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

So 'Freedom Day' is tomorrow, and the UK Health secretary has Covid, and the PM and other top ministers in the government have to self-isolate for ten days because they spent time with him... cases are rising so quickly that delivery systems are collapsing under the strain of worker absence due to quarantine and illness. The government's idea to 'let the pandemic rip like the flu' IS WRONG. 1. deaths remain low, BUT the virus spreads quickly and makes people ill enough to need time off or hospitalisation in sufficient numbers to cause societal and economic chaos; 2. an idea that people only want to avoid death - many also want to avoid organ failure and long-term survival on respirators, or six months of brain fog. The farce should end. It won't, probably, but they should delay Freedom Day, and then scrap the idea and replace it with an on-off switch like in a world periodically attacked by space vampires - when it is green, we can go out normally; when it is r...

When a brilliant scientist like John Ashton says the government's Covid-19 strategy is wrong, you should sit up and listen. See his bio below (note he is not the author of this editorial). Today, the top scientist in Boris's circle of boffins, 'Sir Patrick' , said he was comfortable with 60% of the UK population getting the disease - because we need 'herd immunity' and that it will 'return annually' and that 'it can't be stopped'. All of these comments should get him replaced immediately. Consider if your top general announced the enemy could not be defeated? You'd fire him. More seriously, this almost inhumanely-cold approach (reminiscent of notorious mid-century experiments on large populations) takes for granted that 1% of the population will (must) die for this 'herding' to work... that's giving up on upwards of half a million people in the most threatened categories in the UK alone... This extraordinary idea - t...

Cancelling is better than being a superspreader As a small publisher with a table booked at the 2020 LBF - the major gathering for the publishing industry in the UK - I stand to lose a lot of money if this event is cancelled - but if I went, or sent my team, I'd risk losing much more - including their lives or my own. Readers should not be compelled to become super-spreaders. Today Facebook has cancelled its May annual conference, major firms are cancelling all business plane travel, and 30 minutes ago the Swiss government - not known for its wild and irrational behaviour, cancelled ALL public events and gatherings of over 1,000 persons, until at least march 15. In Iran, the most holy Friday prayers have been today cancelled, and Mecca is closed to foreign pilgrims, as Saudi Arabia plans to control its borders from more contagion. Meanwhile, the stock markets globally have fallen to Crisis 2008 levels, and farther. If the organisers of the LBF really think their event - he...

A terrible injustice has occurred in the UK .  If it had happened in Russia or Iran, we'd be enraged and shocked.  A woman has terminated her pregnancy (very late) by her own hand, and buried the dead foetus.  The judge and law call this a baby, and have jailed her for 8 years.  The judge is a Christian fanatic, as it turns out, opposed to abortion laws as they now stand.  As a Catholic, I know what I am supposed to think, but as a rational and tolerant human I know what I believe - no man (or other person) can tell a woman what to do with her womb; Sarah Catt may have done something sad, unfortunate, even borderline troubling.  Wrong, unethical - debatable.  But criminal?  No.  This person is a political prisoner, imprisoned by a fanatical Christian patriarchy, and she should and must be freed.  In a week that bristles with rage at MP's shouting at police officers, let us spare some sympathy for Ms. Catt, who has been slapped with the ...

I have been a member of a gym for about a year now, and see a personal trainer from time to time.  I run, swim, lift weights, and stretch, three to four times a week.  And, due to genes, a love of food, and some medicine I need to take, I am still about ten kilos over the suggested weight for a man my age (46).  Then again, having neither won nor lost Lee Child 's lottery of life (I am exactly medium height, at 5-9, neither short nor tall), and being a middle-aged man, most of the excess baggage appears around my midriff.  This has got me so down it was beginning to look up to me, and then the other day - zap! - I had a thought.  Who hates me this way, other than me?  I am loved by wife, and friends.  More vitally, some of the best guys ever, guys I loved, were love-handled or even fat - Orson Welles, Dylan Thomas , and Babe Ruth spring to mind.   Wallace Stevens , Philip Seymour Hoffman , Diego Rivera - all had a bad BMI.  If being a chu...

Barbara Smith reviews Not Many Love Poems by Linda Chase Sometimes it can be refreshing to read a poetry collection without prejudice. By that, meaning that one knows nothing previously about the poet: there is just the poetry to go on. Perhaps that is the way one should read poetry, but sometimes it can be difficult to disengage expectations – Paul Muldoon ’s work springs to mind, with his unusual, surprising word choices. In the case of Not Many Love Poems , by Linda Chase , reading blind pays off handsomely. Here is a collection of strong work, well crafted that reels us in and shows us songs of experience and innocence and every poem encountered is a layer within the whole, making the collection a bittersweet delight: more on the bittersweet later. This collection is split three ways: I Many Love Poems, II Kisses and Harps and III Our Lives. The first section’s poems look back to an earlier time: songs of innocence layered with the benefit of experience: or is...

