Another Monday. Masks. Common sense ... and the lack of it. Being responsible.

Here we are at the start of another week of muddling along. Mr Johnson says we should wear face masks in shops. Mr Give, on the other hand, says that wearing face masks will not be mandatory, indeed does not need to be mandatory as we can rely o the common sense of the British people. Does the right hand know what the left hand is doing? Debatable! Apparently a decision will be made later this week. “Asked specifically whether face coverings would be made mandatory in shops in England, as they already are on public transport, he said the government was considering what “tools of enforcement” would be used to increase compliance.”

That’s all right then!

Common sense is not stopping some people heading off for the sun. In the Balearics they appear to be in two minds about the return of tourism there. Here’s something from Friday’s Guardian:

“Diego Belmonte, the owner of the Chippy pizzeria and takeaway in Magaluf, is frustrated at what he describes as arbitrary rules. “Young people want to come here and have fun. What’s wrong with that?” he says. “The problem at the moment is the government and not the tourists. We’ve been told we have to close at 2am – I have a 24-hour licence – and then they won’t allow the clubs to open. And now the face masks. They want [a] different type of English tourist but I like the ones we have. I don’t care if they are aggressive, break glasses. I love them!”

But for Eduardo Gamero, the president of the Fomento del Turismo de Mallorca, a non-profit association that represents the tourism sector on the island, it is simple: the Balearic Islands have so far managed to stave off a high number of coronavirus cases and he would like to keep it that way. In Spain Covid-19 has killed more than 28,000 people and infected more than 253,000; on the islands there have been 2,228 confirmed cases and 224 deaths.”

It’s a bit of a delicate balancing act.

And someone sent me a report about British tourists sleeping on he beach on the Costa del Sol after being booked into hotels by their travel agents, only to find that the hotels were still closed!! How did that happen?

It could be worse though. In Texas some people, still believing that Coronavirus is a hoax, organise “Covid Parties” - “a gathering held by somebody diagnosed with coronavirus to see if the virus is real and to see if anyone gets infected”.

A 30-year-old man recently died after attending such a party. A Texas medical official said, “Just before the patient died, they looked at their nurse and said ‘I think I made a mistake, I thought this was a hoax, but it’s not.’”

That’s a hard way to learn.

Lots of people, not ordinary people getting on with their lives but experts on news and things financial, have been going on about the amount of money government is “borrowing”, which perhaps should be better described as “creating”. But there remains a reluctance to tax the rich. Now a group of rich people, 83 of them in fact, have called on governments all over the world to increase taxes on them, and on the rich people who didn’t sign. They include the Ben and Jerry’s ice cream man Jerry Greenfield, and Abigail Disney, the Disney heir.

“As Covid-19 strikes the world, millionaires like us have a critical role to play in healing our world,” the millionaires said in a letter shared with the Guardian. “No, we are not the ones caring for the sick in intensive care wards. We are not driving the ambulances that will bring the ill to hospitals. We are not restocking grocery store shelves or delivering food door to door.

But we do have money, lots of it. Money that is desperately needed now and will continue to be needed in the years ahead, as our world recovers from this crisis.”

I wonder how the non-signatories feel about this. It’s nice to see a bit of responsibility-acceptance though.

Here is a quote from Thomas Sowell, an American economist and social theorist who is currently a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution:-

“Have we reached the ultimate stage of absurdity where some people are held responsible for things that happened before they were born, while other people are not held responsible for what they themselves are doing today?” 

It’s something to think about in our blame-giving but also blame-avoiding society.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!