Planning for this year's Proms is no doubt well under way, but hopefully, in the year of 75th anniversaries, room will be found for Alfred Schnittke's precocious magnum opus, the oratorio Nagasaki. If we are not already at war by the summer, it will if nothing else serve as a reminder of why 1945 was the last time atomic weapons were used in warfare.
Paul Scully's statements from the despatch box on Wednesday concerning the business of the next parliament refer. While hoping that a comprehensive economic crime bill will be included in the Queen's Speech, one trusts that further deregulation is not. In July last year, Kwasi Kwarteng and Lord Frost (who has now resigned from the Johnson government because he believes it is not reactionary enough) published a document (pdf here) opening a three-month consultation on post-Brexit reforms to the regulatory framework. If there has been a government response since the consultation period closed in October, I have not been able to find it on the Web. However, in the light of continuing revelations from the Grenfell Inquiry of how deregulation contributed to the disaster, Private Eye fears the worst. Its analysis concludes that the proposed new framework would:
entail delegation of legal powers to regulators (who often end up being captured by the industries they're regulating), "less prescriptive" rules (allowing wriggle room of the sort the cladding manufacturers and others exploited), regulators being "encouraged to adopt more innovation-friendly initiatives in their sectors" and a return of "regulatory offsetting", whereby at least one regulation is scrapped as soon as a new one comes in. All would make for more "agile" and "proportionate" regulation.
I managed to get out my post about financial fraud finally, just before there was an Urgent Question in the House yesterday afternoon. MPs had heard a whisper that the intended Economic Crime Bill would be dropped from the Queen's Speech. It was noticeable that the Question had been raised by Conservative MP Kevin Hollinrake, and there was at least as much concern expressed by Conservatives yesterday as by opposition speakers. Indeed, it is difficult to find any Member who supported the government's official non-committal line. Minister Paul Scully had to fall back on the mantra that the government remains "committed to tackling economic crime". In response, Chris Bryant (Labour, Rhondda) reminded the House that at least seven years ago a Conservative prime minister had promised a public register of beneficial ownership (a key anti-money-laundering tool) but no Bill enabling it had yet appeared. Lib Dem Layla Moran drew attention to her own attempt to introduce such a Bill which had been thwarted.
Protests by minister Scully notwithstanding, there is strong evidence that the Johnson administration is inhibited in this area by its dependence on donations from oligarchs channelled through UK shells. Added to his reluctance to cooperate with the EU over the threat from Russia, this is all the more reason for Conservative MPs to vote Johnson out of the leadership of the party and of the country and to replace him with a cleaner pair of hands.
Lord Agnew's dramatic despatch-box resignation on Monday was driven specifically by his disgust at the lax control of government loans and grants related to the SARS-Cov-2 pandemic. However, it could have stood for the Johnson administration's failure to get to grips with financial fraud at all levels, as highlighted by a debate on Economic Crime held at the beginning of last month.
At the highest level, London is widely regarded as the money-laundering capital of the world. Russian money forms a large part of the hot money which finds a home here, but cash from all quarters flows into the City, including that from criminal and terrorist organisations closer to home, as DUP MP Jim Shannon has pointed out. Much is converted into UK property, because owners are able to conceal their true identity behind shell companies. At least one of the leading ratings agencies, Moody's, has shaded the UK's credit rating specifically because of the “weakening in the UK’s institutions and governance”.
Dame Margaret Hodge, who introduced the debate, painted the wider picture:
Economic crime is often the facilitator of other crimes—from people trafficking to drug smuggling, and from terrorism to corruption. It does not just enable other crimes; it impacts on our national security. Dirty Russian money laundered into the UK is spreading like a spider’s web through our society. It is used to buy influence and to control our football clubs, our vital infrastructure and, more recently, our politicians and our politics.
At the domestic level, people are still being swindled out of capital, often their entire life savings, by plausible web-sites. Search engines and social media sites could take action by de-listing them, but mostly do not, even when the fake sites are reported to them. Google, for instance, profits from giving priority listing at a price.
There was a unique insight into the difficulties facing those in the business world combatting fraud and other financial crime. Simon Fell used to be involved in that fight before he entered the Commons. It was like "Whac-a-mole", he said; no sooner had a criminal scheme been shut down than the perpetrator popped up another one elsewhere. It is too easy in the UK for this to happen.
