How ridiculous!

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The leaders of the Greek Orthodox Church have formally warned adherents against taking up yoga. The practice, they say, is “completely incompatible” with the Christian faith. In a statement last week, the church’s Holy Synod (the Patriarch and the most senior bishops) cautioned that yoga is not “a kind of physical exercise”, but rather a “fundamental chapter of the religion of Hinduism”.

There has long been a debate – not just in Greece – over whether yoga is an intrinsically Hindu practice. Yoga is cited in Indian texts dating back 2,500 years, and some of the asanas, or yoga poses, retain their earlier spiritual associations and names. However, many yoga classes seem (are. Ed.) devoid of spiritual content. In 2015, a Californian court – asked to rule on the subject – concluded that if a person doing yoga doesn’t consider his or her actions to be religious, then they aren’t.

(My reaction): Quite.  I have never met anyone who goes to yoga for religious reasons, although I have to admit I don’t know many practicing Hindus.  Millions of people who practice yoga do so for flexibility and strength.  Period. Others find it offers peace of mind.  In any case, it is both healthy (mostly) and harmless.  Would the Holy Synod kindly leave us rational people alone?

The British quarantine

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“Even by its own increasingly chaotic standards, the mess into which the Government has got itself over its new quarantine rules takes some beating,” said The Times. The new regulations – which came into force this week – require travellers to Britain to self-isolate for 14 days on arrival. This is “the wrong policy at the wrong time”. A 14-day quarantine would have “made sense” at the start of the pandemic – but instead, over the past three months, Britain, almost alone in Europe, continued to allow new arrivals from anywhere in the world, including virus hot-spots such as China and Iran, without so much as a temperature check.

Now, at the very moment that outbreaks in many popular travel destinations have been brought under control, and restrictions are being lifted across Europe, the Government has finally imposed a quarantine of its own. It will heap further misery on British tour operators and airlines, and will deter much-needed foreign visitors from coming to Britain during the summer months.

Tough border controls are popular with voters. According to YouGov, eight out of ten members of the public support the proposed £1,000 fines for failure to self-isolate on arrival in the UK, with the highest backing (83%) found among the working-class voters who gave Boris Johnson his huge majority in December. So the measures appealed to a PM keen to “find some ‘good news’ to announce amid growing criticism of the Government’s response to the pandemic”.

But they have gone down like a lead balloon elsewhere.  The policy has enraged airlines (BA, Ryanair and easy-Jet are threatening legal action), frustrated travellers and upset lawmakers – including many Tory MPs fearful of the economic damage. Border officials say it is unenforceable: they will have no capacity to check whether addresses provided by travellers are genuine. The alternative is to bar only those from high-risk countries.  This would be politically tricky: it would anger the US and President Trump. Either way, it seems likely that, with so many ranged against it, the policy will be “watered down, if not scrapped”, in time “to salvage at least some of the summer holiday season”.   (The Week, 13 June 2020)

My comment:  If you only have a short vacation and fancy a trip to England you will enjoy little but the inside of an hotel room.

Almost every day we are asked whether we will be visiting London this summer, and we explain we don’t think it is safe (the air bit, especially).  Air travel and two week’s quarantine is enough of a deterrent, but the likelihood of further spikes in the virus as well persuades me to stay put. Neither the American nor the British government have proved themselves managerially capable of fighting the virus effectively. This comes as no surprise.  In the old days, when scientists would have had the last word, one could have trusted government.  Not now.  We are staying at at home.

 

 

What ever happened to Brexit?

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 The EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, has confirmed that no progress has been made in the almost five months since the UK formally left the bloc. Britain has until the end of June to request an extension of the transition period, which is due to expire in six months’ time, but the Government has repeatedly ruled this out. So despite the fact that coronavirus has triggered the worst recession in peacetime history, it seems ministers are happy to let UK firms also suffer the consequences of a messy no-deal scenario at the end of the year.

“Brexit ultras” have sought to make a no-deal exit sound less scary by rebadging it as an “Australian-style” outcome, said Andrew Rawnsley in The Observer, but don’t be fooled: it would be “no picnic on Bondi beach”. The CBI says Covid-19 has left firms with “almost zero” resilience to a chaotic EU split. The hardest-hit areas would likely be those where many people voted Tory for the first time in 2019. Nissan has warned that a no-deal outcome could lead to the closure of its Sunderland car plant. Before last year’s election, Boris Johnson boasted that he had an “oven-ready deal”, but the only thing coming from his kitchen “is the smell of something burning”.

