Oh my word the Cummings and Goings around Dominic Cummings, the U.K’s prime minister top aid isn’t going away at all. You see the U.K. is all about fairness. A Government that doesn’t follow the rules they themselves have imposed on millions of law abiding citizens, will have to deal with the U.K. public and feel the unfairness of rules for them and us.
Just after the daily news briefing finished the U.K. Civil Service sent a tweet, see below.
“Arrogant and Offensive. Can you imagine having to work for these truth twisters?”
This is a brilliant response by the Civil Service, who is supposed to be impartial. Unfortunately that hero(in), who obviously has access to the Twitter account on their mobile will inevitably be sacked. But what a great thing to do on behalf of the U.K. people.
So the U.K. Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, basically told the country in no uncertain terms that he backs Dominic Cummings 100% and suggests that he followed his instincts by travelling 260 miles to isolate with his parents, so they could look after his children. Action that the U.K. government told us time after time not to take and instead to stay home and isolate.
I believe this story won’t be going away anytime soon.
Here is a link to the Guardian, which includes another witness statement who allegedly saw Cummings also on a different occasion, where he travelled to the North, whilst he should have stayed at home under U.K. lockdown rules.
Today, was the first time in years that I washed my car. Normally I would go to the hand car wash, support the local economy and save myself a job to be honest. They always do a great job in such a small amount of time. But of course with social distancing these operations have all shut down, possibly to never reopen again in some cases.
I probably didn’t have the right equipment to be fair, but just using a bucket and sponge did the job. It was a beautifully sunny, warm and windy day, so it all dried off quite quickly, probably to quick actually.
Before I did that I took a whole load of wood, left over from the kitchen improvement project to the recycling centre and because they have strict social distancing in place, I had to queue for about ½ hour, which was fine, lucky for me I could park directly by the wood bin, so good job done there!
After that, I put my feet up and watched a bit of Netflix, not much but one of my favourite series at the moment, Forumla 1.
Then I came across some news trending about the top aid of Boris Johnson’s, Dominic Cummings. This is going to a hell of a storm, you watch!
Today was definitely a strange day. During conversations with my darling wife Clair, I came up with an observation. It was based on what she was sharing with me and the attitudes of some people she was in contact with.
During this COVID19 period, it is going to be very tough for those who have become used to the habit of working to earn a living in order to do the things they love doing.
This year of course, they won’t be able to spend their hard-earned cash on that many things, unless you love having Amazon deliver non-stop to your doorstep. I am talking about trips, holidays away from the home. Of course some won’t heed the warnings and go travelling anyway, but some folks will stay put and that means the purpose of the job to earn money and enjoy it for one main purpose has gone, well for now anyway.
It means the purpose of the job has to change, you have to start enjoying the job, you have to appreciate the people you work for and you have to respect that for now at least you need to put more into the job, because there’s nothing else for now. Of course many people have lost their jobs and many are sitting at home furloughed, with money in the bank and to do what they please. But doing what you please won’t be that much either, so it is still a dead-end road.
It certainly is a major time for reflection.
Today we heard that clothing sales in the U.K. are down 50%. Now most will gasp in horror and many clothing companies may go bust as a result, resulting in a lot of job losses and that is indeed very regrettable. However it does show that we already have the clothing we need in our wardrobes and it shows that we don’t need as much as we thought. It has saved us from spending millions, we don’t have and causing major pollution on the planet in the process. Very interesting, I bet more stats like these will be made public over the coming weeks and months.
I came across this video by JP, which is quite hysterical.
[embed]https://youtu.be/7vAKMrZvIWo[/embed]
I’m a podcaster and heard from Russell Brand in one of his videos that Joe Rogan a very famous podcaster is leaving YouTube and going to Spotify in September the princely sum of $100 million. Wow, this is major news, now I know I’m nowhere as famous as Joe Rogan, but nevertheless I’m in the space, so will need to have a think what I could be doing that will elevate podcasting in my world.
Spider at home in the bath — wonder if she knows what’s going on!
