I'll take the service, please and keep the compensation

A failure to do

Compensation: the refuge of service providers after the efficient display and demonstration of ineptitude and incompetence in the provision of an advertised and vaunted service you first can afford and pay for, that they have so failed to deliver, you are left both speechlessly askance and quite livid with rage.

You might think I am on the roll with regards to compensations in December, for at first, it was with my laundry service provider, LaundryHeap, with a laundry and dry-cleaning turnout of 24 hours, picking up and dropping off your clothes at your home.

A willingness to fix

When I used that service in mid-November, 20 out of 58 clothing items were returned in the service window, the rest involved a back-and-forth that ran for 4 additional days with a £10.57 compensation offered at that time.

Blog - Laundered to distress by Laundryheap

I was utterly dissatisfied even after using the service for years, and I resisted posting a review apart from what I posted on my blog, keeping my counsel and holding my peace. Then out of the blue on the first of the month, Laundry Heap contacted me to refund the full-service charge for 38 clothing items that were not returned within the 24-hour service window. It amounted to £184.50.

My globetrotting baggage

Moving on, we had a situation where I arrived in Cape Town 40 hours before my baggage which from the assurance of the captain on my Air France flight from Paris to Cape Town indicated our delayed departure was to allow for baggage to be loaded on the plane. The aircraft left Paris with less than half the baggage of the passengers that boarded the plane when we stood at the carousel a few minutes before 23:00 local time.

Blog - In flights of intermittent piquancy

We learnt that baggage had been left behind before each of us got emails from Air France informing us of the possible circulatory route our baggage would take to be reunited with us by Sunday, we having arrived on Friday night. After filling in a Property Irregularity Report with information of where to deliver my baggage, if and when it arrives in Cape Town, I took to Twitter to follow up on the progress.

My baggage made it to Amsterdam on Friday night and then was put on board a plane in the morning from Amsterdam to Cape Town, to arrive just an hour short of midnight. I heard nothing more and could not contact the office in Cape Town nor leave a message as their mailbox was full.

A disorderly organisation

I assumed my baggage was already in Cape Town, so I made for the airport and through some security to a desk where I was informed my baggage was on the way to my Cape Town address without anyone having contacted me to update me of that situation. It transpired my baggage was still on the airport premises, I collected my 3 suitcases and signed for them.

I then returned to Twitter to remonstrate, wherein I was given a link to claim some sort of compensation. You wonder what for? The T-shirt, the pair of shorts and the sandals, I got to just not be overdressed for summertime in Cape Town?

Then I got a call from Air France to my South African number where I was offered a maximum compensation of £85 and 8,000 Air Miles. I could quibble because the last time Air France forgot to keep my baggage on the same itinerary and schedule as I was, they gave me 10,000 Air Miles and it was a journey to Bucharest and I was reunited with my baggage within 24 hours. But for the fact that I was a premium rate customer with a Platinum Flying Blue card meant this was throwing pennies at me to compensate for pounds of distress. I was unimpressed, we soldier on.

An apartment apart in chaos

Then, we are left wondering what attracted us to the apartment we are staying in for 28 nights in Cape Town because we were no doubt taken in by the glossy pictures and that was about it. The letting agents that injected themselves into the process after we booked the apartment on Hotels.com now have to earn their keep because they have heretofore been sitting pretty and indolent.

The agent who was supposed to meet us to show us around the apartment was not available because of car trouble, then on entering the apartment, we began to see that so many things were not as stated in the details we read about this place. There is a lift in the building even as the material suggests there isn’t as there is a bathtub in the bathroom when we were informed it only had a shower. How do you miss that, except if you have never bothered to visit the property under management?

No cooks ever cooked here

There is no microwave oven in a 21^st Century apartment leaving you wondering if anyone who ever stayed here ever ordered or takeaway or even tried to cook anything with the aluminium pots that had no handles and lids without holders, it got worse when I tried to prepare a salad and there were no kitchen knives.

The wardrobe with two 1.5m rails only had 3 clothes hangers, and though the apartment had a washer/dryer with a 7kg/4kg weighting for the respective cycles, there was no clothesline and there is no vacuum cleaner in the apartment. Considering this is the 5^th apartment we are staying in since we started visiting Cape Town, even we are left astonished that this is the first time we have ever had to complain about where we are staying.

We always try to create a home away from home experience with fully domesticated living, but this is at a stretch difficult in this apartment without considerable remediation that the agent has informed us the owner of the apartment would sort out, we just do not know when and it is the 5^th day of our stay.

Get it right the first time, thanks

Now, this is my view of the issue of compensation, I do not need it, what I need is the service I paid for delivered to the standard and better of what was advertised without my need to complain, except to be appreciative and commend whoever and the service provider for their excellent service.

In fact, you can never fully compensate for a failed or below par service apart from paying back everything with a little more for the distress and inconvenience suffered. In my view, LaundryHeap went the furthest in the compensation stakes, Air France has not acquitted themselves well for the fact that the captain knew he was leaving France without our baggage and that it took that long to get things back to me.

Then 6 hours after I collected my baggage from the airport, I received a message from Air France indicating my baggage had arrived in Cape Town and will be delivered to my address. Honestly!