What needs to be done:
There will be quoted "To a Mouse", "Address to a Haggis", "Auld Lang Syne", "A Red, Red Rose" and "John Anderson", but for our times Robert Burns' most appropriate verse would appear to be "A Parcel of Rogues in a Nation". However, the situation would be reversed in that now there are fewer rogues in Holyrood than there are in Westminster.
http://aberavonneathlibdems.blogspot.com/2022/01/serious-allegations-of-islamophobia.html refers.
The Tory chief whip has denied that he gave "discomfort with her Muslim faith" as a reason for Ms Ghani's removal as junior transport minister. He points out that she did not appeal the decision at the time, but on the other hand she may not have felt it right to rock the boat then. The situation has now changed.
What is undeniable is that there is a strong anti-Islamic tide running through the current Conservative leadership (now echoed by the Labour party). Much of this may derive from Priti Patel, the holder as Home Secretary of one of the key Departments of State. She is clearly sympathetic to Hindu nationalist Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and had unofficial talks with ministers in the former hard-line Israeli government when she was at the Foreign Office.
It is a remarkable turn-round from the days when Tories used subtle anti-Semitic messages in their election campaigning, notably against the Miliband brothers when they were leading figures in the Labour hierarchy.
Some years ago, when the ozone hole crisis became obvious, asthma inhaler manufacturers took action to replace the HCFC propellants in their products. CFCs and to a lesser extent HCFCs had been implicated in the destruction of the ozone layer which reduces the amount of harmful ultra-violet radiation reaching the earth's surface. The Montreal Agreement was a rare success story, achieving almost global compliance - though the Chinese government was rather slower than most to crack down on CFC use. The ozone hole is no longer an issue, though climate experts mostly agree that we should remain vigilant.
Unfortunately, the replacement propellant of choice, HFA134a, turns out to be a potent greenhouse gas. Experts say we should be switching to a different type of inhaler, which requires a different technique for use. This dry powder device is apparently widely used in continental Europe. We await developments.
There is more on BBC Radio's Inside Health.
Nor can any pensions minister in recent years. There is a separation between policy (the province of politicians) and administration (down to the regular civil service). So no minister or junior minister would have been aware of how pensions were administered - until things go badly wrong.
One such systematic error has now been exposed in a damning statement by the Public Accounts Committee. 134,000 women have missed out on their full entitlement since 1985.
The committee's report said the errors were the result of outdated systems and heavily manual processing of pensions at the DWP.
Small errors that were not recognised added up to significant sums of money over the years.
In a damning report, it concluded:
The committee said that there was a risk that the errors that led to underpayments in the first place could be repeated in the correction programme, the ninth such exercise since 2018.
There was also concern that, by allocating staff to deal with this problem, backlogs occurred in dealing with claims from new pensioners who suffered delays in receiving their state pension at 66.
Meg Hillier, who chairs the committee, said: "For decades DWP has relied on a state pension payment system that is clunky and required staff to check many databases - and now some pensioners and the taxpayer are paying in spades.
"In reality, the DWP can never make up what people have actually lost, over decades, and in many cases it's not even trying.
"This is a shameful shambles."
I am grateful to fellow liberal Dave Simpson for the following (slightly edited):
David Davis' invective at Prime Minister's Questions, copied from Leo Amery's speech against Chamberlain in 1940, which was in turn lifted from Cromwell's dismissal speech to the Long Parliament (or the Rump thereof) prompted me to look at the original rant, (Wikiquote, of course) which is singularly appropriate to today. Some choice extracts:-
"... put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches ... Is there one vice you do not possess? ... which of you have not barter'd your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth? ... Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress'd ... In the name of God, go! "
Neville Chamberlain, for all his faults, does not fit the bill quite so well as this crew!
The "red meat" statements made in the House on Tuesday served to rally the Tory troops behind Boris Johnson in his period of "partygate" travail. Coverage of both helped to obscure notification that a benefits up-rating Order was laid on the same day confirming the government's intention that the rise will be no more than 3.1%. This is less than the wage rate increase which in turn lags behind CPI (5.1% in November, 5.4% last month and expected to rise to 6% in April).
