donor countries with the aim of funding vaccination programmes for children in all areas of the world. This will improve health, prevent needless deaths and lead to less poverty. In June a little-reported summit of world leaders was hosted by the UK and pledged over $8billion over the next five years to the programme.

The UK can be proud of being the largest donor pledging £330million a year. As Bill Gates said at the time

To beat the COVID-19 pandemic, the world needs more than breakthrough science. It needs breakthrough generosity. And that’s what we’re seeing today as leaders across the public and private sectors are stepping up to support Gavi – especially Prime Minister Johnson. When COVID-19 vaccines are ready, this funding and global coordination will ensure that people all over the world will be able to access them.

In recent weeks Russia (who pledged no new money in addition to the $4milion per year share from a previous campaign) have been accused by the UK of trying to steal scientific secrets on the development of a Covid-19 vaccine. China, who also only pledged $4million per year, are still being accused as a possible source for the current outbreak. 

To be clear, the pledges are for vaccinations of all types and not just Covid-19. Since 2000 over 760 million children have been vaccinated against polio, pneumococcal disease, typhoid, MMR, meningitis and rotavirus (that causes diarrhoea). However, the lockdowns in various parts of the world and the WHO advice to temporarily suspend vaccination programmes, to prevent people from spreading Covid-19, could lead to an estimated 6,000 children dying every day from lack of protection that vaccination provides. It’s a terrible dilemma for many countries’ health systems.

Their personal $1.6 Billion pledge hasn’t stopped the conspiracy theorists putting false information out about Bill & Melinda Gates, accusing them of wanting to use the programme for mass sterilisation to control world population, and even implanting a microchip as part of the programmes, to track everyone in the world.

This week DHSC announced that eligibility for the programme of flu injections for the coming winter has been extended to 30 million people in an attempt to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed by a flu pandemic and a second wave of Covid-19. We have had years of creating vaccines for seasonal influenza which is a slightly different strain each time, but even these aren’t always fully protective, but can lessen the severity of symptoms and reduce the rate of infection. 

We have never succeeded in getting an effective vaccine against any of the coronaviruses. Even with about 150 programmes to develop one and almost 25 starting human trials, there are questions to be answered  before getting one. Here are seven according to an article I read this week.

  1. Is the vaccine safe? Early results suggest that there can be mild side effects from the vaccines, but more worryingly these can we worse in those more likely to be affected by the actual virus – the elderly and those with comorbidities. It is possible that a vaccine could make the disease worse in those who have it already.

  2. Does the vaccine work? The general view is that it is unlikely to be completely effective and Professor Chris Witty has said that at least 50% would be a good result.

  3. Will protection from a vaccine fade over time? There was some excitement when the vaccine being developed at Oxford produced the type of reaction expected, but it could be that this fades after a few weeks or months. However, there is also a theory that some element of ‘immune memory’ could result that helps the next similar infection.

  4. Can we mass-produce it? Whilst the UK Government claims to have pre-ordered 100 million doses and be investing £150 million in new production facilities, there will be a long timescale. Some vaccines need to be stored in specials conditions such a low temperatures before being given. This could also be a challenge both in transportation and worldwide in countries with poor facilities and health systems.

  5. When will we really have a vaccine?  Are we talking about when we have a proven vaccine after clinical trials, when it is approved by regulators, when we have enough to give it to key workers in clinical settings and then those at greatest risk, or when we have enough to inoculate the whole world?
    There is a danger that if supplies are strictly limited only those who can afford it, or have the political leverage to get it will be treated. This will only exacerbate conditions in the rest of the world who can’t afford it – and the virus will be around for even longer.

  6. Once we have a vaccine, will people want to get it? So we come back to the anti-vaxxers or even those who are just cautious. In a recent poll about one in five Americans said they don’t plan to get a coronavirus vaccine, while half said they would. The rest were unsure. The US has a system where people need to pay or have insurance, so even in the richest country in the world cost could be a barrier.

  7. What about booster shots? It is likely that any vaccine could need more than one dose to maintain effectiveness, so all the points about cost and organisation of healthcare systems come back into play.

There was an appeal for volunteers to take part in the clinical trials for vaccines produced by Oxford University and Imperial College London, so I thought I might offer – but although I am fairly fit and healthy I am over 55 so that was the end of that.

Vaccines aren’t the only treatment and this week again there have been trials of a new therapy based on a protein called interferon beta that have shown promising results when given as an inhaled dose. This was previously shown to have been effective for the treatment of SARS.

Other news this week.

  • A couple of months ago when the government was recruiting 25,000 people to train up to ‘track and trace’ contacts of those who had a positive test for the virus, there were newspaper stories of them having so little to do that they were watching Netflix movies. A story emerged this week that could have been interpreted in a way that could have suggested these people were making their own work. It was an ‘international’ story too.
    The English NHS ‘test and trace’ system has been outsourced to a US company that uses call centres based in Scotland.  Eight of the Scottish workers there tested positive for coronavirus, meaning that the Scottish system, called ‘test and protect’, had to get involved to trace their contacts – you couldn’t make it up!
  • In an interview on the anniversary of taking over as leader of the Conservatives and moving into 10 Downing Street, Boris Johnson admitted that there were some ‘open questions’ to be answered about the handling of the crisis in relation to timings of lockdown and protecting care homes. There was a less than generous video doing the rounds on social media claiming that as the virus was spreading across the world Boris missed several COBRA meetings, was uninterested in briefings and more interested in throwing a party to celebrate ‘getting Brexit done’.
  • Whilst the school holidays had started and some people were enjoying time in Spain, on Sunday morning all four UK governments brought back measures for people returning from the country to isolate for 14 days on their return. Despite FCO advice that travel to the Balearic and Canary Islands was still allowed, and only that to mainland Spain was not recommended, people returning from the islands still had to isolate. Such measures had been on the cards, but the suddenness and extent caused some controversy with many people again unsure of their holiday insurance situation. Many will also lose money as not all employers will be sympathetic to them taking more time away from work.
  • The number of cases is still falling very slowly with average daily deaths at 64 by the end of the week, down 8% from last week. The number of daily cases was averaging 662, which is up over 6% from last week. We are definitely plateauing but possibly to a sustainable level to live with as a trade off for an economic recovery.  Total deaths reported for the outbreak was 45,752.
  • At the same time as gyms and swimming pools are allowed to open, the government was trailing an old idea of getting doctors to focus on reducing the levels of obesity in the country. This is one of the key factors that makes people particularly susceptible to severe symptoms of Covid-19, as well as being bad for general health. Laws on advertising junk food will be brought in and GPs will be allowed to prescribe 12-week health plans and exercise.

How was week 18 for us?

It was back to work for me with planning for the project I am doing with the accountants in Manchester. The pressure is on to complete the first stages of the system in the next three months. We are not planning to be away on holiday any time soon so this should be manageable.

Alyson continued to come close to getting a first shift with NHS 111 pharmacy advice service. She had more technical problems but at the end of the week all appeared sorted and this is a photo of her ‘mobile call centre with a laptop with connection to the NHS systems, two screens, a smartcard and a mobile phone system that allows her to call patients using an NHS number.

In the week more sports opened up, I was pleased to be able to follow some Major League Baseball (MLB) as the team I support the Toronto Blue Jays started a shortened season in empty stadiums. As the only team in MLB outside the US, the Canadian authorities would not give them permission to play home games in Toronto as it would mean them crossing the border to play away games and US teams crossing to play at Rogers Centre in Toronto. Right up to Opening Day on 23rd the team had no base, but then it was decided to play games at their minor league team’s base in Buffalo in New York State. Their first series was away in Florida, so they need to get the stadium ready for the first home series, which was to be next weekend but has been put back until 11th August.
My other sports team, Middlesbrough football club managed to survive in the Championship on the last day of the season on Wednesday – ironically away at Sheffield Wednesday. Two teams previously managed by World Cup winner Jack Charlton, whose funeral was the day before.

Keep safe everyone and let’s see what the next week brings.

I am thinking about stopping this blog for a few weeks as the situation in the UK appears to be in a steady state.

Coronavirus week 14 – Not ‘the new normal’ but ‘a reorientation…’

‘So what’s the story?’….time for change

This week’s blog will be a shorter one (who shouted hurrah!) as I am busy this weekend taking part in a ‘virtual Methodist Conference’ along with 300+ other people from all over the country and the world.  The Conference met for the first time with founder John Wesley in the chair in 1744, and has convened annually in the 275 years until 2019 when I attended for the first time in Birmingham. It would be easy to characterise our church as ‘old fashioned’ and living in the past, but the first thing we did was spend half an hour voting electronically via ‘raised hands’ and Zoom polls to put aside our ancient rules designed for a physical gathering. This had taken a great deal of work by our Law & Polity team in conjunction with the Charity Commission. It could have been a very short conference if we hadn’t voted unanimously to do so. Who says our church is stuck in its ways?!

A casual glance at our new President Rev Richard Teal, dressed in black robes with a white collar, the 60+ year old white male that he is, might have reinforced the old-fashioned tag. But his message that this time of lockdown must lead to a time of ‘reorientation’ – to see people and do things differently in the future, shows we are rooted in the present not the past. He used the word ‘oriented’ to describe the way we felt just a few months ago, comfortable in our situation, and the example of his feelings seeing his new grandchild for the first time to emphasise the emotions that existed at the time. Next he talked about feeling ‘disoriented’ during the last three months, unsure of what it means, and without many of the things which make our lives stable, including family and being part of a local church with all its traditions and routines. What we need to do next is ‘reorientation’ as a church, with the things we have learned. We are finding more people than ever wanting to be part of on-line services and gatherings, we have reached out to those who live in our area most in need – particularly those who are lonely and isolated. We need to value those who do vital work and have been underappreciated in the past.

Richard follows a President in Rev Barbara Glasson who exemplified the diverse talents we have in our ordained ministers. Barbara has spent her ministry working with people ‘on the margins’ or outside our church. In Liverpool city centre she started a group of people including those with learning disabilities, from the LGBTQ community, the homeless, and young people, who came together every week to make two loaves of bread, then gave them away to whoever wanted it. Never the same group two weeks running, the ‘Bread Church’ is still going strong. She currently directs the Touchstone Project in another city centre, Bradford, that works from a terraced house in a Muslim-Pakistani heritage area on interfaith relations. They are about to move into a refurbished pub. Barbara is a blessing in our church. With 2019 Vice President Clive we were encouraged and challenged to tell our story of faith – hence many of my blogs using their phrase ‘So what’s the story..?’.

