I’ve been sitting in entrance of my laptop for round half an hour questioning what I ought to write about for Christmas Eve. I attempted trying again at what I’d accomplished in earlier years – all within the weblog archive on the suitable of this web page which matches again to 2006 (although I didn’t submit something on December twenty fourth till the next yr) however all that did was depress me as so a lot of my earlier posts appeared moderately extra attention-grabbing and higher written than more moderen entries, and far wider in scope.
This yr appears prone to be a really quiet Christmas for me, and the reason being largely Covid and different infections. Though Christmas and Boxing Day will likely be a lot the identical each my sons have cancelled deliberate visits residence with their households due to the massive prevalence of illness for the time being and the dangers they may trigger each to weak adults like us (I’m an historical diabetic) and their households.
In fact I’ve had all of the Covid jabs – I feel 4 to date – and the flu vaccination and it’s maybe why I appear for the time being to be doing higher than a few of my primarily moderately youthful pals. Final Wednesday 4 of us cancelled a closing get-together earlier than Christmas for a meal collectively as one had Covid and one other was in mattress with one other virus.
However I do really feel very depressed and indignant. Primarily on the horrible mess our authorities have fabricated from the nation significantly within the final yr, but additionally over the long run. Truss’s nightmare authorities which resulted within the waste of many billions in a couple of days, Sunak as Chancellor and now PM and the long run disastrous results of Brexit and austerity. And long term nonetheless the actually loopy privatisation of key industries reminiscent of gasoline, water, electrical energy, railways and the creeping back-door privatisation of the NHS with ‘reforms’ which have been largely about opening it to personal revenue.
Issues do now appear to be coming to a head, with employees seeing wages clearly leaving them unable to deal with will increase in costs of power and meals, in addition to rises in rents and mortgages, and strikes throughout the general public sector as effectively within the privatised postal service. Even among the right-wing press have begun to abandon the Tories for his or her incompetence – as Labour has moved and is starting to appear to be a extra economically competent right-wing celebration. And even the BBC has begun to choose up among the extra blatant lies made by ministers in regards to the nurses.
One factor I’ve not posted a lot if in any respect about this yr is my persevering with images on the streets of London, largely masking protests. I don’t do as a lot as I did in earlier years, however I’ve nonetheless been going out and dealing a couple of days every month because the lock-down ended. And though I’ve not been maintaining My London Diary updated, in addition to submitting the images to Alamy I’ve additionally been placing them in albums on Fb.
The chilly spell made it troublesome for me to get out earlier within the month and rail strikes have made it unimaginable for me to get to another occasions. However each days when the nurses had been placing I went to {photograph} them, on the first strike day exterior St Thomas’s Hospital and the second a rally at College School London Hospital adopted by a march. The images with this submit are from these two occasions. You possibly can view extra from each days by following the hyperlinks within the earlier sentence and see these photos bigger by right-clicking and selecting to open them in a brand new tab.
Tags: ASLEF, Brexit, Christmas Eve, price of dwelling, Covid, power prices, meals costs, authorities incompetence, inflation, London, march, mortgages, NHS, nurses, peter Marshall, political mess, postal employees, privatisation, protest, rail employees, RCN, rents, rising costs, RMT, Royal Mail, St Thomas’s Hospit, strikes, placing days, placing employees, Sunak, Tories, practice drivers, Truss, UCLH, College School London Hospital
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