As for our apartment, we are expecting to be surprised if any of the issues were raised gets sorted out. One thing the agency and the owner of this apartment should avoid is a negative review because I will be honest and that is just the way things are.

Thought Picnic: In aid of posterity

The absence of skill for success

I spent 6 hours attempting to remediate something I had planned to do for not more than 90 minutes and this was fielding a request for assistance in which I was asked to cast an eye on some activity for its correctness and suitability for the purpose intended and it failed woefully at both.

If my patience was tested, my calmness did little to betray it. Something in my nature demanded the kind of endurance with keeping my counsel in the hope that our engagement which had not fully delivered the outcomes might just bring into focus the functional inadequacies in my quarry and the desire to do better.

Almost hopeless at method

I needed to review the meanings of two words, ineptitude: the lack of ability or skill, and incompetence: the inability to do something successfully. We do have the tendency to conflate the meanings and consider them synonyms, but they are very far apart in terms of context.

My interlocutor had planned to do some things or imagined things had been done and even with following a clear set of instructions failed at implementing what he intended. I could say ineptitude contributed to the inability to use the instruction set and the result was incompetence because whatever he set out to do was not accomplished and he could not understand how and why it was not.

A call upon absent ability

Just to imagine that someone has been bestowed to such responsibility having convinced the unlearned that they are capable and there is no challenging assessment or scrutiny of their abilities apart from the pressing demand to fulfil requirements that within that setting they know can be done but have no wherewithal to achieve.

It is a different thing if, in some way, there was a prospect that growth was possible, but my doubts outweigh my hopes. I am lumbered with a sense of kindness, maybe also of duty to ensure that whoever might replace my friend will not be assessed by the propensity to the maladroit of their predecessor by reason of any form of similarities that might prejudice the process.

The significance of posterity

At one time, I thought I was doing it for him and it might well save his job and lengthen whatever employment contracts he has if he can learn from this, but posterity is of pertinent consequence, the ground we lay determines how we are succeeded and the legacy should be praise at your departure rather than relief that what you have done has not laid the situation to ruin if the opportunity presented itself.

Yet, we have not all been so perfect, we have made errors sometimes too shameful to recall but quite defining of our careers and the determination to better and strive for excellence. It is not a hopeless situation, just one where the prerequisites for hope are not very present.

Blog - Showing courtesy to others' time

The UK: Protect yourselves against Boris' recklessness

It is out of control

The level of recklessness and incompetence that has greeted the government of Boris Johnson in the handling of the pandemic in England has been beyond the pale.

Having another look at the ignominious Coronavirus league tables, the United Kingdom comes in at third globally behind India and Indonesia in the number of new cases, and still ahead of its European neighbours in total deaths and at 7^th globally. [Worldmeters.info: Coronavirus]

The fact that the United Kingdom is ahead of its European neighbours in the vaccinations stakes has been squandered on allowing the Delta variant to run rampant in the country that we now have the highest infection rate of any industrialised country in the world. Nothing but incompetence and ineptitude could have allowed this to happen.

The vaccine talisman is lost

With the increasing trend of infections, the government with its penchant for running headlong into obvious disaster with far-reaching consequences is in full throttle. The Prime Minister announced today that most Covid restriction rules will be lifted on the premise that the vaccination drive is going so well. It makes one wonder how then with the vaccination we still have such a high number of new cases. [BBC News: Covid: Most rules set to end in England, says PM]

For instance, I was out at Primark for a cheap thrill on Saturday and more than 50% of the customers in the queue either did not have face masks on or the masks were worn like chin stirrups. This is in a city with literally the highest prevalence of new infections. People might be thinking having escape the scourge of COVID-19 they are invincible and untouchable, those who have had it and survived will tell a different story – you don’t want to catch this thing.

The other day, it was allowing apparently important people into the UK without restrictions or quarantining measures. The UEFA officials and their entourage have full fiat to come and leave at will. A minister even suggested important people are exempt from checks, in what might have looked like a Mosaic Passover of the Exodus times. The pall of the Coronavirus avowing, “If I see your importance and your entourage, I will pass over you.”

Masked lives matter

The question of masks has become unreasonably political, even the officials will not be categorical about the use of masks but devolving that to personal responsibility and common sense, this considering under strictures the virus gained footholds, at freewill, the thought of what might result is terrifying at best. Everyone knows, the virus is NOT under control, the new cases show it, the death roll confirms it.

This is my situation, I am in a vulnerable cohort, I cannot afford to be careless and reckless with my wellbeing. I will avoid crowds, closed places and improperly ventilated places. In public places and on transport services, I will wear my mask for my protection first because the Coronavirus must not be trifled with. Whilst masks can be uncomfortable, I wear a strap that takes the strain off my ear lobes and have a muzzle or guard over my nose and mouth to keep the mask from pressing on my face.

I would rather the discomfort of a mask that expose myself to the possible contracting of the Coronavirus. I can live with having a mask on, the idea of living with an out of control virus does not bear thinking off. For all the good intentions of reviving the battered economy after the impact of this pandemic, the more the people are in fear of the virus, the less bold they would be to dare getting infected apart from the foolhardy amongst us.