The Order will be subject to debate but no doubt the government's massive majority will see it through.
As predicted by Peter Black yesterday morning, yesterday's statement by the DCMS Secretary of State, Nadine Dorries turned out to be of the deceased feline variety. Along with the statement about Chinese interference (referred to yesterday), it gave a taster of red meat to the Tory faithful while incidentally taking up time which could more profitably have been given to discussion of the Elections Bill. (A further hour was given to a statement by defence minister Ben Wallace about the Ukraine, but since this (a) introduced new government policy and (b) was undeniably topical, it can be excluded from the list of statements calculated to divert attention from Boris Johnson's troubles.)
When I first heard of Nadine Dorries' premature Tweet about the licence fee (incidentally earning her a rebuke from Mr Speaker), my first thought was: the Beeb has now fulfilled the Tory purpose in achieving Brexit, so it can now be sold off. Fortunately, Ms Dorries had no such proposal to lay before the House - or any proposal, for that matter. Instead, she merely stated two obvious facts: that there is now a lot of competition out there in the field of dramatic entertainment, both broadcast and distributed over the Internet; and that the licence fee is in effect a regressive tax.
It is all very well for the likes of Gary Lineker and Yvette Cooper to say that £159 is good value for money (arguably true) and easily affordable, but they do not have to budget week by week, let alone month by month. £159 is probably the sort of money they would spend in a good restaurant for a family meal. It is much different for people of the stock Nadine Dorries sprang from, and she should be given credit for being more in touch with the terraces of Walton than most professional politicians.
Of course, being a Tory, she could not take the logical step of declaring that what was needed was a levy which fell proportionately more on the broadest shoulders and not at all on the poorest, with appropriate tapering in between. I have already suggested that a household levy linked to council tax bands, using existing collection mechanisms, would be more equitable. Housing benefit would take care of the most deprived. The outsourced licence fee collection and enforcement scheme could then be done away with. Clearly, a tax expert must be able to come up with at least as good a solution.
What we do not want is yet another channel dependent on advertising. I agree with much of what Nigel Hunter says most of the time, but I believe he is wrong in his comment on Peter's post. The aim should surely be to restore Auntie's distinctiveness, not reduce it. Already, too much time on TV (and even radio - even Radio 3!) is annoyingly wasted on plugs for BBC's box-sets. Also, making the BBC dependent on advertising, even for just a part of its income, reduces the Corporation's independence.
Nadine Dorries and many of the Conservatives who followed her were right to point out that, while the BBC used to have the field of high-value drama to itself, the latter is now available via other media. One way the Corporation could trim its costs (which it clearly needs to do) is to withdraw from this area unless it has something distinctive to offer. Another "me-too" cop show is not it.
Of course, the fat which would be least missed from the BBC budget is that of needless administration. Its status as sacred cow has permitted the Corporation to be impervious to the sort of regular job reviews and administrative audit that the general civil service is subject to. There must be many posts, particularly in TV, which have now become supernumerary because of the digital revolution and thus can be abolished. Many posts vacated on retirement need not be filled.
Surprisingly, considering the number of accusations made by MPs on various media in advance of the statement, there was very little said about the perceived bias of the BBC. Only Sammy Wilson of the Democratic Unionists and Conservative Richard Fuller characterised the Corporation as biased and only in passing. Away from their megaphones, MPs recognise the BBC for what it is, a basically conservative organisation, the cap-and-bells of its comedy output notwithstanding. It is noticeable that recent coverage of "partygate" has centred on the person of the prime minister rather than attacking the government as a whole. It has been as helpful to potential rivals to Boris Johnson within the Conservative party as it has to Sir Keir Starmer.
Ms Dorries' announcement that the licence fee would be frozen until the end of this parliament drew the predictable response from the corporation: programmes would be cut. There are programmes and their staff which would not be missed by the general public but will never be cut, though. I refer, of course, to the political output. As long as MPs are guaranteed their slot on the box, BBC News and Current Affairs will always have friends in Westminster.
