DRILL OR DROP?

More than 100 climate campaigners have taken part in a mass trespass at Aberdeen’s Torry harbour in opposition to plans by the fossil fuel industry to build on a park.

Climate protest in Aberdeen harbour, 31 July 2022. Photo: Climate Camp Scotland

The action (Sunday 31 July) was part of a five-day climate camp calling for a transition away from fossil fuels, led by workers and the local community.

The activists have argued that St Fittick’s Park is threatened by a proposed energy transition zone, promoted by the oil and gas executive, Ian Wood.

They carried banners with slogans including Hauns Affa Torry and No Future in Fossil Fuels, describing the plans as “a corporate landgrab”. The scheme would, they said, industrialise the last accessible green space in the Torry neighbourhood.

The developers behind the energy transition zone have said it would become “a focal point and catalyst for high-value manufacturing, research, development, testing and deployment”.

During the weekend’s camp, activists have urged the UK government to cancel plans for new oil and gas developments, such as Shell’s Jackdaw fields.

They also called on Aberdeenshire Council to refuse permission for a new gas fired power station at Peterhead. And they asked the Scottish government to ensure communities and workers had a greater say in how money from the Just Transition Fund was spent in the region.

Richard Caie, a spokesperson for Friends of St Fittick’s Park said:

“We are very grateful to Climate Camp Scotland for helping to highlight the very unjust way the “energy transition” is being managed in North East Scotland and for their support for our campaign to save St Fittick’s Park”.

Jessica Gaitan Johannesson, a spokesperson for Climate Camp Scotland, said:

“As an increasing number of people experience the dire reality of climate collapse, and soaring energy prices victimise the most vulnerable, we need to remember that fossil fuel companies do not work for us. The proposed Energy Transition Zone in Torry is a stark example of their priorities: to exploit communities for profit for as long as possible. We’re here in solidarity with the people of Aberdeen, making the vital connection between local and global climate justice.”

Scotland: SNP COUNCIL IN STRIKEBREAKING THREATS

Anarchist Communist Group.

We are sickened but not entirely surprised to learn that the SNP[Scottish National Party]-run Glasgow City Council has threatened to bring in scabs against the striking cleansing workers and is bullying the GMB union with threats of billing them with the scabbing costs.

The SNP has a reputation for talking left and acting right, but this is beyond the pale. Any party that claims to be on the side of the ordinary worker does not use scabbing tactics.

This comes after an unsavoury scramble by many online nationalists to denounce the striking workers as “talking Scotland down” or being “dupes of the Labour Party”. Such simplistic anti-worker bile is to be expected of these keyboard clowns, devoid as they are of any class solidarity, but it was hoped that the SNP itself might have been more tuned in to the reality. It is abhorrent that instead they have gone with these capitalist, anti-worker divide-and-rule tactics.

We in the ACG [Anarchist Communist Group UK] believe in working class solidarity. We support the cleansing workers in their time of need because we know that when our time of need comes, they will support us. That’s how class struggle works.

Reflections on the passing of the D of E.

D of E mid left, her maj the Q sixth from left, King of the jungle (deceased) foreground.

What can one say about an old man that died? Lifelong family man and public* servant, went to war, dedicated to the nation – ah, that old manifestation of class antagonisms. Nothing to speak of, nothing that couldn’t be said of countless unknown Working Class folk, many of whom will have died on the battlefield or perished in prison and poverty inflicted by the British ruling class, unsung and un-celebrated. No cannon fired for these – not yet.

* The word ‘public’ as in -interest, -property, -safety, -ownership, etc, means nothing more than ‘state’; and the state doesn’t represent any people, just a mode of production.

That he was so casually racist he was blissfully unaware of it, that when he used his influence he pushed downwards and backwards, that he was habitually miserable to animals and foreigners despite being one himself. Of course, when you’re a member of a European dynasty, descendant of the Romanov tyrants, grandson of the Prince Of Battenberg, cousin of the British Queen and heir to the Greek and Danish thrones, place of birth doesn’t count, borders are only for plebs*.