Protect yourself against the government

The mask is not a sign of the loss of freedom, it allows the freedom to do things with due consideration of the fact that there is trouble and danger unseen out there. That anyone would think personal protection is for wimps beggars belief, or they just have a masochistically breathless death wish. You never can tell.

Regardless of the number jabs you get like an opponent of Muhammed Ali, we know that vaccines are not enough and every like thing we can do to keep ourselves out of the statistics and memorials of COVID-19 would give us opportunity and hope to put this pandemic behind us. The government does not care, we are left to care enough for ourselves and that is the smart ticket around here.

The UK: Cummings reveals the goings on

The comings and goings

Much as one cannot place much on the credibility of Dominic Cummings, the erstwhile aide and special adviser to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, his appearance before two committees in the House of Commons, earlier today was almost compelling viewing. [BBC News: Dominic Cummings: Thousands died needlessly after Covid mistakes]

Dominic Cummings had a front-row seat and presumably the ear of the Prime Minister, it was at the behest of the Prime Minister that the Cabinet expended all their goodwill and acquiescence to the first lockdown after Mr Cummings’ unfortunate lockdown-busting trip to Durham and eye testing gallivant to Barnard Castle, last May.

They let death run free

Yet, I was unconcerned about the minutiae of that incident and rather more interested in the workings of the government as the pandemic took hold, the scandals of Personal Protection Equipment (PPE), the seeding of care homes with untested geriatrics released from hospital caring the plague to the most vulnerable, the test and trace debacle, and the hold off the second lockdown, altogether leading to a totally needless, preventable, and the unimaginably high death toll in the UK that still exceeds any other in Europe.

Time and again, Dominic Cummings revealed incompetence, ineptitude, lassitude, inertia, indecision, indifference, apathy, bloody-mindedness, and carelessness in the corridors of power as death, sorrow, loss, grief, tragedy, and unmitigated suffering swept through the land. A full public inquiry cannot come soon enough to question what happened, who was responsible and who should be held accountable.

We are ready for inquiry

Like I have said before, the success of the vaccination rollout cannot compensate for the failings of the past. We need to know what went wrong, what lessons can be learnt, and most pertinently, how never to let this ever happen again.

The analyses of the Dominic Cummings outing are many, I think there would be some really good questions demanding answers rather than rhetoric, obfuscation, and evasion, even so, from the mouth of Boris Johnson who should not be given the latitude to wriggle, bluff, and bluster his way through intense questioning. Let the bells toll, for they have begun to toll for those who history will not judge kindly.

The UK: On easing the lockdown, we're being taken for fools again

Defined by incompetence

The unforgivable inability to anticipate and act dogs the government of Boris Johnson that its rank incompetence cannot fail to show itself. In the handling of the Coronavirus pandemic there is one statistic that cannot be ignored, the fact that the UK, despite its success in the rollout of the vaccine still remains ahead of all European countries in the death toll, mostly acquired into early this year. Then fifth behind the United States, Brazil, India, and Mexico in that order. [WorldMeters: Coronavirus]

In my view, someone needs to be held responsible and accountable for that failure, the successful vaccination campaign cannot subsume the critical analysis of what went wrong and for some justice regarding the unfortunate martyrdom of the innocent, especially frontline workers, an independent inquiry with far-reaching scope to interrogate, indict, and publish cannot begin soon enough.

We could have avoided it

Having set out a roadmap for the unlocking of the England and broadly the UK, with an end date of the June the 21^st to all restrictions, Boris Johnson appeared to inform us that the Indian variant of the Coronavirus might stymie those plans. We hope it is just a scare, but they have form.

That situation was completely avoidable, it was obvious that in places where leadership was populist and caught napping variants would emerge, yet, our borders were left porous for people bearing the virus to arrive with minimal checks and so introduce community spreading that would definitely begin to alarm any public health official. [BBC News: Covid: Indian variant could disrupt 21 June easing, PM says]

It was a gamble, not a plan

As I have said before, the successful vaccination campaign was a gamble that paid off, for we were the first to grant emergency usage of a CoVID-19 vaccine and administer it to the broader public, and against manufacturer notice extended the timeframe between vaccine doses to capture a broader cohort of those taking the first dose. If this vaccination programme had not been under the management of the NHS, it would have gone the way of the exorbitant and corrupt PPE procurement scheme and the ineffective but outrageously costly testing, tracking, and tracing programme.

The gamble paid off, but the incompetence of the government cannot seem to find total concealment behind that success for the failure to act promptly, check border entry, institute stringent protocols against variants long before they became of concern, makes it the third time of lethargy and inertia that is about to put the UK nations at risk of another avoidable Coronavirus wave. The utter carelessness of which has been unbelievably rewarded at the polls.