Our new Vice President Carolyn, in her 50’s, described herself as an introvert, activist, impatient, easily bored and liable to make flippant remarks – an honest assessment of her humanity. She confessed to being uncertain about taking on such an important role, but the testimony she gave on how she got here was powerful. She described the church as part ‘mad’ – some of our members can get very worked up if people use the wrong cups, wear the wrong clothes, put papers on, or take them off, the noticeboard.  There is a whole potential for trouble around anything to do with setting out, stacking or moving chairs!  It is also part ugly – this ranges from telling visitors off when they sit in ‘someone else’s seat’, we can say the cruelest things to each other, have inappropriate comments and touching, bullying and controlling behaviour. Ministers from our overseas churches can be subjected to racist comments from our members, and homophobia is not uncommon.  This ugliness extends to some extremely serious cases of abuse, which we need to continually guard against.

Carolyn’s hope is that the best of the work we do is really good and awesome; helping the weakest in society, and through our overseas relief and development charity, All We Can, those in poorer countries. She wants to use the year meeting with local churches and encouraging us to use our gifts to the utmost.

It is a very different conference this year, but our group of 8 local Chester & Stoke District representatives are keeping in touch, and helping each other during debates via a WhatsApp group.  We won’t be able to hold the deep and passionate debates where speakers come forward to give different views, but we will be reviewing some important reports and committing millions of pounds of funding to important mission and outreach projects. We will also do the ‘mundane and routine’ business such as approving accounts, membership of committees and working parties. There is a sadness that the vital debates we held last year, and the provisional legislation needed, to make us a more inclusive church that recognises a wide-variety of relationships as valid, will not be completed as it was felt the format would not allow the ‘deep personal conferring needed’. Those in single sex relationships are already welcomed, and can hold any position in Methodism, but will have to wait until the conference of 2021 to find out if they can marry in our churches.

Our ministers in training are usually ‘ordained’ on Conference Sunday, but this year they had to make their promises on Saturday via Zoom as the first part, but will have to wait until we can get back into churches to have the physical ‘laying on of hands’ in the special service with friends and family. After one of the candidates made her promise from home our chair Helen sent a message on WhatsApp saying ‘we need to get Natalie into our district’, prompted by a framed message on the wall in Natalie’s house that read ‘Gin is my saviour’!

In the conference last year we learned that language is so important, not only in what is said but how it is said. Hence my wish not to use the term ‘new normal’ for our post-Covid society but the hope that, using Richard’s word we will ‘re-orientate’ ourselves. This week with the ‘White Lives Matter’ banner flown over a premier league match we learned again this lesson of use of language.

With cases not falling as fast and the death rate levelling off to about 150 per day, there is concern that the ‘welcomed’ easing of lockdown has sent the message that ‘it’s all over, we can have a party’. Scenes at ‘block parties’ in London, the celebrations in Liverpool after their team won the Premier League title after a 30-year wait, and overcrowding on the beach at Bournemouth during a very warm spell, raised fears of a second spike of infections. And all that before the pubs open on 4th July. Add alcohol to the mix and arguments over what constitutes ‘one metre plus’ in crowded pubs will lead, as one punter said, ‘to even more fights on a Friday night’! 

I understand some of the reasons, but in my opinion it says a lot about our country that we work hard to get the pubs open, but not the gyms and swimming pools. Judging by the photo on the front page of one newspaper this morning, Boris Johnson clearly thinks an office floor is all that is need to become ‘as fit as a butcher’s dog’. Although I am not sure wearing a suit and tie is recommended gym wear?

We really are at a ‘turning point’ or maybe looking over a precipice with the virus. Infections are reducing, deaths at least leveling out, and there are signs of hope. Yet scientists keep telling us that there is no sign of the virus just dying out and it will be with us at some level for ‘years to come’. The next three months and how we as individuals react will be critical to the future path of the virus, even more than the past 14 weeks of lockdown.

We need to re-orientate our country if there is not to be a pandemic of unemployment. In my less optimistic times I worry about a complete breakdown of society as those in work continue to regain wealth, but those in lower paid jobs or no jobs get poorer and poorer – or am I kidding myself, as that has been the case for decades?

Other news this week

  • The daily briefings came to an end on Tuesday with the announcement of the next stage of easing, adding to the ‘its all over’ feeling. Those who are shielding were told that they could leave the house at the same time. There is uncertainty and real fear among some. It may be that the presence of the virus is such that on average you need to meet 1,700 people before you interact with someone who carries the virus, but the effect if you are the unlucky winner of that particular lottery is no less devastating if you are vulnerable.
  • With the briefings ending, you have to work hard to find the daily new cases and death figures. The four days figures Tuesday to Friday were 154, 149, 186, 100  and the total is 43,550 and the average new daily cases is about 900 which is at least moving in the right direction. Globally we passed 10 million confirmed cases and  500,000 deaths.
  • At the weekend it was announced that from the 6th July we will be able to go to some European countries via so-called ‘air corridors’, meaning that on return there will be no requirement to go into two weeks’ quarantine.
  • Infections in the US are continuing to rise at a dramatic pace and President Trump is still in denial, with his senior team appearing increasingly uncomfortable trying to defend the indefensible. It is such a large country and a major part of the world economy, even beyond the personal impact the loss of over 125,700 of its citizens.
  • World number one tennis player Nova Djokovic arranged a short tour of his native Serbia, and Croatia in which there was little attention paid the social distancing or ‘covid security measures’. Djokovic himself got the disease as did his wife and several of the organising team. He is a self-declared ‘anti-vaxxer’, an area I plan to explore in a later article as the ‘conspiracy’ theorists and those who ignore science facts are dangerous for the rest of us.

How was week 14 for us?

It didn’t start well as on Monday Alyson was seriously ill with sickness and stomach upset. At first I did wonder if she had caught Covid-19 from working in the pharmacy on the Saturday. It turned out to be a reaction to a new type of antibiotic she was taking.  It was the first time in 93 days that she hadn’t been on our exercise bike and her Wii Fit.  We had to cancel our trip to meet friends from Shrewsbury the next day for a walk around a lake at a park halfway between us. It was a gloriously sunny day and such a shame.

The weather stayed hot and sunny and by Thursday when Alyson finally got to meet three former work colleagues in our garden, we needed to put up the gazebo we had bought specially, not for the rain, but so that they could sit in the shade. It was the hottest day of the year at 30 degrees.  

The opening of self-catering accommodation on 4th July means that our holiday at a National Trust cottage in a remote area of Norfolk is back on. It will be good to get away even if we can’t visit some of the places we planned to. It will be a change of scenery and walks along coastal paths. I admit to glancing at the availability of villas in Spain, Crete and Croatia when the air corridors were announced, but Alyson is a bit more cautious and is waiting for the ‘second spike’ and what happens when the ‘winter flu’ season starts again.

I continued to do my local parkruns twice a week and am feeling the benefits both in some weight loss, and clearing my mind of confusion.

We had a meeting of our head injury charity trustees via phone and the figures I had prepared as treasurer showed that our reserves have increased.  There really has been great support for small charities like ours who can’t hold fundraising events. We have been fortunate with the grants we have applied for – and received. Apart from the National Lottery the money we have received is from local trusts and benefactors wanting to support Cheshire-based charities.  We have not furloughed our two employees, as the work they do supporting members who were socially isolated even before the restrictions caused by the virus, is vital. We too will continue with ‘reorientation’ of our services, taking some of the ‘virtual coffee mornings’ and chat rooms forwards to reach those who haven’t wanted to attend physical meetings even in normal times.

Alyson’s hairdresser called to ask if she wanted an appointment in the first few days of opening. I am getting used to her long hair and she doesn’t want it taken back to where it was, just the fringe tidied up. I love the haircuts Alyson gives me with my trimmers and not sure I will ever go back to paying for one!

Although there was no formal Conference Service this year, our new President and Vice President joined the service at Westminster Central Hall via Zoom. Richard’s sermon was about John Wesley’s drive for Methodists to strive for ‘personal holiness’, but to live out the gospel we proclaim via what he called ‘social holiness’. This is a radical, active care for those in society who need it. Richard talked about the last letter Wesley ever wrote being to William Wilberforce supporting the abolition of slavery. He worked in the desperate slums of London where he saw people in extreme poverty continue to work and help others. Richard used a modern-day example of this social holiness by telling of a member in his circuit in rural Yorkshire, inspired by her faith to help the local food bank and deliver to the housebound and isolated in her community. 

Vice President Carolyn led us in prayers for those who are broken-hearted, worried about the virus, struggling with loneliness and living in conditions where social distancing is impossible. For countries where health systems are overwhelmed and asked that we use our social holiness to do what we can.

We finished with video messages from our sister churches around the world from, Bolivia, Rwanda, Australia, The Caribbean, and Italy. As Methodists we adapt one of  Wesley’s famously sayings ‘the world is our parish’.

Keep safe and let’s see what the next week brings us.

Life & Death – Coronavirus week 10 – taking things one day at a time

Week  10 in daily format.

I usually start these blogs at the end of the week but decided today that I will try doing a ‘daily’ note. This will allow me to capture my thoughts in real time and my mood in relation to events around the crisis. I will review and correct some grammar and shorten sections prior to publishing, but the essence of the days won’t change.

Monday 25th May – ‘I have never been so angry..’

Having made a determined effort in last week’s blog not to write much about Dominic Cummings, the story of his 260 mile trip to Durham, and Boris Johnson’s ‘defence’ of his actions at Sunday’s daily briefing, I woke up this morning quite angry. Not about the actions of the senior advisor, but more that I was so distracted by the whole thing that I missed a huge section of the blog which I had planned to cover.

Sunday 24th May was, for Methodists like me a special day. It is called  ‘Aldersgate Sunday’ formerly ‘Wesley Day’. As the web site for the Methodist Church in Great Britain explains;

In May 1738, John unwillingly attended worship at a Moravian ‘Religious Society’ meeting on Aldersgate Street in London. It was during this service that he felt his “heart strangely warmed”, as he experienced God’s love in a most personal and life-giving way. Until then he had known God in his mind, but not in his heart. Now he understood the value of a personal experience of God that would bring assurance of salvation to the believer.