* In case you needed reminding, borders are there to maintain differentials in prices and wages, which boost the mark-up on manufacturing.

The nation that rejoices in drowning refugees sent a warship for the Greek royal family then under the Truman doctrine hired a gang of Nazi war criminals to wipe out its victorious wartime resistance and keep its people in check. Not a peep out of the blunt-speaking Phillip as his people became the underdogs of Europe, playthings of the C.I.A. and international capital. The self-described “refugee” likewise had nothing to say about the latter day asylum-seekers deported from his homeland in defiance of international law. You can’t credibly claim to be apolitical when laws are enacted, parliament convened and wars declared in the name of your ol’ lady.

A conservationist who shot a tiger, along with a crocodile and six mountain sheep on holiday in India and allegedly accounted for over thirty thousand peasants. I’m no vegan, but could a chap eat thirty thousand pheasants in a lifetime? That’s getting on for one a day.

Now don’t mistake me for someone who gives a shit, we will see his like again, and again. I’m only driven to comment by the shameless hypocrisy. His long awaited demise couldn’t have come at a better time for the executive with its institutions universally discredited. Pfeffle’s long-winded grandstanding, even to the extent of celebrating the Duke’s verbal gaffes, surpassed only by his own, is a exercise in bad taste. Career brown-nose Keir Starmer will struggle to get his head out of there before they bury the old codger, and even Sinn Fein queued dutifully to kiss the royal sphincter.

The Duke is a poster boy for the ruling class’ fascist revival: ultra-conservative, obedient, grateful, backward-looking and dedicated to the fiction of national interest. Keep your place, one step behind, take what you can get, never complain and never do anything worth mentioning.

– Mal Content.

Stuart Christie Memorial Archive

https://www.gofundme.com/f/stuart-christie-memorial-archive

Stuart’s life may have been plastered with headlines, Britain’s most famous anarchist was the usual description, but the small print of it was what was important. His courage, imagination, his loyalty, not just to what he believed in, but to his friends and family, his remarkable intelligence, his self-deprecating, droll and spiky humour. He was a man of parts, each one of them remarkable.

To reveal the richness of Stuart’s life and the many histories he was a part of, we intend to establish a memorial archive in his name. The Stuart Christie Memorial Archive will be housed at the MayDay Rooms in Fleet Street in London.

This project has been brought together by his family, close friends and comrades and is supported by the MayDay Rooms collective. The memorial will include photographs, letters, personal mementoes, art works, his writings, as well as the output of his publishing arms, Cienfuegos Press, Christie Books and his Anarchist Film Archive.

The archive will also be available online. With the money raised from you, we will be employing a part-time archivist and researcher. Jessica Thorne, a doctoral researcher, whose work focuses on anarchist prisoners in Franco’s Spain, has already started work on the archive. Stuart’s daughter Branwen is contributing personal photographs and letters.

Much of the material will be new, including letters from Carabanchel prison in Spain where he was incarcerated after his failed attempt to assassinate the dictator Francisco Franco, as well as early childhood photographs. It will cover his involvement in the Angry Brigade trial, his period on Orkney – and his newspaper, the Free-Winged Eagle – with previously unseen photographs.

Stuart’s writing was prolific, including his ‘autobiography’ Granny Made Me An Anarchist, which was published by Scribner. That was the expurgated version, there were three previous volumes he published himself. Part of the memorial’s work will be to re-publish the three-part autobiography, as well as Pistoleros!, his trilogy, novel/memoir, the Chronicles of Farquhar McHarg.

An important part of the project will be to make the archive available online so that people throughout the world will be able to access it, to gain an insight into a life lived to the full, but also for study and research. Alongside the archive, the money raised from donations will help fund a series of educational events, addressing Stuart’s history and the histories of the movements he was involved in.

