Author: Mick Hartley

Up at The Hill, Hampstead:

through the crisis swifter than most.

Instead, Britain is in the grip of a collective national hysteria, unleashed and prolonged by a Government that flails around dementedly, petrified of negative headlines, afflicted by short-termism, imposing extreme and counter-productive measures utterly out of proportion to the problem we face, trashing ancient liberties along the way, and all with disregard for the appalling economic consequences.

And parliament says nothing.

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But this time, instead of a left turn east to Woolwich, a right turn west through Greenland Dock and back over London Bridge.

rs, untested medical equipment, shoddy construction…with the wind of the Supreme Leader at their backs, there are no obstacles that cannot be overcome with the correct ideological fervour.

John Vachon, July 1941:

"Gas station. Chicago, Illinois."

"Parking lot. Chicago, Illinois."
[Photos: Shorpy/John Vachon for the Farm Security Administration]

ing evidence the "cure has been worse than the disease" because of the wider societal costs.

girls as the most graceful. 

But only the Angolan originals, I think, are eating at the same time….

Update: no, my mistake. They're eating here.

Update 2: and let's not leave out the brilliant Nairobi Women's Hospital, posted yesterday.

A joyous life-affirming response to pandemic gloom.

cated in earlier research, that the misogyny of the manosphere has permeated mainstream culture. In 2018, Amnesty identified Twitter as “a toxic place for its female users”. Now, regardless of earnest pledges to improve, the reach of its orchestrated abuse must be the envy of the most rabid subreddit.

So long as misogyny stays off the list of hate crimes, and endemic male violence against women remains a negligible political concern, it evidently suits both certain campaigners and this social media platform to keep up their contributions to the spread of professional, private and street-located hate.

No mention of the absurd gender trans ideology behind all this – perhaps wisely or the poor woman, like Suzanne Moore, will be subject to censure from her fellow journos – but at least it's an acknowledgement of the blindingly obvious motivation for Rowling hatred.

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p style=”padding-left: 40px”>The tragedy was brought home when a close friend of Choudhury’s died. “He was an educated man and father in his mid-fifties who spoke to his GP and convinced himself he had Covid, so rather than coming to hospital, he self-isolated for 10 days. In fact it was a heart attack. It was tragic. Treating heart attacks is something we do extraordinarily well in this country and he lived walking distance from the hospital.”

Professor Barbara Casadei, the president of the European Society of Cardiology, estimates that 5,000 patients in England had heart attacks in March and April and did not go to hospital. “It’s extremely upsetting. I would never have believed that people would have a heart attack and stay at home.” She contacted colleagues in Europe and America and found the same thing happening there, so started a campaign with the British Heart Foundation to encourage people with chest pains to seek help. Admission rates for heart patients are now almost back to normal.

With infection rates rising again, there is no doubt that winter will be tough. Though hospitals have been told by NHS England to return to 90% of capacity by the autumn, few surgeons we spoke to thought this was possible. Enhanced protective measures, such as socially distanced wards and waiting rooms, and the need to constantly change cumbersome PPE — personal protective equipment — have reduced capacity. New Covid-safe procedures such as having to spend 20 minutes disinfecting a scanning machine between patients mean longer delays.

Even before the coronavirus, NHS England had a shortage of 36,000 nurses. The stress of dealing with the pandemic means many staff are off work and some nurses are returning to their home countries. GP services are restricted and, judging by letters to newspapers, people are finding it hard to access them to get referrals.Those who do reach hospital talk of deserted waiting rooms and doctors twiddling their thumbs.

A man in Hampshire complained of driving for four hours for a 10-minute consultation with an oral surgeon only to be told the unit would not restart surgery until next year. Yet the hospital, he said, was empty, “with staff in scrubs standing about doing nothing”.

The government stands condemned either way.

If you believe that the lockdown has been fully justified, get outraged at any mention of how well the Swedes have done, and mutter angrily at anyone in a shop not wearing a mask, then for you the government was culpable for not introducing lockdown weeks earlier – never mind all the other fiascos like track and trace or the shortage of tests.

If on the other hand, like me, you think that while the virus is clearly nasty and understand why the lockdown was initially introduced in the face of dire predictions which turned out to be nonsense about the NHS being overwhelmed, it's still not nasty enough to justify setting the economy back some twenty five years and side-lining every other form of illness – plus the mental health issues, and the unprecedented assault on our social liberties.

It's all very grim.