Junior is still living with his parents

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Nearly two-thirds of childless British single adults aged 20-34 have either never left the family home, or have moved back into it, according to new research into the “boomerang” generation. There are now an estimated 3.5 million young single adults living with their parents in the UK, a third more than a decade ago. (The Week 16 Dec 2020)

My comment: On a practical level this is a bad idea; bad for Mum who probably has to do the cooking and cleaning; bad for both parents who might have expected to have the house to themselves at last; and bad for the young adult, who should be spreading his or her wings, acquiring a home and maybe a spouse. In other words it isn’t historically normal. Even Neanderthals took themselves off to new caves, where they could more relaxedly entertain young Neanderthal girls.

This has been caused mainly by insecure, poorly paid jobs, and high house prices. It is not socially or economically healthy for any country. And now the young look forward to as yet unknown hazards outside the UK, foisted on them by backward-looking old buffers. Wisdom is a scarce commodity.

American renters

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In the midst of the worst pandemic since 1918, one only growing ever more severe as cases, hospitalizations, and deaths rise precipitously, if you haven’t lost your job or had your hours and wages cut back severely, if you can cover your rent or make your mortgage payments, you may not have noticed …..but more than 14 million American households are currently at risk of eviction and have an estimated $25 billion in rental debt, according to a report by Stout, a global investment bank and advisory firm. And 4.9 million of them are likely to receive eviction notices in January after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention eviction moratorium expires on December 31.”

It’s a fact of American life that millions more Americans will potentially be left homeless in a raging pandemic. This, in turn, only guarantees yet more Covid-19 victims from among evictees living in nightmarish, crowded quarters of one sort or another or simply finding themselves out on the streets of American cities in winter. It’s hard even to take in if it’s not happening to you (and maybe even if it is). In fact, behind all the pandemic and vaccine stories now filling the media lie any number of nightmarish tales that were already common in a country of raging inequality before the coronavirus landed on our shores, but that are now intensifying in ways that should be (but aren’t) headlines everywhere. (Tomgram, 15 Dec 2020, edited)

My comment: The United States was once a beacon of democracy and the rule of law. Now the very health and lives of poor people are under threat owing to pathetic games and messed up priorities of our so-called “leaders”. Those responsible should be deeply ashamed. This isn’t governance, it is game-playing and yah-booing.

A 2021 wish list

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Happy holidays to all the readers of Epicurus.Today!

May everything calm down
May the hungry be fed
May the US Constitution survive and even be strengthened
May the welfare of the citizens take precedence over political advantage
May the new Administration take over peacefully and may it be successful.
May everyone get vaccinated and the pandemic fade away
May those in danger of eviction remain in their homes
May those who have no jobs find new jobs as soon as possible
May the disruption of education be corrected

(Please comment, adding any (positive) other things that will add to the nation’s happiness and peace of mind)

Breakup of the “United” Kingdom

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Scottish independence: a matter of time?

Without rejuvenation, the Union will be gone within ten years. Brexit and Covid have combined to seal its fate. A recent Ipsos Mori poll found the highest ever level of support for independence, with 58% of Scots who have made up their mind saying they would vote Yes, and only 42% saying they would vote No. Among young voters, support for independence was even more clear-cut, with 79% of 16- to 24-year-olds opting for Yes. The pandemic has helped to make the case for separation, “in that it has already led to the effective reimposition of a border”. And although Edinburgh has made many of the same mistakes as London, Nicola Sturgeon has “cleverly” deflected the blame for any failings onto Westminster. As the poll also recorded, 72% of Scots are satisfied with Sturgeon’s performance, while 76% are dissatisfied with Johnson’s.

But the contest isn’t over yet. It’s worth noting that, though Scotland voted 62% to 38% to Remain in the Brexit vote, there was no sudden surge in support for independence after it. That has come about essentially because of the “personae of Sturgeon and Johnson” – the Scots’ affection for Nicola, and their dislike for Boris. With his approval ratings so low, Johnson will not allow a second independence referendum to happen on his watch. And when the time finally comes, a “whole range of other factors” will come into play, including the same tough questions, “about currency, pensions, the economy and whether Scotland will rejoin the EU”, that undid the Yes campaign in 2014.

To preserve the Union, we’ll have to tackle the consequences of devolution. It allowed the SNP to use the Scottish state to campaign for separation, while “hoarding enough power” in Westminster to allow them to blame London for all ills. The Covid crisis has exposed the absurdities of our “centralising and controlling government”. If the United Kingdom is to survive, it will need to decentralise, and make the four nations a “smarter and more coherent” whole.
(Dominic Lawson in The Sunday Times; Ian Swanson in the Edinburgh Evening News; Nick Timothy in The Daily Telegraph; and comments in the Sunday Times, 24 October 2020).