Depending on the amount of money raised, we are also hoping to commission an artist to create a physical memorial to Stuart. We are currently drafting designs for a secular, stained-glass window, which will be placed in the renamed Stuart Christie Library.

If we exceed our funding target, the collective will meet to discuss how we can expand the project further – or alternatively, re-allocate these funds to prisoner support groups/educational projects.

Finally, thanks are due to MayDay Rooms for readily making the space available and for their suggestions and insights and to the many, many friends and comrades throughout the world who have offered their help and suggestions.

There will be regular updates about the developments in the project as they occur.

Corona comment number six, from the South of England: Gulag archipelago, by Mal Content.

Since my last comment the bourgeois state has ratchet-tightened its grip on all aspects of life, with the apparent acquiescence of a large section of the British population – Leaving out the six counties, who seem most preoccupied with not being able to buy vegetables. The demagogues of the devolved administrations* crazed with a little power, vie with each other to boss their subjects about.

* Scots nationalists have blown their best chance of independence in a century with all guns pointed at their own feet, I wonder if MI5 had a hand in that.

As I have observed elsewhere, ‘Lockdown’ is a measure taken by prison governors to facilitate searching of inmates for contraband, apprehending a fugitive or putting down disorder. Doors are all locked forcing each prisoner to remain wherever they find themself. It is predicated on the idea that prisoners have no agency, they do not ‘own’ their flesh, their time or their productive and creative abilities. Incarceration in the United States is an extension of chattel slavery as permitted by the thirteenth amendment; in Britain it originates from the custom of holding a person hostage pending payment of a debt. Other cultures find their own justifications. The first use of this term in respect of the corona virus epidemic was in the People’s Republic of China, which is of course nothing but a giant gulag. It will be deeply offensive to many of our Class who have suffered such abuse.

The latest regulations blatantly reserve overseas travel for the rich, and whilst it will amuse us to watch entitled posh people treated like common prisoners there is a serious point. Jewish workers, whose recent ancestors fled Nazi Germany and other European pogroms find it disturbing to need “permission” to leave the country. We have refugees from the former Soviet bloc and other totalitarian regimes. They know what it means to have papers out of order.

The middle class, the stodgy, flabby rump of totalitarianism, continues to twitch its curtains on full pay, brags about attending ‘zoom meetings’ from the bath or not getting out of bed at all. They quibble about how many times they are “allowed” to walk the dog or whether to have their mum over for lunch. Whilst they sit around their computers knocking themselves off like safari-park chimps, the Working Class must run the gauntlet of crowded workplaces, dodgy PPE and weirdoes who thing it’s clever to gob in their faces.

Gulag:
Acronym of Glavnoye Upravleniye Ispravitelno-Trudovykh Lagerey.
Russian: “Chief Administration of Corrective Labour Camps”

People are afraid, for sure, not just of the virus but of starvation and homelessness, of their kids condemned to the scrapheap, their parents dying alone. Rumours abound, of the cops using number plate recognition to clock how far a vehicle has travelled from its registered address. There are despicable class traitors who will grass on their neighbours. Although there is no stop and search power that requires anyone to answer questions*, we hear of people being threatened with arrest for refusing to identify themselves. Call their bluff I say, you waste my time I’ll waste yours.

* Unless you’re driving, then it’s name and address only.

Bosses are taking advantage of the ‘furlough’* to shed workers with protected characteristics, and the super-rich, as always, are making money hand over fist. The sums may seem abstract, but the only value of wealth is the expectation that someone, somewhere will labour to acquire it. This is achieved by limiting access to the product of our own labour. As Heywood put it: “if a man has a dollar he didn’t work for, someone else worked for a dollar he didn’t get”.

* Another prison term. ‘Furlough’ is temporary release. As most prisoners in the U.S. are no threat to anybody but themselves, should they become logistically inconvenient, or if there is no work for them to do, they can be put out to save the state the expense of feeding and housing them.