Green list to nowhere

Then when you look at the 12 Green List countries, never has a confidence trick been performed so brilliantly on the public as this group of shysters have thus attempted. New Zealand, Australia, and Singapore are not receiving visitors from the UK, Portugal, Israel and Gibraltar have local restrictions as to who can visit from abroad, The Faroe Islands you can visit, but no airline comforts like food and beverages, the in-flight magazine, then blankets and pillows must be removed from the flights. [Faroe Islands] [BBC News: Green list countries: New rules for England revealed]

The vaccinated or recovered can visit Iceland, and at least if, from a high-risk country, you can have a hotel quarantine at no extra charge. [Iceland]

Brunei; how to get there or Falkland Islands; maybe idyllic, then South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands are apparently remote and literally inhospitable in the South Atlantic, also in that region, a volcanic outpost that spots the place of exile and the death of Napoleon Bonaparte is St Helena, Tristan de Cunha, and Ascension Island, places that might well be exotic but you probably cannot reach without traversing one of the amber or red list countries, or get to directly at great cost. Gosh! We really have been taken for fools.

Jabbing a finger at the idiots of Downing Street

Any wonder he won?

When Boris Johnson won the general election in December 2019 on the promise codified in the “Get Brexit Done”, he must have thought he had won the lottery along with the immunity that gives power the impunity to do anything with an 80-seat majority.

With much regret, we grudgingly congratulated him and wished him well as we licked our wounds for the second time of voting for the sadly unelectable Jeremy Corbyn.

We broke for Christmas and ushered in the New Year then left the EU for a transition period on the 31^st of January, just as a menace brewing in China leading to radical measures was growing global tentacles. An epidemic evolving into a global pandemic was about to unleash itself on mankind, but Boris Johnson could not be bothered.

As an island nation bewitched by the populist sweet-talk of taking back control of our laws, our sovereignty and our borders, you began to realise it was all empty talk because none of that was done as the coronavirus cut a swathe through northern Italy and we saw the restrictions being deployed in China and South Korea, but scratch all that.

As if life really mattered

The UK now stands 5^th with 46,853 reported deaths from COVID-19 for the simple reason that in acquiring power the government of Boris Johnson seemed to have forgotten that it comes with great responsibility, the responsibility for lives. I believe that was his mind when on the 12^th of March, he said to the nation, “I must level with you, level with the British public, more families, and many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time.” [Source: COVID19LIVE.Info]

Blog - Thought Picnic: The vulnerable to be martyred to the Coronavirus in the UK

Whether he is ready to admit it or not, the government has still not found the way to grapple with this pandemic, as they were advised on the 21^st of September to put the whole nation in lockdown but he has prevaricated and delayed with hubristic inertia, indecisiveness, and absence of resolve that we are now to go into a 4-week lockdown that does not portend an end to the crisis.

Failing on all counts

This pandemic thrives on crowds, close contact, and closed spaces, to tackle it, we need not just capacity for testing, but a prompt turnover of the testing results that feeds back into a tracking and tracing system, none of which are working despite the billions of pounds shovelled off to friends of the powerful.

We are at this point because despite all that is obvious around the world and in the territories of our neighbours, as Sir Keir Starmer with forceful conviction, “They failed to learn. They failed to listen. And they failed to lead. The result is tragic – but all too predictable.” [The London Economic: Sunak’s ‘name is all over’ delaying lockdown claims Starmer saying ‘result is tragic’]

They have consistently failed to learn time and time again, as populists, they will only listen to convenience and have to be railroaded by circumstances to take tough decisions late, much like shutting the stable door after the horses have bolted and rather than lead, they have had to follow disaster, defeat, death, when they should have prevented it.

If only leadership were just about Brexit and populist postulations, however, it cannot always be an easy ride, for when it is called upon by situation or circumstance, those in power must have the capacity and the ability to meet the challenge, or lives will be lost. We have not had this kind of loss of British lives, not since we were in WWII. Ineptitude has been compounded with unbelievable incompetence never seen in Whitehall or Downing Street, this is going to the record books.

Blog - Opinion: Of our PM, cometh the hour, cometh no man

Can anything rid us of the grip of this unconscionable kakistocracy? I’m afraid, this blog offers nothing more than a review of Boris Johnson’s unimaginative, talentless, gormless, ill-fitting cabinet of discarded woodwork. We’ll do some thinking elsewhere.

 

 

Touched and violated by the incompetence of my government

Bullshit is just shit

When the grime minister of the United Kingdom and I do mean grime rather than prime stepped up to the podium to front a press briefing on the Coronavirus pandemic this evening, his voice was a repulsive grating sound to my hearing and probably to many others around our country.

The hollow unconvincing rhetoric with the attempt to stir and rouse us to a national cause to defeat this pandemic rang hollow with an unerring absence of sincerity or conviction. Anyone would commiserate with us on how this great country could have been afflicted with this impersonation of an atrocity too mean in its deathly grip of the notion, principles, and history that had made this our country a beacon of hope, power, and force for good.

The Coronavirus showed up this government in ways that no other event could, it did not come out of the blue, it was evident that it could be devastating from what was seen when in started in China and for weeks as we saw it sweep through northern Italy. Yet, we were caught flat-footed.

The walk must match the talk

The tools of bombast and bluster that had served this cohort of shysters and confidence tricksters were just hot air in the face of a pandemic, words had to be met with action, optimism was no substitute for facilitation and operational efficiency.

When Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) was required, it had to be properly sourced to meet our requirements ordered and delivered to the individuals who needed the protection to save themselves from contracting the virus and many health personnel died because the government’s weasel words of assurance met anything but the stark reality.

