E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

I am reminded of Cato's Guilty Men , the 1940 British best-selling polemic that established the 'appeasement' approach as wrong, and charged (Cato was three anonymous journalists, not a judge) the many men named as dolts or worse who had squandered the past ten years, and let a great evil rise unchecked. Churchill , newly elected to a national unity government, would save the day, and rid the top of the failed dead wood; Churchill did save the day, and nation, but he keep most of the top untrimmed. He was, after all, a Conservative. For then, think now. Ten years of NHS underfunding, and gross under-preparation for the pandemic, long-warned-of. For the 'Munich' agreement, and the deal, think of the 'herd immunity strategy' - or the late 'lockdown' - or indeed, the now unfortunate '20,000 deaths will be a good result claim' (oft-repeated). But who, then is Churchill ? In one sense, PM Boris is, because his return to power, as the newly-Christ...

HOT ZONE CONFESSIONS   ‘Thomas and Lowell made themselves the metaphor of their poems’   1. I am myself the quarantine. The garden spreads children In summer clothes like sores   On a lip. The world quivers, All arrows locked and loaded To overflow. I don’t quite explode.   2. Writing has never been bomb squad To the great squatting missiles below Our skins; you don’t avoid   Volcanic eruption with lava postcards. Words hurl microbial aerosol Across the lawn to sicken, invade.   3. I’m only paper, metaphor, inky myth. What’s made isn’t mine or shrapnel to own, Contains pandemics in its sly mists.   Controlled explosions like punking steam? All dreams are engines to the minefield Mind we try to civilly distance from, or collide in.   4. We’ve died in rhetorical verse too often to see The trees burst from it like shells out of Burial mounds; all’s fecundity, even dross,   ...

A week ago, on the 14th, I predicted here we would likely see around 20,000 reported UK deaths, and between 160-200 k cases reported, of infection. As it turns out, the hospital reported deaths as of yesterday are closer to 17 k, and the reported cases are around 125 k. Now, since reports suggest community-based and care home deaths (unreported at this stage for these hospital NHS figures) add another 41% per cent to these already solemn and tragic figures, we probably are looking at over 20,000 UK deaths so far related to Covid-19; and at least 160,000 cases - though some studies suggest the number is closer to 1.6 million infected in the population. The government has had a mixed time of it - they have succeeded in acquiring more beds and ventilators than needed, and their ability to persuade the electorate to law-abide and stay in has been marvellous. Infection rates have seemingly begun to plateau, deaths are slowing - the lockdown has worked, the NHS has not buckled. Unfortunately...

CICERO UNLOCKED After  W.B.Y & D.T. with love   Cicero knows a soul is there or isn’t there And neither bandage unbreaks the fear; My cat’s coalfired sleeping in a fiery pool Put out in purrs sleep derails, his fur The kingdom of panthers all breeders confer Ribbons on; in heaven the dead move too – In puzzled sleep, at their side some owner Scribbling also of the worried times: half The world is half apart from half the world’s Other part – the solid heart has come to know The dialogue of self, and loss, and selfless loss; As Plato told, and Aristotle tossed aside, in scorn. We’re divisions of an army made up of us Alone; the hill-town’s been cut off from its face, To save the sloping nose to keep the mills alight. Economies of scale collapse   like climbing bibles Tipping off a feeding beltway to appal the stars. It is dust bowling as dollars fly like mice Out of the cat hospitals to die church poor In single pairs o...

Apologies for being late with the weekly pandemic report from London. We have just had a sunny Easter bank holiday weekend, and that meant four days when people could either break the law and potentially infect and kill people, or stay mainly indoors; or 'exercise' a lot in gardens, parks and streets. The police asked sunbathers and BBQers to 'move on'. The PM has second-homed it, but few mind, as he has survived. Meanwhile, the less impressive of his cabinet run the daily press briefings flanked by the scientists and medics who 8 weeks ago wanted herd immunity to rip through the country and kill off the weak, and who now solemnly demand we social distance to save the NHS. Hypocritical Oaf, as one headline said in a similar context. The good news is that though deaths, factoring in those in the community and care homes, is about 900 to 1,000 a day in the UK from Covid-19, the curve is flattening, it appears. This means my prediction from a week ago is somewhat off. I ha...