For years we were offered a false dichotomy between state control and free market – either way is unregulated aggregation of economic power. Somehow the state has been rehabilitated without ever lifting a finger on our behalf, and to contradict its nonsense is to be aligned with cranks with their own set of authoritarian delusions.

Now having had the ‘rona twice I don’t consider it a hoax, it was like sleeping sickness with a loss of mental focus and bodily appetites. The cough only set in after a week but it never quite went away. It tends to magnify symptoms you live with normally, in my case headache, joint pain and irregular digestion. But everybody’s different, some test positive with no symptoms at all, some clearly have it but test negative or inconclusive.

We hear a lot these days about “imagining new futures” but no-one has any answers beyond more of the same, with a bit of technological wizardry thrown in. You cannot “unite” a society built on domination and abuse that refines its exploitative mechanics with every crisis it visits on our Class. The idea that there is an alternative to the status quo that is still military-industrial capitalism is irredeemably stupid. It wasn’t too much of a surprise that fucking idiot Hancock is influenced by Hollywood films, he could have just read his government’s own report on preparing for a pandemic, published in 2016, if he were serious about becoming health secretary. Are we really going to let wankers like that get the better of us?

You cannot compromise with the ruling class because they won’t compromise with you. They will maintain their privilege at all costs – and it costs them nothing. Black people, and other disadvantaged groups will need to take matters into their own hands because the liberals and the reformists can do nothing for them. They will need to fight their oppressors with the same ferocity with which oppression was imposed on them. Compliance will eventually cost more of our lives than any pandemic. The proper response to the Colston situation was for a hundred thousand Bristolians to turn out on the streets and tell the ruling class we will not allow it to try these comrades, precipitate a real insurrection, there’s never been a better time.

There are no broad sunlit uplands on offer, only a brutal, vicious war with the prospect of the means of production finally under control of the producing Class – it’s got to be worth a fight, stuff your prison logic, let’s put our heads together and have a serious discussion about how to fuck shit up.

Stuart Christie, the Eternal Young Rebel Always in the Fight for Life, by Xavier Montanyà

Kate Sharpley Library.

Stuart Christie was born in Glasgow in 1946, too late to enlist in the International Brigades and go off and fight alongside the Spanish republicans in the 1936-39 war. As a child, though, he befriended some Scottish miners who had fought with the International Brigades in that faraway war that he was to take so closely to his heart. A war for ideals that were and are universal. He used to listen in wonder to the tales they used to tell. Taking a pride in them. Such conversations moulded his sensibility to life and struggle.

He did not know it yet, but Stuart would later be ready to carry on with their fight. He would try to complete his friends’ task in Spain. From then on, that was to be his mission and his life. A commitment to the struggle that would be deployed across many fronts. Internationalist, revolutionary antifascist activism, direct action and history, publishing and investigative journalism. Stuart Christie was the real thing, a free man.

As he was to put it in the first volume of his memoirs The Christie File: Part 1, 1946-1964: My Granny Made Me An Anarchist (2002), his granny

Read more.

Octavio Alberola says goodbye to Stuart Christie

Octavio Alberola at Kate Sharpley Library.

Octavio Alberola, who was in charge of Defensa Interior and was a close friend of Stuart’s has left us this farewell message to his friend.

Stuart Christie, comrade and friend

The news of Stuart Christie’s death arrived by phone halfway through yesterday afternoon from comrade René after he asked if I had heard the bad news and after I quizzed him brusquely: Who’s dead? I could tell from his tone of voice that it must have been somebody close who had passed away.

René’s answer stopped me in my tracks, because even though Stuart had told me a week before that the cancer had left him still hoarse and that the findings of his medical tests were none too encouraging, it never at any moment occurred to me that he would be taken so quickly. I am surrounded by several male and female comrades – more or less of my own age – who are in none too rude health and at my age (due to turn 93 shortly) the thought that one’s days are numbered is just “normal”.