The same is the case for testing, for contact tracing and for knowing how far the testing is available to those who need it as a matter of urgency or criticality. The whole mission has been a catastrophic bungling that has left the UK with the highest death toll in Europe at 42,143 and the 5^th highest in the world.

They gave the gift of death

As a proportion of our total population, that statistic is more damning, because the UK rises to the 3^rd position behind Peru and Brazil. To match the UK death toll, only Spain is close, with 262, all other countries except the first 2 will have to record thousands of lost lives. That is how bad things are when it comes to the UK and the comparison in the top-10 countries in the numbers of the dead from this pandemic.

Figure 1: COVID-19 Statistics

COVID-19 data from COVID19Info.live and population data from U.S. and World Population Clock.

What makes this situation most compelling and personal for me is that South Africa is opening its borders for international travel from the 1^st of October; Brian and I were looking forward to meeting up there as soon as it was possible as we were last together in January.

As a result of the mishandling

We obviously need to see how things pan out, but my reading of the situation is quite bleak because the Foreign Minister released a statement that leaves me quite deflated and worried. “South Africa has developed a risk categorisation model for different international travellers. This model classifies international travellers according to a scale of high, medium and low risk.  High-risk travellers are those who come from countries with higher numbers of COVID-19 infections and reported deaths compared to South Africa.” This is the issue, “Leisure Travellers from high-risk countries will not be permitted.” [South Africa Government]

South Africa has only suffered 16,667 deaths due to the COVID-19 compared to the UK at 42,143, and that puts us in the high-risk country category and one can only wonder for how long. There are 12 countries above South Africa with a higher number of deaths, and that includes the United States, Italy, France and Spain.

It reminds me of a scripture, ‘For we have not an High Priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities.’ Hebrew 4:15 (KJV). Wherefore, in the UK, we have been touched by the magnitude of our government’s rank incompetence and ineptitude at the handling of this Coronavirus pandemic, part of the consequence is we might not be able to travel to countries where we were once very welcome.

I cannot be more pissed off with Boris Johnson and his cabinet for the situation in which we find ourselves. It is damning and it should have consequences, sadly, they might just get away with it too.

Thought Picnic: Killing their people with incompetence

Nothing to hold my confidence

I have many views about how I think there is no upside to Brexit if at any time I thought the government of Boris Johnson had a tenth of the acumen, principles, competence, and/or the capacity of the coalition war cabinet of Winston Churchill, I might even consider they’ll pull off a useful EU deal.

Their response to the Coronavirus pandemic already shows they are completely incapable, the excuse that they did not know enough about the virus to act with alacrity, preparedness and purpose does not wash, because governments all around the world had the same access to the information we also had, New Zealand, South Korea, and Germany are good examples, even Scotland rejigged their response to contain it.

Killing their people with bluster

The difference is they took the information and acted on it, testing, detecting, isolating, locking down, monitoring, tracing, and informing truthfully. These are what others did without boasting and with a clear grasp of the realities they faced. The virus had no time for bullshit and there was no vacuous optimism that could take the place of effective action. It showed up Johnson, Trump, and Bolsonaro as windbags and their citizenry is paying for it with deaths that top the global tragedy of this pandemic.

Blog - It perished in a lake of tea

For all this, I was listening to a programme on BBC Radio 4 the other night when I heard the last few lines of a poem, haunting and dangerously fearful, I stirred from my slumber to look it up. Brian Bilston encapsulates the tragedy of our times, both on Brexit when he wrote it two years ago and now as we bungle a deal as much as we bungled the response to the Coronavirus. I am sorry, whilst I have no instant hope to give, I hope the only way is up from this rock bottom splatter at the bottom of the cliff. [BBC Magazine: Brian Bilson - 'How I accidentally became a poet through Twitter']

Hold my hand while we jump off this cliff

‘Let’s jump off this cliff – it’ll be fun! A right laugh!’
urged all the people (well, I mean just over half
of those who had bothered to speak up at all).
I peered down at the rocks; it was a long way to fall.

I said, ‘This cliff’s more than three hundred feet high
and my doctor tells me if I jump I will die.’
‘Cliff-jumping’s fine!’ they said. ‘Don’t trust doctors, trust us!
We read all about it on the side of a bus.’

Worried, I met up with my local MP.
I shared my concerns. He was forced to agree:
‘Why the rocks below would smash you to bits!
Where did you get this idea of jumping off cliffs?’

‘It was the will of some of the people,’ I said
and his expression changed to another instead.
‘I think,’ he revised, ‘you’re being melodramatic.
The problem is you. You’re undemocratic.’

On the clifftop, we waited. In silence we stood.
Then a voice: ‘Remind me, why is cliff-jumping good?’
But we looked down at our shoes, baffled and stumped.
Then, out of embarrassment, we held hands and jumped.

© Brian Bilston Hold my hand while we jump off this cliff

Who is still listening to Boris Johnson?

I am shielding at home

It may surprise some that with the easing of the lockdown restrictions in England, I have of my own volition gone into self-imposed shielding. Besides attending church on Sunday in a properly socially distanced seating arrangement, I was out in our neighbourly courtyard for half a glass of wine the same evening and since then sequestered at home.