This year the 24th fell on a Sunday so that made it even more relevant. Not so reluctantly as John Wesley, I attended a streamed service from Methodist Central Hall in London, just over two miles from Aldersgate Street in the City of London.  It was a wonderful service with over 1,500 watching. It was also the last service of their minister Rev Dr Martyn Atkins, former President of the Conference who was ‘retiring’ or as we call it ‘sitting down’ after over 40 years of service to his church. He was what we call ‘one of Mr Wesley’s preachers’, who had been ‘stationed’ in various places across the country as ministers in our denomination are called to be ‘itinerant’, usually staying in one place for around 10 years and then moving to another ‘appointment’ .

The penultimate service I attended in church before they were closed for lockdown was at Methodist Central Hall on 1st February. We were down in London for a visit and, never having been there, I decided to go for the Sunday service. It is an impressive place, built from the donations of one million Methodists, including members of my mum and dad’s families. Martyn was preaching and gave a challenging message about putting on the ‘armour of God’. I received a blessing and was anointed with oil by one of the Deacons at the end of the service. I  managed a few words with Martyn as we had briefly met a couple of years previously. It was in a small room at one of our closed churches, repurposed as a second-hand bookshop raising funds for the museum of Methodism at Englesea Brook Chapel, which is in our circuit between Crewe & Alsager. I was dropping some books off and Martyn was chatting to our Superintendent minister who worked there on his days off. Martyn had written an article for the ‘Methodist Recorder’ that came out that day and which was a challenge to modernise, and I told him it was thoughtful and a great piece. Martyn didn’t remember the conversation but knows the bookshop as he is a great collector of books, and said he would be going there a lot in the future as he and his wife are moving back to Derbyshire, less than an hour away from Alsager.

So, my anger was about not mentioning all that in last week’s blog.

However, the anger referred to in the heading of this section is my wife Alyson’s. Having never been ‘political’ before, she found the email address of our local MP this morning and wrote to him to express her anger at the situation over Dominic Cummings and her disappointment at the way Boris Johnson has handled it. I don’t think Alyson will mind me saying that her natural inclination is not to vote Labour. As a pharmacist and frontline worker who has seen the effects of coronavirus on her patients she wanted her MP to know. He is Dr Kieran Mullan who worked in the accident & emergency department prior to becoming our local MP for the conservatives and has gone back to work some shifts. It will be interesting to see if she gets a reply.

Neither of our moods was improved after the two press conferences that evening. The extraordinary lengthy one with the special advisor in which he showed no regrets but tried to explain why he could make special arrangements for his family. Followed an hour later by one with Boris Johnson. No one, particularly the journalists, was listening to details of how lockdown was to be eased by opening of shops and secondary schools in mid-June. Everyone wanted to keep talking about Mr Cummings. As the day ended the special advisor was still in place, left to be judged in the court of public opinion.

I sat and wrote my own email to Dr Mullan MP.

Tuesday 26th May – hey ho, hey ho, it’s back to work we go..

When the prime minister told the country two weeks ago to get back to work, I didn’t think it applied to me. I was enjoying my semi-retirement, time with Alyson, the warm weather and helping my church and the charities I am involved with. However, at 9.30am I found myself attending a Zoom ‘Monday Morning Meeting’ (moved due to yesterday’s Bank Holiday) with 18 of my new colleagues at an accountancy practice in Manchester.

My friend Steve had asked me back to do another systems project for his new company. If Alyson and I had been managing to take all the holidays that we had planned, there was no way I could have said yes. Truth be known I had some doubts about my ability but after a couple of meetings and 1-2-1’s my interest, and not a little ‘excitement’, was back. It took most of my day, and I had foregone the usual early morning exercise.

Meanwhile Dominic Cummings was still in his job, despite one ministerial resignation and a ‘revolt’ of 30 MPs and literally thousands of similar emails like mine to local MPs. It was left once again to the BBC ‘s Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis in her opening ‘monologue’ to sum up as follows

Dominic Cummings broke the rules. The country can see that and it’s shocked that the government can’t. The longer ministers and the prime minister tell us he worked within them, the more angry the response to this scandal is likely to be.  He was the man remember who got the public mood, who tagged the lazy label ‘elite’ on those who disagreed. He should understand that public mood now; one of fury, contempt and anguish. He made those who struggled to keep the rules feel like fools and has allowed many more to feel they can flout them. The prime minister knows all this, but despite the resignation of one minister, growing unease from his backbenchers, a dramatic early warning from the polls, deep national disquiet, Boris Johnson has chosen to ignore it. Tonight we consider what this blind loyalty means about the workings of ‘Number Ten’. We do not expect to be joined by a government minister but that won’t stop us asking the questions.

Wednesday 27th May

Today was a warm one and started with my weekly 5k ‘local Parkrun’ which I have been doing as the usual Saturday morning one, I have done since 2016, has been suspended as part of the lockdown measures. We ate all three meals outside on our patio table and were delighted to see a pair of young goldfinches on our feeders.

The numbers of Conservative MPs asking for Dominic Cummings to  be sacked was over 40, and the prime minister was before a committee of senior members of parliament from all political parties. Their questions were supposed to be on his performance in the new parliament which started in December. However, they too concentrated a lot on his special advisor and what effect it might have in getting the message over for the rest of the pandemic.

Health secretary Matt Hancock tried to distract from the Cummings story by changing the sign on the podium at the daily press conference announcing the NHS test and trace strategy to help ease the lockdown. He was ambushed by the video question from a member of the public asking if everyone who had been fined for travelling to arrange childcare would have the money refunded. Perhaps taken aback by the questioner being,  as he so tweely described him, ‘a man of the cloth’, he desperately searched for an answer and promised to take it back and ask the treasury. The next day the answer came back – ‘no’.

At 9pm I logged onto the American businessman Elon Musk’s SpaceX website to watch a live stream of his Falcon 9 reusable rocket taking men into space in a Dragon spaceship that sits on top and carries astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley. It will dock with the International Space Station (ISS) and then return to earth. This was the first time since 2011, and it was cancelled with 17 minutes to go due to storm clouds. I looked forward to the second try on Saturday.

The virus touched this event when a photo of people watching the launch from a road bridge nearby caused a social media storm around social distancing and accusations that the picture in USA Today was an old one. I read an account on the paper’s blog that showed the picture from 2011 and you can see not quite so many  people, and some in the today’s one wearing masks.

We have watched the launch of a small rocket from a beach nearby the Kennedy Space Centre during a visit in 1994, so can understand the interest of locals in such a massive event.

Just before turning off my laptop to go to bed I made a sign parodying the one on  the daily briefing podium. Having done so, I almost deleted it immediately, worrying if such a thing was ok. I posted it on Facebook and Tweeted it to Rev Helen Kirk, our own Chair of District or ‘woman of the cloth’!

Thursday 28th May

The tactics seemed to work as the prime minister’s special advisor was not the top headline on news bulletins. My ‘funny’ podium sign was retweeted by Helen and liked on Facebook, so guess it was ok. This was the exchange between Helen and me.

When we had a coffee via Skype with friends David & Janis it was something they were annoyed about. Janis knows the road to Barnard Castle where the now infamous ‘test drive’ was taken and thought it unsuitable as a check for the type of journey back to London.

It was another very warm day and we had meals outside and did more work on the garden.

The evening briefing, after the cabinet had done their legally required 3-weekly review, brought news of another ‘easing’ of the lockdown measures. From next Monday we will be able to meet in groups of six in a garden or outside space, some non-essential shops, outdoor markets and car show rooms can open from the 8th of June.  Premier League matches would start from 17th June behind closed doors. Boris Johnson stated that he wanted to ‘draw a line’ under the Cummings affair and move on ‘as the country wanted’. Journalists had other ideas and asked more questions about the ‘illegal trip’, even trying to involve the Chief Scientist and Chief Medical Officer in the questions. There were questions about how people might hold ‘socially distancing barbecues’ in their gardens, and what if someone wanted to use a toilet in the house. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland announced different measures from England, just to add to the confusion.

The evening brought the tenth and final clap for carers. It was well supported and loud on our street, but it felt like the right time to end it.

Friday 29th May

We had planned to get up very early, have breakfast, drive to Delamere Forest, and see if we could manage a walk without getting too close to other people. We arrived at 8.45am and walked to a small isolated lake surrounded by some beautiful yellow orchids. It was not too busy with people, but there was a lot of litter from visitors over recent days. We resolved to take bags and collect it if we came again. We saw a lot of birds, went on a rope swing under a tree, and walked the parkrun course.  We arrived home by mid-morning and sat in our warm garden for lunch.

Alyson commented during the walk that it seemed odd to be in such a peaceful place surrounded by life when there were thousands of people in hospital fighting for their lives. I said that most days were like that, but it had been heightened in the last three months.

Rishi Sunak, Chancellor of the exchequer announced an extension of the furlough scheme and support for the self-employed until October.  It was at a slightly lower rate and employers were going to contribute towards the costs. Employees can go back part-time under the scheme.

We watched the last of the daily  BBC Two ‘Springwatch’ reports. It has been a joy to see all the birds nesting and trying to survive. Insights into nature, and a new section of ‘mindfulness’ where they show 90 seconds of pictures with no commentary. We have had river valleys, woodlands, seaside, and tonight’s was lakes and mountains. Wonderful.

This was followed by the satirical program Have I Got News For You, and we were back to Dominic Cummings again. The fun (laced with real anger) they had with the story reached new levels of satire. Apparently there is a Durham slang of ‘that’s a load Barney Castle’ meaning a pathetic excuse. It originates from medieval saying based on a siege in the castle. As one famous columnist is fond of saying ‘You couldn’t make it up!’.

Saturday 30th May

Another bright and sunny day. I got a new PB for my new regular ‘local parkrun’ and like every other week I finished in first place! Alyson was back on the frontline working a morning shift in a community pharmacy. It was again one where she felt safe with one patient at a time.

Two members of the Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (SAGE) broke ranks to voice concern about easing lockdown restrictions too early, risking a second wave and peak of infections. There was a worry that having announced on Thursday that people could meet up in larger groups for a barbecue in gardens, some would start early with the forecast sunny weekend. Our neighbours had two families together in their garden with little evidence of social distancing, and on Alyson’s afternoon walk she saw a group of youths playing a football game.

