Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.
- Christopher Howse: A Pilgrim in Spain*
The Coronavirus: A Less Negative Take- The BBC: Coronavirus: Deaths rise sharply in Spain while the infection rate stabilises. Similar report here, on long term infection rates.
- Another nonagenarian recovers. Possibly the guy who fled Madrid even after being diagnosed with the virus.
- The Times 1: There'll very soon be a test to show - via antigens, I guess - that you're immune to it.
- The Times 2: The UK has contributed more than €200m to the global effort to find a vaccine.
- The UK lockdown ‘is on course to reduce total death rate’. Britain is on course for an estimated 5,700 deaths from coronavirus, far lower than originally predicted.
- The Spanish government announced that 9,000 of the tests bought from an (unregistered) Chinese company were faulty. And then increased this to 50,000.
- Here and here are Days 12 and 13 of Maria's Chronicle of life in her Galician pueblo.
- A beautiful letter from Italy.
- Lenox's equine take.
- Driving down to the supermarket yesterday it struck me - guess why - that I'd seen no roundabout insanity during several days in Jávea. Perhaps it's a Galician thing. More likely it's because most of the drivers down there are Dutch and British . . .
- Needless to say, I did pass more people driving to the carpark under our (wonderful) fish, meat and veg market than if I'd walked down. Three people insisted on coming down the stairs as I was going up, or vice versa. No question of 1 or 2 metres separation.
The EU
- "The EU is finished," gloat the naysayers. "Even faced with the coronavirus, its members can't stick together." Certainly EU leaders meeting on Thursday - by socially-distant video conference - glaringly failed to agree to share the debt they are all racking up fighting Covid-19. Angela Merkel openly admitted to the disharmony over financial instruments. What leaders did agree on was asking Eurogroup finance ministers to explore the subject further, reporting back in 2 weeks' time. Two weeks. The EU is famous for kicking difficult decisions down the road but in coronavirus terms, with spiralling infection and death rates, 2 weeks feels like an eternity. For ordinary people, frightened for their health, the safety of their loved ones, worrying about their rent and feeding their family after businesses shut down, the idea that leaders spent 6 hours squabbling over the wording of their summit conclusions in order to defer a decision over funds, will be incomprehensible.
- Richard North: When the clapping dies down, we need to be aware that we are actually dealing with what looks distinctly like a system failure – the price being paid in the steady accumulation of corpses, the curtailment of our liberties and the wrecking of the economy.
- CNN: The 30 most outrageous lines from Donald Trump's interview with Sean Hannity
- Would this happen anywhere else in the developed world. Or only in the 'biggest and best economy in the world'. 'American exceptionalism' at its very worst.
- The article below - Pettifogging officials are having a field day - is possibly relevant for more than just the UK .
- A Colorado pastor: I’m Ignoring all Covid-19 safety rules that aren’t in the Bible. Lets' hope so. The world could do with fewer people like him.
- Be warned. You have to stop all that sex immediately, if you want to avoid going down with the virus. Possibly the wrong expression, I now realise . . .
- Word of the day:- Empresa no autorizada; Unauthorised company. For selling masks, for example.
- Another (dreadful) topical song.
- My younger daughter's latest vlog on homemaking. No, I don't know what a bujo is.
THE ARTICLE
Pettifogging officials are having a field day: Janice Turner
The strangest thing, in this strangest of months, is how willingly people have surrendered private freedoms for public good. “You can’t eat out or go to the pub.” Excellent! “Or swim or play football.” Fine. “Or visit friends or your old mum.” Sigh, OK. We’ve given up pretty much everything we like to save those we love. So no wonder we cling hard to what’s left.
How precious are our permitted freedoms: to set foot outside, to feel the air, to see other people, even at a distance: 23 hours in solitary is cruel, we need to feel half-normal for an hour. This epidemic, we are told, is a marathon not a sprint. Months of probable confinement lie ahead and we will only comply with authoritarian rules if the authorities remain just.
