Monday 20 April 2020

Fixed - Damned if You Do.....


Mower fixed! Garden mown!


The actuator for the clutch was rotationally misaligned by a couple of centimetres, resulting in the clutch being engaged, despite the lever being in the disengaged position.

Complaints are being made that BAME deaths due to the pandemic are not being recorded separately, despite it being recognised than BAMEs are disproportionately hit. If they're not being recorded, then how can the conclusion be reached that BAME deaths are disproportionate? Something's not quite right in the conclusion.

Record the ethnicity of criminals and the authorities are blamed for discrimination, don't record ethnicity in the pandemic and the authorities are once again accused of discrimination. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

There's no denying that BAMEs are highly represented within the NHS and are therefore disproportionately exposed to Covid. Asian people tend to live in larger generational groups, increasing the risk of transmission (which is one of the reasons you won't find many elderly Asian people in care homes - they're looked after by the family). Black people are more likely to feature in the poorer section of the population and, again, be at higher risk as poverty is a key indicator of health. However, the above applies to many white people too - it's simply demographics at work. Work in the NHS on low pay, live in a large generational group in overcrowded conditions and you're likely to increase the risks to yourself and your family - it doesn't matter what ethnicity you are. It's no more surprising than elderly people in care homes or people with a pre-existing health condition featuring high in the death toll. It's not exactly rocket science.

Turning to lockdown shaming; it's being reported by the police that this is being used to settle old scores. I simply can't believe that, but while I'm here I'd like to mention I could have sworn I saw Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock and Dominic Raab taking long, unnecessary journeys...

Part of me thinks those that flout the rules should just be allowed to get on with it - it'll improve the nation's average IQ. However, they'll also put additional pressure on the NHS, which ain't so good.

Ever noticed how when you go on holiday you fall victim to all manner of ailments for the first week? Since work closed down I've been suffering from sciatica, I developed a torn intercostal in my chest yesterday and I'm developing a nice ulcer on my tongue. While we can seem to hold ailments at bay while at work, the move to sudden relaxation tends to crash the immune system - not that my muscular or sciatic nerve problems are the result of a depressed immune system. Yet it's a well known medical phenomenon that people fall ill at the onset of the longer holiday periods, probably due to the higher levels of anxiety just before the holiday to clear the backlog of work.

On an unrelated issue; a gunman has killed 16 people in Canada. Police are at a loss to determine the motive. I've been reading Jordan Peterson's "12 Rules for Life" over the last few days and the answer lies within in this brilliant book, where Peterson analyses the nihilism prevalent in mass killers. I highly recommend the book, although it has become increasingly difficult to obtain a copy on Amazon.

Peterson posits, quite logically, that to determine the motive behind such people you simply have to ask them - the ones that are apprehended before killing themselves, that is, as most of them do. If they kill themselves, then merely read their manifestos. He maintains these people believe humanity to be a scourge and that the world would be a better place without humans, themselves included, which is the reason they invariably turn their weapons on themselves or invite being shot by the police.


1 comment:

Roger said...

Well done in getting the mower fixed :-)