I am spending a lot of my time helping our student drummers get to grips with their broadband and WiFi connections, including my Taiko teacher. Often the workings of their equipment too. I have mentioned this before in my writings during this time, people are just not equipped with either the right technology/hardware, proper broadband speeds and understanding of their WiFi. Really it is a minefield.
I shared the post below recently to share a site in the U.K. where people can throughly check what they can get for their money in terms of Broadband etc. Hope it will be helpful to folks.
Then saw on Twitter this analysis of the USA epidemic in terms of if they had taken action just one week earlier, what it would have meant regarding the number of deaths. Very alarming indeed!
Today was the hottest day of the year and it means the people in the U.K. go slightly mad. They are not used to hot weather, however I must say, since the lockdown, we’ve been have amazing weather, probably the driest weather I have witnessed in the UK for decades.
As the image above suggests, people in the U.K. are travelling many miles to sit on the beaches, whilst not adhering to social distancing rules. I picked up the image from a Twitter post, see below.
There’s a comedian here in the U.K., Russell Kane, I do find him hysterical. He does a piece on YouTube regularly called Kaneing. Basically he has a go at the U.K. about anything that wrangles him. Of course the beach picture got him going, the video is below for your amusement.
There could be offensive language used in the video below, not suitable for minors.
The image above is from a construction site I walk past when I take ‘Pip the Dog’ for a walk in the mornings. As you can see, the procedures are very well laid out and clear, I thought, I was well impressed. However I saw several construction workers very close to each other, i.e. within 1/2 metre of each other and not wearing any PPE. Interesting!
Today was the first time since the start of lockdown that I actually interviewed someone for my ‘Share Your Story’ Podcast. I really enjoyed it and I have to say I have missed it. My guest was David Wynn, an Executive & Leadership Coach & Mentor. He lives in Scotland, but lucky for me his Scottish accent wasn’t too bad actually. I really enjoyed chatting with him. Of course I had him give me and the podcast listeners some tips in terms of how to deal with this whole COVID19 situation and I even share one of my personal challenges and habits at the moment, so do tune in and I hope you will get something from it. Link is below.
The rest of my day was spent on Taiko West — Taiko Drumming, mainly technology based stuff. Tiring to say the least you need a lot of brain cells to figure these things out.
Also came across this story on Twitter and felt it was symptomatic of what’s happening to all of us in Lockdown and it’s Mental Health Awareness week as well!
The biggest news for me today was the report on Centivax’s successful testing in 3 independent laboratories of their antibodies. See link to the article below. These antibodies could be used to create drugs or potentially vaccines. I’m not a big fan of vaccines or drugs, but obviously do believe this may have to be a necessary intervention during these scary days on the planet. And I warned to both Jacob Glanville and Sarah Ives in Netflix’s Pandemic.
In other news, we started output second week this week with delivering Taiko drumming lessons online and live. There’s always lots to do, like updating the online resources website pages for our students and liaising with them on their technical issues, it’s certainly keeping me busy.
A nice quiet day — it seems all calm out there and hardly anyone on the streets. Bliss!
Not much to report about me, except that I’ve decided to start cycling in addition to walking Pip as part of my half-lockdown regime. Watch this space, at least it gives me something to write about!
Listening to the news today the views of Government, Teacher, Parents, Medical Science are all at odds with each other when it comes down to sending kids back to school starting on the 1st June. I’m curious as to what might happen in the end.
The number of cases are still too high, the death toll so far is huge in the UK and the government should be apologising for getting it so wrong, but instead they are beating the drum of ‘we followed the medical science and we’re still following the medical science’. It’s very clever having people at lecterns telling the country that they are the best in the world, but to me the best in the world is still New Zealand!
It’s cleve keeping a 7-day rolling average, but the average daily cases is still around 3–4,000 cases every single day. That’s huge and potentially very dangerous. See figures below.