Yes, it was dumb for crowds last weekend to hike in the Peak District and eat chips at Matlock Bath. But lockdown had not been declared then, rules were fuzzier. And if police were concerned, why did they not foresee spring sunshine, anticipate numbers, then turn back cars? Just because they failed to think ahead then shouldn’t give them power to overreact now.
What is the point of that nasty little video posted by the Derbyshire force spying on law-abiding citizens with a drone? Why shame a middle-aged couple on a quiet dog walk or chide a woman who paused on a path to take an Instagram snap. “NOT ESSENTIAL,” screamed the police caption. Yes, maybe, but was it harmful?
Outside towns, many have to drive a short distance for a pleasant, socially-isolated walk. Of course, using lockdown to climb Snowdon or bag munros is stupid, risking mountain rescue patrols. But Derbyshire police said that driving to exercise in local woods “risks road accidents”. Well, cycling is far more perilous, why not ban that? Or forbid people doing DIY, which causes untold trips to A&E.
Some people in authority forget why a rule exists. They ignore its spirit and care only for its letter. Most airport staff policing terrorism regulations are courteous and humane but others, puffed up on petty but intrusive power, bawl at passengers as if they’re in orange Guantanamo jumpsuits and thrill to bin an elderly lady’s 110ml shampoo.
Now that police have been given unprecedented peacetime powers they must resist heavy-handedness or swagger. Nor can they make up rules on the hoof. Who says you can’t take a photograph on a stroll? How is Instagram spreading Covid-19? I recall the famous Not The Nine O’Clock News sketch where a thick, racist copper invents crimes including “looking at me in a funny way” and “walking around with an offensive wife”. There are echoes too of the police’s sinister recent practice of treating a single non-criminal tweet as a “hate incident”, then visiting people’s workplaces or calling them up to “check your thinking”.
Yet it is not just police whose decisions are micro and rigid rather than mindful of the wider objective. Hammersmith and Fulham council made the idiotic decision to close every park in the borough. Large, council tax-funded spaces where its 185,000 residents could exercise without coming into contact with others were locked. It only repented yesterday under pressure.
Tower Hamlets, the poorest borough in London, has shut Victoria Park. Why? Because large groups gathered. Well, duh, send someone down with a megaphone to enforce the rules. Don’t cram the exercising public into a neighbouring borough’s parks, narrow towpaths or pavements. But some local authorities — the sort that love to fell healthy street trees because they displace kerb stones — will rub their hands at shutting open spaces. As Derbyshire police would agree, parks are NOT ESSENTIAL. In fact, every football field, reservoir, heath, golf course and nature reserve should be open so there is as much public space in which to roam safely in solitude as possible.
Already in busy urban parks those sworn enemies, dog walkers and runners, have resumed hostilities. The former say that sweaty alpha males loom behind them breathing heavily; the latter that, engrossed in their phones, their mutts on extendable leads, they don’t look where they’re going. Controversial signs have appeared in Brockwell Park demanding that joggers give way by veering onto the grass.
Others are using this epidemic to indulge their favourite hobby: judging and rebuking others. Humberside police has set up a phoneline so residents can shop each other for virus-spreading. Among legitimate complaints about neighbours holding super-spreading parties are suburban Stasi snitching someone for exercising twice a day. Others on social media report that some people’s supermarket trolleys contain barbecue briquettes, booze and fags, which are NOT ESSENTIAL. Neither are chocolates, crisps or flowers. What about condoms: how dare people have sex during a pandemic? Let’s ban everything.
Yet what is essential is we get through this alive, preferably with our sanity and social fabric intact. Without the safety valves of exercise and fresh air, there is a risk, especially if this extends into summer, of frustration bubbling into mass non-compliance, even riots. “This is a national emergency,” said National Police Chiefs’ Council chairman Martin Hewitt, “not a national holiday.” But nor is it time for a power grab.
*A terrible book, by the way. Don't be tempted to buy it, unless you're a very religious Protestant.
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