The Cedar Lounge Revolution

The UK government on Covid-19: Not comforting… August 3, 2021

Worried about variants emerging in the UK due to the reopening? Many are, but not the UK government in the last week or two.

A government spokesperson said the UK was a world leader in genomics with more than 600,000 positive Covid-19 samples having been genomically sequenced during this pandemic.

“Our top priority has always been protecting the public and the vaccine programme and our robust border regime are combining to minimise the risk of new variants coming into circulation in the UK,” they said.

“We take all concerns about our approach to defending the UK from variants very seriously and we are looking into the content of this report.”

Concerned like one SAGE advisor, Robert West, that there is a deliberate policy to build ‘herd immunity’ off the back of infections of younger people? Many are, but not the UK government in the last week or two:

A government spokesperson said: “Herd immunity has never been part of our pandemic strategy. Our approach has always been to protect the NHS and social care, save lives, and ensure as many people as possible are vaccinated as we learn to live with Covid-19.

“While the vaccination programme has substantially weakened the link between infection and serious illness or death, we have been clear about the need to exercise personal caution as we ease restrictions.

“We are encouraging settings to make use of the NHS Covid pass by requiring either proof of full vaccination or a negative test and we reserve the right to mandate certification if necessary to reduce transmission.”

Is that a note of caution this morning on Delta, nightclubbin’ (again) and other matters… August 3, 2021

The news this morning in the IT is intriguing:

Ministers are due to meet virtually this week to discuss fresh concerns around the rising number of Covid-19 patients in hospital and intensive care.

The meeting will be held on Friday as the head of the HSE, Paul Reid, expressed concern about the “slowly, continuously rising numbers of hospitalised cases”. While Government sources believe the rise was largely expected and daily case numbers may be plateauing, Ministers will be looking for projections and modelling for the coming weeks.

Government sources – eh? ‘Largely expected’, ‘may be plateauing’. I don’t know. Reading that sort of stuff makes me wonder. 

Meanwhile mentioned over the weekend that nightclubs in the UK have not experienced a mass return by clubbers to them since ‘Freedom Day’ last month. And that is interesting because it suggests that perhaps people are a little more cautious than some expected (though as noted by SoS, clubs in the UK have already been facing reduced numbers of clubbers pre-pandemic). Which makes me wonder at the news yesterday that:

The Government will be in a position to give a clear signal on a reopening plan for the live entertainment industry by the end of August, Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media Catherine Martin has said.

Entertainers including musicians, DJs and other live performers and their support staff have been largely out of work since the first Covid-19 lockdown in March 2020.

Now it has to be said, the situation here feels different to the UK. Or to put it another way, it feels as if government and health authorities have it more under control. So that’s a factor and may impact on attendance more positively. But, again, just as with ‘indoor’ dining and drinking my rough assessment (and the attitude exemplified by users on this site) was that people were holding fire for a while. The vaccination programme is proceeding very well. The uptake is heartening but many of us – vaccinated or not, aren’t necessarily keen to go indoors quite yet – and there is the issue of those who work in those contexts too. 

And of course there’s the issue of the virus itself. In the last week or so I have heard of multiple instances of people who were in the company of those who had it and had to get tested. In some cases those tests came back positive. And these would be fully vaccinated people. So it’s an odd moment where there’s a sense of matters improving but also a certain exposure too. 

One interesting point made in the RTÉ report:

Meanwhile, MCD Productions and Festival Republic have written to the Government to outline their proposals on how events, including Electric Picnic can go ahead later this year.

The promoters say they have staged ‘Living with Covid’ live events worldwide including Lollapalooza in the US and Latitude in the UK, and have gained first hand knowledge and experience in safely running large scale Covid pilot events and festivals.

Latitude is an interesting one. As it stands  already clusters of cases associated with the event have emerged (accounts like this are increasingly evident) .

This BBC report sums up the situation:

Up to 20 people in Suffolk have tested positive for Covid-19 after attending the Latitude Festival, the county’s director of public health said.

The four-day festival at Henham Park, near Southwold, was the first major event to be held following the lifting of most Covid restrictions in England.

It had a daily capacity of 40,000, made up of campers and day-ticket holders.

The government said it was too early to get a full picture of the impact the four-day event has had.

If that’s the government’s read – and that report is two days old, then one has to question how promoters could be certain about anything. 

Seanad by-election news! August 2, 2021

Candidates and potential candidates already lining up in the by-election to take Ivana Bacik’s seat. GP Chairwoman, Cllr and former Dublin Lord Mayor, Hazel Chu has thrown her hat in the ring, though only if after a process of consultation with the GP the party is amenable. Hugo MacNeill, former rugby international and husband of FG TD Jennifer Carroll MacNeill will run as an independent, though with FG support.

