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Showing posts from December, 2021

CALM BEFORE THE STORMS?

Depending on where you live in Europe, 'Christmas is cancelled' is already a thing. Lockdowns and major new waves of Delta/Omicron have already started in Ireland, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, and beyond. Travel is being curtailed, as is access to pubs, restaurants and crowded events. In England, the most laissez-faire of the UK's nations, there is a sort of blasé exceptionalism, commingled with a frantic surge in third (and fourth) vaccinations (boosters). The UK government has been keen to normalise the situation since summer, and 'move the conversation on' - the new variant is a bloody impertinence, and not on message at all. This blog and its chief writer-editor are not optimists. I find the history of human conduct to be an almost infinite library of ignorance, cruelty and self-interest, leavened at times with striking acts of sacrifice, wisdom, and kindness noteworthy by their relative rarity. Violence and depravity seem hard-wired, but even if it is onl