Yesterday at 13.05 I posted on Facebook: ‘Boris has become Jesusson instead of Johnson for some since Easter rising.’ I referenced the Jesus’ Son1999 movie starring Billy Crudup, Samantha Morton, Holly Hunter, Jack Black, Denis Leary and Dennis Hopper.
I’d been meaning to write it since hearing Ian Hislop mention it on the topical quiz show Have I Got News For You two Fridays ago. He’d said some of the right-wing press had used that reference after Johnson left hospital on the Easter weekend.
He hadn’t combined them I like I did though, thinking of Scandinavian names that work like that, or referenced the Jesus’ Son movie: my additions to previous scholarship, using academic language.
I’d forgotten all about the expected Johnson baby when I wrote it.
Then today it was announced the Johnsons had a healthy son last night, born much earlier than most expected!
The note I made 18 months ago that came in useful on Saturday, for my last sunrise b4 BST photos, with the sunrise then at 83 degrees east; so I knew it would be visible:
My Public Health Contribution
Coronavirus hand-washing: a guide as I understand it.
While avoiding people’s breath seems clear, how the virus survives on surfaces has had mixed messages so far.
As I understand it, it’s if somebody with coronavirus has left it on a surface, which you then touch, and then touch a part of your body open to the inside: mouth, nose etc, and I presume cuts etc.
So you only really need to wash your hands if you’ve touched something that may have coronavirus on it: when you’ve been out, or brought something from the outside in. It’s supposed to survive on hard surfaces longer than soft, but only for hours, up to 72.
So if you haven’t been out for 72 hours and not brought anything in, you should be safe, and not have to stress about washing hands all the time.
Contagion Movie and Coronavirus Reality
I watched Contagion (2011) on ITV4 last week; inspired by the coronavirus outbreak, as I hadn’t watched it before!; and it had a lot of similarities with what’s happened with coronavirus: especially it starting in the Chinese animal food chain: Screen Rant comparison between the two.
I think Chinese culture has a lot of positives, especially the martial arts exercise and philosophy; pandas and eco initiatives; but really think they could improve their food chain; as the whole world could.
Blogging and Writing
Unlike the blogger in Contagion, I’ve tried to really provide an entertaining public service model, which is one of the reasons I haven’t made much money.
Blogging has also been useful to me for getting my views down as they happen, so I can look back on them. Today, I remembered blogging criticism of Boris Johnson (‘Well, the Chinese are showing us that that is the approach we have got to have in the future.” https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2464791/Boris-Johnson-takes-dramatic-helicopter-flight-Hong-Kong.html) and George Osbourne for wanting a ‘Chinese-style’ high development country when they visited China and Hong Kong in 2013; it was also criticised in The Guardian!
I advertise my books because I believe in them, and always will; although they have largely been ignored, as far as I know! I have been ready to hand the baton over to Greta Thunberg and her Children of the Quorn since she arrived over the horizon (linking at the last moment to the original topic in this blog post; previously unforeseen and unplanned, in true spontaneous prose style!).
Blue sky city park days could be a thing of the past if humanity continues to pollute the planet. Ross McGuiness reported in the Metro last week that Beijing’s pollution level has hit Orange for the first time: ‘The World Health Organization says the presence of tiny pollution particles – known as PM2.5 – should not exceed 25 micrograms per cubic metre. In Beijing, the levels were recorded at close to 400.’
World Health Organization building from the South-East, Geneva (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Johnson and Osborne’s U.K. Future
Hi, it’s Wolf Whitzer with the Greenygrey News. London mayor Boris Johnson and UK Chancellor George Osborne of course cited China as a role model for the U.K. after visiting there last year.
Beijing China in Three Bands (Photo credit: sjrankin)
I think China can be an example of hard work, innovation and industriousness, but Beijing and other cities pay for industrialisation with terrible smog: reminiscent of Victorian London.
Johnson also used Harry Potter to try and bind the nations together, as Potter had a relationship with a Chinese girl called Cho Chang.
The article also reported ‘a British architecture and design firm based in London has a plan to let people breathe in clean air. A team at Orproject is currently working on bringing a park enclosed in a bubble to Beijing. The design proposes housing a botanical garden under a bubble dome-like structure, which could also cover office buildings, retail outlets and apartments…’ up to a whole city.