Disabilities campaigner Tom Clonan, a former Army officer and lecturer in ethics at the School of Media at the Technological University of Dublin, will also contest the byelection, his third attempt.

Labour party member Ursula Quill, a former parliamentary assistant to Ms Bacik and to former senator Seán Barrett, will also run.

Fianna Fáil has said it will discuss the issue in the autumn. Sinn Féin is also thought likely to make a decision after the summer. The Social Democrats said “it is not up to political parties to field candidates in a Seanad byelection for a university seat”.

And no doubt more to announce their candidacies!

High speed rail in Ireland and bridges and tunnels… August 2, 2021

Reading Newton Emerson’s latest contribution in the IT one will see that he’s not in favour of high speed rail on the island of Ireland and most particularly not the idea of links between Dublin, Belfast and Cork. Why this should be the case is not immediately clear. He talks of the Irish Rail study from Aecom in 2011 which suggested that population and growth up to 2030 would not justify same – one might think that during a global financial crisis perspectives could be a little different to more recent times. Worth reconsidering at least without dismissing out of hand.

Anyhow, be that as it may – and as someone who has had the experience of travelling around southern Spain on high speed rail, it really is quite something.

Meanwhile he notes that:

The UK government is offering billions of pounds for national infrastructure under its “union connectivity” and “levelling up” policies. Nationalists have condemned this as meddling with devolution but the independent commission could help Mallon get around that concern. For all the attention and laughter at British prime minister Boris Johnson’s tunnel to Scotland, it receives only a token study in the Union Connectivity Review, while cross-Border rail gets a specific listing – ironic, given the constitutional politics involved.

Okay. But perhaps he should read the UCR which offers a reason for this mention:

Given that both passengers and freight travel through the Republic of Ireland on their way between England and Northern Ireland, north-south connectivity through Ireland is important. Cross-border routes include the Irish M1 which runs along the coast from Dublin to Newry, joining the A1 and continuing to Belfast and the A5 which runs south from Derry through Strabane, joining with the Irish N2 on its way towards Monaghan and Dublin.

Difficult to see that mention infringing or impinging on the ‘constitutional politics’ of the ROI in a negative fashion.

Whereas the lack of focus on the tunnel?

Perhaps because there is no detail from British Transport Secretary other than a proposal and with no specific route suggested. Can’t blame the UCR for being more focused on a realisable upgrade to already existing links. 

Left Archive: An Phoblacht Abú, Voice of the Socialist Republican Movement, Anti-Imperialist Action Ireland, March 2020 August 2, 2021

Please click here to go the Left Archive.

Many thanks to the person who forwarded this to the Archive.

This document from last year joins another in the Archive from the same source, Anti-Imperialist Action Ireland.

This is number 4 of their publication, An Phoblacht Abú and the contents are primarily focused on the then visit of ‘the self-styled Duke and Duchess of Cambridge [who] have been invited to make an official visit to Ireland one behalf of British imperialism.’

It continues: ‘Irish Socialist Republicans are fundamentally opposed to the ongoing illegal occupation of Six Irish Counties by Britain. So long as that illegal occupation is maintained the relationship between Ireland and Britain can never be a normal one. While the occupation continues ‘state visits’ by representatives of British imperialism to any part of Ireland are deeply offensive to the Irish People and should be rested’.

The document mentions ‘the Campaign Against Royal Visits’ and notes that ‘on February 19 Macradh-Irish Socialist Republican Youth’ occupied the Free State Department of Foreign Affairs to protest at the invitation’.

There’s also an article on Election 2020. The rest of the document is taken up by an outline of AIAI and an invitation to join, as well as exhorting people to wear an Easter Lily.

Nightclubbin… or not. August 1, 2021

Anyone see the report here in the Guardian about how ‘nightlife’, namely clubs and so on, have been finding it heavy going this last week since the declaration of ‘Freedom Day’ by the UK government and the lifting of restrictions. Everyone involved seems baffled that:

[nightclubs] have seen low attendances and been forced to cancel events as the pandemic continues to disrupt the nightlife industry almost two weeks on from “freedom day”.

And there’s this gem:

Many operators blamed “low consumer confidence” in the face of confusing government messages about whether it was safe to attend.

 

“It has not been the freedom that we’ve been expecting,” said John Clark, owner of Faces nightclub in Gants Hill, east London. “We’re unlocked on paper but we’re just in this twilight zone where it’s not been as busy as we’ve anticipated.”

Get out of here! A viral pandemic, insufficient people fully vaccinated and most punters are voting with their feet and staying home. How bad has it been?

Lab 11 had also been plagued by low attendance. “It’s great to be back but we saw a pretty large amount of no-shows last weekend,” said Power.

The venue sold 1,400 tickets for its reopening event but only 450 attended. The second event didn’t fare much better, with 850 attendees against 1,500 tickets sold, and Lab 11 have had to refund as much as 40% of the tickets for some events.

