The start of another week, with some changes. And some muddle.
The general consensus seems to be that Mr Johnson’s road map to relaxing lockdown is a very muddled roadmap. Here is one newspaper’s attempt to explain what it all means.
Basically I don’t think it changes much for the situation Phil and I find ourselves in. My habit of running in the morning and then going for a walk later, in other words exercising more than once a day, becomes legal. We seem, however, to have been going against the rules by chatting to our daughter and her children in the garden when they deliver food purchases to us. Clearly they should just drop the shopping and run. And the idea of meeting in the park and walking around together at a nice safe distance from each other is off the cards as well. So really it’s not doing much for helping families see each other.
A friend of mine emphasised the inequality of the whole thing. If you are middle class and can work from home, then all will be well. You can carry on as before, work-wise anyway even if you can’t go for an after-work drink. But if you are working class and have the kind of job where you cannot work from home, then you should return to work with all the possible contagion risks. And you might be obliged to use public transport if you don’t have a car or a bike. The only bit of equality is that they can’t go for a drink after work either.
Other countries are approaching it in other ways.
Belgium is exploring Coronavirus bubbles:
“From Sunday, every household in Belgium can invite up to four guests to their home. Two sets of four people make a “corona bubble”, who can visit each other’s homes. No one else is allowed into the domestic social circle. The concept, also being discussed by the British government, opens up the biggest social minefield of the coronavirus lockdown.”
That idea has been suggested before. How do you choose your selected social bubble people? Wow, that could lead to some arguments!
France is now letting people go outside without having to carry a document stating why they are doing so.
I read that in Spain, which has been under one of the strictest lockdowns in Europe, the government has said that groups of up to 10 people will be able to gather in private homes or outdoors from today, but only in areas of the country that have been given permission to move to the second phase of the lockdown de-escalation plan.
I don’t know what phase my Spanish sister’s Cadiz bit of Andalucía is in. Maybe she will now be able to get her Spanish family together and see her grandchildren. But she might not yet be able to get a haircut and I know she is desperate to do that.
I just heard on the radio that the Spanish can now travel within their provinces but not yet between provinces. How safe is their public transport though?
Here in Greater Manchester our city mayor, Andy Burnham, opposes the idea of rushing back to work yet as Manchester is still seeing a high rate of infection and death. It’s all very confusing!
I came across a new bit of terminology today: Coronawashing. “We have become used to sportswashing, greenwashing, pinkwashing and even wokewashing. We are now in the first wave of coronawashing, in which corporations trip over themselves to clap for key workers, before packaging the footage up into moving nuggets of shareable content and promoting them on several social media platforms. In the background, these same companies are asking for government bailouts and taking advantage of a crisis to push for favourable legislation and the slashing of regulations that are more necessary than ever.”
Personally I have noticed a lot of what seem at first sight to be public announcements about taking care, about people being there to support each other, and all that sort of thing. And then at the end you realise it’s a bank or an insurance company finding a new way of touting for business. Uber, for example, thanks people for not riding with them - in other words, “What a good, caring company are we?” CORONAWASHING!!
Today is marginally less windy than yesterday but it is quite a bit colder. We need to wrap up when we go for a walk later.
On the menu today we have a tortilla to finish off, with some vegetables , a bit of ham perhaps, and some salad. There is cake; I had all the necessary ingredients yesterday but that will be the last one for a while. My daughter’s partner found me some flour but now I need to source caster sugar.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment