Back on 11 September (Words On Paper, Words For Crooks) I said
Given the rise in cases, and what everyone said about Britain’s slowness to act in March, the logical choice is either (a) restore lockdown now ahead of the curve or (b) implement an effective alternative. Given the lack of (b), I presume lockdown is now imminent.
It turns out SAGE gave the same advice to the Prime Minister on 21 September, and the Prime Minister ignored (and continues to ignore) them. Nicola Sturgeon was a party to that decision and defended the decision on Twitter today. Her reasoning is that they were trying to strike a balance bearing in mind other harms of lockdown itself. I’m not going to object to that in principle because I think decision making in this has to be about striking that balance, but if the consequence of the balance is the virus spinning out of control (I understand 90+% of Liverpool’s ICU capacity is now full of Covid patients) with the inevitable increase in deaths, there will be political consequences.
I also think that will happen because there is no effective alternative in sight here.
I am not seeking to equate Ms. Sturgeon and Mr. Johnson in a simplistic way: they are clearly very different characters, but I keep coming back to the thought that Ms. Sturgeon’s principal advantage is that she is much better at communication than any of the shower in Whitehall. Rather like Joe Biden’s biggest strength is that he isn’t 45, so Ms. Sturgeon benefits from not being Mr. Johnston.
She is under threat, though, from the continuing saga of Mr Salmond. I am a former Scottish Government civil servant and am not going to comment on that, except to say that I think that has a ways to go yet.
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Music: random record time. I remember I heard this single at school, borrowed and taped it, then lost the tape. For years I could remember snippets (I remember the night Walter Kronkite said…) but couldn’t remember who it was by. When the internet came along, I found a number of people on message boards all asking ‘can anyone remember who recorded…?’ Eventually I found it entirely by accident, as I recall, on YouTube.
Being honest, it isn’t as great a song as I thought it was when I was sixteen/seventeen, but it still touches a nostalgic nerve that has me singing along. It has a Harry Chapin vibe about it too. There is also, somewhere under the overdone orchestrations, a nice string bass sound going on.
After leaving the music business, recording as Bill Amesbury, the artist, from Ontario, is now Barbra Amesbury, a philanthropist and film maker.
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