... Never mind. We were soon rejoicing again because Carrie had had a baby. Yet the natives were still restless, stuck indoors, home-schooling their kids and Zooming. So they let us visit garden centres. The Queen was rolled out again for VE Day. And they knighted Captain Tom. He ended up raising £39m, against an original target of £1,000. Amazing. Would he have been honoured for the £1,000? The actual walking would have taken no less effort, his personal achievement no smaller. Of course not.

The difference was a PR-savvy daughter and a government/country desperate for something joyous.

We needed it. We now have the highest death toll in bald numbers in Europe and, last week, the highest daily toll per capita in the world. But, having spent seven weeks proclaiming our “success” in combating the virus, they suddenly declared international comparisons “unhelpful” once we’d claimed the European championship...

... People are dying. The economy is wrecked. We’re heading for a no-deal Brexit precipice. And still they use words like “fantastic” and “world-beating”. This isn’t a competition; we don’t want to beat the world. We just want our families kept safe and to be able to hold our mum’s hand as she dies. Instead we’re living in an Orwellian dystopia ‘led’ by an absentee prime minister of Churchillian delusion who signed up for the glory, not the gory. A man devoid of integrity, insight and ideas; a man totally lacking the appetite, application or ability to perform the job attached to the title he craved...

... A senior European Union official said last week that Britain’s financial services sector should be ready for a no-deal Brexit. Britain wants binding commitments from the EU on financial market access to avoid the country’s finance industry suddenly being cut off from the bloc, a request Brussels has rejected, EU officials and diplomats said on Tuesday. – Reuters

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/bank-of-england-tells-banks-to-get-ready-for-no-deal-brexit-1.4269591

. .. In recent weeks vocal independence supporters and backers of the former First Minister Alex Salmond, specifically the former UK diplomat, human rights campaigner and journalist Craig Murray along with fellow journalist Mark Hirst, have been arrested and charged in relation to comments they made publicly during and following the trial of Mr Salmond. Other supporters of Mr Salmond have also been contacted by police and warned over online comments they made in the wake of the trial.

We are particularly concerned to note that the investigating police officers are the same detectives who led the investigation against Mr Salmond over a period of two years and at considerable cost to the public purse.

As you know, the prosecution following from that investigation, pursued again at considerable cost to the public purse, resulted in the acquittal of Mr Salmond on all charges and now raises the most serious questions about why that investigation and that prosecution were pursued.

Whilst we appreciate that you cannot be involved in individual cases you will undoubtedly be aware that complaints of alleged Contempt of Court were made against six other individual journalists widely regarded as being hostile in their reporting of Mr Salmond. No action by the Crown Office or Police Scotland has been taken against any of those individuals. This leaves the distinct impression that Police Scotland, at the direction of the Crown Office, is acting in a manner that is both biased and disproportionate...

https://www.thenational.scot/news/18486299.global-stars-rally-back-salmond-supporters-contempt-case/

It is now certain. We will emerge from lockdown grieving for those lost and yearning for our previous lives, only to crash into a recession. As much as we dream of visiting our favourite cafe or pub, it’s not clear they will remain after the virus has run its course. Already reality heaves into view. The hospitality industry is being battered. One in four restaurants in the US is expected never to reopen. Amazon is finishing off the retail sector. Small businesses, cafes, online retailers and clothes designers are struggling. Loved and carefully nurtured ventures, operating on the thinnest of margins, are dying out. Every few days another one of them posts its goodbyes. We think of the world as how we left it. But that world is gone...

Even establishment bastions turned against the current political order. The Financial Times wrote that “radical reforms – reversing the prevailing policy direction of the last four decades – will need to be put on the table”. Emily Maitlis looked straight at the BBC Newsnight camera and slated the inequalities of the pandemic. Rightwing governments in Britain and the US scrambled to pay people to stay at home. Surely, all these things point to a revolution... Some hold out for further changes, anticipating the introduction of low-carbon jobs to replace those lost, or a universal basic income, or rethinking the value of labour altogether...

In reality, the first thing that happens in a recession tends not to be radical reengineering of the economy. The first impulse is to make a quick calculation: who should be saved and who is dispensable. In the US after the 2008 crash, the banks were recapitalised and the economy stabilised, and 10 million Americans lost their homes. The only factor that mattered was how many people could be lost without disrupting the economy for everyone else. That question is already being asked with regard to the current lockdown. How many deaths can we afford before the economy suffers?...

