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Wednesday 3 June 2020

Empty café



Yesterday we whizzed off for our first proper walk since lockdown began. It was one of our shorter walks because we knew we’d be out of condition – and we were. We discovered that while toiling up a hill which barely counts as a hill. It's one we’d hardly have noticed not so long ago. It became much easier once we’d climbed to the top but then we remembered - that’s how it works with hills. After that it was grand to be out again absorbing the views. 

Later we noticed that one of our favourite cafes was open for takeaway service but the place was empty unfortunately. It would be tragic if it went under but who wants a takeaway coffee unless they are in a hurry? After a walk we prefer to sit and chat and watch the world go by. 

It would be a major step forward if government and ‘experts’ could bring themselves to admit how tiny the individual risk is so we may as well go back to how things were. We may as well go back now and show a touch of optimism for a change.

Fat chance but that seems to be one of the great political divides – pessimism versus optimism, political versus apolitical. Political pessimism is the curse of our age and isn’t all health and safety. We are where we are in the pandemic debacle because we are governed by pessimist politics and unrelenting propaganda persuaded us to be pessimistic. It’s still working – the café is empty.

Want even more pessimism? Just look at Keir Starmer.

3 comments:

wiggiatlarge said...

Well the easing of the lock down means you can meet up to six friends as long as you social distance, though if you are protesting about the American policeman killing a black man in the USA you are it seems allowed to gather in thousands in Hyde Park with no social distancing and not a word is said about it, you just know it makes sense........

Sam Vega said...

I think that no government or politician could now "admit" to anything. It would simply be handing their enemies a big stick. "Sorry, we mucked up the entire economy because we believed the wrong experts" is a lot harder to say than "It would all be a lot worse had we not acted decisively, so listen out for further orders".

A K Haart said...

Wiggia - strange that isn't it? Yet Dominic Cummings supposedly spat in the eye of something or other.

Sam - yes cockups can be too big to fail and often are on the political stage. It shows up our adversarial politics as far too adversarial and much of that problem is down to the media.