But who could blame people not attending reading the report further and the apparent complete indifference of those involved in some of the nightclubs to the health and safety of their clientele. For example:

ff the back of a challenging first weekend for the industry, nightclub operators urged the government to rethink vaccine passports, which the government plans to make mandatory for entry into large-scale venues from the end of September.

Will Power, owner of Lab 11 in Digbeth, Birmingham, said it was “complete madness” to limit nightclub entry to only those who’ve been double jabbed. “If it gets passed, I’m pretty sure there will be a lot of challenges. It’s just nightclubs people are talking about now, but it sets a precedent that could run through a lot of other industries.

Like commercial places should have restrictions when a coronavirus is on the loose? Crazy stuff! 

BTW this is a recognised phenomenon – most people staying out of contexts which they perceive as being too risky. And some are saying it accounts for the plateauing of numbers of cases this last week in the UK. But again, who could blame people?

Fortnightly Culture Thread August 1, 2021

gregtimo proposed in comments recently the idea of a Culture Thread.

It’s a great idea. Currently culture is a bit strange, but people read, listen to music, watch television and film and so on – spread the net wide, sports, activities, interests, all relevant – and any pointers are always welcome. And it’s not just those areas but many more. Suggestions as to new or old things, events that might have been missed, literally anything. gregtimo for example asks… 

Sunday and other Media Stupid Statements from this week… August 1, 2021

Unfortunate timing for Stephen Collins given the week that is in it with regards to appointments…

One of the surprising features of the Government to date is that there has been far less tension between the three Coalition partners than many expected. All of the tension has been internal to each of them with at various times the leadership of Martin, Varadkar and Eamon Ryan being queried by some of their own followers.

Though elsewhere today someone had a very idiosyncratic definition of cronyism. 

If the appointment of Katherine Zappone as a “special envoy for freedom of opinion and expression” was cronyism, it was pretty lousy cronyism. Zappone has never been a member of Fine Gael, is retired from Irish politics and has left the country; although she served in government with Simon Coveney, Leo Varadkar and Paschal Donohoe, it is unclear what kind of leverage she might have over them to insist on a sinecure.

The appointment has antagonised Coveney’s actual cronies — Fine Gael. “Many Fine Gaelers feel one from their own ranks could have filled the job of special envoy,” reported Senan Molony.

Finn McRedmond argues the following in the IT about the interest in Dominic Cummings:

Maybe in time the quasi-celebrity advisers will eventually be consigned to a historical footnote. But for now the lure of petty political drama seems irresistible. Perhaps Dominic Cummings’s ongoing relevance tells us a lot more about ourselves than it does about him.

Or perhaps his frankness, however self-serving, provides a window into the thinking of the current British administration and those at its heart and to hear that now is of greater utility than waiting for the inevitable autobiography five or ten years down the line?

The IT radio reviewer gets it the wrong way around in this:

His contribution is brief and lively, and, as O’Connor has opened the show with an astute observation about our national focus on hospitality being a sort of bizarre displacement obsession, there’s reason to hope there will be no more talk about indoor dining, a phrase I’m not sure I ever heard before Covid and would quite like to never hear again. Because after a week when the airwaves are filled with little else – who knew as a nation we were such gourmands, more concerned with hospitality than hospital waiting lists? – surely a weekend magazine show, taking place during record-breaking sunshine and with the country in holiday mood, would leave Covid to the news bulletins.

It seems likely the nation isn’t more concerned about indoor dining than hospital waiting lists or this phase of the pandemic, but the lobbyists for the ‘hospitality’ industry certainly appear to be. 

All other contributions welcome.

One planet. Two moons in the sky. Not exactly welcoming… July 31, 2021

Was reading a review of soon to be arriving on a digital platform near you SF film Settlers, set on Mars at some point in the future, and to judge from various outlines fairly unrelentingly gloomy.

I don’t know why but broadly speaking I find films about humans on Mars leave me a little cold. Either they’re too prosaic and bogged down in the nuts and bolts of the processes of same or they seem to be too adrift of the reality – essentially allegories. Worse when they’re both. Indeed I’m desperately trying to think of a fictional rendition of Mars that I enjoyed (possibly that in Babylon 5 – possibly not). I don’t include the Martian which while flawed was a film of space exploration and survival more than anything else and while it dragged to some degree did at least have some fantastic visuals of the surface of the planet. Maybe it is because humans arriving and surviving on Mars seems like an awful lot of hard work and considerably more than SF seems to appreciate. It’s not that there might not be outposts there, but ‘colonisation’ seems quite a stretch. And yet, I can point to story after story in Analog and other SF magazines over the past ten or twenty years which seem to take it as read that colonisation is going to be the path forward. In fact that’s not a bad idea for a SF story – something set in a future where scientific research outposts on the Moon and Mars are the only off-Earth human installations. Though even that seems implausible. The effort to have such outposts on Mars – the Moon is slightly different, being considerably closer, would likely be too great given any possible return. And I’m very dubious about space ‘tourism’ taking up the slack.

