In the June 2017 UK general election, Labour under Jeremy Corbyn came within a whisker of power. If just 2,227 votes had gone the other way, seven Tory knife-edge constituencies would have been won by Labour, putting Corbyn in a strong position to lead a coalition government.
On 12 March, British PM Boris Johnson informed the public that families would continue to “lose loved ones before their time” as the coronavirus outbreak worsens.
He added:
We’ve all got to be clear, this is the worst public health crisis for a generation.
A perception ‘gap’, so wide, you could sail a Cruise Liner through it. On the one hand, we have the looming spectre of recession; a major loss of jobs, and of earnings cratered (some 80% of the global workforce has seen their workplaces closed, or partly closed, as a result of the virus crisis), and on the other hand, the shocking non-sequitur of the U.S.
Boris Johnson. A man who has lived his entire life recklessly, selfishly, irresponsibly; without any regard for the consequences. Because he’s never needed to. His enormous privilege has protected him from any repercussions. He is a proven pathological liar, swaggering through the years with no empathy or concern for anyone but himself. Indeed, recently bragging about shaking hands with Corona […]
It should not be a matter of distinction, but Julian Assange is a figure who is becoming the apotheosis of political imprisonment. This seems laughable to those convinced he is an agent without scruple, a compromiser of the Fourth Estate, a figure best packed off to a prison system that will, in all assuredness, kill him.
Tony MCKENNA
I do not wish Boris Johnson to die. I only wish him to suffer.
As paradoxical as it might sound, I don’t mean this in a sadistic way. Suffering is part of the human life; it is as integral to our experience as the drawing in of air, or the feeling of sunlight against the skin. Hospitals are places of suffering; we suffer the fear and anxiety which comes from a loved one undergoing an operation. And we suffer the fear which comes from our own bodily being when we are ill or injured and we are wheeled into a hospital ward.
RT’s On Going Underground speaks to legendary journalist and film-maker John Pilger about the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. He discusses the fact that the Conservative government was warned about shortages leaving the NHS vulnerable in pandemics 4 years ago, the damage privatisation has done to the National Health Service, budget cuts which have seen bed capacities fall to record lows, his criticisms of the Boris Johnson administration’s response to Coronavirus, the lack of mass-testing in the U.K.
Ken Loach, one of Britain’s most acclaimed film directors, has spent more than a half a century dramatising the plight of the poor and the vulnerable. His films have often depicted the casual indifference or active hostility of the state as it exercises unaccountable power over ordinary people.
British newspapers delivered the grim news on their front pages Tuesday: Prime Minister Boris had been taken into hospital intensive care because his health deteriorated rapidly overnight from Covid-19 disease.
The Mirror splashed: ‘Sick Boris Faces Fight For Life’. Other newspapers conveyed similar shocked tones and the disquieting sense of a government in disarray. Who will lead the government if Johnson is incapacitated, they asked?
Scribes of the Julian Assange case must surely gawk with a sense of horrified wonder at each proceeding unfolding at the Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London. Assange is in a battle that can only be described as titanic, seeking to avoid the clutches of the US Justice Department, not to mention its legal system, and convince District Judge Vanessa Baraitser about the merits of that argument. The gigantic canvass confronting all participants in this squalid tale of vexation and oppression is the nature of journalism itself, and the central point of sharing confidential state informatio
