The Cedar Lounge Revolution

Public sentiment dipping as case numbers rise? And other matters… September 8, 2020

You’ve got to wonder sometimes. The IT had one reporter this week seriously suggesting that if the government didn’t like health advice from public health experts it should go and get advice it did like from others. That’s the paper of record, or so it likes to see itself. And then there’s this from Conor Pope:

Irish consumers are now the most anxious in Europe, and are increasingly nervous about shopping, eating out, spending money and using public transport, according to a sentiment tracking survey from Deloitte.

And:

Confidence levels in Ireland have dropped by 6 per cent from a previous wave of research in late July, falling behind France, Belgium and Spain, and making Irish consumers the most anxious in Europe.

Some 50 per cent of Irish consumers report that they are worried about their physical wellbeing, up slightly from the previous wave of research. Concern for their families’ health has also increased by 2 per cent to 62 per cent.

And:

Confidence in visiting physical stores was at 59 per cent, down 3 per cent on the most recent survey conducted at the beginning of August.

And:

Some 40 per cent of people reported feeling safe going to a restaurant, a decrease of 4 per cent on the last survey.

Planned expenditure in restaurants had decreased significantly, falling 13 per cent.

It’s… it’s… it’s like there’s a viral pandemic going on!

That said some interesting stats. People seem a lot less willing to throw caution to the winds than some of the boosters of commerce and ‘return to the new normality’ crew. Perhaps because people are able to see that there is indeed a viral pandemic and act accordingly.

While confidence in air travel increased slightly, with 22 per cent saying they would feel safe travelling on a plane – an increase of 2 per cent –confidence in hotel accommodation remained consistent at 40 per cent.

And far from unsurprisingly given the numbers out of work, something the ‘new normality’ folk seem blissfully unaware of as a consequence of the pandemic:

Nearly a quarter said they were worried about making upcoming payments, a jump of 4 per cent on two weeks’ previously, while 41 per cent reported that they were delaying making large purchases, also an increase of 4 per cent.

And 68 per cent were limiting their use of public transport.

Hardly a surprise:

The head of consumer at Deloitte, Daniel Murray, said consumer confidence was “extremely fragile and sensitive to changes”.

He said that although overall confidence either grew or remained steady as we emerged from the national lockdown throughout June and July, the “recent uptick in Covid-19 case numbers and the implementation of localised restrictions across three counties have taken their toll on consumers in Ireland”.

But amazing isn’t it the framing of that last. The restrictions aren’t what dents confidence as such. It’s the reality of the virus. And it really doesn’t matter how long business interests and some in politics keep banging that drum – the reality is a rhetorical mixing of cause and effect won’t convince anyone as long as actual numbers of infections continues to rise.

Look again at those figures. Restaurants, air travel and so on. Does any of this suggest a massive groundswell of public opinion to further ‘reopen’ above and beyond where we are? Surely they suggest quite the opposite. A large majority in all instance who are cautious. And it does point up how much of a stranglehold some interests have in the media in terms of presenting matters as they will.

Which brings me to another thought. Read the comments BTL on many IT articles and one will read about how we must shrug off a pathological fear of infection. But I think that is an unwise attitude. I’m not sure people do have a pathological fear of infection any more than those of us who cycle have a pathological fear of an accident. Rather we take precautions to minimise risk as best as is possible. We wear helmets, reflective gear, put lights on bicycles, obey traffic signals (well, some of us do anyhow). Of course there’s the possibility of accident, but simple enough measures mitigate that sufficiently to allow one to cycle around with a degree of confidence. Similarly, and here’s a key point, many people who will happily go out to the shops for food or into some workplaces or into parks or wherever for exercise, will eschew bars, restaurants, cinemas for the moment (here’s NFB who ventured in for the first time in many months to see Tenet recently and to be honest it sounded more than safe enough, but I’d not want to go to a later performance). Because all these are voluntary acts. If one can avoid them, well, why not? Holidays are much the same. Indeed let’s not overstate it. Pre-pandemic I’d go to a restaurant – quite often the local Bruhouse, perhaps once every six weeks to two months. It’s not exactly a luxury but it’s not exactly not. For many it is a luxury. There’s no need for a pathological fear in this for many people to determine air travel simply isn’t worth the risk, restaurants are something for another day. Hopefully sooner, but if not some point down the line. And so on. None of this is irrational. None of it is phobic. It is a basic assessment of benefits and potential risks.

Perhaps not unrelated, consider this from the frontline. Much exalted but undermined by so many of the policies being implemented at the moment. For as case numbers rise so...

More than 120 healthcare workers were diagnosed with Covid-19 in the past week as transmission levels increase across the country, new figures show.