I watched the SpaceX mission finally take off to the ISS at 8.22pm. It was a spectacular event.

Sunday 31st May

Harold Wilson, labour prime minister in the 1960’s is quoted telling lobbyists before a general election, when it wasn’t looking good, ‘a week is a long time in politics’. He won the election with an increased majority. Well, it is a week since the papers and television were full of stories and accusations about a trip to Durham. It felt at the time like Mr Cummings would be sacked, especially after another day trip to Barnard Castle came out. Boris Johnson decided to try to ride out the storm, pushback on any questions, and focus on getting the next steps of easing restrictions out. It appears to have worked. The news today was of opening schools and some shops tomorrow, and the overnight announcement that those who have been ‘shielding’, and locked in their own homes for the last ten weeks are to be allowed out for walks in the local area but still not to go to shops. They can meet up with one person from another household in the open air but must maintain social distancing. As the virus is around less than it was the chances of infection have gone from 1 in 40 at the start of their self-isolation to 1 in 1,000 now.

This Sunday in the church year is Pentecost (what used to be called Whitsun), the anniversary of the formation of the early church and the day the first ‘sermon’ was preached by Simon Peter after the coming of the Holy Spirit. Watching the service streamed from Methodist Central Hall, preacher Rev Howard Mellor reminded us that the disciples had been effectively in ‘lockdown’ for coming up to 50 days waiting for the next stage in their work.  The image with tongues of fire raining down reminded me both of the fires burning in the US from the protests over the killings of the unarmed black man George Floyd by a white policemen in Minneapolis, and the power of the burning of kerosene and liquid oxygen that took the two NASA astronauts towards the ISS. The US riots had spread to many more cities overnight with more fires and looting. There was little social distancing going on there or at the protests in central London.

I watched the live stream of the docking manoeuvre on SpaceX’s web site as the Dragon-2 spacecraft gently attached to ISS. Despite the seemingly ‘slow and careful’ way the two vehicles came together; we were reminded by the commentator on the video that the two vehicles were travelling at 7.66km per second or over 17,000 miles per hour. As I watched the spaceship close in ‘slowly’ for the last 20 metres between the two vehicles which took just over a minute, they travelled over 300 miles or the distance from Crewe to Land’s End! All at 260 miles above the earth. Over 1.3 million people were watching live on-line.   Docking happened at 3:16pm and the alarm on my phone went off. It is set to remind me of the famous Bible verse John 3:16. My mind went back to the time last November when I stood on steps on top of the Hulda Gate up to the temple at the centre of the ancient city of Jerusalem. Our guide told us that when astronaut Neil Armstrong stood on them he said

I am more excited stepping on these stones than I was stepping on the moon.”

It was seeing earth from the Apollo spacecraft and from the moon that reinforced Armstrong’s belief in something larger than humanity. He had been brought up in a Methodist family and on return from the moon he gave a speech in front of the U.S. Congress in which he thanked them for giving him the opportunity to see some of the grandest views of the Creator.

The final daily briefing of the week gave the figures for deaths on Saturday as 113 compared to 215 on Friday and 324 on Thursday. The total of deaths at the end of week 10 was 38,489.

We shared a weekly family Zoom with the boys. David was happy to be back on the river Avon after his second session of solo rowing from his club in Bath. He had also managed a short swim as he capsized his single-seater boat!  Michael had been walking in Delamere again.

Alyson has arranged for a friend from her ‘knit & natter’ group to come around tomorrow and sit in our garden to share a coffee. We are planning to meet up with her sister and husband for a walk somewhere between our home and theirs in Coventry.

Next week I am planning to look at a single issue related to the pandemic, perhaps the future of the health and social care services, or the costs of repaying the huge financial debts the government support has built up.

Keep safe.

 

Life & Death – Coronavirus week 9 – easing the lockdown

We’re all in this together, again?

As I start this week’s account on Saturday afternoon, I wanted to resist commenting on the incident of government advisor Dominic Cummings trip to his parents’ home in Durham. But having just done so, I will leave it to the mainstream media, and the numerous self-appointed political commentators on social media, to report the story to what appears to be its inevitable conclusion as more details come out. It certainly appeared that the Transport Secretary, Grant Shapps had been ‘thrown under the bus’ at the daily briefing.

Instead I will confess that, however people have interpreted the ‘rules/guidance’ both during lockdown and now, we too have stretched them, or to be correct ‘broken them’. I confess to ‘excusing myself’ about driving faster than 70mph on the motorway on the basis that almost everyone else does, and to drive at exactly 70 or below puts us in danger from all the other ‘idiots’ who are speeding. There always appears to be a ‘get out’ clause if you judge it to be right in your own mind.

This week Alyson and I took advantage of the new guidance to drive outside our local area to a country park near Northwich. It was Alyson’s birthday and she was desperate to go for a walk somewhere else, and it is a place we have been birdwatching.  It is a 42-mile round-trip and it felt very strange to be driving even for half an hour. It felt very familiar as we queued in a traffic jam through roadworks over a closed bridge to get to the park. The car park was quite full and as we ate our picnic we wondered whether to come straight home. We didn’t need to pay & display as the machine was covered, presumably to avoid people touching the buttons, and everyone appeared to be keeping social distancing. The park is very large, so we walked to the birdwatching screen at the end of the lake. It was a sunny day and it appeared that there were family groups sitting alone enjoying the fresh air. We managed to pass other people with at least the required two metre gap. When we got to the bench seats at the screen which are about 15 metres long the only other person there, sat on the end, was our son Michael. He lives only two miles from the park, and I had text him to suggest he went as a birthday surprise for his mum. It worked, and Alyson was really pleased to see him. We chatted for a few minutes as he was on his lunch break from working at home. He looked healthy and happy. Alyson said afterwards that she just wanted to give him a hug. I ventured that Michael didn’t feel the same way! Have you spotted it yet? The current government guidance for this phase of easing the restrictions state;

I have highlighted the parts that make clear we broke the rules. Two of us met one other person outside our household to make a group larger than two. We excused ourselves as I sat two metres from Alyson and four from Michael and it ‘felt ok’. A lot of people will have done similar things over the weeks, using their own ‘excuses’. I know people who happen to have walked past their parents’ house with their child on their daily walk and stood at the end of the drive to talk to them, then later extended this by going through a garage (always keeping themselves two metres apart) to sit on chairs in the back garden and chat to grandparents. And if the young child who doesn’t understand social distancing happens to take a toy over to his grandparents, it doesn’t harm anyone else…. I have seen people who walk a dog in the morning and then the evening, presumably reasoning that it doesn’t do any harm.

There has been much discussion, some with a lot of hindsight, as to whether the lockdown was ‘too late’. It may have saved more lives, but even on the weekend of the 21st March, two days before lockdown was announced by the prime minister, I was emailing the owner of the lovely cottage in the north east we were staying in about renting it again the following weekend. I reasoned that it was so remote we could easily ‘self-isolate’, go for walks in the early morning from the door onto deserted moorland, take all the food we need, drive there and back on one tank of fuel etc etc. In the end we decided not to, which when we heard the ‘rules’ was the right thing. I even held out until the very end, that our week in Lanzarote could go ahead. 

I have re-watched two issues of BBC’s Question Time from March and even ten weeks on there are some things that are now shocking. On 6th March after the first death in the UK when there were 100 cases, health secretary Matt Hancock said that the majority of people will get minor symptoms and a few will need some extra care. There was laughter in the audience when a panellist talked about elbow bumping instead of handshaking, and another joked about not being able to find toilet roll. To be fair there was worry about older people and those who might not be able to go to work and claim sick pay. Matt Hancock said that the evidence was that large-scale sporting gatherings outside were not places where widespread infection spreading would happen.  It was in the ‘containment phase’ where the message was only people with symptoms had to self-isolate.  Professor John Ashton, former head of public health in north west England was on the panel on the 13th March, the night after the Liverpool v Real Madrid match at Anfield. His accent gave him away as a Liverpool fan, but he had stayed away, frightened that the virus had come to Merseyside and spread through the bars before and after the match. I watched this live and, like host Fiona Bruce, remember getting quite cross at what seemed a hysterical reaction when he started shouting about wasting four or five weeks already. 

The daily briefings had started,  but in my opinion there was no appetite for a full lockdown and if it had been imposed at the start of March compliance would have been much lower. Ironically, if it had happened and after two weeks ‘only 100 people a day’ were dying, people would have said ‘it was all a hoax and businesses are going to the wall so let us go back to work and school’. It is also clear that there were not enough tests available as we seemed pleased to be testing 2,000 a day.

For me, this week has been a rollercoaster of hope. One day I hear that the cases may be falling quickly and caught a clip on the radio of a scientist who believed that in a few months the virus would just die out. I started checking the booking sites for the holiday cottage in the north east. The next day there was talk of the virus being ‘with us for years, and life would never get back to normal….’.

It does seem that there is cause for hope. You don’t need to understand much about the way viruses spread to know that if there are no cases in your local population, it can’t spread. The origins of it may have been transmission from a mammal to humans, but that doesn’t happen spontaneously on suburban estates in the UK. New Zealand earlier in the week and Guernsey on Saturday released lockdown completely. They are both islands that have managed to almost full close their borders, and done lots of testing and tracking. New Zealand has a population of 4.82 million and only 21 deaths and on several days in the last three weeks no new cases, despite carrying out an average of 4,400 daily tests. Guernsey, a very small island with a population of 67,000 had no new cases for 22 days. There were pictures of families actually hugging grandparents. Shocking! But to repeat myself, you can’t catch the virus from someone who hasn’t got it. They have been developing ‘household bubbles’, firstly just two then last week putting 2+2 to make four households that don’t have to maintain social distancing. This very simple 3-minute video explains the approach;

This could be the way the UK government(s) decide to go. Let’s stay optimistic.

Test, Test, Test! or Education, Education, Education?

When the head of the World Health Organisation was asked for a message to countries fighting to control the spread of Coronavirus Pandemic in early March, his answer was very clear ‘Test, test, test’. It does seem that those countries who had a good testing regime allied to a system to do contact tracing, asking people who had the virus to isolate themselves, have managed to control the spread.