Obviously, I met a stranger, the Uber driver who brought over my catering order after a seemingly histrionic falling out with the Nigerian catering whose impeccable African timing was as infuriating as it left me seething, that I told her, we would do no more business together if she could not sort her customer service out. She might have been saved by the tastiness of the food also attested to by my Irish friend and the friend who recommended her.

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It’s still dangerous out there

My Irish friend paid a visit to partake of the bountiful largesse that I feared I might not have enough space to put away. Even that visit left me partly terrified as he has been socially active in parks and at home, that my main extended contact with anyone has been him at my home. I cannot say I have been wise about this situation.

The more we learnt about the Coronavirus, the more one is certain that you don’t want it and the vaunted immune response after you survive it is no guarantee of the return to status quo ante of health or wellbeing. [GAVI: The Long-Term Health Effects of COVID-19]

Are you still listening?

Then after the parliamentary committee appearance of the Chief Scientific Officer, Sir Patrick Vallance yesterday with the clear indication that the government was following anything but the science, wisdom and knowledge are a defence in these uncertain times where governmental hubris far exceeds the ability to appreciate how COVID-19 unnecessarily and avoidably cut a swathe through our populations. A lockdown a week earlier could have saved a considerable number of lives. [City A.M.: Sir Patrick Vallance: UK coronavirus response has not achieved a good outcome]

Instead, at the Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, Boris Johnson was in the full loss of his humanity, empathy, compassion, and awareness, with a tasteless joke on Calvin Klein briefs in what could only have been peak sociopathy. Proving the point, I have never deviated from that his life-threatening encounter with the Coronavirus has done nothing to mollify character or personality. He never had the capacity, a change of heart would hardly come with a heart or full organ transplant too. [Independent: Boris Johnson accused of lacking compassion for coronavirus victims after making 'Calvin Klein briefs' joke]

Blog - Thought Picnic: The vulnerable to be martyred to the Coronavirus in the UK

Blog - #Coronavirus: Can commendable competence emerge from astonishing incompetence in the UK?

My lion games are tame

Today, he announced an extended timetable of easing lockdown restrictions and I have not bothered to check on the detail. I last watched television news over a month ago. Twitter and radio seep the news into my purview. My most pertinent question is, “Who in the UK is still listening to Boris Johnson for pandemic guidance or advice?” [BBC News: Coronavirus: Boris Johnson statement fact-checked]

You are a braver person than when it crossed my mind that I could tickle the tonsils of a wild lion with my head and come to no harm. Those scratching their itching noses with the gaping fangs of a recently killed black mamba are fidget spinning and in no danger. I scoff.

#Coronavirus: Can commendable competence emerge from astonishing incompetence in the UK?

It’s damning incompetence all round

Every day appears to be overcast with a Coronavirus cloud, in the news, in our cities, in our limitations and expectations.

In the middle of this pandemic what is becoming obvious is the need for competence in government with the wherewithal to grapple with a complex and complicated issue that is presently impacting on lives in unprecedented ways. [The Irish Post - Virus crisis reveals Boris Johnson's astonishing incompetence]

It is literally impossible to deploy the kind of glib political spin that has been the stock in trade of the people who constitute our current UK government headed by Boris Johnson. People need answers to questions to which the usual obfuscation or verbosity with sophistry will not pass the muster. [Yahoo! News - Coronavirus: Two-thirds of Brits think the government has badly handled COVID-19 testing]

The numbers are real people

Today, the UK registered the 4^th highest global death toll of 569 in the last 24 hours of people who succumbed to the COVID-19 virus bringing the 7^th most deaths of 2,925 in a country that comes the 8^th in the number of confirmed cases of 34,006. In the numbers and percentages game, there is a fatality rate of 8.6% and a recovery rate of 0.5% where China and South Korea have recovery rates of 93.7% and 58.4% respectively. [COVID19INFO.live]

Screen captured from https://covid19info.live/

To suggest that the management of the pandemic in the UK has been abysmal would almost be forgiving, look at the statistics as each an individual, each person named and their survivors accounted for constitutes probably in a majority of cases an avoidable tragedy visited upon UK residents and citizens by their own leaders.

Before we lose the context of what is happening in our country, we need to refresh our minds with what Boris Johnson said in early March.

Is death so insignificant to them?

“That’s where a lot of the debate has been and one of the theories is, that perhaps you could take it on the chin, take it all in one go and allow the disease, as it were, to move through the population, without taking as many draconian measures.”

“I must level with you, level with the British public, more families, and many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time.”

Blog - Thought Picnic: The vulnerable to be martyred to the Coronavirus in the UK

These are the people who when the Prime Minister allowed the COVID-19 to move through the population with taking draconian measures like the lockdown, took it on the chin and died before their time.

You can only wonder how many more will take it on the chin before the government really does come to grips with this pandemic by scaling up tests for the infected and all frontline staff acquires and distributes PPE to all that need it at the point of contact with the public, and ensure hospitals are adequately equipped with ventilators at the point of need.