But back to Settlers which seems to posit a vaguely mapped out future situation where who knows what is going on. Well something must be – the colonists live in the open air, they do not require breathing equipment, they seem to move at Earth standard gravity. They’re living in what appears to be at a somewhat industrialised civilisation level – quite sophisticated firearms, mechanical doors, possibly hydroponics, but the trailer suggests everywhere else is a wasteland. Difficult to see them retaining that level for very long in the face of a broader societal collapse.

Check out the poster. Now it is true that Mars has two moons, but they’re certainly not shaped like they are in the poster. Anything but. Deimos and Phobos are irregularly shaped and very small.

Phobos and Deimos bear more resemblance to asteroids than to Earth’s moon. Both are tiny — the larger, Phobos, is only 14 miles across (22 kilometers), while the smaller, Deimos, is only 8 miles (13 km), making them some of the smallest moons in the solar system.

And what would one see from the surface?

The more distant moon, Deimos, appears more like a star in the night sky. When it is full and shining at its brightest, it resembles Venus as seen on Earth. Phobos has the closest orbit to its primary of any moon in the solar system, but still only appears a third as wide as Earth’s full moon.

But then being on Mars, living on Mars, presumably growing plants using processed Martian soil, or even running around on Mars presents some interesting problems. For example:

Martian soil is toxic, due to relatively high concentrations of perchlorate compounds containing chlorine.^[3] Elemental chlorine was first discovered during localised investigations by Mars rover Sojourner, and has been confirmed by Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity. The Mars Odyssey orbiter has also detected perchlorates across the surface of the planet.

The NASA Phoenix lander first detected chlorine-based compounds such as calcium perchlorate. The levels detected in the Martian soil are around 0.5%, which is a level considered toxic to humans.^[4] These compounds are also toxic to plants. 

Somewhat less than comforting is the following from Space.com:

In many ways, managing calcium perchlorate exposure on Mars is viewed as no different than managing for example, uranium, lead or general heavy-metal-contaminated areas in modern mines, where dust suppression, dust extraction and regular blood monitoring are employed. Other ideas suggested by the study team include a wash-down spray that can clean suits and equipment of dust deposits.

Managing uranium, lead or general heavy metal contaminated areas in modern mines? Ripe for habitation so. 

And then there’s the atmosphere, or rather the dust in the atmosphere:

The potential danger to human health of the fine Martian dust has long been recognized by NASA. A 2002 study warned about the potential threat, and a study was carried out using the most common silicates found on Mars: olivine, pyroxene and feldspar. It found that the dust reacted with small amounts of water to produce highly reactive molecules that are also produced during the mining of quartz and known to produce lung disease in miners on Earth, including cancer (the study also noted that Lunar dust may be worse).^[9]

Let’s not even get into how the lower gravity of Mars is depicted, or not, in the film, to judge from the trailer (unless of course it’s all a big hoax and a final act reveal points to them actually being on Earth).

If global civilisation collapses guess where’s a good place or five to be? July 31, 2021

From the Guardian a report on a study that has determined that:

New Zealand, Iceland, the UK, Tasmania and Ireland are the places best suited to survive a global collapse of society, according to a study.

The researchers said human civilisation was “in a perilous state” due to the highly interconnected and energy-intensive society that had developed and the environmental damage this had caused.

And:

A collapse could arise from shocks, such as a severe financial crisis, the impacts of the climate crisis, destruction of nature, an even worse pandemic than Covid-19 or a combination of these, the scientists said.

To assess which nations would be most resilient to such a collapse, countries were ranked according to their ability to grow food for their population, protect their borders from unwanted mass migration, and maintain an electrical grid and some manufacturing ability. Islands in temperate regions and mostly with low population densities came out on top.

Lovely. Though I wonder if there was a global crisis, say an asteroid strike or something along those lines, and people were fleeing from the European continent would any island state be able to do anything much in that situation to – ahem – ‘secure’ their borders. And should they? 

Places that did not suffer “the most egregious effects of societal collapses and are therefore able to maintain significant populations” have been described as “collapse lifeboats”, the study said.

New Zealand is better!

New Zealand was found to have the greatest potential to survive relatively unscathed due to its geothermal and hydroelectric energy, abundant agricultural land and low human population density.

Of course – and the piece notes that some billionaires have woken up to this – that’s all very well. But the study notes that global resilience has to improve. And I’d add forethought and effort to avoid the sort of calamities that it discusses is necessary. Or to put it a different way, let’s not have to head for the collapse lifeboats in the first place. 

BTW, why not Japan? Earthquakes?