NOTE: Somewhere along the way, Sunday's post got lost. So here it is. My real post for Tuesday will be posted later today . . . Monday's post is below this one, if you haven't seen it. Nice song in it.
Sunday, 24 May 2020
Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.
- Christopher Howse: 'A Pilgrim in Spain'*
The Bloody Virus
- Sweden: The take of a foreign resident.
- The UK: Now at the same level of deaths-per-million as Italy, and will be beyond it by the end of today. All down to delay and the resulting lag.
Life in Spain in the Time of Something Like Cholera
Real Life in Spain
- At least politics in Spain are still normal. Meaning tribal, of course.
- An idea that was ahead of its time?
- Missing your 'pilgrimage' on the camino de Santiago? Here's news of potential compensation.
- Missing your football? Here's some good news on that too.
The UK
- The Sunday Times: The public inquiry into the government’s handling of the coronavirus will come later, but, as our Insight report today shows clearly, the broad outlines are already taking shape. Britain was slow into lockdown, is slow to get out of it and is suffering the highest death toll from Covid-19 in Europe. This is the worst of all worlds, and it was preventable. the picture that emerges is of a prime minister with a tendency to put off until tomorrow what should be done today and a government unable to communicate messages with clarity and focus.
- As for the PM's popularity . . . Johnson’s personal ratings have dropped 7 points in a month. On the belated lockdown, the paucity of testing, and on the lag in tracing, he is very vulnerable. Studies are beginning to show, as they have in the U.S., just how many deaths could have been avoided if the government had acted a week earlier in shutting the country down. As that settles in, the rally around the leader effect will surely dissipate.
Finland
- In the article below, crime writer Antti Tuomainen says that self-isolation is a way of life in Finland. And asks: Who else has a word for drinking alone in your (under)pants? [Finnish friends kindly sent me the book she cites and I included cartoons from it in this blog a while back.]
The EU
- The positive take: In the twilight of her chancellorship, Angela Merkel has secured her place in the pantheon of European statesmanship by agreeing to common EU borrowing to help the countries hardest hit by the coronavirus rebuild their economies. In so doing, she has jumped over the shadow of tight-fisted German conservatism, faced down the high priests of fiscal and monetary orthodoxy and finally practiced the mantra she preached in the 2008-2015 financial crisis: that “if the euro fails, Europe fails.”
- The negative take: The Franco-German plan for a €500 billion “recovery fund” has been welcomed with superlatives such as “Hamiltonian,” “stunning,” “a game changer” and the somewhat slightly less hagiographic “surprisingly ambitious.” In actual fact, it is just a damp squib. . . . EU politics is becoming more, not less contentious. If we can’t set aside our petty, parochial politics amid a global pandemic to move toward a fiscal union now, we never will.
The USA
- Neal Ferguson in today's Times reminds us of his comment of Nov 2015: Trump has the face that fits the ugly mood in America. He has both the resources and the incentives to press on. In the current national mood of disaffection with professional politicians, he could seem an attractive alternative to Hillary Clinton . . . The point about Trump is that his appeal is overwhelmingly a matter of style over substance. It is not what he says that a great many white Americans like — it is the way that he says it.
- And in a terrific article Andrew Sullivan writes: I know we’re used to it, but there is no rational or coherent explanation for any of [Trump's behaviour]. There is no strategy, or political genius. There is just a delusional pathology in which he says whatever comes into his head at any moment, determined entirely by his mood, which is usually bad. His attention span is so tiny and his memory so occluded that he can say two contradictory things with equal conviction repeatedly, and have no idea there might be any inconsistency at all. . . . The key thing is that none of this seems to matter to the supporters of the president. For them, the pathology seems to be the point. It is precisely Trump’s refusal to acknowledge reality that they thrill to — because it offends and upsets the people they hate (i.e., city dwellers, the educated, and the media). The more Trump brazenly lies, the more Republicans support him. The more incoherent he is, the more insistent they are. Bit by bit, they have been co-opted by Trump into a series of cascading and contradicting lies, and they are not going to give up now — even when they are being treated for COVID-19 in hospital.
Finally . . .
- I wonder how many Americans abroad can now display pride in their country. I really do feel sorry for those who didn't vote for Fart. As for those who did, one hopes many will have changed their minds.