As every wag has noted, it was indeed a Good Friday for Boris Johnson ; and this blog is mighty pleased he is out of ICU and on the mend. We are also pleased his father has recommended he take it easy. Yesterday, an almost empty St. Peter's in Rome featured a homily by a priest who suggested God had allowed all viruses to evolve, like all life forms, within their own free patterns, and that He therefore had not stopped Covid-19.  This is a fascinating argument, and one that I need to think through more closely. He also called the Crucifixion the 'most evil act in human history' - which, if one agrees that Christ was God Incarnate, may well be the case. Like many others, I have long struggled to understand the Matrix -level complexities of an event that HAD TO HAPPEN and yet was not divinely-controlled. I suppose it equates to epidemiological modelling. The scientists who predict a thousand deaths a day next week in the UK are not making those patients die - they just know ...

The news today could not be much grimmer, or more sad, without being fully tragic - a brilliant, charismatic, well-spoken and driven leader of a country facing a major crisis gone suddenly from public life - not Lincoln , or Kennedy , but Johnson . And not dead yet, to be British about it. But my how this hurts. Since the bombshell news last night that the PM - Boris - had been admitted to the ICU - much of the world has been stunned. I felt as if my father had died; it was a gut-punch, and winded, I fought back tears. I feel shaken to the core. Why? Because Johnson, along with the Queen , is the symbol of our nation, of Great Britain, now, in its hour of peril. He has been our robust, funny, energetic, boyish, mischievous, literate captain. He lives on, but it is a grim moment. If he can be felled, who cannot be? Who is safe? No one. This virus unscrews the doors. Let's be frank. 50% of men over 50 who go into the ICU in the UK for Covid-19 and go onto ventilators, die, within 5-1...

It is a matter of record that this blog has not always agreed with everything that PM Boris Johnson has written, said or done; that in no way lessens my concern, at the deepest level, for his current state of health. I wish no one, friend or stranger, ill; and as a Catholic, believe the best of everyone, even a total rogue; we can be forgiven to the last. Nor have I always agreed with everything I have written, said or done. We are all imperfect, angels with clay feet, sinners through and through. I will have no glee at this time. Those who think the PM's plight is ironic, or any other sort of literary trope, are missing the human story. Here is a man, brilliant, enterprising, witty, forceful, driven, and by nature, seeking the betterment of his country, engaged to be married, with a child on the way, who many people admire or love, a natural-born leader of rare charisma and intellect - fighting to regain full health, felled by a perfidious invisible foe. Many leaders would have ta...

In some ways - this exceptionally sunny Palm Sunday in London - the news is almost good.  Good relative to the tragedies all around us. There were 621 deaths from Covid-19 in the UK in the last 24 hours; just under 50,000 reported cases, and just under 5,000 deaths. Last week, I predicted around 3,250 deaths for today, and around 65,000 reported cases, and said that if these or higher numbers were hit, we'd be in Italy style trouble. It is too early still to be sure, but this could suggest a slight levelling of the curve is taking effect, and that the peak may well come, as predicted by government scientists, in the next seven to ten days - that is around Easter. Sadly, the death rate is higher than even I anticipated, but it is still within a range that, as we can see now in Spain, can level off within a fortnight. The British prime minister is still ill, and his fiancée is recovering - we wish them a speedy recovery; the Queen is to address the nation tonight at 8 pm, for only th...

Boris Johnson (himself fighting the virus in isolation, a war we hope he wins speedily) and his cabinet are not having a 'good war' more broadly against Covid-19 (annoyingly called Covid plain and simple by some newspapers). The daily briefings - usually around 5 pm each afternoon, and featuring two or three podium speakers, a government minister in the middle, and two scientists or medical experts flanking them - have become a figure of mockery in their farcical Sisyphean repetition. The problem is the collision between rhetoric and reality that, from the Trump presidential campaign onwards has been a hallmark of the post-2015 age - what's called fake news, or misinformation. It is easy to lie as a politician, but not when the world can check, and the stakes are literally about lives and deaths. Bluntly, the UK government has been badly-advised by some advisors, who, in documents seen by the media, as recently as end of February were dismissing Covid-19 risks to the UK as...

  Reading Laura Mulvey’s Late Style Essay on Vertigo in the Light of Covid-19   She says that film is death in its each frame, moving life into motion by light so artifice plays on reality, arousing automatons, those herky-jerky objects we desire to own, infuse   with fake breath, because to dominate the unreal is what only gods, artists, do. In Vertigo Madelaine is memory, crossed twice, a favourite bridge, she’s ordinary spouse refused,   credit card declined, turned as in Pygmalion into goddess; she falls doubly, is a double image and the pain is fetishes are never again what they once were in the possessing hand; you play, let go, released   the toy breaks on the rocks below. Freud, Adorno, the one who died at the Swiss border and loved unpacking books, Benjamin, the master theorist of machinations and creation; the late style is, Deleuze or Said   both knew, an outcropping of...