But in Stuart’s case, how could this be when he was eighteen years my junior? Besides, we had both been working on joint projects and both had been determined to plough ahead with our battles with the world of authority and exploitation.

To me, his death represents not just the loss of a comrade and friend but an end to long years collaborating on joint actions and initiatives designed to expose the injustices of the world in which we live and the fight for a fairer, freer world. A world that is possible for all of us who have not given up on wishing and trying to work towards a consistent practice of active, internationalist revolutionary solidarity.

We have known many years of brotherly relations ever since our first meeting back in August 1964 and up until 2020, without interruption. Half a century of our lives in tandem, one way or another, working on behalf of a common cause, heedless of borders. That struggle, though centred on the Spanish people’s political and social vagaries, initially under the Franco dictatorship and later under this phoney democracy spawned by the Transition/Transaction, has at all times carried the imprint of an internationalist revolutionary outlook.

The evidence of that, in Stuart’s case, was the time he spent behind bars in Spain and England, and in the case of Brenda his partner, in Germany and, in the cases of Ariane and myself, in Belgium and France. Experiences that bear witness to struggles that knew no borders as we knew that a characteristic of freedom is that it is the right of every man and woman.

So how could I not feel impelled to remember it now that our fraternization with Stuart has ended with his death? As well as with the death just a few days ago of the German comrade Doris Ensinger, the partner of Luis Andrés Edo, with whom Stuart shared some of his prison experiences and with whom he rubbed shoulders in their struggles; obviously, speaking for myself, the loss of Doris in a way represented the final ending of my fraternization-in-struggle with Luis. A finale that started some years back with Luis’s own death.

The fact is that in the case of Doris’s death too I was stopped in my tracks, startled by the news of her demise communicated to me by Manel, as barely a week earlier she had sent Tomás and me an email to let us know that she had been abruptly recalled to the hospital and undergone a transplant operation … But was now back home and feeling well …

Meaning that yet again I am brought face to face with the tenuousness of our existence and the need to preserve the memory of what we strove to be and do, to the very death.

Perpignan, 17 August 2020

Octavio Alberola

From RojoyNegro_Digital el Mar, 18/08/20; 15:02 http://rojoynegro.info/articulo/memoria/octavio-alberola-se-despide-stuart-christie

Translated by: Paul Sharkey.

Obituary: Stuart Christie (1946-2020)

Anarchist Communist Group.

We mourn the loss of our anarchist comrade Stuart Christie who died on August 15th. It was thanks to people like Stuart Christie and Albert Meltzer that British anarchism began to break with the liberal, quietist, gradualist and “non-violent” outlook that had pervaded it since the end of the Second World War. They sought to return it to its radical roots, back to a revolutionary working class anarchism that had first emerged with the First International.

Joining the Anarchist Federation in Glasgow in 1962, Stuart became involved in the anti- nuclear bombs movement, at first with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and then with the more radical direct-actionist wing of the anti-bomb movement, the Direct Action Committee and its successor the Committee of 100.

Stuart made contact with the action groups of the exiled Spanish anarchist movement, organised around Internal Defence (DI) and involving militants of long standing like Octavio Alberola and Luis Andres Edo. As such he was arrested in Spain in 1964 and charged with the possession of explosives. These were intended for an attempt on Franco’s life and he was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. Thanks to a continuing international campaign he was freed after 3 years.

Returning to Britain he re-founded the Anarchist Black Cross with Albert Meltzer, which acted as a support organisation for prisoners internationally. Its bulletin transformed itself into Black Flag, a paper advocating revolutionary class struggle anarchism.

Stuart Christie co-wrote The Floodgates of Anarchy with Meltzer in 1970, which further popularised class struggle anarchism. He strongly believed in the power of the printed word and founded Cienfuegos Press and Cienfuegos Press Review. He was also involved in the setting up in the Centro Iberica and International Libertarian Centre in London with the Spanish militant Miguel Garcia.