I still hope for better

I want to believe that this government can rise to the occasion as they are the ones in charge with the responsibility for which they must ultimately be held accountable. Their need to be truthful, honest and scrupulous cannot be overstated or we would lose confidence in them. [Reuters - Under pressure, UK government promises 100,000 daily coronavirus tests]

People are dying daily and much as one can readily blame them for criminal carelessness and the recklessness that has unnecessarily endangered lives our of lethargy, inertia and unpreparedness, one would hope they are more aware of the gravity of the task ahead of them to find the means to excel beyond their heretofore cack-handed gross ineptitude. I wish them all the success and there can be no refuge in excuses anymore.

Opinion: How much longer can we endure Theresa May and her #Brexit ineptitude?

She never could do it

News that Theresa May the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland had decided to delay the meaningful vote on her much-vaunted deal from Europe for #Brexit was hardly a surprise.

It is depressing and a depressing state of affairs that a nation that in the last century was one of the leading lights of world leadership, diplomacy and political nous is in a state of ineffectiveness, utterly inept, incapacitated by infirmity, deformed in prospect.

I have never had the confidence that Theresa May could pull off #Brexit with any credibility or ability, she mastered and spearheaded a negotiating tactic that projected hubris and bluster, sending bombastic blowhards to Europe with delusions of grandeur convinced in the exceptionalism of the UK. Her powers of persuasion were deployed as dogged obstinacy, tinned eared in her hope that brinkmanship would yield a result.

A living insanity

For 29 months since she assumed office, she has followed the same course, mouthed the same mantras, repeated the same talking points and achieved nothing. Paraphrasing Albert Einstein, "The definition of this #Brexit insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results."

It is insanity that bedevils this #BrexitShambles, she can win no support within her party and she has found no way to unite the country behind anything she has to offer apart from uniting us in disgust and revulsion of her deal.

Theresa May had ample opportunity and scope, she could have on becoming premier gone for a grand coalition to work on this #Brexit issue. Rather, she triggered Article 50 completely clueless of what she could achieve, then gambled away her majority on an ill-judged election before losing two Brexit Secretaries of State, a Foreign Minister and scores more from her cabinet.

Neither up nor down

Dysfunction and derision have become the hallmarks of this government hellbent of driven the country headlong into perdition on the force of ideology above reason. The Pound Sterling in the wake of foolhardiness not seen since the Grand Old Duke of York became a nursery rhyme of the utmost ridicule.

The problem is not in Europe, the EU-27 countries have already agreed the deal she wants to renegotiate with them, they all know it is the fact that she cannot persuade, convince, cajole, cudgel or bribe enough in the House of Commons to buy into her plan. She is an abject failure and if any Tory is ready to put the country above self-interest, it is time to pension off this apology wrecking the country and chart a new course in leadership and in Europe.

Stop this #Brexit nonsense now

The #BrexitShambles has sucked all productivity, progress and oxygen out of our national effectiveness and the ability for us to take our place in the comity of nations where we belong. There is no Kumbaya of rich pickings after #Brexit.

We belong in Europe, the best deal we could have we already have in Europe and we need to send better representatives than those of the ilk of Nigel Farage to Europe who would attend meetings, constructively engage our partners and win compromises, concessions and consensus that gives of the best of what Europe can offer.

It is time to end the leadership tragedy of Mrs Theresa May and consign her to the scrapheap of history. She has done enough damage already.

South Africa: Is this a black empowerment timebomb?

Conversations, many

South Africa offered me a variety of opportunities for meeting people, making conversation, but mostly, there was much to observe and from that as an outsider draw some conclusions about the society the country projects.

The most engagement was on my Uber cab rides to and from work, from the Gautrain station or out for social engagements. Of the probably 40 or so Uber trips I had, there was probably one uninteresting and disinterested driver, I should have sat in the back and occupied myself with a more interactive reading material, my eyes darting from left to right as I read.

Where our journeys were short, it was quite honorific to have the Uber cab drivers express the desire to meet me again so we could have a longer chat. By osmosis and general interest, I seemed to know a lot about South Africa and its current affairs, along with seemingly alternative viewpoints to the events that occupied the newswires in the time I was there.

Signs and realities

However, it appeared I was only getting one perspective of things until last Saturday I witnessed both an interesting and an alarming incident on the concourse of the Johannesburg Park Gautrain station.

I had just missed the opportunity to go on the Soweto tour and so returned to the station to take the train back to Sandton Gautrain station. At the entrance, I had already seen that the next train was in 29 minutes time, it meant I had just missed a train.

I could have loitered around the station, but there is a sense of safety once you are beyond the ticket barriers. The seating on the concourse is really a design malfunction, aesthetically pleasing to the eye but uncomfortable to sit on, the two metal slats are angled for slouching for the able-bodied and literally unusable for those with assisted mobility or any other kind of impairment or strength, age or nature.

Malfunction feeding resentment

What transpired was the electronic signals on the concourse were not updating to tell exactly when the next train would arrive. What I saw as 29 minutes at the entrance was reading a minute on the concourse and it did not change for minutes.

A white lady then made to ask one of the guards on the concourse when the next train would arrive, the guard indicated it would be about 26 minutes. She then when on to ask why the electronic sign was reading different from the expected time. The guard had no answers, but she suggested the lady check the timetable, a cleaner who was chatting to the guard before the white lady interrupted buttressed the point of the view of the guard.