A no-deal exit would certainly hurt, said Camilla Cavendish in the FT, but there’s no point extending the transition period for a year or two if it just “prolongs the paralysis”. While the “skinny FTA” (free trade agreement) sought by UK chief negotiator David Frost is more complicated than the deals struck by Canada or Japan with the EU, an agreement is achievable in six months if the two sides put their minds to it. At the moment, Brussels is the one being unreasonable. Its demand that the UK adopt EU state aid rules in perpetuity, overseen by a foreign court, “seems aggressive and unrealistic – not least when only a month ago, German judges challenged the principle of European Court of Justice supremacy”. The EU could show more flexibility on this issue, agreed Wolfgang Münchau in the same paper. But the UK, for its part, needs to accept that it can’t wriggle out of commitments it has already made regarding a level playing field in future trade with the EU. “The job to find a compromise will fall to the EU German presidency, which starts in July. It is still all to play for.”. (The Week, 13 June 2020)

My comment:  Brexit inflicts another blow to the stricken UK economy.  One journalist commented that it is akin to “putting an anchor around the neck of someone trying to climb out of a deep hole”.  O.K, so no one foresaw Covid 19 or the wreckage it would  cause.  But what you do when your back is against the wall and the future of your country is that of an offshore island with little to offer, is to “compromise“, a word seldom used by the exponents of Brexit .  This is a national emergency, but you wouldn’t know it if you read the British daily news. 

Start again!

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Democracy being sidelined in th US…….

Recent events have exposed the inadequacy of the US democratic checks and balances created over200 years ago.  What’s required is a second American revolution  – and a fresh constitutional convention that demolishes anachronisms like the electoral college, makes democracy work for all, and refocuses on constructive global engagement.  (Guardian Weekly 29 May 2020)

……… And in Britain a concentration of power……..

John Harris,  in The Guardian“

If there’s one thing this crisis has underlined, it’s the calamitous way in which power in Britain is concentrated at the top. Time and again, Downing Street has grandly issued edicts that just don’t match the reality on the ground.

Take the PM’s sudden switch from a “stay at home” to a “stay alert” policy. It had huge implications for transport and health systems; yet the leaders of Scotland and Wales were given no part in the decision (and so have stuck to their lockdowns), and mayors and council leaders in England were taken by surprise. “The first I knew of it,” Newcastle City Council leader Nick Forbes told me, “was when I saw it on TV.”

It’s the same with testing. It is councils that have the forensic knowledge required for post-test contact tracing; yet they’ve been bypassed. Instead, Health Secretary Matt Hancock has relied on a centralised system of call centres run by big private firms whose newly recruited staff have received cursory training. And on top of this policy neglect, councils are still being hit by cuts in central funding. This pandemic has shown that dispersal of power must now be a priority. “The old centralised game is over” (or should be).

My comment:  I see here a conundrum.  As a supporter of Epicurus I am expected to eschew politics and politicians.  But what happens when right wing governments, as in the US and the U.K, ignore the democratic process and dissenting voices, lying about everything in sight and leaving the average citizen powerless?  Is this a way of fostering peace of mind? (or simply peace?). And does ataraxia prevail when you have parties in power parcelling out key jobs to their chums for their own enrichment and for election funds?  Grubby corruption is not confined to Asian and African countries.

Time the rich helped out

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A rich opportunity

To The Daily Telegraph

Should the rich set an example when the nation’s debts soar? Stanley Baldwin, the first Tory leader to use the phrase “one nation”, thought so.

In a famous anonymous letter of June 1919, signed FST – he was financial secretary to the Treasury at the time – he announced that he was giving a fifth of his wealth, £120,000 (some £6.5m today) to help his debt-ridden country after the First World War. He added that “the wealthy classes have today an opportunity of service which is so vital at the present time”. He anticipated at least £1,000 million; no more than £500,000 was received.

Are the rich doing better today? It would be interesting to find out. Our wealthy PM and his well-heeled adviser could show the way, with the support of those who find they can spare millions for the Tories at election time.

Lord Lexden (Con), London. ( published in The Week, 6 June 2020)

My comment: Bezos, the richest man in the world, owns Amazon.  He deserves his wealth and success, but one might think it appropriate for him to give generously to charity in the present circumstances. The people who helped him to success are hurting at present.  Could he be giving anonymously or on the quiet?  I think we would know if he is.

If such people if cannot give from the heart, especially in a crisis, then they should be taxed at the same percentage as their secretaries.  Bezos could get so much goodwill and even encourage sales by being seen to give back to the society that made him.  (Some hope!)