{"id":2511,"date":"2021-06-06T22:01:33","date_gmt":"2021-06-06T22:01:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/?p=2511"},"modified":"2021-06-07T20:10:33","modified_gmt":"2021-06-07T20:10:33","slug":"sunday-5th-june-2021-day-446","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/2021\/06\/06\/sunday-5th-june-2021-day-446\/","title":{"rendered":"Sunday, 6th June, 2021 [Day 447]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today was an\u00a0<\/span>indeterminate kind of day – the kind of day in which Denis Nordern the famous comic who used to broadcast regularly on Radio 4 when asked to make\u00a0up an ‘un-newsworthy’ news item that might appear in a\u00a0footnote to an obscure column in ‘The Times’ \u00a0would venture ‘Small earthquake in Chile – not many killed’\u00a0<\/em>The\u00a0pattern of the day followed the normal routine for a Sunday in which I walked down to town in order to collect our newspapers crossing the path of absolutely nobody (typically a jogger or a dog-walker) whilst en route. Then, of course, we watch the\u00a0Andrew Marr<\/em>\u00a0politics show and again we have an appearance by Matt Hancock who must be by now of the most visible’ Health Secretaries on\u00a0record. He was rebutting the argument that he sent people unvaccinated (certainly untested ) straight from\u00a0hospital wards (in order to clear them) back into the residential homes from whence they came. His\u00a0rebuttal has become second\u00a0nature to him by now i.e. to repeat like a mantra that ‘we put a policy in place’ to vaccinate the elderly (repeating the fact that they had reached their target of 100,000 or whatever) completely ignoring the question that although they had a plan in place,\u00a0people actually did progress straight from\u00a0hospital to residential homes. At one point, there was a slight chink in his armour when he let slip well ‘it was a \u00a0question of priorities<\/em>‘ \u00a0but Andrew Marr did not seize upon the remark as he\u00a0should have done. Matt\u00a0Hancock was in effect right – as a ‘question of priorities<\/em>‘ then the elderly\u00a0occupying much needed hospital beds were a ‘lower priority’ then COVID\u00a0patients. Eventually, I walked on down to the\u00a0park alone this Meg because Meg was having a slightly ‘off’ day and was resting at home. In the\u00a0park, I\u00a0met up with one of our\u00a0park regulars and we had quite a long quasi-theological discussion whether it was legitimate to seek to persuade people from\u00a0holding whatever views\u00a0that they may have with conviction. We were of a like mind \u00a0in that that we did not think it was legitimate to\u00a0dissuade\u00a0somebody from whatever view which might be deeply and sincerely\u00a0held, even though we might\u00a0disagree with it. On the other hand, we both agreed that we were\u00a0rankled if we had an encounter with someone of\u00a0pronounced religious views who were convinced of the\u00a0truth of their own position and had attempted to\u00a0teach us the error of our ways.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In the late afternoon (and thinking about our friends who might be visiting us tomorrow and who are keen gardeners), I\u00a0decided to plant up the\u00a0stone planters I had recently acquired from a friend. In these, I put a combination of both top soil and some of my own 2-year old compost but I had run out of bonemeal\/Growmore that I generally deploy on such occasions. Anyway, they got planted up with some spare plants that I had around the garden and\u00a0are sitting on the front of some decking to form a sort of leafy boundary or instant wall. However, after a good\u00a0watering I must keep on remembering to water until the plants are established\/reestablished.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have just this evening experienced one of these really frustrating half hours that beset us from time to time. As we\u00a0<\/span>all know, the Sunday newspapers are replete with supplements of\u00a0various kinds. Various things such as ‘Style’ or ‘Fashion’ goes straight into the bin whilst other sections are flipped through incredibly quickly to see if anything catches your eye. So I spent at last 45 minutes scanning each of the supplements of todays (and yesterday’s) newspapers, trying to discover an advert for a patio cleaning fluid which I am sure we need. Of course I\u00a0couldn’t find the advert even though I had recourse to the vertical filing system (aka. green wheelie bin) Eventually, I found what I was\u00a0looking for as I had already detached the relevant page and saved\u00a0it ‘in a safe place’ but that was a fruitless half or so spent on a\u00a0fruitless search.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Tonight, there are more and more hints that a full end to the lockdown is not to be forthcoming in two weeks time.\u00a0Matt Hancock is quoted as saying that he is ‘open’ to an incomplete end to the lockdown on June 21st. Given that the infection rate is 70%\u00a0higher than a week ago and the Delta version of the virus is judged to be 40%\u00a0more transmissible that the previous variant, then one can\u00a0understand\u00a0that the\u00a0<\/span>government is going to backtrack\u00a0like mad. What I find\u00a0interesting is that the\u00a0right wing of the\u00a0Tory party and much of the press are\u00a0constantly urging an end to the lockdown but my judge of the public mood (Vox pop on TV, people I meet in the park) all seem to think that having endured 15 months of COVID restrictions, then one month more is not going to make a lot of difference.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today was an\u00a0indeterminate kind of day – the kind of day in which Denis Nordern the famous comic who used to broadcast regularly on Radio 4 when asked to make\u00a0up an ‘un-newsworthy’ news item that might appear in a\u00a0footnote to an obscure column in ‘The Times’ \u00a0would venture ‘Small earthquake in Chile – not many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2511"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2522,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2511\/revisions\/2522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}