I’m a couch Formula 1 fan for many years and I support Lewis Hamilton, from the very start of him becoming a Formula 1 driver. Obviously the Formula 1 2020 season was about to start when COVID19 hit. I remember reports from Formula 1 suggesting they would go ahead and Lewis Hamilton was very much against it at the time. Well done Lewis for being a lone voice at the time. So of course no Formula 1 season as such. But, what I did find by accident is a brilliant series on Netflix, titled drive to survive. I started watching series one last Sunday and I’ve just started on series two. It’s a brilliant insight documentary into the lives of the drivers and the teams, including the principals in charge of the teams. Many clips and highlights of the races and brilliant quality of filming. If you are a Formula 1 fan you will definitely enjoy this series. Check out “Formula 1: Drive to Survive” on Netflix
Saturday is becoming a day for chores and mainly because Clair goes to her Mum’s to do her cleaning for her as she has to be shielded as she is in the vulnerable category.
I also spent quite a bit of time, Taiko drumming practice, seeing as we learnt two new songs last week. It’s quite interesting to practice two new songs and they haven’t as yet become muscle memory, so definitely I need to do a lot more practice.
I’m noticing the weather in the U.K. has been very dry, is this just a coincidence or is it because we have less pollution in the air from air traffic and car traffic? We will probably never know.
Below is the U.K. Gov Data for today. One thing to note is that by the 1st May, the Office for National Statistics reports that deaths in the U.K. were actually 9,082 higher compared to the figures by the Department for Health and Social Care. So every time we’re being told that the figure is x which is 34,500 at the moment, you might as well add at least 10,000 to that figure. I’ve said previously we’ve just become immune to the amount of people that are dyeing each day. I clearly remember that when we heard of the amount of deaths in Italy and Spain we gasped and now we become more interested in getting back to ‘normal’, whatever that ‘normal’ might be.
I can’t remember now which day it was, but Dr David Nabarro definitely is the first person I’ve heard during lockdown who makes perfect and complete sense about his assessment in terms of where we are in connection with the evolving COVI19 crisis. Do check him out, I believe this guy has it 100% right. Below I’m embedding one of his tweets.
I discovered Michael Spicer’s comedy videos on YouTube the other day and bizarrely someone mentioned it to me whilst on a video group call too.
Here’s one where he’s working in the back room during the U.K. government daily briefings, whilst Mat Han(cock) the UK’s Health Secretary is on.
[embed]https://youtu.be/osgcTSVt7eU[/embed]
When we went into lockdown I decided to start a weekly group video call. I call it LinkedIn Lunch. You may wonder why it’s called LinkedIn Lunch. Well it’s a long story but briefly I used to do LinkedIn training and years ago started a business networking event in the city of Birmingham UK and I decided to hold it at lunchtime. The purpose of it was to have people who were connected to each other meet face to face – in person and have lunch together. It was successful to start with but then after a while nobody came so I killed it. Of course now or rather before lockdown we had something called Linked Local which has exactly the same idea. I’m always ahead of the curve with my idea.
Anyway I decided to start LinkedIn Lunch again but this time of course virtually and not on Zoom or Microsoft’s teams but simply using Google Meet as it has now been renamed. Google have had a real identity crisis with their video call product and it used to be called Google Hangouts, Google chat, more recently it was called Google hangouts meet, it’s a real mess. But the product is simple and quite useful because you can schedule it in your Google Calendar and it automatically will assign a Google meet url. However you do need to have Gsuite, but only to host it you can attend without having Gsuite.
Anyway I’ve hosted about 4 of these now and in the first three only had 1 person show up, but today 3 people showed up and I must say it was a scream, we had so much fun and a great giggle.
Apart from that I spent 2½ hours helping my Taiko drumming teacher set up his router and Wifi inside his house. The major issue were his flipping BT extenders and no matter what we tried they wouldn’t speak to the router. We had to give up in the end and I felt really deflated afterwards.
It was a busy day with many calls. Two support calls, helping people with some of their IT issues or confusion around what they were doing. All of these are just as a result of poor education in Technology to be fair. The UK is in a poor place in terms of its understanding of Technology. The move to online has put a lot of pressure and frustration into people’s lives, especially our older generation.
Then I had a Microsoft Teams call with STEAMhouse who will hopefully be able to assist me with pushing forward with my ideas around augmented reality. I was a member of STEAMhouse previously and the support I got wasn’t much use to me, this time around I am hoping that it will be much better as they are set up to support small businesses in a different way. I was impressed with what I heard, so staying optimistic and hopeful for how it will all unfold.
