Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.
Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.
- Christopher Howse: 'A Pilgrim in Spain'*
Covid
Below is an impressive letter to the French president from more than 200 lawyers, expressing concerns about the latest lockdown there. Some very good point and some nice phrases.
Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain
Under the midday sun in Pontevedra's main square yesterday, mask-wearing and social-distancing were being observed by all. Except for a group of 6 or 7 sitting on the edge of the square. A daily congregation spot for the city's (ofttimes raucous) drunks, drug addicts and beggars. The response of the local police was noteworthy. Or, rather, the lack of it. A patrol car passed twice but did nothing. I was left wondering if they'd be so lenient with a group of more normal folk. Who'd be better able to pay the fines, perhaps. The wages of sin?
Talking of groups, we know have La policía de balcón. Balcony police. People who report their neighbours for Covid transgressions. An activity known in British common parlance and in kids' talk as as ‘snitching’. ‘Ratting on’, in the USA, I believe.
I need, this morning, to check out driving schools. Are there still 4 people in a learner's car - the instructor, the pupil and 2 other learners in the back? And are the tests still taking place, with the examiner, the learner and the instructor all in the car? If so, it'd be material to know the rate of Covid infection among people who clearly can't be 2 metres apart. And if it isn't higher than elsewhere . . . ??
Incidentally, I think it was reader María who pointed out that having the instructor in the test car provided scope for secret hand signals to the driver being tested. But maybe this never actually happens.
Is Covid a boon for the press? Now that I can't read a paper for free in a café, I've taken to buying one each day. Are there many others doing the same, outnumbering perhaps the cafés that aren't doing so?
The USA
Spanish
To snitch. Delatar; Soplarse de alguien.
English
Coming soon to all dictionaries . . . . A new (combination) word - ‘non-zero’. Maning 'some’. As in:-
Were your [Republican] observers in the counting room?
There was a non-zero number of our observers there.
Finally . . .
In various guises . . . The wages of sin. Just in case you were wondering.
THE ARTICLE
After saying there was 'no question of lockdown', Emmanuel Macron has announced what many feared: the implementation of a new national and mandatory lockdown. We are lawyers and jurists of all specialities and from all parts of France and write to express our indignation at the injustice of this measure. After being astonished by the first lockdown, we believe that such violations of our freedoms and ways of life are neither viable nor legitimate. Lockdown will have major collateral consequences that will be more harmful than the virus itself.
While we agree with the President’s statement that nothing is 'more important than human life'. But a national lockdown is an approach reduced to the biology of life alone, forgetting that health is also, according to the WHO definition, 'a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity'. Protecting life therefore implies taking into account all its aspects, which are as much social, cultural, spiritual, political and economic as they are health-related.
We understand the anger and concerns of doctors and health workers and we ask the Government to provide them with the necessary means to exercise their professions. Supporting hospitals ought to have been the government’s priority over the last six months. Instead, it allowed itself to be overwhelmed. It now prefers brandishing the threat of a collapse of the health system - to impose measures that are arbitrarily described as a last resort so as not to have to consider other options (which do exist). This insults both doctors and the French people, making them believe that they are not capable of managing the crisis we are going through.
We are deeply concerned about the future of this zero-risk society, which would be ready to stop living so as not to die.
By putting a large part of the country on hold, the Government is sacrificing the bravest of our people: entrepreneurs, the self-employed, craftsmen - those who took risks to invest and create, giving this country colour and life, as well as their employees. Yet the human and social misery that will result from this lockdown (bankruptcies, depression, suicides, poverty, psychological disorders, renunciation of care) will also lead to many deaths, but necessarily less visible in the short term... If support measures have indeed been announced, they have been taken at the price of an unprecedented debt which will ruin our children and the political room for manoeuvre of our nation.
If we are at war - as the government has repeatedly declared - it is courage that we need, not governance by fear. Moreover, this fear is often irrational. Let's remember that the median age of death is 84 years old, according to the latest statistics from Santé Publique France. Forcing the majority of the population into inactivity, preventing any war effort, any start is a curious way of fighting a battle.
We are deeply concerned about the future of this zero-risk society, which would be ready to stop living so as not to die. Ready to sacrifice practically everything - its normal living conditions, social relations, work, and even friendships, affections and political and religious convictions - because of the threat of infection.
As lawyers, we also warn in particular about twisting the law. Any state of exception, even justified by an exceptional health situation, implies a risk of drift. Thus our law is now subject to the technical-scientific injunction of doctors and the Scientific Council, who impose their vision to the detriment of a more global political vision which must balance different interests.
Recalling that the WHO has highlighted the harmful effects of lockdown and drawing on the work of the European Lawyers' Institute for Human Rights and the Human Rights Institute of the Paris Bar, we argue that national lockdown is disproportionate in its infringement of our public freedoms, unjust, contrary to the common good and therefore illegal. The Government must adapt its measures to protect the weak and those exposed to the most serious forms of the pandemic without sacrificing all the citizens who enable countries to survive.
We join many entrepreneurs and mayors who have sounded the alarm. We therefore call on the executive to allow the forces of life in our country to get out of lockdown and we call on the elites of all sides to make their voices heard to protest against these measures which will hit our most humble citizens the hardest.
* A terrible book, by the way. Don't be tempted to buy it, unless you're a very religious Protestant.