At that moment, the white lady flared up and rudely told that cleaner that she was not invited into the conversation, and so she should mind her own business. At which point everyone else on the concourse waiting for the next train was alerted to the fact that this might degenerate into an unholy fracas.

This must be one of many

The guard trying to reason with this gradually obstreperous lady, tried to aver that the timetable took precedent if there were problems with the electronic indicators, somehow, the context of the problem took a strange twist when the white lady said, “No problem? We don’t run the country anymore and the very simple things you people cannot make work, everything is a mess.”

Now, that caught my attention as the white lady walked away in apparent irritation at not being taken more seriously and began talking across to the other platform in mock rage and annoyance as if there as someone else listening to her grievance. Well, there was no one there, it was a loud soliloquy looking like the onset of some mental disorder.

At which point, I surmised that this was pent-up Afrikaner resentment being let out, apparently triggered by the frustration of not being in control or being able to control, situation, event or direction.

This in my view could not be the only place where resentment was festering and ready to be blurted out at any sign of ineptitude, incompetence, misdeed or malfunction. In my over three weeks in South Africa I had seen much of this with the impunity, the contempt of institutions and the cack-handedness of the President in replacing the Finance Minister in the middle economic turmoil with a complete tyro, all for political expediency.

Distrust in the rainbow nation

The week before, a survey had suggested that South Africans of different races distrusted each other, there was very little social interaction between the races except in the workplace, in schools or in the shops. It goes without saying, that if there were people of the stature of Nelson Mandela in power with the requisite competence to run the government for the good of all South Africans, there would be little room for resentment.

Then, on my way back from South Africa, as we waited for the embarkation of our delayed flight, I got to talking with a couple that were off to Italy via Paris. They were travelling with three generations of the family, 11 in total, but grandpa and grandma were travelling business class and the others elsewhere.

They expressed frustration at the seeming rudderless direction of the government, the rapid decline in the value of the South African Rand and it was precipitous in the last week besides the fact that the Rand had lost 30% in value against the Dollar in the year 2015 alone.

Bantu education all over again?

However, what concerned him most was the affirmation action that was to encourage black empowerment and emancipation in South Africa. Now, the Bantu Education Act was a rotten Apartheid policy that provided not useful education to the black population as means of lifelong subjugation with no prospect of elevation in life.

“There is no place for [the Bantu] in the European community above the level of certain forms of labour ... What is the use of teaching the Bantu child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice?” Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd, the Dutch-born architect of Apartheid.

Yet, according to grandpa, during the struggle against Apartheid, the kids of the chief activists went to the best schools elsewhere, whilst the activists instigated the students left behind to burn their schools in protest and insurrection, leaving the students in the midst of the struggle bereft of education and consequently subjugated to the children of the activists who have returned to rule over the masses.

Marking up failures to pass through

He continued by saying, the affirmation system, whilst apparently giving opportunity to blacks to access education and qualifications, none of it appeared to test their aptitude, challenge their mental capacity or equalise their achievement with mainstream standards of education expected of anyone who has passed through an educational system from primary school through to the end of tertiary education.

He said many black South Africans in affirmation schemes were being given a full pass at 33% and conveyor belted through university to have a degree in three years whether they made the grade or not. Whilst I have no proof of this, on an anecdotal basis, I had seen many instances of people being trained and failing to perform when without direct supervision at hotels, in shops and elsewhere, it is concerning.

Dishonesty in presented qualifications

In my time in South Africa, after the scandal that broke in May when I was there that trains ordered from Spain for South African railways were not of the right specification, the speculation about the qualifications of the head of engineering of the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) was confirmed.

Dr Daniel Mtimkulu had not studied at the university he said he attended and was not registered with the engineering body that was supposed to validate the qualifications that made him eligible for the role he was in. There no asking how he scaled through the due diligence processes of the people who interviewed him and promoted him to the role he assumed until he was found out when a procurement process was bungled creating serious embarrassment for all concerned.

Likewise, at the South African Broadcasting Corporation, the COO was found to have misrepresented his qualifications by a public prosecutor whose institutional responsibility of oversight and regulation was ignored that other parties had to seek orders from the courts that enshrined and supported the authority of the public prosecutor.

Yet, integrity and honour were left by the wayside as the system appeared to give support and succour to dishonesty and fraud in the face of incontrovertible facts.

It does not augur well, at all

All of this will give cause for resentment amongst South Africans, especially when those in power seem to forget the great responsibility of nation-building and unifying a nation bequeathed them by the likes of Nelson Mandela for the politics of expediency and a descent to hedonism and opulence at the expense of the majority of South Africans that placed confidence in their government bringing lasting prosperous change into their lives.

One is appalled to say the least and it simply corroborates what I wrote in another blog titled, South Africa: Rubbish!

There are many stories in South Africa, but if the decline by indifference and indolence of government egged on by comfort oblivious of duty and attention to the purpose for which they were called to serve continues, Zimbabwe will be nothing compared to the disaster that is looking like the charted future of South Africa on this avoidable trajectory.