Comparing New Zealand vs the UK in terms of the handling of the COVID19 outbreak. The video below, see on Twitter, explains it very well. We have failed on so many levels.
In the thread of this tweet I found a link someone posted to a petition and I am sharing that link below and the text from their website. I do sincerely hope there will be a public enquiry, as I do believe the Uk has failed badly in preventing the spread of the virus outbreak.
We need a full public inquiry into the UK response to the coronavirus crisis.
The UK is currently on course to be the worst-hit European country, suggesting systemic failings in the approach taken to tackle the coronavirus outbreak.
The number of lives lost may jump further when we account for the inadequate reporting of coronavirus casualties in the community and in care homes, which raises questions about government honesty in documenting the crisis.
We have already had several scandals, including the ‘herd immunity’ strategy, dropping contact tracing, woefully inadequate Covid-19 testing, and a slow, half-committed initial response while other European countries locked down fast. Combined, these have likely cost many lives.
There has also been a shocking dearth of support for the NHS with key supplies (such as PPE and ventilators),despite opportunities to obtain such supplies from standard NHS suppliers or international sharing & procurement programmes. This has endangered our frontline staff and patients alike.
Finally, a pandemic simulation in October 2016 warned of these supply risks and related issues, yet this government irresponsibly chose not to act on the warnings, leaving our NHS and public vulnerable to a pandemic.
We cannot ever again leave our NHS so under-resourced, expecting brave elderly doctors to return from retirement to save our lives only to lose theirs, and leaving frontline staff to treat patients dressed only in bin bags and thin surgical masks. All political leaders must now commit to an inquiry to identify what has gone wrong, learn the lessons, and ensure it never happens again.
You can help start this essential process by signing our petition for a full public inquiry into the UK government’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak.
And then there’s the USA. The tweet below says enough. Being on the cover of Time magazine for the wrong reasons!
Starting off with some amazing news. A few weeks ago I told my Taiko drumming teacher about the possibility of being able to obtain a grant from the U.K. arts council in view of the fact that he’s currently not able to earn from his physical classes he used to deliver pre Covid19. I came across the detail in an email I received from a local arts group. He mentioned to me that he too had seen it but didn’t hold out much hope and the system for applying is antiquated and really awful. I suggested what if I helped him with it. He said a reluctant yes, but it wasn’t his priority at the moment. Anyway the deadline was looming, so we went online and basically figured it out. He was right the system they use online is rubbish and confusing and if you don’t have any IT knowledge you’d be struggling quite a bit. Nevertheless we did manage to submit firstly the eligibility questionnaire and secondly the application. We submitted it 40 minutes before the deadline. So yesterday he received confirmation that he would be receiving the grant, amazing news.
But now more steps were required. We had to go back on the system and confirm and acknowledge the grant offer. Then we also had to submit bank details but there wasn’t anywhere to do that so we left it as I suspected they first had to acknowledge that we’d completed step 1. I was right another email did arrive and now tomorrow we will complete the last step. Happy days.
I spent some time myself practicing a new song we all learned online on Monday. It was quite satisfying that I could do it.
Bradley, my stepson is now an affiliate on Twitch which means he can earn money from his gaming efforts. Fantastic news. Clair came across this on a Facebook. If you wish to follow his gaming efforts you can find him via his Twitter handle.
[embed]https://twitter.com/BradleeCopper[/embed]
In other new the U.K. government is suggesting schools start a gradual return starting 1 June 2020. Not all teachers are very happy about this. See link to article in the Huffpost below.
And so the confusion continues, here are some soundbites I heard today:
You can meet with one person outside of your household outside in the open air as long as you stay 2 metres apart.
You can meet with your parents (they would obviously outside of your household), so that means 2 people outside your household?