The increase of 121 healthcare cases reported by the Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) comes as Beaumont Hospital in Dublin was forced to close wards after a small number of patients and staff tested positive for the virus.

And some fairly stunning detail in all this:

The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) claimed the rate of infection among healthcare workers could be even higher because asymptomatic cases are not being picked up.

“When a positive case is identified in an acute hospital, all staff are not tested. We do not believe testing suspected close contacts goes far enough considering the normal movements of staff throughout a hospital in any one day,” said INMO general secretary Phil Ní Sheaghdha.

And:

“We do not believe this is safe and providing temperature testing is not sufficient considering what we know about asymptomatic positives.”

Meanwhile numbers of those in older age cohorts continue to rise. One can only hope the impacts will be limited. So where’s the surprise people more broadly have concerns?

An interesting question about the Oireachtas September 8, 2020

From last week, but worth consideration:

Ceann Comhairle Seán Ó Fearghaíl has said everyone makes mistakes, but what happened at the Oireachtas Golfing Society in Clifden was the result of a “collective crass stupidity … or arrogant delusion … or both” said the event organised by the “self-styled” Oireachtas Golfing Society last month should never have happened.

Note that ‘so-called’…

Mr Ó Fearghaíl has asked the Clerk of the Dáil to see if there any other groups operating under the Oireachtas banner.

He said the golf society was never funded by the Oireachtas.

Only now the Oireachtas is getting around to seeing what groups might be using the Oireachtas name?

That says a lot.

Walk away? September 8, 2020

Considerable alarm last night over the potential threat to the Brexit withdrawal agreement from a British government that appears to be anything but wedded to it, rhetorically at least. From Sinn Féin through to Alliance the concern that this would damage the GFA/BA was uppermost. Perhaps the most educative responses were those from political unionism, and within the DUP, which is to say none at all immediately. But how about this for an illuminating insight into their thinking:

The Democratic Unionist party (DUP), which opposed special arrangements for Northern Ireland, made no immediate official response.

On Friday its leader, Arlene Foster, said she recognised the protocol was law and that the challenge was to mitigate its impact, only to have the rug pulled from under her by Downing Street’s announcement.

Sammy Wilson, the DUP’s Brexit spokesperson, said the party would not accept the withdrawal agreement – a flat contradiction of his leader that was not issued through the party’s press office.

A sobering analysis in the Guardian from Mujtaba Rahman, managing director for Europe at Eurasia Group where he suggests the idea that Boris Johnson is likely to walk away from a deal with the European Union is implausible. His feeling is that:

If there is progress, it’s highly unlikely Johnson will walk away.

This is because he needs a deal. After a poor performance on coronavirus and with a jobs crisis looming, he needs a success story: no deal would be portrayed by his opponents as a failure. It would lend itself to a rejuvenated Labour opposition’s main line of attack – the general charge of incompetence – which is a difficult label for any government to throw off.

That point about Labour is intriguing:

As well as letting Labour’s new leader, Keir Starmer, back into the Brexit game, where he has had to tread carefully given his support for a referendum last year, no deal would also play into the hands of the Scottish National party ahead of crucial elections to the Scottish parliament next May. It would boost Nicola Sturgeon’s chances of winning an overall majority, and claiming a mandate for a second independence referendum. Ministers are increasingly nervous that a Scottish breakaway is on the cards (the cabinet was recently briefed that the latest opinion polls show 56% of Scots would vote for independence, and 44% to stay in the UK).

But he also points to ‘business leaders’ crying out for a deal. And while most of us would be sceptical of such cries he points to a clear and unambiguous political linkage to voters:

Business leaders are also lobbying MPs, warning that a double “Covid-19 and no deal” blow would be disastrous for jobs. This plays into the politics. Tory MPs representing the former Labour heartland seats in the North and Midlands are unnerved by surveys suggesting they would be among areas hit hardest by no deal. As one of them put it: “The message has been relayed to No 10. It needs to get it.”

The problem is that the British government is already clearly uninterested or unconcerned at the damage that it inflicts on others or indeed its own reputation.

Perhaps more important than all this is another aspect to this which Rahman points to. That is that the British government is unreadable at the moment. This one has to suspect is as much a function of chaos as guile. Simply put it seems overwhelmed. Perhaps this is a view born of distance but it seems to me that figures in the UK government, never very substantial to begin with, appear absolutely exhausted a lot of the time lending them a lack of weight that is quite perceptible. I wonder if there’s a political effect there too. Could it be that if the pandemic eases somewhat the sheer stress of that on government structures and personnel will leave a huge toll. In a way this feels like a government that has been in situ for years rather than quite a bit less than a year.