It is always good to have a reminder that foreign nations and corporations work continuously to achieve an administration in Westminster favourable to themselves or at least to undermine trust in our institutions. Thus the activities of Christine Lee, a London-based lawyer, in funnelling funds whose ultimate source may have been an agency of the Chinese state, first revealed a number of years ago, were the subject of a further warning from MI5 recently. It did give the Home Secretary an opportunity to make a statement in the House, which some cynics have characterised as part of a campaign to divert attention from the Prime Minister's troubles, especially as she failed to respond to virtually all requests for further action. In particular, shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper asked:
Can she tell me when the Russia report’s recommendations will be implemented in full and when the results of the consultation on foreign state interference, which closed last summer, will be published?
When will there be a response to the Committee’s crucial recommendation on the funding of digital campaigns and to its important recommendation that more needs to be done on identifying the source of donations and the role of shell companies? Labour has tabled a common-sense amendment to the Elections Bill this very afternoon: new clause 9, which would close the loophole allowing foreign donors to hide behind shell companies. Will the Home Secretary now support that important amendment to ensure that donors to UK political parties have a connection to the UK?
- to which Ms Patel did not respond. She was similarly unhelpful to MPs from her own side making positive suggestions.
But we should also be active in countering China's subversion of other nations, including fellow-members of the Commonwealth. Sri Lanka's plight has given rare publicity to a consistent Chinese campaign across the globe of using short-term loans for infrastructure projects to create a network of indebted states. China has huge military resources but hardly has need of them when she has the power of the IOU. Votes in the General Assembly of the UN may be influenced by the generosity or otherwise of President Xi when it comes to restructuring debt.
The latest project in Sri Lanka, "Colombo Port City" may serve a dual purpose in that it will avowedly provide competition for Singapore which remains proudly independent of her Chinese cousins.
- and an environmental catastrophe narrowly and expensively avoided.
The report into the Llangennech derailment has been published, and it makes depressing reading. Not only does it highlight poor maintenance:
The derailment occurred because one set of wheels on the third wagon in the train stopped rotating during the journey. The wheelset had become locked, probably because of a defect in the braking system on the third wagon, arising from deficiencies in the design and maintenance of components. The sliding of the locked wheel along the railhead caused damage to the profile of the wheel treads. This meant that the wheels were unable to safely negotiate Morlais Junction, near Llangennech, damaging the pointwork and causing the third wagon to become derailed. The following wagons derailed on the damaged track. Some of the derailed tank wagons were ruptured in the accident, and the spilling fuel ignited.
- but also points out that technology (hot axle box detection) was able to detect the trouble when the train passed through Pembrey station. However, it seems that the reporting software had been disabled because there had been false positives in the past.Jack Dromey's final speech, on the eve of his untimely death last week, was in a Westminster Hall debate on the resettlement of Afghan citizens. Before his speech, there was a contribution from the SNP's Joanna Cherry about a most endangered and sadly overlooked group, the women judges of the former regime. They came into mortal danger virtually overnight when the Taliban released all prisoners regardless as they took over each province. Many Taliban fighters had been jailed because they had beaten or killed their wives. Now free, those fighters sought revenge on the whole class of female lawyers. Ms Cherry expanded:
As the Minister knows, I have been working with a former Afghan judge and feminist activist to try to highlight the plight of lower-level female judges and prosecutors in provincial villages, whose lives are particularly at risk because they live in small communities and are therefore more readily identifiable. Marzia Babakarkhail came to the UK in 2008 after two attempts on her life by the Taliban, having served as a judge in Afghanistan. She is now a British citizen who lives in Oldham, and her story is featured in the People’s History Museum in Manchester, which is very worth a visit for anyone who has not been there. It houses the black Samsonite bag that Marzia was given by her mother as a gift to congratulate her on her success as a lawyer, which is one of the few possessions she was able to bring with her to her new life in the United Kingdom. Marzia is anxious that the UK Government should provide a new life in the United Kingdom for other female judges and prosecutors, and she is in touch with many of those who are trapped and left behind. They are in imminent danger of persecution from the Taliban, and from other dangerous criminals and members of terrorist groups who the Taliban have released from prison.The Welsh Government may have missed a trick in falling in behind the UK government's plan for an examination of how the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic was handled here. It is not too late to listen to Labour's Chris Evans as he calls for a separate inquiry for Wales. There is already an inquiry being set up in Scotland.