Former prime minister Tony Blair at the ‘New Labour’ Party Conference at Blackpool in 1996 gave a speech about his top three priorities if they were able to form the next government. He said ‘Education, Education, Education’.

Following on from last week’s blog, these two phrases have collided as the country tries to start ‘the new normal’ with schools being asked to start opening to more pupils. Teaching unions met with scientists and data has been published and discussed. There is still some uncertainty and natural concerns, specifically around the ability to do local testing and tracing. If we wait for a vaccine or 100% guarantees of no risk we will never get schools open. But with a combination of good risk assessments, the ability for schools or local authorities to determine phased opening in conjunction with parents, no sanctions for parents not wanting to send their children back, and exemptions for ‘vulnerable’ children and adults, backed with local testing hubs, it could work. We might even decide to ask parents to form ‘household bubbles’ based on the friends of very young children so that they can hug and go to each other’s houses to play. Some schools will wait two weeks which is the current time for infection rates to halve.

Other news this week

  • The daily death count continued to fall even when ‘all situations’ were taken into account. The last four daily totals of 338, 351, 282 and 118 and the total of 36,793 appears to be a steeper decline than previous weeks.
  • We clapped for carers for the 9th week on Thursday. I was pleased to learn that Dutch-born Londoner Annemarie Plas responsible for starting this initiative, suggesting that this coming week should be the last and tenth time. This will allow us to stop, reflect on the sacrifice and set a date in the future to remember again, perhaps annually. This will stop it going on and on and simply petering out gradually.
  •  President Trump was causing concerns again with his announcement that he had been taking the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine for two weeks. This is not a recognised prophylactic for the virus causing problems now, and even the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) warn against its use. Being a pharmacist, Alyson has access to the online British National Formulary (BNF) of UK recommended drugs. She posted two pictures of the list of side effects on social media. I have highlighted two particular ones that President Trump should be aware of:
    More worrying than President Trump’s personal medication was a warning from the White House’s coronavirus taskforce member Dr Anthony Fauci that new localized outbreaks were “inevitable” as mitigation measures are relaxed, leading to the need to put in place a further lockdown. Given the dependence of the world’s economy on that of the US, however much we wish it didn’t, the decisions of the administration are vital to the rest of us.
  • Airlines, travel agents, hotels and others in the tourism sector gave stark warnings of the economic effects on their businesses. Hertz Global Holdings Inc the US car hire firm, and Specialist Leisure Group, which owns coach company Shearings, both collapsed into administration. US business magazine Forbes stated;

Hertz was just another victim of the pandemic, people will say. It’s easy to blame the company’s misfortunes, as well as the other corporate casualties, on the pandemic. The reality is a different story. The failures of Hertz and the others have more to do with their own arrogant inertia and inability to recognize the fast-changing trends and a refusal to adapt their business models accordingly.

This is a narrative we will come back to when the whole economic story of the crisis is analysed. Some companies have been ‘found out’ by the pandemic while others have adapted in an economic equivalent of the evolutionary principle of ‘survival of the fittest’.

How has week 9 been for us?

We are conscious of the fortunate position we are in with regard to holidays. We have managed to get a full refund on our Lanzarote holiday, moved an Easter cottage and another Cottage in Ross-on-Wye, both with family, to the same weeks in 2021. This week the travel company moved a very expensive cruise in Norway to 2021, along with an upgrade and £45 credit.

We have been taking part in a UK Biobank project for over 12 years. They are a major national and international health resource, and a registered charity, with the aim of improving the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of a wide range of serious and life-threatening illnesses – including cancer, heart diseases, stroke, diabetes. We have been scanned, had blood taken and completed endless questionnaires on lifestyles. This week I received an email from them on behalf of Professor Sir Patrick Vallance, UK Government Chief Scientific Adviser. I volunteered to send a sample of my blood monthly for six months to be tested for coronavirus antibodies. The project will help the scientists track the course of the infection across the population.  As well as us ‘oldies’ aged 40-69 they needed some younger adults, so I sent invites to Michael and David.

This week I was very proud to wave Alyson off back to the ‘frontline’. It did feel a little like sending her off to war, as she set out with her mask, visor and hand gel to work a shift at a local community pharmacy. She had been desperate to play her part, but as she has a condition that would class her as vulnerable, she wanted to wait until safer conditions were in place. There was no way that she was going in at the start of the crisis with busy branches overwhelmed by customers and lots of other people working there. Her Saturday morning session was at a small local branch with screens between the customers and counter. You can see below pictures of some measures. There was only one other member of the team working so social distancing was easy to maintain. We have had a chat about her wishes should she contract Covid-19 and need to go into ICU.

Alyson also had an alarm on her phone go off as part of the local volunteering force. It was to call a lady recently discharged from hospital to check she was ok in terms of shopping, medication, loneliness and mental wellbeing. All was fine and she didn’t need to pass them on to anyone else.

Keep safe everyone and let’s see what the next week brings.

 

Life & Death – Coronavirus week 8 – assessing risks, dividing the country

Tell us what we are supposed to be doing, don’t ask us to use common sense….

Looking back with the benefit of ‘2020 hindsight’ the week started with what Boris might have called ‘an inverted pyramid of confusion’ with lots of unanswered questions following his Sunday evening address to the nation.  The well-trailed/leaked message of ‘we’re coming out of lockdown’, the ‘meat of the story at the top’ was followed by the fragmented uncertainty of what was actually said, and the shrinking detail of how that would work – the narrowing at the bottom of the pyramid.

‘Stay at Home’ was replaced with ‘Stay Alert’ and we were told that ‘coming down the mountain is sometimes harder than going up’. He announced a government plan to ‘ease the lockdown’ in the next few months. Some of the measures had been widely trailed in the media in a way that I don’t fully understand. All journalists have their ‘sources’ and back-door channels into government departments. Indeed it seems that some cabinet ministers are happy to ‘leak’ when it suits them, or perhaps to gain an advantage in the game of getting more power by a higher profile. The problem was that some people were waiting to hear that they could see more family members, start planning a late summer holiday or going for a beer at a pub that has an outside garden or space.

What we heard instead was ‘go back to work tomorrow’, ‘from Wednesday we can go out more, sunbathe or play sports’, ‘schools and some shops will be opening at the start of June’, ‘hospitality being open from 4th July’.  The new alert system was underpinned by scientific advice and monitoring of the now infamous ‘R-number’. Monday morning brought more confusion when ministers didn’t appear to have details on some of the ‘rules’ and how they would be applied. Could we meet mum and dad in the park or was it only mum (presumably while dad sat in the car and waited his turn next). The situation was not surprising as the more detailed 60-page official document was not published until later on Monday and news programmes were full of traffic jams and crowded tube trains as the ‘rush back to work’ started.

By this weekend crowds were taking advantage of the warm weather to travel long distances to beauty spots in the countryside and on the coast. Some interviewed for the evening news expressed surprise at the number of people there and the lack of social distancing. 

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago the need for careful planning of how workplaces could open with ‘social distancing’ and ‘re-engineering’ of processes. Any business or workplace that had wasted the last seven weeks of the lockdown and wasn’t planning how the changes could happen prior to the announcement, can’t complain if they fail in the future. Talking to Steve, an accountant friend of mine, about how his small business customers were coping, he said there were two groups; those who had panicked and taken short term decisions, and those who had changed. He mentioned restaurant businesses who had turned into takeaway services and were now making more money as they didn’t realise just how much customers liked their dishes. We agreed that the ‘good’ well-run businesses who treat their teams well will come out of this stronger.

Trade Union Leaders were calling for their involvement in helping businesses get back working in a safe way. They have many trained ‘Health & Safety Reps’ that can help companies and reassure their members that safe-working practices are in place. Although the TUC had been on a conference call with the Prime Minister on Sunday evening, no mention of help from the unions was made by ministers in the daily round of the breakfast news media organisations. The phrase ‘it is just common sense’ was often used. The government did produce some detailed guidance on workplace changes, staff shifts, social distancing and deep cleaning measures for eight areas of work from manufacturing, offices, restaurants etc. But I repeat, most businesses should have been thinking about these things before this week.

Wednesday was the day we could all begin to get out more and play sport, but we decided to stay home and see if the beauty spots, parks and garden centres became crowded with people, as had been the concern when it was announced. It was a mixed picture and the mood was captured by a cartoon in one of the newspapers of a golfer playing a round on his own whilst his wife took a towel to sunbathe in the bunker. On seeing the queue of 30 or more customers to get into a garden centre we decided that we weren’t that desperate to get some more plants for our garden.

Parents, teachers, and their unions were raising concerns about how social distancing would be in place for reception, year one and year six classes, the first designated to go back. For some it was literally a matter of ‘life and death’ with some parents accusing ministers of treating them and their children as ‘guinea pigs’ for an experiment and saying that they definitely wouldn’t be sending their children back until schools were ‘100% safe’. Of course there is no such thing as 100% safe statistics were quoted on the risk of being injured in a car journey or playing in a park. There is also a risk of harm if younger children see parents in a state of terror about letting them out for the ‘virus to get them’. We watched an interview with a head teacher from the UK and a teacher in a primary school in Denmark that had been open for a few weeks and put in place measures to help. They put the children in small groups of 4-5 and played a game whereby they had to keep away from the other groups in the school. Washing hands at the start and end of the morning and afternoon became a physical education (PE) class where children lined up two metres apart and did various exercises such as squats, jumps, stretches as they moved closer to the sinks and after washing their hands they went back to the classroom to do a paper exercise. The UK head teacher appeared to take an interest and be willing to learn some lessons from this. The Danish teacher stated that when they opened less than half the parents sent children but after two weeks it was over 90%.

Of course we shouldn’t forget that teachers and schools have been open during the lockdown, doing frontline work and teaching smaller numbers of key worker’s children. They will have learnt something from this experience. Some of the larger ‘Academy School Groups’ that have estates departments have been planning for opening and doing individual risk assessments for their varied buildings. Some head teachers in primary schools are not trained in risk assessments. This is not a criticism, it’s just not their job which became clear when they panicked about how to keep 4-year olds apart, and not to be terrified of teachers wearing masks and full PPE! They may be great teachers, but they also need help from local authorities and others. We have to hope that the large academy groups only motivation is education of their pupils but, as with some of the larger businesses in the commercial sector, it is possible that their Chief Executives are more concerned with lost profit than with the safety of their employees.