And even if the British government is attempting to mask its intentions deliberately, and that is quite likely to be honest, that too seems problematic, particularly if a chorus of voices amongst its supporters against a walk away strategy come to the fore.

Your workplace safety in a time of COVID-19 September 7, 2020

Any thoughts on how safe your workplace is at this point, or are you working ‘remotely’?

Independent Left: David Graeber’s Politics, An Appreciation September 6, 2020

Ciarán O’Rourke offers an appreciation of the late David Graeber on the IL site. And he starts the piece with this particularly pertinent quote from Graeber.

“Say what you like about nurses, garbage collectors, or mechanics,” declared anthropologist David Graeber in 2013,

“it’s obvious that were they to vanish in a puff of smoke, the results would be immediate and catastrophic. A world without teachers or dock-workers would soon be in trouble, and even one without science fiction writers or ska musicians would clearly be a lesser place. It’s not entirely clear how humanity would suffer were all private equity CEOs, lobbyists, PR researchers, actuaries, telemarketers, bailiffs or legal consultants to similarly vanish. (Many suspect it might markedly improve.)

Statements in the media… good, bad and indifferent September 5, 2020

It’s not all about Covid-19. For example, a frequent commentator seen in these posts writes in the Sunday Independent on an all too familiar theme:

Eugene McCabe was the greatest writer of my generation and when I heard of his recent death I recalled something my late friend, Patricia Redlich, told me at the height of the Provisional IRA campaign.

Patricia, a woman so wise she would have been burned as a witch in the Middle Ages, said that of the two kinds of sins, commission and omission, the sin of omission was the worst.

She meant that while committing an IRA murder was bad, omitting to condemn the murders for the sake of social comfort was worse because it created a climate of moral evil.

This from Lucinda Creighton in the SBP, on the need for the government to govern, takes an oddly florid turn:

Symbolically, autumn is the season of change, as leaves fall and we harvest and prepare for winter. The government should embrace this symbolism and start to prepare the country for the challenges ahead.

‘We’ harvest, Lucinda? Surely not.

Michael Clifford in the Examiner notes, correctly, in a piece on co-living accommodation:

Co-living represents bedsits for the 21st century. Do we as a society really want to turn in that direction in order to sort out a chronic housing crisis?

Some would say worse than bedsits.

It’s not all about Covid-19. But a lot of it is. Breda O’Brien makes a good point:

Thus far, the Government has relied mainly on goodwill rather than enforcement measures when it comes to Covid-19. If that were to change and non-compliance with, for example, mask wearing, results in a fine of €20, it will be little more than a slap on the wrist. Nonetheless, it would mark a change in policy.

Mask-wearing should be voluntary and an act of solidarity. Imposing new, lower fines is an acknowledgment this can no longer be taken for granted.

The Irish Times health correspondent draws an implausible comparison in the following:

The hyped-up language might not be necessary if the public had a clearer idea of what was happening – where the virus is circulating, what actions are being taken to deal with outbreaks – and if a better co-ordinated and better explained response was in place.

Four people with Covid-19 died in August, compared to 15 on the roads. The only death announced last week actually occurred in June.

Difficult to disagree with a comment below the line on this piece here on the lockdown in Melbourne – which across thousands of words lamenting ‘one of the worlds harshest lock-downs’ and a ‘world of pain’ due to the lockdown, oddly doesn’t mention the numbers who have died there…

First-world concepts of ‘a world of pain’ are truly staggering.

Riley Gale September 5, 2020

Very sorry to hear about the death of Riley Gale of the thrash metal band Power Trip at the tragically young age of 34. He was a good one, who in interview came over as deeply sincere, engaged, politically aware and questioning. Not a lot of thrash vocalists unselfconsiously reference Zizek and Foucault et al. He and the band were also near brilliant at what they did. As noted on wiki they had a range of influences…

“Some of Blake [Ibanez]’s favorite bands are Killing Joke, Stone Roses, Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Wipers”.

As a branch of metal that I’m not hugely fond of (though I do love my Kreator albums and unlike some whatever about Mustaine I do like Megadeth a lot) they brought a sound that was true to its roots – as well as being more than a little inflected by hardcore punk (and by the by Napalm Death and they are mutual friends and toured together) – while also moving forward. Crisp and reverby, no small achievement. And political too…

Rest in power.

Microdisney September 5, 2020

This was referenced before, at least in the audio version, but here’s an expanded history of Microdisney by Paul McDermott which as he notes:

…is a companion to the audio documentary: Iron Fist in Velvet Glove — the story of Microdisney. It contains many contributions from over 25 interviewees that due to time constraints never made the final edit of the documentary.

Great work by McDermott on a band who deserve this level of engagement.