What concerns me is that along with the mistakes that were made by administrators in Wales, very much the same mistakes as were made by NHS trusts and social services in England, the good things done in Wales may be missed by an overall inquiry. For instance, the NHS in Wales, although constricted by UK government procurement policy (the NHS is not totally devolved), managed PPE and tests rather better than England. But most importantly, the success of Ceredigion in holding the virus at bay, a model of what should have been done on the national scale, may be passed over.
I learned via a belated obit. in the i newspaper of the death last month of Darlene Hard. If I had been in the pin-up habit as a young man, she would have been one of my first. Buxom and aggressive, she was a contrast to the other Americans who dominated women's tennis after the war. People like Doris Hart, Louise Brough and later Maureen Connolly were stereotypical baseliners as I recall, and boring. Hard was a refreshing change; ironically, her best chances of winning the singles title at Wimbledon were thwarted by two other players who broke the mould: Althea Gibson and Maria Bueno.
Summers came and went, along with the opportunity to watch Wimbledon on TV, and other players made an impact. So the later career of Hard rather passed me by (though she was a key member of the US's dominant Wightman Cup team for several years) until I read an obituary of Bueno which observed how Hard had taken her on as a doubles partner and also saw Bueno through her various illnesses and injuries. There was clearly a strong personal bond between the two women, but one feels that Hard's one enduring love was with the game of tennis itself. Not as privileged as some of her compatriots, able to maintain their amateur status without much effort, she financed one grand slam campaign by working as a waitress. When the opportunity came to turn professional - even though the circuit did not yet include the major tournaments - she took it, along with Bueno as a doubles partner as well as a fellow contestant. The major sponsorships of the women's circuit came too late for her, as did the acceptance of a non-conventional personal life-style. After retiring from competition, she became a coach.
So, thank you, Darlene Hard, not just for brightening the life of a young Wimbledon watcher, but also for inspiring hundreds of young women to play tennis both for fun and for profit.
... that their Great Leader tends not to be totally honest.
I wonder how long it will take them to realise that he is also a member of the Church of Rome.
Information about his behaviour in the woods is not yet to hand.
We Liberal Democrats are resigned to Conservatives claiming credit for policies we brought to the coalition, even as successive Tory governments since have sought to outdo them. However, we now see Labour pinching our ideas. Four days ago, Ed Davey pitched the idea of a windfall tax on oil and gas firms. Lo and behold, Rachel Reeves for Labour comes up with the very same idea this weekend.
What gets me is that certain news organisations, including the BBC, have published the notion as original, even though they had already covered the Davey proposal.
This is the principal council by-election scorecard since last May. Acknowledgements to Mark Pack.
It is noticeable that Conservatives are still gaining Labour wards in spite of the lead which Labour has in the opinion polls..
Commiserations to Harriet Harman on the unexpected death of her husband Jack Dromey MP, and to family and friends. He spoke only yesterday in Westminster Hall in a debate on the resettlement of Afghan citizens
.
In time of war, other conflict or occupation, collective punishment is a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention. Thus a former government of Israel stands accused for denying power and water to occupied territories, not to mention other restrictions.
But what are we to make of the West preventing access to their own money by the Afghans?
Or UK's refusal to return the Iranian money paid by the Shah for a contract we did not fulfil?
Or sanctioning Belarus because we do not like its dictatorial government?
The episode of BBC2’s inside the Factory at 9pm tonight covers mainly a visit to the Soreen Malt loaf factory but includes a 5 minute or so segment about LEO at the end.
The revival of an ancient pilgrimage route, albeit relying on a modern ferry connection, is very welcome. Ferns in County Wexford is associated with St Aidan who
is said to have travelled from Wexford to Pembrokeshire to study under St David. According to academics, there is clear evidence they were close. The new routes will recreate the journeys followed by St Aidan and St David.Apart from celebrating Celtic links, all the more important now that Wales and Ireland are on opposite sides of the EU border, and the religious significance, the route apparently involves two relatively easy walks at either end, Ferns to Rosslare and Fishguard to St Davids. There is a clear tourism benefit to Pembrokeshire and Wexford councils who are contributing to the pilgrimage walk.
Perhaps Carmarthenshire and Neath Port Talbot councils might care to research the history of St Illtyd's Walk which was in need of care and attention last time I walked the middle section.