In 1972 he and other defendants were acquitted in the Angry Brigade trial. In 1974 he moved to Orkney and edited a local radical paper there, the Free-Winged Eagle. In 1981 he moved to Hastings and set up the Anarchist Film Channel in 2006. He also produced a three-volume autobiography which was then condensed into a bestselling paperback Granny Made Me an Anarchist in 2004. In addition, Stuart brought out his history of the Federacion Anarquista Iberica, We, The Anarchists! And re-published Jose Peirats’ three volume history of the Spanish anarchist movement, continuing his publication and distribution of books and films through his Christie Books.

Stuart did much to popularise class struggle anarchism, and his importance to the movement in Britain cannot be underestimated. He was definitely “on the side of the angels”. However, it would be false to say that there were no differences with the current in British anarchism which has culminated in the Anarchist Communist Group. He was suspicious of specific anarchist organisations, preferring an approach of ad hoc organisation and networks of affinity groups. As a result, he was to characterise the Organisation of Revolutionary Anarchists as “semi-Trotskyist”. Similarly, he gained entrance for the Franco-German militant Daniel Cohn-Bendit, with whom he shared similar organisational views, to the congress in Carrara in Italy of the International of Anarchist Federations. Cohn-Bendit promptly denounced the Cuban anarchists present as agents of the CIA for daring to criticise the Castro regime. As Stuart was to write himself: “He had no proof whatsoever for this accusation…” Well, now Cohn-Bendit is a reformist politician, which speaks for itself. Stuart thought that the existing anarchist federations were sclerotic, oligarchic and bureaucratic and indeed there was some truth in this, with people like Federica Montseny and Germinal Esgleas of the exiled CNT-FAI, always opposed to militant direct action, carrying out bureaucratic manoeuvres at the congress. However, there were also present many long-term anarchist communist militants like Alfonso Failla, Mario Mantovani and Umberto Marzocchi. Was it the right decision to abandon the Congress and set up an informal one at the beach nearby as Stuart and others did? The Congress represented a clash between different generations, but it also represented a clash between spontaneism and organisation. Certainly, one of the positive things that came out of the informal congress was the idea to set up Anarchist Black Crosses in different countries, but looking back was it not a good idea to develop better relations with the best of the militants of previous generations?

Despite these fraternal criticisms, we appreciate the many beneficial influences that Stuart had on British anarchism, not least the creation of the ABC, Black Flag, and his consistent publishing efforts. Stuart was a comrade of great charm, warmth, humour and a wide and expansive culture. He will be sorely missed. We extend our condolences to his daughter and granddaughters.

Stuart Christie 1946-2020: anarchist, antifascist, publisher and educator

Stuart Christie passed away on the 15th August 2020, the anniversary of the day in 1964 that the Spanish state announced the capture of two ‘terrorists’ in an attempt (one of many) on the life of the fascist dictator Francisco Franco. He will be sorely missed.

Short biography by John Patten here.

Bella Caledonia

If you would like to share your own memories of Stuart for a more comprehensive biography contact KSL, BM Hurricane, London  WC1N 3XX. or e -mail:

info@katesharpleylibrary.net

His work on the historiography of the anarchist movement and the Spanish Civil War can be sampled here:

https://christiebooks.co.uk

his anarchist film archive:

https://christiebooks.co.uk/anarchist-film-archive

If you would like to help carry on Stuart’s work paypal to:

christie@btclick.com

Corona virus pandemic comment number four, from the south of England. By Mal Content.

C.W. Profanity, cannibalism.

One nasty side-effect of all this is a widespread acceptance that there is some virtue in doing as you’re told, or that a government can rule by decree, in fact you cannot make statute law by announcing things on twitter. Their intent has been to condition the population into following arbitrary “rules”, raking over the details of what is permitted rather than thinking for themselves, with predictably catastrophic results.