According to today's Guardian , Lord Byron was actually "overweight and unattractive".  This seems like nonsense.  The evidence is his weight.  He is described as five eight (a handsome size at that time), and weighing in at 76 kg, described as "borderline obese".  Not so.  According to the NHS site which calculates such things, Byron's BMI would have been 25.48, or, very borderline overweight - not the same as obese, and close to a healthy weight.  Byron may have had a slight paunch, but he was no Arbuckle .  If he was in fact 13 stone (another figure mentioned) he would have been 29 on the BMI scale; 30 is obese - but this might have been with his heavy medical boots on.  At 23, he weighed around 63 kg, which would have made him a very slim weight.  This seems like a story without much weight to it.

Like something out of a science fiction movie, perhaps starring Charlton Heston , Europe is in the grip of a new form of deadly bacterial infection transmitted apparently on raw produce (tomatoes, cucumbers, salad, etc.).  Ground Zero is Northern Germany, but death and illness have radiated out as far as the UK and America.  For the last week, a billion-dollar farming industry has ground to a halt - Russia has banned all vegetables and fruit from Europe; and no one is buying or eating fresh, uncooked vegetables.  The question I have is: how long can this go on before malnutrition sets in?  What seems like precaution or prevention, now, will soon be a diet no one can survive.  Europeans will have to go back to eating their greens.  But who wants to when the potentially lethal strain has yet to be located?  What are the vegetarians of Europe doing?  The crisis will hopefully diminish soon - but some scientists predict the source may never be known. ...

This past week, David Cameron has been talking up his "grenade" being thrown at the NHS, as if it were the kindest cut of all.  He has spoken of his respect for the doctors and nurses, and love of what the great institution does, while also pushing for a massive change of direction, so big "it can be seen from space".  Indeed, the NHS has never been remade so completely in its 60+ year history.  At heart, along with allowing private health providers much more access to the market, is the demanagementising of the system, with groups of GPs replacing managers to run the NHS in local clots.  Never mind that GPs are doctors, not public planners.  Mr Cameron has been evangelical about the ability of the GPs to handle this big ask.  So, what to make of today's news, t hat GPs bungled their ordering of flu jabs so badly this year , it is being recommended that the government resume running the yearly influenza vaccination programme itself.  This seems a warn...

The latest influenza figures for Britain are to be released today - and it is expected they will indicate a surge in serious illness and deaths related to the H1N1 virus, currently the primary 'flu circulating, at epidemic proportions in the UK.  Vaccines are low.  Healthy younger people under 65 are most-affected.  Will this be the crisis feared and predicted in 2009, or will it peak with relatively few fatalities?  It seems odd not to keep schools closed a week or two, to let the seasonal virus settle.

I met with my doctor today to review my chronic condition, an Oxford-educated specialist, and a charming, elegant, and unflappable man about as likely to panic as the Rock of Gibraltar.  He advised me to get the new three-in-one influenza vaccine soon, as he has seen the latest government estimates.  While the current rate of infection is approximately 22 per 100,000, it will grow tenfold or more in 2011, and is set to overtake the epidemic numbers seen at the pandemic's height in mid-2009.  As healthy people under the age of 65 can die from this influenza, it seems worth being concerned.  However, vaccines, too, have their risks, however slight (and somewhat vague).  I am therefore, as a hypochondriac of sorts, between a rock and hard place.

The fact that teams and individual athletes are beginning to pull out of attending India's pending Commonwealth Games in Delhi is unquestionable - but is the nature of the health scare debatable?  One of the Indian officials responsible for cleaning up the contested athletes' apartments complex noted that standards of cleanliness might be different for some nations in the West - a fascinating moment of "relativism" at work.  The comment is both startling and, in a sense, apt - are there universal standards of cleanliness? If societies are to be encouraged to develop their own belief systems, and cultural values - if multiculturalism is to be allowed to flourish even in a globally-connected capitalist system, which India is clearly a triumphant recent member of - then can they also continue to maintain their own particular, indigenous levels of hygiene?  Might the pampered Australians, or Europeans, expect a sparkling deep clean that in India, with its monsoons and...

The news that the Coalition is scrapping NHS Direct is shocking, and bad news for anyone who gets sick.  Last year, when ill, I called NHS Direct, and was able to speak to first a nurse, and then eventually, as I needed to, a doctor.  The service was courteous and informed.  Now we will be directed to people with 60 hours of medical training instead.  In the week that the Camerons enjoyed excellent NHS service in Cornwall, such a blow seems low and mean.  And many lives will be lost, as misdiagnosed persons are left untreated or misguided - misdirected from the care they deserve.