The trouble with our politicians is that they are robots, they are not human, except when they’re up for election, then they will have a camera crew come into their kitchens, to show they can make a salad. During these times when clearly our politicians got things wrong, over promised what they could deliver and then try and prove through lies that they got it right all along. Non of them ever apologises for when they do get it wrong and of course they do get it wrong all the time. They then say we shouldn’t politicise things during a health crisis, but the ones that clearly are doing that are the ones in charge during this time, they create spin all the time. You only need to look at Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, they are the biggest spin and puppet masters we have ever witnessed in the western world.
And then they keep changing the data slides every few weeks, so nobody can actually get hold of something that looks wrong with the data and challenge the presenters. The data is all we can actually try and rely on and we can’t even trust what we’re being told.
The new data slides are below and here is the terrible evidence of what they have tried to keep from us, the death rate is far greater than originally presented. There are a further 9,081 deaths in the UK up to May 1.
Up to 1 May, the Office for National Statistics reported a total of 36,591 deaths registered in the UK where COVID-19 was mentioned on the death certificate. This includes cases without a positive test and suspected cases.
Up to 1 May, the DHSC reported a total of 27,510 deaths where COVID-19 was confirmed with a positive test.
And to leave you with a bit of humour, although a super serious event nevertheless. This is Sara Cooper who dubbed Donald Trump a few weeks ago when he came out with this ridiculous notion that you can inject the body with disinfectant!!
It is purely by chance that the above image I created a few days ago, appears on this day. The very day that my Taiko drumming teacher and I launched the start of a 5 week Taiko drumming course. We are delighted that many of the Taiko West students have signed up to this course and this evening we had our first online session, which was attended by 19 Taiko drummers. Seeing as we had already done 3 weeks of free online classes, my teacher was very well prepared for the start of this course and it went really smoothly.
Furthermore some of the students have sent us very kind comments on the professionalism of the delivery, communication and resources that we are providing. This was really the highlight of my time in Lockdown!
Screenshot of our Taiko Class using Jitsi Meet — 11 May 2020
In other news, the UK government came under heavy criticism for their incredible mis-communication of the new guidance, moving gradually out of lockdown.
If you would like to read the full text of what has come out, you can do so below. I’m recording them here anyway, so when I look back on this in 10 years time I can reminisce on past events. 🥴
It looks like the UK goverment have ceased their daily briefings, I guess in view of the changed circumstances, but to be honest I think this is a big mistake, it pushes people into a false sense of security, we already know that reinfections are happening in South Korea and Germany, two countries held up as great examples of how they dealt with the outbreak. Basically the UK who have failed to live up to their standards, will fail even bigger. Remember the trend is your friend!
This is a great image someone sent me after their online attendance failed.
I’ve been providing some support for other onliners to get their equipment and WiFi working to the best of it’s ability. Broadband speed in the UK is quite poor still and this means that many people do struggle with their equipment and their enjoyment for attending online activities. This is one of the main barriers in taking part for people, plus their equipment is old and out of date too, mainly because they’re of an age that they really do not need to push their hardware to deal with the resources required for live online activities.
The big news today is the UK Prime Minister’s statement to the nation, which I suspect was watched by maybe at least half the nation. Below is the actual video of the statement.
[embed]https://youtu.be/bjvRhrJqNHI[/embed]
Despite the confident nature of his address, the communication has left many people totally in the dark as to what the new way forward is. Below is an image composite of the the current and revised guidance. On the left a very clear message repeated over and over, no ambiguity whatsoever, on the left the new guidance that has left many of us totally confused. What an absolute mess! Nobody really understands what ‘Stay Alert’ means, plus the border is now green, well in my book green means GO!, why wasn’t it coloured amber?
Furthermore the PM said that people who can’t work from home, should go back to work tomorrow, he announced this on Sunday night. Dominic Raab another Tory Tosser, said that the new measures come into force on Wednesday and that there will be a 50 page report coming out with guidance for businesses before then!
For me Matt Lucas summed it up perfectly, his video tweet has had over 4 million views already. No other comments.
Banksy released this drawing the other day, depicting who are the real superheroes walking amongst us at this time. What a shame that the uK PM can’t honour them better by giving the British public better information.
