People have spent the week getting very cross about flags, but really we should spend more time slagging off national anthems. They are all so dreadful.
And yes this was triggered by the singing before the rugby thing.
Every time I hear the national anthem I feel slightly less patriotic.
See I quite like the bit in rugby where they're all twatting each other, but they're always stopping it because of breaking some rule or other. It's impenetrable.
Fucking scrum, man. Whatever the fuck it is. They've been doing it for ages now and still fuck all.
This game is preposterous.
Even when they score it's impossible to tell what the fuck is going on.
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Bit of covid advice. If you think you might have covid, or have tested positive, the first thing to get is an oximeter. They're about £20 and easily available online.
They measure oxygen in your blood. If it's above 95%, you're good. If a bit below, you should call 111 or your GP. If significantly below, you should go to hospital.
It's a good fail-safe. But it also offers an objective assessment of your condition during a period in which you're liable to freak yourself out on the basis of your subjective assessments. They're tremendously reassuring.
You can't defeat nationalism *without* patriotism. People have a need to belong. Either the left and liberals have something to say about that, or they leave it to more sinister political forces.
Orwell wrote about this convincingly during the war. For some inexplicable reason people fail to grasp it. Now we're having to learn it all over again.
Many replies to this stress that you can't oppose Tories by doing the same thing as them. The entire point is that you express belonging without doing the same thing as them.
Aghast at the comments from Ursula von der Leyen here, or those from Clément Beaune and Emmanuel Macron in France. They're coming close to actively encouraging vaccine hesitancy. theguardian.com/world/2021/feb…
The suspicions they're voicing are nearly identical to the most common forms of vaccine hesitancy - specifically nervousness over the speed and reliability of authorisation. Whatever the political reasons behind it, it's intolerable.
It's particularly disgraceful from Macron, given France has a major problem with hesitancy. One poll suggested under 50% of people were planning on getting the vaccine.
Right yeah, so the missus and I totally got coronavirus. We tested positive last week and basically lost the last 10 days. We seem to be slowly recovering now and are hoping to be sort of OK to do most things by next week.
We had it mild, but I can tell you right now: This thing is no fucking fun at all, and even the mild version will sit you on your arse.
Anyway, crucial point: We were basically saints. We've been proper little goodie-two-shoes about the rules. We still got it. There's a lot of this thing about - be safe.
So many on the British right were seduced by nativism. They took Trump's election, coming right after the Brexit vote, as a totem of a new global status quo.
It is fascinating to now see them dissemble, downplay, delete, deny and redefine their support in a desperate scramble to reformulate their position.
Some will have a true moment of reflection about where this kind of politics leads. Others will try to salvage their reputation, as they suddenly glimpse what a future evaluation of their behaviour will conclude. Others just want to preserve parts of the nativist project.
Without many people noticing, Anneliese Dodds is putting together a credible, deliverable left-wing economic programme which can maintain business support politics.co.uk/comment/2021/0…
Dodds is very impressive indeed - a properly big brain thinking hard about how to attract business support for Labour while simultaneously setting out a radical and sustainable Keynesian agenda.
I can' tell you what a relief it is to read her speech. This is someone thinking things through, trying to come up with a long-term framework, and reflecting a sense of national and historic responsibility.