My comment: All this represents the inexorable trend towards breakup that comes with Tory obsession with centralization (but inability to govern justly when they do get power). Thus it has been for decades and the show will continue unabated until, who knows?, London becomes a city state and the rest of the country (what country) is left to get along as best it may. Cheerful prospect!

Renters in America

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Before the covid epidemic about 3.7 million evictions were filed for every average year. Most poor renter families spent at least half their incomes on housing, and about 1 in 4 of these families spent more than 70%, most of whom are Black (most White families own their own houses). Housing is the main driver of inequality.

The covid 19 epidemic, together with the economic crisis, has now put 30-40 million Americans in danger of losing a roof over their heads. In September the CDC issued a moratorium on most evictions until the end of the year. Some cities also banned evictions during the covid period. But the rent is still owing when the moratorium ends, and this ending could be a signal for mass homelessness.

My comment: In a rich country like the United States it is shameful that the shadow of homelessness should hover over so many people. The situation used to be similar in the UK, but the labour Party, after the Second World War, built thousands of “Council houses”, under the control of local authorities. Nothing fancy, in fact mostly ugly, but at least the rents were low and tenants were fairly secure (at least, until Mrs Thatcher came along and started selling them off (typical of the woman’s total absence of empathy – but don’t get me started!). American States and local communities should likewise be building housing for the very poor, away from the clutches of individual landlords. It’s the decent thing to do. Stop the evictions! (Guardian Weekly 6 November 2020)

Following on …..more Epicurean quotations

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Quotes on the thoughts of Epicurus (First part done 11/20/2020)

“If the gods listened to the prayers of men, all humankind would quickly perish, since they constantly pray for many evils to befall one another”. (The Essential Epicurus”, by Eugene O’Connor, Great Books in Philosophy series). Done Nov 2020

It is impossible to live pleasurably without living prudently, honorably and justly, and also without living courageously, temperately and magnanimously, without making friends, and without being philanthropic”. Philodemus

The idea that life’s objective should be pleasure was greeted with horror by contemporaries, who believed that man’s highest calling was self-sacrifice. dying for one’s country, self-denial and worship of the Gods, and the Emperor. The early christians regarded pleasure as a form of vice . To them the pursuit of pain triumphed over the pursuit of pleasure.

At the end of the 4th Century A.D Ammianus complained that the Roman Empire had lost its cultural moorings and had descended into a state of triviality, where scholarship was no longer respected and fewer and fewer people read anything at all. (Sound familiar?). ( used Dec 2020)

Epicureanism: Charity, Friendship, Foregiveness, suspicion of ambition and politics

My comment “The physical resurrection of the body and an afterlife are all part of a hoax on the simple-minded. The threat of hell is a means of keeping them in order. Resurrection is contradicted by science, the evidence of our eyes and by common sense. What is the point of listening indefinitely to out-of-tune celestial choirs in any case?

“The best things in life are not things”.

Catulent – a name you are probably unfamiliar with

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How will Moderna make the 100 million doses contracted for in the first quarter of 2021 and the 200 million doses it has to provide the federal government (for $3.2 billion) by the end of June?

A big part of the answer is outsourcing production to a contract manufacturer that will make the vaccine on Moderna’s behalf. The biggest of these companies is Catulent in Indiana. Catulent has dozens of factories around the world and makes 70 billion doses of numerous drugs every year.

Catalent is processing 500,000 doses per day, but the factory is hoping to ramp up to a million doses a day to fulfill its contractual obligations and deliver 100 million doses by the end of March. It had been making vaccines for the U.S. population for a long time and has a proven safety and quality record.

However, FDA inspectors visited Catalent’s Bloomington facility in October 2019, and found that it had problems with making sure sterile products weren’t contaminated with bacterial or fungal particles. Inspectors also wrote that the facility had problems storing pharmaceuticals at the right temperature and humidity levels. The company also has a record of not always complying with its own microbial contamination preventative procedures. For example, employees weren’t making sure sterile forceps didn’t touch non-sterile surfaces, and they didn’t follow rules around sanitizing gloved hands in certain situations involving vials and syringes. However, FDA inspections in 2019 and 2020 showed that the company had addressed these complaints.

My take: The complexities of the pharmaceutical industry are mind boggling. I used to work for Glaxo Smith Klein. What struck me was the premium put upon the latest innovations and product launches. Little time was devoted to older products which paid the overheads. Some of these products, about 50(!) years later are still producing handsome profits, I assume. But when I was there any suggestion about re-formulating, re-packaging, re-launching or having a sales blitz on the older products was greeted with a deafening silence. (Grumble, grumble – don’t listen to me!)

The Egret: a poem

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The Egret

A snow-white egret passes our cottage
By the Gumbo Limbo and the Traveller trees.
With its ballet dancer’s step and mobile neck
It reminds me of something……
Ah, yes! Alice playing croquet in Wonderland,
Striking the hedgehog with the flamingo’s head.
Like Alice’s flamingo the egret’s head moves
Restlessly back and forth,
In counterpoint to the watchful head.
Oblivious to us she seeks her prey.
Is she used to human presence,
Or does hunger cast thoughts of danger from her mind?