In other news from me, I spent about 3 hours getting my Formula 1 racing fix, by watching the Netflix series, Drive to Survive. A real great insight to the Formula 1 teams, their drivers and the ups and downs of the billionaires and millionaires in their driving machines. Really fascinating.
Last night, during my last walk with Pip the Dog, there were a lot of VE Day people on the streets celebrating and in fact I noticed several neighbours ignoring the 2-metre distancing rule and as it started raining they then started walking back to their homes, whilst walking right across the road and pavement, very slowly too as they were drunk, which meant I couldn’t get passed them. Aaaargh! Yes it was stressful, but I have no idea why it affected me so much.
I came across a clip created by MSNBC, which portrays perfectly how Donald Trump is a total disaster for the planet and the American people. I found a couple more clips, which I added at the end. This will have your mouth drop to the floor.
Today I spent completing the week’s of journal entries, some of them very short, it’s really tough to write something significant, but I guess it doesn't matter as these words are only for me!
Other jobs today, catching up with the Pivot Podcast with Kara Swisher and Prof Scott Galloway, which gives me a real insight in to the current workings of the USA. Cutting back a small hedge on the drive so Clair’s car can park easier and doing the ironing pile, not much actually.
Its VE day in the UK and we’re celebrating 75 year anniversary since becoming a free world once again. It’s appropriate therefore that we’re all in lockdown and can be even more appreciative of being free, although right now it doesn't appear to be that way.
So it was a day off from work, but not a day off from chores and seeing as it was going to be a warm day, we did some laundry. Apart from that not much else to be fair. Okay I did have to sit at the computer for an hour or so and we ordered a new vacuum, Gtech Pro. Fingers crossed it will work beautifully for our home!
Everyone is talking about the anticipated relaxing of lockdown measures, which they hope will be announced on Sunday 10 May, by Boris Johnson, UK’s Prime Minster. I will be very surprised if we have any major announcements, this is going to be a very slow and painful opening up of the country. We probably wish that we would stay in lockdown a bit longer as the alternative is probably not worth having to go through with.
We watched the last few episodes of Ricky Gervais’ ‘After Life’.
All morning was spent doing things for Taiko West as usual. The amount of work is still quite large. Emailing folks with their passwords and sending surveys out.
Then an hour’s long call with James, 45 minutes for lunch and back at the screen at 1.45pm for a Taiko drumming class starting at 2pm. About 4/5 people there, saying 4/5 as one person’s technology failed.
A further discussion with James about process and procedures for next week, when paid classes start and doing loads of research on using DSLR cameras and GoPros as alternative webcams. There’s so much conflicting information out there, wow!
The whole online teaching of Taiko drumming is going quite well.
Feeling quite exhausted after this week, so looking forward to a day off tomorrow, a UK bank holiday for the 75 year celebration of VE day.
Oh wow, I know it’s getting repetitive now, it was another full on day with Taiko West, Japanese Taiko Drumming in the U.K.
First assisting one of the attendees with their technology issues.
I must say I’ve learned that people’s Tech/IT knowledge is really quite bad. Going online for people has been a real challenge. It’s not just the online bit most folks don’t even understand their own computers let alone their broadband speed and WiFi connnections.
Oh wow it’s a real mess and
We did another two classes so finished quite late again, 8.30pm.
Next week less pressure hopefully with just 3 classes throughout the week.
I’m not spending much time on my own business and my prospects/clients are on a massive go-slow at the moment, hopefully they’ll wake up from their slumber.
The days just merge into one blur to be honest. Decided to stop writing about my walk with Pip and instead focus on some of the bigger stories that have made an impact on me.
Today was again another busy Taiko West day, website work, emails and other things.
The biggest impact on me is the disgusting failure of the U.K. government to promise 100k tests per day and not achieving these now. What a massive failure! I couldn’t believe that Matt Hancock the health secretary in the UK was so smug when he confirmed that the testing totalled over 120,000, when he announced that on the 1st May 2020, that figure was in fact never true and the subsequent days figure confirmed this. When government officials are even bending the truth for their own personal gain whilst families are losing loved ones, it does make you think, whether you can ever really trust what comes out of their mouths and the answer is a resounding NO!
