Twitteretter

The coronavirus pandemic has, it seems to me, exacerbated some tendencies already shown by governments previously. What is particularly worrying, at least from my perspective, is watching what is going on in the US, where the president seems to be touting unproven medicines, inciting citizens to armed rebellion and civil disobedience, fighting his expert advisors and waging a budgetary war on beleaguered, underfunded US states to put them under pressure to restart economic activity. This observation has got me thinking that, whilst electorates can get away with practically any voting choice, however idiotic, in normal times, when a crisis comes, who you have in charge can quickly become life critical. The catch is, of course, that most crises come unannounced. Therefore, when going to the polls, it would be sensible to think: ‘If a global, life threatening crisis comes, who would I rather have in charge, a Churchill, von der Leyen, Merkel, Abe or a Qi Jinping, Trump, Kim Jong-un?’...

A front door to the street. That may be the answer. I have been wondering, the last few days amid coronavirus lockdown, why the UK allows its citizens to go out to exercise, while Spain does not. The first reaction by many in Spain is that their government is just bloody minded, but my long-term observation is that politicians tend to avoid unpopular decisions if at all possible. It must be something else. Could it be, I wonder, the fact that the great majority of Britons have a front door to the outdoors, whilst most Spaniards live in apartment blocks and therefore, the front door to the street is shared by 25-50 families, as are the elevators that will take them to street level? If you consider how the virus propagates, negotiating your way from your 7 th floor apartment to the street is risky business, probably much riskier, in epidemiology terms, than reaching the outdoors from your semidetached, street level house. So here is a tip, get down to street level before the next pande...