Whatever you decide to do you should have a bloody good reason for doing it.

Why are people calling for “clarity” from the fucking government? Can they not make their own minds up? I find it hard to credit that anyone listens to the incoherent blitherings of Boris de Pfeffle fucking Johnson, let alone discusses them. Remember when he said he wanted the pubs to stay open but he didn’t want anyone to go there?

Did you know?

The UK government’s Coronavirus Act 2020 comprises a series of statutory instruments, supposedly deriving their legal authority from the emergency provisions contained within the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984, as amended.

“In accordance with section 45R of that Act the Secretary of State is of the opinion that, by reason of urgency, it is necessary to make this instrument without a draft having been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, each House of Parliament.”

Remember now who the Secretary of State is – Matt fucking Hancock! Anyone interested in his opinion? Thought not.

Did you know?

Examinations of sewage samples from Italy and Spain (apparently they keep these things) show that the virus was present in Europe as long ago as March last year, months before it was identified in China.

You could be forgiven for failing to keep up with their ever-shifting injunctions about who can do what with some people but not others, here but not there, and for this reason but not that. In fact if you have been keeping up, you’ve clearly got too much time on your hands, in other words, you’re middle class, and probably work in the media – or rather, you’re sat on your arse looking at the internet and getting paid for it. Even the chattering classes, marooned in their expensive flats with little else to chatter about, have been getting it wrong.

Did you know?

The ban on taking exercise more than once a day, widely touted in the media, is in fact not in the English Regulations at all; it comes from The Health Protection (Coronavirus Restrictions) (Wales) Regulations 2020.

Did you know?

The equally widely-touted “one hour duration rule” is not in any government document but was made up on the spot by Michael fucking Gove!

Did you know?

The phrase “reasonable excuse” set out in Regulation 6(2) has never been defined, though examples were given. Early high-profile test cases were thrown out on appeal. It allows politicians to suit themselves.

Did you know?

The words “furlough” and “lock-down” were borrowed from the US prison system.

We should always be wary of people who find it necessary to coin new terminology out of the blue. When they started banging on about “linked households” I dropped out, but for the purposes of this blog post have looked into it.

Did you know?

(7) After regulation 7, insert—
“Linked households
7A.—(1) Where a household comprises one adult, or one adult and one or more persons who are under the age of 18 on 12th June 2020 (“the first household”), the adult may choose to be linked with one other household (“the second household”), provided that—
(a)the second household is not linked with any other household; and
(b)all the adult members of the second household agree.
(2) There is no limit on the number of adults or children which may be in the second household.
(3) The first and second households are “linked households” in relation to each other.
(4) The first and second households cease to be linked households if neither household satisfies the condition in the opening words of paragraph (1).
(5) Once the first and second households have ceased being linked households, neither the first household nor the second household may be linked with any other household.”.
(8) In regulation 9(2), after “Regulations” insert “, including any person who is a relevant person for the purposes of regulation 8,”.
(9) In regulation 10(12), at the end insert “or the obstruction under regulation 9(2) of a person carrying out a function under regulation 8”.

You lot got that?

Did you know?

On 4th July 2020 the regulations were repealed in their entirety and were replaced with The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (No. 2) (England) Regulations 2020 (SI 684).

Could you construe morality or responsibility in terms of counting “households”, an abstract bourgeois concept? Here are some dictionary definitions of “household” (noun):

• individuals who comprise a family unit and who live together under the same roof
• all those who are under the control of one domestic head.
• the people of a house collectively
• a family including its servants.
• one or more people who live together in a common space, share meals, and combine economic resources.

Many of us do not live in “households” at all but share crowded dwellings, occupy sites, or borrow sofas and spare rooms from more settled folk. Some vulnerable people live alone, or with dependants.

Did you know?