Speaking to Chris, a friend who has a daughter that teaches primary school children in a relatively deprived areas locally, I asked his view. He said he could understand the unions asking for guarantees on safety as that is their role. His daughter has identified vulnerable pupils who should be in already but haven’t been coming. Some of her children are not capable of being controlled in the way people would expect and their hygiene habits are poor as the result of the environment they live in. She is not worried about catching the virus as she is young, but Chris is concerned about her, as there is still much we don’t know about how the virus affects children.

The Danish comparison was being used as a ‘positive example of what could be done’ by the same ministers who said it was wrong to compare the way we handled the crisis, compared to other countries who appeared to be doing better. Is it that Danish schools and parents have a different relationship than ours?

As I write teacher unions and leaders have met with government scientific advisors, and doctors have backed the proposed way forward for a controlled opening in June. Anne Longfield the children’s commissioner for England has demanded that the two sides stop squabbling and get on with reopening ‘in the interests of children’, the many disadvantaged of whom had been away from education for too long.

The schools issue was just one area this week that shone a light on the growing division/diversion of the way the crisis is being dealt with both between the countries of the UK and within the regions of England. I wrote last week that Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland were sticking with the ‘Stay at home’ message. This week the elected mayors in Manchester & Liverpool went on record about the support they and their councils were being given from London. The Greater Manchester Mayor, Andy Burnham wrote two newspaper articles bemoaning the short notice they were given of the proposed ‘back to work’ message and not having the financial package given to the London Mayor to provide the extra public transport to maintain social distancing. The allowances given to local authorities to deal with the crisis had gone from ‘spend what you need, and we will reimburse you, to ‘we need to be sharing the cost’. It needs to be stated that he was a former Labour MP for Leigh, one of the constituencies that changed to Conservative in the December election. So the following statement needs to be read in that context.

For a government elected on votes in the north, and promises to “level-up”, it is surprising how quickly it has reverted to the default, London-centric mode in this crisis. Last Sunday’s package certainly felt more suited to the south than to the north.

His article refers to another issue I heard on Friday that seems to mark a change in approach. Many homeless people have been taken off the streets and put into hotels with a grant from central government. That funding is being withdrawn and put back onto the local authorities, many of whom have also had a large cut in the funding to give local support during the emergency. It seems that the poorest areas are having the largest cuts.

One of the most deprived areas in the country and one often shown on news bulletins is our ‘home area’ around Middlesbrough in the north east. Alyson & I lived and went to school in one of the more affluent areas from the ages of two and five. The area of Brambles Farm shown in Friday’s bulletins is one we know well and is where Alyson’s mum worked in a bookmakers. The interview with a mum and her child about the cost of living and the need to access support and foodbanks was a stark reminder of areas of poverty in our country. 

Today’s statistics from the NHS show the following;

  • The North East region has the highest infection rate in the country with 358 people per 100,000
  • Within the region Middlesbrough is fourth highest for infection rates at 451 per 100,000
  • The James Cook University Hospital that serves the area is in the top third of deaths in the country with 316 to date.
  • One day in the last week there were 24 new cases in London and 4,000 in the north east and Yorkshire.

The regional mayor had been resisting the reopening of parks despite the pleas of an MP who is a member of the government and one who is the Labour MP for Middlesbrough.  He is, however, in favour of reopening schools unlike his counterpart in nearby Hartlepool.

Other news this week

  • The daily death rates appear to be on a downward slope with today’s figure of 170 bringing the total to 34,636. But this week we had a figure of 50,000 for the ‘excess deaths’ for the period to 1 May.
  • Following the extensive coverage of the track and trace app on the Isle of Wight there has been little news on how the trial is going. I looked up the local newspaper and all it said was that less only about 33% of the population had downloaded it. Michael & David told me on our Zoom call tonight that the source code for the app had been released and there were lots of comments about functionality and not connecting with phones nearby. As per the blogger’s prediction last week there is talk of moving to the decentralised version of the app.
  • Tuesday 12th May was International Nurses Day and fell this year on the 200th anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s birthday. Florence died a recluse after many years of a ‘mystery disease’ which some scholars now think could have been partly related to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Much more is known about this today, and it could be that her reluctance to talk about the 21 months without a break looking after the injured soldiers in appalling conditions during the Crimean War, 30 years previously, was the cause. Many today are asking that our NHS workers and others on the frontline receive PSTD counselling in the coming years.
  • Belly Mujinga a Victoria Station ticket office worker died after being spat at on the day before the lockdown by a man claiming to have coronavirus, falling ill with Covid-19 two days later and dying in hospital a week after that. It is a shocking story.
  • The question I submitted to the group who choose ones from the public to the daily briefing didn’t get picked, but somewhat surprisingly one about the possibility of in the future of having a ‘Universal Basic Income’ (a subject I want to cover in a later blog) did, but was dismissed outright by business secretary Alok Sharma MP, who again was happy to use other countries as reference as ‘it had been tried and shown not to work’.

Thoughts at the end of week 8.

This week we were due to be on a cruise in Norway from Bergen to Kirkenes and back, on a small cargo boat calling at many ports and sailing up some of the very scenic fjords. A ‘first world’ problem I know, but we are some of the many trying to get a refund or rearrange for next year.

This week is designated Brain Injury Awareness Week and in the charity I am a trustee for it would be one of our main awareness and fundraising times. I wrote and hosted a Zoom quiz for our members to replace the events we would have had. It was a fun time of sharing. It has also been Christian Aid Week and the door to door collection I sometime do was cancelled. It raised over £8 million across the UK last year. I shared the preparation and hosting of another quiz for which we asked for a donation. We had 16 ‘screens’ with about 25 people joining in. This week’s appeal is to help victims of coronavirus in parts of the world less able to cope and where Christian Aid have projects. I encourage you to donate.

The advice this week from the government was to start wearing face coverings in some enclosed spaces such as on public transport and shops. Alyson had used a design from You Tube to sew some cloth ones for us all. We posted two each to Michael and David and I wore one for the first time to go to our small local Tesco. I only had it on for about 45 minutes, but that was long enough for me to have some understanding of how uncomfortable it must be to wear one for a ten to twelve-hour shift. And that is without the rest of the PPE needed to treat patients in ICU.

I read a blog from an academic at Swansea University who was recruiting people willing to take part in a ‘CoronaDiaries’ project looking at how people react in the crisis. I have been accepted onto the project so these blogs will be converted to PDF and stored in an archive for future researchers to use.

As usual on Sunday I attended a streamed service from Methodist Central Hall in London. The sermon and prayers related to a passage in Matthew chapter 5 where Christians are called to change ‘from  just being, to doing’. This struck me as particularly apt for the events of this week, as did our prayer,

may the poor be enriched, the bereaved comforted and the hungry filled.

Keep safe, stay alert, manage the risk and let’s try to ease the lockdown.

Life & Death – Coronavirus week 7 – preparing for the ‘new normal’

Using technology for good – to help us ‘ease the lockdown’.

In terms of the coronavirus pandemic, week 7 was one in which we all speculated on what Boris would announce during his ‘address to the nation’ on Sunday by way of a ‘road map’ for lifting the restrictions. Lots of documents were ‘leaked’ and guidelines for certain businesses were published on the .gov.uk web site.

At the start of the week daily death totals (now in all situations) didn’t appear to be falling as quickly as many had hoped, but the last two days’ figures of 346 and 269 were lower, even for a Bank Holiday. By Sunday evening the number of lives lost was 31,855. On a purely numerical measure the UK is second to the US in terms of total deaths. There were more discussions on international comparisons. I have written in previous weeks about statistics and the difficulty of comparing countries. Factors such as the age profile, ethnic mix, housing density in cities, poverty and whether a country is an international ‘transport hub’ need to be considered.

Another topic that took up a lot of time during news bulletins and daily briefings was the launch of a ‘Track Test Trace’ (TTT) application for mobile phones. This is an example of ‘using technology for the good of society’.

On a basic level everyone who downloads the app to their smartphone can collect data about close contact with others who have the same app. If someone shows symptoms of infection by coronavirus they complete some details on the app and a central server sends a message to all of the people they have been in contact with over recent days informing them of steps they need to take. As with all ‘technology’ and especially programmes or apps, things are not so simple as I explain below.

My life using information technology for almost 40 years could be the subject of another blog. Even though one of my sons, now in his 30s, recently called me a ‘dinosaur’ for asking what I considered a reasonable question about how he implements systems in the complex world of on-line and mobile banking apps, I think my knowledge of the principles still stands me in good stead. I am proud of showing him and his brother before they got to secondary school, that there was more to computing than the games they played on our Atari console. This probably helped set them on the way to the complex systems they are responsible for now.

So I asked our two sons their professional opinion on the planned NHS TTT app development, its data usage and architecture. I read some articles with concerns around privacy, and the two departments party to it, the NHS and the intelligence agency GCHQ, not having a good track record with implementation of IT projects. GCHQ is all about surveillance so is the app as much about location as it is tracking the proximity of nearby devices?

Their reports were that most countries are going with an app produced by two of the largest technology companies, Google and Apple joining forces. They are promising an approach where all the data is stored ‘locally’ on the users device which also sends messages to the relevant contacts if required. No central data is held on individuals. Their  ownership of the two operating systems that all smartphones use, means they can maximise the efficiency of the Bluetooth file transfer exchanges and minimise the use of battery power on the devices.  It is this deep technical knowledge that may cause other countries, including the UK, problems in developing their own. 

An example of the problem is that in its standard form Google and Apple restrict apps from broadcasting Bluetooth constantly, as this has been exploited by companies connecting and sending targeted advertising. This means that most apps only broadcast if they are running in the ‘foreground’ or looking at it. If your phone is locked or you are not actively using the app there is a danger that some interactions will not be registered. There is some debate as to what counts as an ‘interaction’ is it that you are close to someone for a certain time such as five minutes, or just when you pass by on the street?