In response to the requirement that secondary pupils must wear face-coverings in school, Essex MP Robert Halfon expressed fears for the mental health of susceptible young people.
A whole generation of young people from 1939 to the end of Nazi air-raids had to put on and take off cumbersome gas-masks as part of regular drills - a lot more unpleasant than a cloth face-covering, it has to be said. I hardly think we were mentally damaged as a result.
The mob: "you voted REMAIN in 1975 didnt you? Nuff said!"
I was gratified and saddened by turns at the general tone of New Year's Eve's BBC correspondents look ahead. (Incidentally, Lyse Doucet seems to have made this annual review her own; long may it continue.) People who really have their fingers on the pulse of current affairs were also pessimistic about 2022. Surprisingly, nobody mentioned Northern Ireland which looks to become a flashpoint this year.
However, viewing the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures offers some hope. The strides in vaccine technology, after years of graft by an under-funded university team in the UK and work by pioneering immigrants in Germany but given impetus by SARS-C0V-2, look like leading to the prevention of that perennial world-wide killer, malaria. Last October, the World Health Organisation approved the first anti-parasitical. Its success rate is said to be 30%, much less than the 75% which is the gold standard, but it is a start and should save hundreds of lives. Yet more promising are the initial results from large-scale trials in Mali of an Oxford University vaccine, claimed to be 77% effective in the children so far inoculated. One trusts that the current unrest in Mali does not disrupt the completion of the trials in adults. There is also work on a vaccine which targets the relatively-unchanging coat of the SARS-CoV-2 virus rather than the mutable (witness Omicron) spike. If this succeeds, it opens the way for a vaccine against other coronaviruses which have been with us for a long time, causing, along with adenoviruses and rhinoviruses, the common colds which bring misery to many each year, not to mention their effect on productivity.
2022 should also see the first results from the James Webb Space Telescope. The only part of the project for which there could be no dress rehearsal, the launch, safely completed, the NASA team is, as I write, preparing to complete the deployment of the sun shield. There will also be a steady flow of data from probes of asteroids and planets, including a virtual circus on Mars. It will be surprising if the increase in investigate robots does not produce at least one new unexpected item of information.
Nationalism cannot be kept out of scientific endeavour altogether. We have seen how nations have poured money into competitive space exploration, and there has been indulgence in vaccine diplomacy by at least one major nation. Scientists themselves, though, are more intent on gaining knowledge for its own sake, and to that end share findings with colleagues across borders. That is our big hope for the future.
Every year for the past few, I have included in my new year greetings words to the effect that: "it must be better than the year just gone.". Every year, those words have proved mistaken. So in this first minute of 2022, as a sort of juju, I offer my estimate of why the twelve months to come threaten to outdo 2021 in awfulness.
Firstly, politics. Here, Johnson will be eased aside as prime minister since even the dimmest of Tory back-benchers can see that he is no longer an electoral asset. However, there will be no change in the direction of this government, just as Thatcherism continued when Major replaced Thatcher. Immigration policy will be more unfair, public demonstrations will be inhibited, voter suppression will be enacted and it looks unlikely that corruption of our political system will be tackled. Indeed, it appears likely that our only watchdog, the Electoral Commission, rather being given more teeth which it needs, will be muzzled and its budget cut.
The USA, after a respite from the Trump years, looks like suffering a reverse. While the conservative Supreme Court is, as anticipated, not attempting to undo federal law, it has already started to back out from overruling law passed by States, no matter how illiberal. Since the majority of State seats is Republican and States have control of voting methods within their boundaries, it is probable that the electoral scales will be tilted away from the Democrats and towards an increasingly reactionary Republican party with consequences for the rest of the world.
Across the Irish Sea, the pent-up anger resulting from Johnson and Frost's dodgy compromise with the EU over NI trade, and their later U-turn, will surely burst out.
On the world scene, disasters due to climate change show no sign of abating. Nothing is being done to stop the civil wars in Africa and the Middle East. Nothing is being done to remove the illegal genocidal regime in Myanmar. The flow of refugees will therefore not abate. The dictators in China and Russia seem intent on making a military strike this year.
Nor have leaders in the West taken on board the likelihood of a new contagious epidemic of animal origin, not to mention the propensity of corona viruses to continue to mutate.
It makes me wonder whether I want to see another Christmas.