Eyewear was - you may recall - scared mindless last year by the Swine Flu Pandemic - which today the WHO has officially declared kaput.  Good riddance.  The panic was worse than the disease.   Today's Guardian mentions two brewing media stories from reliable scientific and medical sources that promise disaster in ten years or less.  One reports that a new bacteria in the human gut carries genes that make it resistant to almost all antibiotics - in ten years the bug which 1% of people in India already carry - will apparently be 100% resistant, and bring about deadly pneumonia. Also, today, we are told that if the world warms by even 2% in the next ten years , which it may well do, the Greenland ice will melt, raising waters enough to wipe out low-lying coastal cities like New Orleans.  So - will 2020 see us dying of deadly stomach bugs in droves and drowning like lemmings?  History shows that bad things happen at a constant rate, and humankind manages t...

Back from Ireland.  I must stop eating lobster smothered in butter.  But those trolley dollies with their heaps of cream and custard and berries!  Agggh.  Croquet is not, may I add, an aerobic activity...Just read Forster 's first, Where Angels Fear to Tread - a bit odd stylistically.  Does anyone else have any thoughts on his sentimental-ironic melodramatic tonal shifts?  Also enjoyed the first 95% of Netherland , until the cornball London Eye/ family values ending.  A missed opportunity to create a true classic.  Still, I actually find cricket bearable after that.

I was going to title this post 'Poor Visibility" - an Eyewear title if ever there was one - but went for the more theologically resonant one instead.  Odd times over the European skies today - ash is general over England, and beyond.  There was a large volcanic eruption in Iceland on Wednesday.  Due to the weather conditions, a plume of volcanic ash has now spread southwards towards northern Europe and is severely affecting all airlines' flight activity in the area. For safety reasons and on the direction from Air Traffic Control Service (Nats) a decision has been made to cancel a number of flights and close all London airports.  All British Airways domestic services have been cancelled on Thursday 15 April. On the BBC, they are talking about maybe no flights until Saturday, unless the ash plume, now pretty immobile, moves on.  This seems relatively unprecedented, and more than a little sci-fi slash disconcerting.  No eye in the sky, indeed.  Iceland'...

I am just back from a very fine week in the Sultanate of Oman, trekking in the mountains, desert, and spending time by the sea reading. Oman is an exceptionally interesting country, a small nation on the Arabian peninsula connected by its historical, cultural, religious, and sea-faring ties, as much to Africa, Asia, as to the Middle East. A predominantly (moderate) Islamic country, it is not as oil rich as its neighbours, so it has had to diversify its economy. For the past 40 years it has been ruled, benevolently and intelligently, by Sultan Qaboos , who has won international awards for his far-seeing commitment to environmentalism. Oman is also a leader, in the region, in education, health, and eco-tourism. Oman is mainly a gravel desert, and mountainous, country, very hot and humid most of the year (it is bisected by the Tropic of Cancer), with some monsoons in the summer in the south, and a cooler breeze along its long coast (the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman). Politically,...

I was born on Good Friday, 44 years ago - and just barely survived, being exceptionally tiny, three months premature, the smallest baby on the ward, and one of the youngest at my size to ever survive in Canada - a "miracle baby" as they were called then - perhaps still are.  It was a fraught time for my parents, and of course, for me - and I am grateful to have struggled through.  Today, at a celebration of the Lord's Passion, I could not help but reflect on my good fortune, to have lived, at all. Eyewear will be back on April 12. In the meantime, fellow eyewearers, enjoy the various religious holidays with your families, the returning light, and the sense of renewal in the land. May you achieve physical and spiritual health. Or, if that is too much, enjoy some chocolate bunnies. Nothing like a good egg hunt. What's to look forward to in April at this blog? A few superb new poet features; reviews by Christopher Horton , Ian Brinton , Abigail Curtis , and others...

President Obama has achieved the near-impossible - bringing sensible (and humane) health care to most Americans. A knife-edge and teeth-chattering down-to-the-wire House vote saw the Democrats just managing to do the right thing. Like in a wrestling match, the Republicans wore the ludicrous villain's mask and threw their bluster around like cheap seats. November may either see the good or bad guys thrown out like bums. For now, Obama has secured his place in history for a second time, and redeemed his first term. It's been 50 years coming, but this was worth the wait.

Arguably the most visually-complex and witty real-time pop music video of all time, " This Too Shall Pass" by OK Go is must-watch YouTube viewing. Meanwhile, Americans and friends of America, must surely hope that Obama's health care package shall pass, today, too. If not, a lot more than paint will be spillled. There will be blood and tears, for decades, as well.