Down the sandy path she walks,
Inspecting the oleander and hibiscus,
Investigating the philodendrons for tropical bugs,
And the wart fern and monkey grass for ants and beetles,
All the time silent and alert.

Then suddenly she pauses on one leg,
Simply hovering there,
Stock still. A moment of suspense,
She has seen something move in the ixora plants.
She darts forward, a white flash .
……………………

Lazy and replete from its own early dinner
The gecko doesn’t seem to struggle.
It is lost in disbelief. What happened?
With a snap of the bright yellow beak the gecko’s gone,
Another short-lived actor in life’s cruel drama.
Unconcerned, the egret moves on
To peer beneath the Ti plants.

March 2012

Brexit (yawn!) part 1

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After nine months of pandemic punishment, could talk of conflict between former EU allies be less helpful? Yet, days before the deadline for a deal on the terms of the EU/UK divorce, Boris Johnson threatened to deploy warships against French fishing boats in the English channel.

The gunboat diplomacy is pantomime more than poker. In fact, real obstacles to a free trade deal, including a system to prevent unfair competition if the UK diverges from minimum standards on such things as workers rights or environmental rules, are close to resolution. Ursula von der Leyen said today that ‘there is now a path to agreement’ and hinted that the process could go into extra time.

Johnson will ultimately do what he thinks serves his own career and indications are he will compromise – as long as he can sell it as a UK victory. (The Guardian 18 Dec 2020)

Will the ecosystem collapse?

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Ecosystem collapse a risk in one fifth of the world’s countries

The spread of intensive farming threatens to jeopardize the world’s chances of meeting the term of the Paris agreement on the climate crisis.

Nitrous oxide is given off by the overuse of artificial fertilizers, and by organic sources such as animal manure, and has a heating effect 300 times that of carbon dioxide. Levels of nitrous oxide in the atmosphere are 20% higher than in pre-industrial times, with most of the increase coming from farming. Emissions of nitrous oxide are growing at a rate of 1.4% a year, outstripping the forecasts of the intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and, left unrestricted, would put the world on track to exceed the 2% warming limit set in 2015, according to a paper published in the journal Nature. Guardian Weekly. 16 Oct 2020)

Obscene wealth keeps rolling in

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It was a Rand Corporation study showing that, between 1975 and 2018, the equivalent of $2.5 trillion (no, not “billion”!) was transferred annually from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%. (In those years, even the 2% to 9%-ers essentially twiddled their financial thumbs.) Such a transfer of wealth, close to $50 trillion, should stagger the imagination.

And yet, unbelievably enough, in this Covid-19 year of ours, America’s billionaires have simply continued to add to their treasure trove in an overwhelming fashion as significant parts of that 90% went down hard.

According to the Institute for Policy Studies, between March and September, in the midst of a devastating pandemic, the net worth of America’s 643 richest people rose from $2.95 trillion to $3.8 trillion. It’s since topped $4 trillion and a new study suggests that those billionaires could make out $3,000 stimulus checks to everyone in this country and not have a cent less than they had when the pandemic began. And yet, at this moment, with millions of Americans out of work, Congress can barely imagine offering them, at best, the most minimal kind of helping hand, though its generosity when it comes to the Pentagon budget is beyond compare. (Tomgram, 13 Dec 2020)

No comment needed from me!

Lockdown “raves” in Europe

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Hours after England’s new lockdown measures were announced last Saturday, 700 people crammed into a warehouse outside Bristol for an illegal Halloween rave. Police were called to the event in Yate, Gloucestershire, at 10.30pm, but according to a spokesman, crowds refused to disperse, and several officers sustained minor injuries when party-goers, denied entry to the warehouse, started throwing lit spray cans and bottles. The alleged organiser, a man in his 30s, was among eight people arrested. In Wigan, seven police vehicles had their tyres slashed while officers were trying to shut down an illegal music event attended by around 300 people; in Glasgow, 64 people were issued with Fixed Penalty Notices for attending an illegal Halloween party. Officers said no physical distancing was taking place.

Last weekend, protests against the measures turned violent in Madrid, Barcelona and other cities. Italy has also seen violent protests over the past week in cities including Turin, Bologna, Florence, Rome and Naples. Although it has not been as hard hit by the second wave as Spain, cases are now rising rapidly. In response, the government has introduced a nationwide overnight curfew, and a new three-tier system of restrictions and partial lockdowns. (The Week 7 Dec 2020)

My comment: It is one thing to hold an illegal secret meeting while covid restrictions, for good reason, are in force. It is quite another to indulge in violence. “Spoiled young people” is my immediate (maybe intolerant) reaction. Grow up and think of others whose health you are recklessly endangering.