Michael found an article referring to a petition by developers to the French government demanding that there is complete openness on privacy, asking for published details of exactly what sort of data is collected, how it is used and when it will be destroyed after use. This is part of the ‘privacy v health’ debate around such applications. The UK government wants to use data to track the areas the virus is spreading.  David’s ‘research’ concentrated on battery life and foreground running. He says that with Bluetooth there is something called  “Received Signal Strength Indication” to determine distance between devices, but it’s not particularly accurate. This probably means there will be a lot of false positives, and even cases where it’s picked up a neighbour’s signal through a flat or house wall.

Whatever the pros and cons of the privacy debate, my concerns are about the practicalities of the system.

  • What incentive is there to report symptoms when people get them?
  • Alternatively what stops someone maliciously reporting symptoms if they are so minded just to cause a nuisance?
  • Is there a necessity for a positive test before the messages get sent and if not won’t the ‘false positives’ cause a lot of unnecessary disruption?
  • Given that a lot of people will go to a supermarket once a week, many ‘contacts’ will take place. The consequence is that one or two customers getting symptoms can lead to many supermarket workers having to isolate. Similarly, one supermarket worker getting symptoms could lead their fellow workers and hundreds of customers isolating. The result, after a few days, could be no supermarkets open and no customers going in.
  • Most transmission currently seems to be taking place in hospital and care home settings where there are lots and lots of ‘contacts’, so I am not sure how practical it is to use the app in those areas. Most medical staff take care not to contact people at home or outside the work situation anyway.

The biggest problem with the TTT system is the same as with the current hard lockdown. If there is a large minority who don’t engage or download the app, and they are the ones responsible for being lax on other ways of controlling the spread of the virus, they will still be responsible for causing some ‘needless’ cases and deaths.

We await the results of the Isle of Wight larger scale test but given that we have been told the app will be available to us ‘by the middle of the month’ there doesn’t appear to be much time to analyse how the system is working.

Readers of this blog know I love an initialism, so the last word goes to the writer of a blog three days ago suggesting countries trying to develop a (deep breath..) Pan-European Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing app or PEPPPT, will find themselves changing course and adopting the Apple-Google model. He predicted that by the end of the month the UK will have done so.

Is the change in message another sign that we are in for a long haul?

If today’s papers are to be believed Boris’s ‘address to the nation’ this evening will change the message we have been used to seeing as illustrated below.

The not so subtle change from red to green along with a ‘traffic light system’ for alert levels suggest to me that we are in for a period of trying changes, and if they don’t work putting restrictions back on. If, as has been trailed in the press, there are a whole variety of ways that businesses, workplaces, schools and social situations will change, then confusion (and some anger and worry) could be widespread.  The words of epidemiologist Professor Peter Horby interviewed on The Andrew Marr Show stood out to me. He is chair of  New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group or NERVTAG – sorry folks it is too lovely an acronym to ignore.  He stated

the virus is not like a storm or hurricane where we batten down the hatches until it has passed by, and then emerge into the sunshine and it has gone. It’s still out there and most of us have not had this virus, so if we get this wrong it will very quickly increase across the population and we will be back in a situation of crisis. So we have to be incredibly cautious about relaxing the measures.

NERVTAG told the government that getting the relaxation wrong could lead to a figure of 100,000 deaths in the UK. We still don’t know the proportion of the population who have had covid-19, but if the professor is correct there might be a lower but steady number of deaths for many more months yet.

The fact that the extra Nightingale Hospitals haven’t been closed is probably a sign that the politicians expect if not a ‘second wave’, then a lot more cases. As well as balancing privacy vs health for the new tracking app, there is even more pressure to balance health vs the economy. 

Finally, on Sunday evening we listened to Boris address the nation. He set out the way the five ‘alert levels’ would be set by monitoring the R-level by an advisory group. He set out timescales for now, the end of May, end of June when certain parts of the economy such as construction, manufacturing, garden centres, shops, and eventually limited hospitality would restart.

He encouraged anyone who can’t work from home to return to work tomorrow, and from Wednesday encouraged everyone to take more exercise and play sport with their family.

However, the main ‘confusions’ straight after the announcements were;

  • How people, who the prime minister said should go ‘back to work’ if they could the next day, would get there given limited public transport.
  • The other nations of the UK have announced that they are sticking with the ‘old message’ about staying at home. Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon even asked the UK government not to run the information ads in Scotland. In Wales where you can’t drive for exercise, people from England could get fined for driving to the Brecon Beacons for exercise. Do Welsh workers need to drive to England if their employer decides that they need to work?
  • The detailed instructions for all sorts of workplaces have not been set out, so it is uncertain how that might look.

We will see what happens in the coming week with clarification and further statements to parliament on Monday, and questions from the public in the daily briefings.

Other news this week.

  • VE Day was celebrated in a ‘socially distancing’ way on Friday 8th May. The 75th anniversary was a special one and street parties held, and old-time songs sung. An evening concert held at Buckingham Palace featured a ‘virtual duet’ with Katherine Jenkins and Dame Vera Lynn of the wartime favourite ‘We’ll Meet Again’. One lady told the story that on the original VE Day she and her sister had to ‘socially distance’ and sit on a separate table as they had mumps, and she didn’t think that 75 years later she wouldn’t be able to join in a street party due to social distancing again.
  • In last week’s blog I wasn’t having a go at radio DJ Chris Evans specifically over his fundraising efforts. I listen to Virgin Radio’s Breakfast Show most mornings and Chris and his team try to spread joy and positivity in these difficult times.  He has also been party to raising literally tens of millions of pounds during his time at Radio 2 and Children in Need auctions and events. Chris by his own admission comes from ‘humble roots’, found fame and has had his well-documented ‘excesses’. But he tries to see the best in people and teach others lessons he has learned.  The message from last week was that our much-needed public services should be properly funded by us all and not rely on the charity and voluntary sectors.  Chris, his family and many celebrity friends have now raised in excess of £1 million from two auctions of memorabilia, and his son Noah over £100,000 by sleeping in a den in the garden. This money will go to producing more than 220,000 sets of scrubs for the NHS workers. 
  • On Friday transport minister Grant Shapps gave news of a £2billion scheme to encourage us to cycle or walk to work. For people travelling on public transport to maintain social distancing then they need to run at about 10% capacity. 
  • Other countries started to ease their lockdowns and in Germany Chancellor Angela Merkle allowed all shops to reopen, pupils are gradually returning to classes, and the Bundesliga – the country’s top football league – will restart next weekend. Initial signs are not promising as the dreaded R-number, a measure of the number of people each confirmed patient infects – moved to above 1.

Thoughts at the end of week 7

We continue to enjoy good health and the warm weather meant we ate a few meals outside. Alyson planted more seeds and worked on the garden. I managed to put the last shelf up in our shed in under an hour!

After finishing Terry Waite’s book Alyson has started the one by John McCarthy and Jill Morrell ‘ Some Other Rainbow‘ that documents the same time and similar events. We have been watching some more ‘culture’ on YouTube with recorded performances of Shakespeare and ‘Frankenstein’ by The National Theatre.

At today’s live stream service from Methodist Central Hall, Rev Martyn Atkins talking about being ‘salt and light’ referenced a talk he had heard where a student illustrated Christians being all shapes and sizes of candle, some battered, some old, some coloured – but all shining as a light to others. Something we are called to do at this time. One of his daughter’s friends when she was frightened would ask her dad to ‘turn off the dark’! We needed to use the battered candle I display some Sunday evenings to remember our carers as we had a power cut on Saturday evening.

We have had the usual Zoom meet up with friends and family. The week coming up is both Christian Aid Week and Brain Injury Awareness Week, so I have two ‘Zoom quizzes’ to prepare and host.

Alyson is hoping to get back to ‘frontline’ work by helping the NHS 111 Service and doing calls to patients who have been referred to a pharmacist for advice. She has been training and is waiting on information on how to setup a ‘call centre’ from her study – i.e. our spare bedroom.

I am a follower of a blog by the wonderful modern poet Brian Bilston and if you have never seen his work I can recommend you looking him up. He has produced some thought-provoking work over these last few weeks and I leave you with one of my favourites;

On Leaving the House and Encountering Another Human Being

I’m sorry I dived into the bushes.
It’s not personal, you understand.
You happened to walk in my direction
and my nerves got the upper hand.

I’m sorry I screamed when you came near me.
Don’t take my angry shrieks to heart.
Idiomatically, let’s stay in touch –
and physically, six feet apart.

Apologies if it seems like you repulse me,
that I recoil when you come near.
In other times, we might have spoken,
shared a joke or had a beer,

or waltzed together down the footpath,
perhaps we may yet still one day.
But just for now, embrace the margins
and wave to me from far away.

© Brian Bilston’s Poetry Laboetry
 
 
Keep safe everyone and remember, ‘We’ll meet again some sunny day’.
 

Life & Death – Coronavirus week 6 – light at the end of the tunnel.

Two narratives, but which do you believe?

This week’s total deaths has risen quite sharply as it now includes all deaths in the community (including care homes) and not just hospitals. At the end of the week the UK total is 28,446.

As I have gone through the last few weeks in this series of blogs, I note down topics that interest me and jot them down on my computer with some initial thoughts.  On the Saturday I just start to write my blog and usually an idea comes to the fore, sometimes I write too much or go off in a particular direction and have to scrap large sections or keep them for another time. Often I am up against my own ‘deadline’ of Sunday evening and end up ‘rushing’ the last part.   As I sit here this Saturday I am conflicted.

I have one narrative of the week’s events and my thoughts which some would describe as the ‘mainstream view’ as reported by the BBC and some on-line articles or extracted from large circulation newspapers. This view is dubbed by users on social media as ‘MSM’ or Mainstream Media.  MSM as a term is often used in a pejorative sense as either left- or right-wing bias, depending on the political view of the person passing comment. In that sense it could be described as ‘balanced’ given that some agree, and some disagree. Coronavirus has taken over from last year’s key word ‘Brexit’ as a topic that divides the nation. The division appears not to be the same extent, but there are plenty of people asking hard questions of the government, and much finger-pointing at individuals or institutions/organisations who they consider don’t represent their particular viewpoint or stance.