In the final stages, policies to help the vulnerable launched at the start of the pandemic will be quietly jettisoned... After this will come the scapegoating of the vulnerable. Who took more than their share in furlough? Who wasn’t alert? A chorus of reactionary voices is already lining up for this task... History shows us that whatever horrors a crisis exposes, they can be covered up in the shattered aftermath. Yes, we must imagine the new world that needs to come out of this crisis: but it will not come to pass without a fight.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/18/revolution-history-fight-back-coronavirus-policies-vulnerable

http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/05/who-says-russia-now-at-epicenter-of.html?m=1

The number of cases of coronavirus infection in Russia continues to rise approximately 10,000 each day. As a result, it now stands at 262,000. And today, the World Health Organization said that Russia, along with Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan is the epicenter of the epidemic (charter97.org/ru/news/2020/5/15/376582/).

But the number of reported deaths from the pandemic in Russia remains remarkably low, the result, doctors, demographers and journalists tell the Meduza news agency of directives to ascribe to other causes deaths from the coronavirus in order to make the Russian government look good (meduza.io/feature/2020/05/14/prosto-zapreschayut-umirat-ot-koronavirusa).

There is a growing sense in Russia that despite that effort, the pandemic has undercut Putin’s image as a strong man in charge and that he is now appearing on television before the population to try to reverse that (themoscowtimes.com/2020/05/14/as-the-coronavirus-contagion-grows-in-russia-putins-strongman-image-weakens-a70257 and mk.ru/politics/2020/05/15/putin-v-pryamom-efire-povysil-podpolkovnika-po-sluzhbe.html).

But if the deaths can be misassigned and thus hidden, other developments cannot. Ever more Russian firms are in trouble, with ten percent now on the brink of bankruptcy and 51 percent saying they will cease operation if the current limitation regime is not ended within a couple of months (interfax.ru/russia/708794)...

http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/05/who-says-russia-now-at-epicenter-of.html?m=1

An Interpol notice has been circulated worldwide making Anne Sacoolas in effect a fugitive from justice if she sets foot outside her native United States...

Radd Seiger, a lawyer for the Dunn family, said Northamptonshire police had confirmed that the Interpol notice had been issued, adding that this meant in the Foreign Office’s view she did not have diplomatic immunity at the time of her initial arrest. “Red notices would not be served on valid diplomats,” he said. “It means she would be arrested if she sought to leave the United States.” He continued: “It is time for her to come back to the UK and on behalf of the family I urge the authorities both in London and Washington to make that happen. It is time to do the right thing.” He said she would receive a fair trial in the UK...

A red notice has been described as an international wanted person’s notice but is not in itself an arrest warrant.. . It cannot compel the law enforcement authorities in any country to arrest someone who is the subject of a red notice. Each member country decides what legal value it gives to a red notice and the authority of their law enforcement officers to make arrests.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/may/11/interpol-red-notice-issued-for-arrest-of-anne-sacoolas

... The US State Department continues to insist that at the time of the accident, and for the duration of her time in the UK, Ms Sacoolas had immunity from criminal jurisdiction.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/anne-sacoolas-wanted-interpol-red-notice-harry-dunn-death-a9508886.html

There is no current evidence to suggest that coronavirus leaked from a Chinese research laboratory, intelligence sources have told the Guardian, contradicting recent White House claims that there is growing proof this is how the pandemic began.

The sources also insisted that a “15-page dossier” highlighted by the Australian Daily Telegraph which accused China of a deadly cover up was not culled from intelligence from the Five Eyes network, an alliance between the UK, US, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

British and other Five Eyes agencies do believe that Beijing has not necessarily been open about how coronavirus initially spread in Wuhan at the turn of the year. But they are nervous about getting involved in an escalating international situation.

On Sunday Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, said: “I can tell you that there is a significant amount of evidence that this came from that laboratory in Wuhan.” No evidence was offered by Pompeo to back up his assertion...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/04/five-eyes-network-contradicts-theory-covid-19-leaked-from-lab

... Senior members of the Australian intelligence community told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age a research document shared in political circles under the Five Eyes intelligence arrangement was mostly based on news reports and contained no material from intelligence gathering.

A 15-page "dossier" has been widely quoted by local and international media about China's alleged cover-up of the virus. Australian intelligence officials have since identified a research report which was based entirely on open source material. The officials said it was likely the reports were the same.

United States secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed on Sunday there is "enormous evidence" the coronavirus outbreak originated in the Chinese laboratory but did not provide any facts to back up his assertion. Mr Pompeo also said he agreed that the virus was not man-made.

Multiple senior intelligence sources who spoke to The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in recent days have confirmed that Australia has still not been provided with any evidence that strongly suggests the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the source of the outbreak...

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/australian-intelligence-knocks-back-us-government-s-wuhan-lab-virus-claim-20200504-p54pk3.html