2 big stories
Who’d have thought it? The achievement of the testing target on 30 April is already looking deeply shady, with the inclusion of posted tests included in that figure, plus allegations that even those posted weren’t actually usable. And now, subsequent data shows that the numbers are going backwards, not upwards. The solution, a new target. The distraction from failure – some relaxations in terms of going out and about.
Meanwhile, the European Union is predicting that its economy will shrink by 7.4% this year, the worst performance since World War II, with the economies of Southern Europe worst affected. With calls growing for support from the wealthier members for the poorer ones, what does this mean for the cohesion of the Union going forward? The Washington Post examines the issue dispassionately, which is good, because the British media are too busy to do so for us.
2 social media posts
Richard Kemp was first elected to Liverpool City Council in 1975, and has served for thirty-seven years. In this piece, he looks at how things have changed;
I remember the amazement when we were provided with complaints pads with three types of paper. You kept one, gave one to your constituent and sent one to the Council. Now we zip off emails and to prove our point can attach photographs to them. In 1975 the only way to communicate with our constituents was to go and knock on the door, have many surgeries and hold public meetings. Now public meetings are a thing of the past and we regularly get roasted on social media.
BBC Radio 6 has marked the death of Florian Schneider, of Kraftwerk (hat-tip to Jonathan Calder for putting that into my timeline)…
“It’s machine music”#kraftwerk on Tomorrow’s World in 1975 pic.twitter.com/yPOE45wfkE
— BBC Radio 6 Music (@BBC6Music) May 6, 2020
Andrew Hickey is respectful of their influence, and he knows his stuff…
And the same day as Millie Smalls, we also appear to have lost Florian Schneider. Two people who massively expanded the range of what pop music as experienced through the British charts could be.
— A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs (@500SongsPodcast) May 6, 2020
If you don’t follow his podcast, maybe you should?
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One Comment
“looking deeply shady”? It was, and is, plain dishonest…Gove praised health secretary Matt Hancock’s “amazing success in increasing testing”, which he said means the public will have “greater confidence” in the government as they move into the next phase of lockdown….However, I have even less confidence in government information after Hancock’s ‘fiddle factor’…
After all, If I claimed that I’d built a model of the ‘Titanic’ using 100,000 matches ( but 30,000 of those matches were still in their boxes) I don’t think it would count..
Yet another wheel has come off the governmenmt’s promises with the revalation that ALL the gowns from Turkey are being returned as ‘unsuitable’. In the mad rush to avoid the truth about PPE shortages it seems no-one checked if they met the standard required.
BTW..I watched Johnson’s PMQ…Deprived of his baying MPs, it was like watching some unfortunate trying to parry a rapier with a baloon on a stick.