I am also preparing this weekend for our Bible study group on the sayings of Jesus from the Gospel of Luke, under the title ‘A New Society?’. One of the main reasons I value my faith is the way that Jesus offers a ‘counter-cultural’ challenge to the accepted norm, and is not afraid to take the issue to the ‘powerful’ in society. As it says in the introduction of the book we are using:

Roman, Greek and Hebrew societies were heavily stratified. Fine, if you were a healthy wealthy, educated, well-mannered, pure-blooded male of noble descent and free citizenship; beneath that you were second class or worse all the way down to worthless slaves at the bottom…Samaritans and Gentiles were scum, the poor, the sick and the deformed, the tormented, well, they must have offended God so you avoided them; prostitutes and tax collectors were beneath contempt.

Jesus not only ignores these divisions but takes special delight in raising the status of the poor…..all may come irrespective of their status. The parable of the great banquet reveals that the self-satisfied will be excluded while the poor needy, the rejects of society, will be welcomed in.

Jesus came to abolish the man-made divisions of race, sex and class.

My second version of the review of the week takes is an alternative more ‘radical’, some would say political angle.

The ‘accepted/acceptable’ view…

The week started with Boris Johnson giving a speech on the steps of Downing Street, addressing the nation on his health and the possible steps that would be taken. Apart from being a little breathless he was full of his usual optimism and stressing words and phrases like ‘good’, ‘amazing’, ‘can-do’, heroes and ‘pressing on’. He said that the government were working ‘full-tilt’ to protect the NHS and save lives. He mentioned that it had been 50-50 at one point but that he was back to lead. The analogy he used was of having been in an alpine tunnel to avoid the peak and we could see the bright sunshine and the green pastures at the end of the tunnel.

Lots of people said he was the best communicator that the government have, and it was good to see him back. Things would get better and later in the week he would announce the next steps.

On Tuesday we had a special one minute’s silence to remember the heroes who had died at work in the NHS and care sectors.

Boris didn’t appear at Prime Ministers Questions on Wednesday when Keir Starmer asked searching questions of Dominic Raab. The press and social media were full of posts stating it was good that ‘the other lot’ hadn’t won the December election, and imagined the chaos that a Labour party, led by Jeremy Corbyn, would have made of the current crisis. We learned that Boris and Carrie had a baby boy and Boris had been by their side all the way through. Again, there was great rejoicing and congratulations and many political opponents wished them well.  MPs across the spectrum suggested this joyous occasion would give a lift to the country.

Meanwhile Captain Tom, the war hero, managed to raise over £30 million for NHS charities in time for his 100th birthday. He got an honorary promotion to Colonel along with his card from the Queen and 120,000 from members of the public. Boris recorded a special message. Keeping the war theme going he had a flyover from the RAF of two WW2 fighter planes.  Tom was even number one in the music chart. Tom has inspired many other people to raise funds for the NHS and Virgin Radio DJ Chris Evans held a ‘garage sale’ of a huge amount of expensive memorabilia and items from his self-admitted ‘excess times’ over the last 25 years. This raised just short of £500,000. The money will be going directly to the ‘Scrubs Glorious Scrubs’ who are coordinating the voluntary efforts from seamstresses making much-needed scrubs for NHS frontline staff or, the ‘heroes’.

The daily briefings continued and there was focus on the promised 100,000 daily test target which, by a huge effort and extending the range of people who could get the test, was met when 122,000 were done on Thursday 30th.

That evening Alyson and I joined in the weekly ‘clap for carers’ with most of the people on our street. Drums, pots and wooden spoons, hooters, whistles were used. We talked in slightly derogatory terms about those who have not been out for any of the five times we have done it.

The daily briefings feature a new section whereby members of the public could write or record a question to be put to the briefing. This was welcomed as often these questions cut through the ‘gotcha’ questions often put by the press to try and catch ministers out or show up errors or misjudgements. The first one from Lynne in Skipton simply asked, ‘When will I be able to cuddle my grandchildren, who I am missing terribly’. The minister said he understood the question but reinforced the need to ‘continue with the measures in place’.

When the journalists tried to ask about PPE and a BBC Panorama programme that exposed a shortage in the national stockpile, and an emergency exercise from 2016, the minister said he didn’t believe any of that and that we just needed to carry on.  The press wanted to know more about the R-number and what value it needed to be for lockdown to be released. Professor Whitty was asked when we would learn the lessons of what had gone wrong. He said that would happen, but you don’t start in the middle of trying to focus on fighting the current crisis. When asked why our death total seems to be so much higher than the other European countries and second in the world, he pointed to what he described as a brilliant article in The Guardian by a professor of statistics on the difficulty of comparing countries.

Jeremy Hunt, former Health Secretary was very defensive when asked about the lack of PPE and ventilators. He said that President Macron had apologised for the lack of preparations but that he didn’t think Matt Hancock should and ‘now is not the time for the blame game’.

Rishi Sunak, Chancellor of the Exchequer was praised for putting in place a compensation scheme for the families of NHS and other frontline staff who had died as part of their duties dealing with Covid-19 patients. He also increased the guarantee for business loans from 80% to 100%. The week before he announced help for charities including foodbanks. On Saturday, a package of £76million to support vulnerable children, victims of domestic violence and modern slavery who were ‘trapped’ at home during lockdown. Pharmacies, who had previously been given £300Million to help with extra stock and deliveries, were to use consultation rooms as save havens for victims of domestic violence.

The ‘alternative/critical view’…

I can only imagine the Daily Mail headlines if Boris was the head of a taxpayer funded project managing an emergency caused by not taking the advice of experts from a few years before. Finding out that he had now fathered at least six children during two marriages and one extra marital affair, was not married to his current partner and had to deny several other similar allegations. He wrote a piece for The Spectator  in 1995 where he attacked single mothers saying it was “outrageous” that married couples “should pay for ‘the single mothers’ desire to procreate independently of men”. Not only that but in two months he had taken several weeks paid sick leave from his £150,000 a year job, and now was going on paid paternity leave. He went to his paid for country mansion set in 1,000 acres of Buckinghamshire countryside for a couple of weeks.  His bluff and bluster of a ‘Churchillian’ speech with its talk of light at the end of a tunnel might have been turned on him, and the question asked, ‘are you sure it’s not just an express train coming towards us…’?

The NHS is not a charity and should be fully funded by the government, the clue is in the name. It shouldn’t need Captain Tom or celebrities to get the general public to raise money for it during a ‘special season’. Of course there may well be a need to have a few ‘extras’ like toys/video games for the children’s wards or special luxury equipment for people in rehab or entertainment packages, but not vital equipment or PPE.  Well done Captain  Tom – only another £320million to go in order to fulfil the Brexit bus promise of £350million for the NHS for a week. It needs long-term guaranteed funding.

The NHS staff aren’t ‘heroes’ they are professional trained people who are willing to treat people in a system that has been underfunded and cut during 10 years of austerity.  Some of the work they do is extremely stressful.

Some people are asking the question whether, once this is all over will the government be willing to continue to give the funding needed, and will those people who gave their donation to Captain Tom still be happy if they have to pay an equivalent amount of increased National Insurance every year? Will celebrities who earn tens or even hundreds times more than a nurse or senior doctor be willing to buy less ‘trinkets’ and support their heroes?

Certainly the pharmacy contractors, something I know a little about, will have their £300Million ‘gift’ (actually a loan) clawed back out of future payments. The sunk cost of all the PPE and extra staff they have had to take on and the small profit lost from reduced counter sales, will not be recovered. No doubt they will have to go back to providing unfunded services for quite some time yet.

The minute’s silence last Tuesday was on the annual International Workers Memorial Day. An initiative setup by trades unions worldwide to fight for safe working for people whose employers make them work in dangerous conditions or with hazardous substances. The 28th of April is officially recognised by the UK government as a day of remembrance around the world. So should we have an official act of remembrance on the 28th of April every year, not just 2020?

Now is the time to be challenging the government on how it was that emergency supplies of PPE were not replenished after Exercise Cygnus in 2016. Now is the time to make sure the government sets up a suitable commission to investigate and learn the lessons.  A good question to the daily briefing might be;

If now is not the time to start learning the lessons of this crisis, is now the time to commit to setting up a wide-ranging independent group to look at it and report 6 months after the crisis is declared by the WHO to have ended. And is now the time to commit to ‘getting done’ all the recommendations and to fund them ‘whatever it takes‘?

Those ‘Masters of the Universe’ the bankers, who don’t appear to have changed much since they were supported after the 2008 market crash, will continue to control the supply of much needed loans. Some managed to bring forward their bonuses paid early, despite the Bank of England asking them to delay. Despite being given huge guarantees by the government (again) they will charge huge fees and take a lot of security from the owners of small businesses.

Returning briefly to Jesus, there was a time when people wore badges emblazoned WWJD, meaning ‘What would Jesus do?’ I think the first thing Jesus might have done was to ask the question ‘who are the people that will suffer most from this crisis and the long-term aftereffects?’ He might have decided the following priority list;

  • Take the homeless off the streets and put them all in hotels not currently being used for tourists, give them health screening and mental health support.
  • Before panic buying, make sure the supermarket stocks of food and necessary essential supplies go to foodbanks.  Or better still, miss out the food banks and give £5,000 to every person or family with less than £1,000 of savings in the bank, along with guaranteed delivery of essential food and other items for the duration of the crisis.
  • Guarantee a payment of the average weekly wage to anyone on a zero hours or part-time flexible contract.
  • Provide support to the people who care for our most vulnerable people in care homes or their own homes.
  • Make sure every child living in a poor household is taken to school every day, given a full education, access to technology and two free meals.
  • Pay for all the care needed to support children or adults with a range of special needs for the duration.

Only after that has been done and ‘maximum effort’ has been given to them, and others identified as in danger of potential harm, can civil servants start to plan and implement the type of support package given by the treasury early in this crisis.

So, which narrative would you choose to believe…?

Thoughts at the end of week 6.

The relatively wet weather has confined us indoors. Alyson has been reading Terry Waite’s book Taken on Trust, sewing masks for us all and going for long walks every day.

I have had many more Zoom meetings and took part in an online quiz for Christian Aid. I have two quizzes to write in the coming week. I attended my weekly streamed service from Methodist Central Hall.

We had a family Zoom with 15 of us who should have been at a large house in Ross on Wye for the weekend.

Alyson practiced her skills as a home hairdresser on me with clippers and special scissors I had bought from Amazon.

I managed to put another shelf in my shed and am confident I can now do the last one in under an hour!

Stay safe everyone.

 

 

 

Brian Bilston

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