THE ARTICLE
How to do social distancing the Finnish way: Antti Tuomainen
Self-isolation is a way of life in Finland. And who else has a word for drinking alone in your pants?
One evening last week, after working alone all day, as I do every day, because I’m a writer and a Finn, I caught the No 17 bus home from my office, because it was raining and snowing at the same time. (Spring has arrived in Helsinki.) Apart from the driver, I rode the bus alone and passed a number of trams and buses with no passengers. On the way, I saw one fellow cycling alone and another jogging alone. This is Helsinki in lockdown. Yet it also looked like a pretty normal Monday.
I am, as I said, a Finn. I can probably guess what you’re thinking: “Oh, he wakes up in his ice hut and wrestles with bilingual bears before inventing world-leading sustainable technology while designing sleek buildings and stark vases.” Well, that’s part of it, sure. If you’ve ever met a Finn, you might also be thinking: “Not big ones for small talk, are they?”
Over the decades, Finland seems to have produced quite a formidable collection of world-class conductors, Formula One drivers, architects, fashion designers, ski jumpers, long-distance runners, film directors, composers and writers. And if you’re seeing a trend here, you might not be alone. Truth is, they are. Alone in their cockpits, on stage and podium, writing in their chairs and running in their shoes. Always alone — and fervently keeping their social distance long before it became the norm.
Covid-19 restrictions began in earnest here somewhere around mid-March. It seems to have happened overnight and gone so smoothly (we have had just 301 deaths) that it was almost as though it were the result of some practice. Come to think of it, maybe it was.
To return to our fabulous public transport system, there is a comic book here called 'Finnish Nightmares', which presents situations that would indeed be nightmarish for a Finnish person. One of these shows a Finn on a bus, sitting in a window seat. The nightmare? That someone sits in the aisle seat — and the first person has to speak to them in order to get past and get off the bus. Needless to say, our buses, trains and trams are, even in normal times, quite roomy.
As lockdown eases around Europe, I suppose the big question is: shouldn’t everybody be taking lessons from us? Because, really, doesn’t it seem we’ve been doing it right all along? To put it directly to you Brits: should you be more Finn? It probably isn’t for us to say. We are famously modest. But I wouldn’t be a Finn if I didn’t give you the no-nonsense, practical, how-to-do-it list of how you might go about it.
First, try to live where no one else would want to live. Simple. Choose the most uncomfortable spot on the map, say, between Sweden and Russia, make a home and don’t tell anyone where you are. Finland is roughly 50% larger than the UK; it is nearly the size of Germany. The UK has 66 million people. Finland has 5.5 million. In a country that is mostly dense forest and empty, well-maintained roads, it hasn’t been entirely impossible to accommodate these times.
Second, minimise social contact. Again, live where going outside is inadvisable anyway. And stop going to pubs and cafés and gatherings and dinners and . . . for heaven’s sake, stop talking. What good is it anyway? We never started talking and look what happened: we’re the happiest nation in the world, with — if we weren’t too modest to point out — the best healthcare, education and rye bread. Coincidence? We think not. If you absolutely insist on going outside, do it alone and in the woods.
Third, if you want to have a party, have it. Just do it by yourself. In Finland, we have a term for hard solitary partying: pantsdrunk. It’s where you sit on your couch alone, in your underwear, get drunk and pass out. A good time will be had by all.
Fourth — this advice will come too late for some: keep family sizes small. One person is ideal. If there are more, you may have to talk to them. We have small families.
Finally — and this is probably too late for all of you — speak a language no one understands. This is a great trick for lessening any need to travel. Why go anywhere when nobody understands you there? Similarly, no curious foreigner will bother you for long when you mumble incoherently and try to drag him into a sauna.
I was in a public sauna, one of my favourite places to be, when I heard the news that, because of this virus, they were going to close all public saunas. I exchanged six or seven low-voiced words with a fellow bather. We concluded there was no need to panic. In a country of 5.5 million people, we have more than a million saunas. So now we find our own private one and sweat it out alone. For some reason, I haven’t had a problem with that.
* A terrible book, by the way. Don't be tempted to buy it, unless you're a very religious Protestant