Here’s what it could look like, as featured in the Metro:
While it could be good for the Greenygrey brand to get more coverage, and is creating work, we hope humanity tackles pollution rather than having to use bubbles for clean air.
Seventy-five years ago, the Slavs were being demonised as sub-human. Now, Russian women like Anna Kournikova and Maria Sharapova are considered too beautiful to be used as comparisons by people like John Inverdale.
English: Maria Sharapova (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Hi, it’s G.G. Howling, literary correspondent at the Greenygrey, finishing off working-class week at the Greenygrey. My human parallel, J.K. Rowling, is a woman done good from an ordinary background, living as a single mother on benefits before finding success.
While I haven’t heard J.K. talk about class I remember Adrian Mole author Sue Townsend talking about her struggles as a working-class writer; on Melvyn Bragg’s On Class and Culture I think; with her (working) class not really valuing her work, and the upper classes not really interested in a working-class writer.
Marc Latham can relate to this, although he has also had help and made valued connections with people from both the working-class and upper classes.
So, after focusing on the working-class this week, we’ll end it by considering its place amongst other classes and cultures in modern Britain.
As this is the Greenygrey, we of course have to consider both sides of the argument. Film-makers like Ken Loach and Alan Bleasdale created realistic but romantic portrayals of the working-class from the 1960s to 1990s, mixing gritty depressing situations with the hope and spirit of people determined not to let the system grind them down.
John Lennon of course sung of this in the Working-Class Hero song.
Perhaps these are old hat to the younger multicultural generation, and they relate more to the street stories of Noel Clarke and Ronan Bennett?
The other side of the coin to the romantic – realistic portrayal of the working-class is like that of Boris Johnson, who blames the working-class for not trying hard enough; living instead in a hazy old world self-sympathising stupor.
But even if the working-class try, it’s not always easy. Mass immigration means there’s more competition, which is usually the government or EU’s fault rather than the migrants, and employers are able to hire and fire more easily, as well as offering less work. Zero-hour contracts are the new novelty harking back to Victorian workhouse times.
And work environments aren’t always that nice anyway; or even universities. When Marc Latham tried to work hard at the start of his PhD thesis in university because of financial difficulties he was persecuted as a pushy troublemaker by his first year supervisors!
The Working-Class Green and Grey
In social terms, the Greenygrey was born between the more green upper classes Marc Latham had mixed with while travelling and in university, and the more grey traditional working-class life portrayed by Loach and Bleasdale Marc related to; although he grew up in a working-class green countryside town.
But, as with everything Greenygrey, the two sides (classes) are not entirely separate, and there are green working-class people and grey upper classes; and Marc Latham similarly thinks green sometimes, and other times grey.
Fire dance (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
While in some ways, some times he agrees with Boris Johnson that people should work more, in other ways he thinks that the working-class who don’t work to chase money and materialism are living an ideal life; like Native Americans, African tribal people or Australian aborigines.
But, trying to live a life focused on old ways family and community is precarious in a globalised world, and as the plight of other indigenous people has shown, it’s an almost certainty that they’ll be preyed upon by other cultures and big business.
Leading into Wolf, Wildlife and Environment Week
Fracking_Food_Farms (Photo credit: Public Herald)
While Jeremy Clarkson’s anti-environmentalism is about as grey as can be, so is usually anathema to Marc, sometimes he does seem to make sense when arguing against policies that are going to have little or no impact on the environment.
While the green of Marc doesn’t like policies that unnecessarily harm the environment, the grey of Marc doesn’t like policies that unnecessarily make life difficult for the poor and vulnerable.
Therefore, he is still open-minded about fracking, which is currently dividing the green and grey worlds. Although in a perfect world it would be nice if it was unnecessary, in the real world green energy can only supply a small fraction of our energy needs; and fracking might make Britain energy rich and reduce bills for the people. Although knowing how the energy companies have profited while raising bills over the last twenty years, we don’t trust them at all.
Eastern wolves at Wolf Science Center, Ernstbrunn, Lower Austria (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
And that leads nicely into the third and final w of the www of the Greenygrey philosophy: wolf. Wolf is the icon for wildlife and environment, and of course also the Greenygrey website.
Although the last couple of weeks have been enjoyable and rewarding, it’ll be a relief to escape into nature and wildlife; writing about women and the working-class can be controversial and divisive, and everybody loves a wolf don’t they…
mistYmuse 