(8) In regulation 8—
(a)in paragraph (3)—
(i)in the opening words, for “outside” substitute “staying overnight at a place other than”;
(ii)at the end of sub-paragraph (a), omit “or”;
(iii)omit sub-paragraph (b);
(b)omit paragraph (4);
(c)in paragraph (5), in the opening words, for “outside” substitute at a place other than”;
(d)in paragraph (8), at the end insert “in regulation 6(1)”;
(e)in paragraph (9)—
(i)in the opening words, for “three or more” substitute “a number of”;
(ii)in sub-paragraph (c), for “the gathering” substitute “a gathering in a public place”;
(f)in paragraph (10), after “a gathering” insert “in a public place”.

I wonder what time you’d have to leave to avoid the charge of “staying overnight”…

Did you know?

If you’ve ever tested positive for coronavirus in England and were subsequently killed by something else, you would be counted as a covid death by the ONS, but not necessarily by the government, which only counts deaths in hospitals. If you died in Scotland or Wales however, you would need to have died within 28 days of your test. If a positive test result came in after your death certificate was issued, you would not be counted. If you died in a care home before 29th April you would not be counted, after that you would be counted if it was mentioned on your death certificate, whether you had been tested or not.

Pfeffle excelled himself this morning. After blithering that he wanted people “to go back to (office) work” – everybody else is already working you numbskull – he stated that it wasn’t up to the government to tell people what to do. When challenged on the scientific advice he retorted that it was a matter for politicians to decide. He then clarified that he wanted the bosses to make the decisions for their workforce.

The government is the bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie is the government!

There has been much speculation over what a “post-furlough” society might look like. The idea of “working from home” appeals to those who can get away with it, of course. People who habitually do fuck all in offices can do fuck all much more efficiently in their kitchens. In future will we continue to pay them to stop indoors doing fuck all, as a sort of tax on the genuine Working Class, while they become ever more dissociated from reality?

Perhaps we will see the logistics Worker, the builder, the cleaner, machine operator and other indispensables emerge as a new labour aristocracy. In H. G. Wells 1895 novel, The Time Machine, the bourgeoisie have evolved into the Eloi, feckless weaklings who caper about in the sun, serviced by the troglodyte Morlocks, who prey on them at night.

Instead it is the middle class who will grow grey and pale, locked indoors jabbering over their futile tasks. Unlike the Morlocks they won’t develop good night vision; their eyes will be ruined by the computer screens and they will have compromised immune systems with no Vitamin D. They will become inbred, as they mate only with their “linked households”. Meanwhile we build our strength and confidence, take over the infrastructure, occasionally drag one out and chuck them on the barbeque. Doesn’t seem so dystopian after all!

Did you know?

The wearing of face masks is to be compulsory in a week or so, until then you are deemed safe without one. There are exemptions, make sure you know what they are …

This will coincide with the re-opening of gymnasia and sports halls, which in the meantime, remain unsafe. My personal view of the masks I have seen is that they are a placebo, which may give a little comfort to those who are especially worried about catching the virus. Now if they succeed in absorbing viral material, what is to happen to discarded masks? Will they be handled as hazardous waste? In a hospital they would be incinerated.

These are mostly pieces of cloth or paper, necessarily loose-fitting and porous. I write as someone who has spent a fair amount of time running around masked up. As you exercise and the carbon dioxide builds up, you puff and blow in your mask forcing material around the sides and through the pores. If you wanted to make a difference you would need a demand valve and a HEPA filter, which would remove all particles down to a third of a micron. Corona viruses are typically around a tenth of a micron and the filter would remove a proportion of these. This isn’t a practical proposition, being prohibitively expensive and impossible to enforce.

The best reason for wearing a face covering is to prevent identification and photography by fascists and agents of the state, and to show solidarity with those putting themselves in harm’s way every day to fight oppression. On the plus side, the cops won’t be using section 60AA anytime soon.