Culture wars – Blood and Porridge

From unsplash.com / © Brian Asare

Earlier this month Singapore’s Ministry of Health announced that it no longer perceived Covid-19 as a threat and the city-state’s ‘disease-response level’ would be lowered from ‘green’ to ‘yellow’. For those people visiting Singapore, this means they no longer have to buy Covid-19 travel insurance, and visitors not fully vaccinated no longer have to show test results to prove their uninfected status. It also looks like Singapore’s Trace Together app – something I had to constantly use when I arrived here a year ago, and without which I would probably have spent my first few months living on the streets – will be discontinued. The most noticeable relaxation of all, however, is that, since February 13^th, face-masks are no longer compulsory on Singapore’s public transport system. *

Thus, riding Singapore’s buses – as I normally do twice a day, to get to and from work – has been a strange experience during the past week. I’ve had to mentally adjust to seeing the entirety of other passengers’ faces. Not that all of them aren’t wearing masks now, of course. A lot of passengers still are, mostly, I have to say, the Singaporeans ones. It’s largely passengers from the country’s sizeable Western community who are suddenly, brazenly flaunting their facial features for the first time in a couple of years.

Perhaps I’m just odd, but I don’t actually mind people wearing masks around me. The masks make me take more notice of their eyes, the windows of the soul, and create a general air of mystery. “What marvellously alluring eyes that person has,” I might say to myself. “But I wonder what lurks lower down, concealed by their mask? Perchance a mouthful of Shane McGowan-style dental work?” Such are the thoughts I entertain as I make the 45-minute bus journey to and from my workplace in central Singapore. “Could that masked person be a gorgeous Singaporean equivalent of Selina Kyle, aka Catwoman from Batman? Or do they really resemble Lon Chaney Sr, from The Phantom of the Opera (1925)?” And in fact, I’ve seen a number of articles in the past few years claiming that a Covid-19 mask adds to a person’s aura of attractiveness.

It’s no surprise that an East Asian country like Singapore has stuck with its mask mandate for so long (way after Western ones have abandoned them), and its population has happily complied with it. Wearing a surgical mask when you’re unwell with something that might be contagious has never been a big deal in this part of the world. It was one of the first things I noticed when I started working in Asia, in Japan back in 1989 – folk suffering from a cold or a dose of the flu would mask up to avoid passing something on to their fellow citizens. Indeed, the surgical mask is so engrained on Japanese culture that there’s even a well-known figure of urban folklore, Kuchisake Onna, whose gimmick is that she wears one. Since Kuchisake Onna is a homicidal spirit who takes the form of a seemingly beautiful woman, that mask has a macabre function. It conceals a grotesquely widened mouth, its ends cut open as far as the ears.

© JollyRoger

Inevitably, the implementation of measures against Covid-19 was, in the West at least, immediately incorporated into the culture wars that these days rage between the right and the left in just about every area of politics and society. The sort of people who rant and rave against woke universities, LGBT rights, asylum seekers, critical race theory, restrictions on gun ownership, taking action against climate change and, in the latest manifestation of right-wing insanity, the so-called ’15-minute city’, have spent the last three years rupturing their hernias about mask mandates, lockdown orders and Covid-19 vaccinations. In the USA, millions of gun-toting, Trump-loving, QAnon-believing macho-men pooped their pants in rage when it was suggested that they don a small piece of cloth over their mouths and nostrils to prevent them getting a virus and, equally importantly, prevent them possibly passing it on to their fellow human beings. The very thought of such a thing was a violation of their rights and ’freeee-dum’, apparently.

The UK was also beset with Covid-19-induced whinging, most notably at alleged news station – though these days it’s more a drop-in centre for conspiracy-theory nutjobs – GB News. Much of it emanated from GB News pundit and supposed archaeologist Neil Oliver, whose schtick is to stare ashen-faced into the camera for six, seven, eight minutes or more and deliver a doom-laden monologue of right-wing paranoia, dog-whistles, unsubstantiated claims and windy, overwrought rhetoric that his hard-of-thinking viewers probably think is Shakespearean. He’s spent much of the pandemic lamenting about anti-Covid-19 measures and how, say, they’ve deprived children of a vital, communal story-telling tradition that’d hitherto existed unbroken since tribal campfires on the far side of the Ice Age. Or some drivel like that.

© GB News / From indy100.com

Oliver’s nadir came in 2021 when he declared, “If your freedom means that I might catch Covid from you, then so be it. If my freedom means that you might catch Covid from me, then so be it.” And presumably, if the person who caught it from him was a highly-at-risk octogenarian or person with serious underlying health issues who didn’t want to catch Covid-19 from anybody… Well, tough shit. At least they’d die of the virus with their freedom intact, which was the important thing.

Then, swooping off into realms of total doolally-ness, Oliver likened the Covid-sceptic minority in Britain, himself included presumably, to the pilots who flew Spitfires and Hurricanes against the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain: “They risked everything for freedom.” Forgive me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the entire population of Britain during World War II surrender a whole bunch of their freedoms whilst trying to unite against, and overcome, an external threat? I can’t imagine Oliver lasting long in London in 1940 if he’d insisted on having his houselights blazing every night because doing so was in the name of ‘freedom’. Yeah, leave my rights alone, Mr Churchill!

Anyway, for the foreseeable future, I’ll continue to wear a face-mask while I use Singapore’s public transport system. I’ve had Covid but my partner hasn’t. Though she’s fully vaxed and boostered up, she probably hasn’t developed the level of immunity to it that I have, and I’d hate to bring the thing home one day and pass it onto her. Also, I’m not convinced we’re out of the woods yet with Covid. I’m sure it’s possible that future, nasty variants will appear and wreak more havoc. And thirdly, I’ll keep wearing my mask because it’s the sort of gesture that Neil Oliver would wholly despise.

And if it’s despised by him, it must be the right thing to do.

From unsplash.com / © Anshu A

* Face masks still have to be worn, though, in Singapore’s hospitals.

© Cold War Steve

Continuing my rant about miscreants who support Putin and / or are generally making arses of themselves during the current crisis in Ukraine – this time miscreants in the United Kingdom.

Vladimir Putin – presently stuck in a big, bloody hole he’s dug for himself in Ukraine, but still determinedly digging, using thousands of Ukrainian and Russian lives as his shovel-blade – has never been short of pals in Britain. Back in 2001, soon after Putin had won his first presidential election in Russia, and not long after the start of the second Chechen war, which saw the deaths of at least 25,000 civilians, a third of Chechnya deemed a ‘zone of ecological disaster’, and most Chechens left suffering ‘discernible symptoms of psychological distress’, then-British Prime Minister and Labour Party leader Tony Blair jetted out to Moscow and cosied up to Putin. El Tone praised him for showing ‘real leadership’ and giving ‘strong support’ in the ‘fight against terrorism’.

Even today, Blair is hero-worshipped by certain centre-right politicians and commentators in Britain. Ironically, while later Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn is commonly loathed and belittled as a traitorous, anti-Western, lefty scumbag, it’s worth recalling what Corbyn said about Blair’s visit to Moscow in 2001. “When the Prime Minister… meets President Putin this evening, I hope that he will convey the condemnation of millions of people around the world of the activities of the Russian army in Chechnya and what it is doing to ordinary people there. When images of what is happening are translated into other parts of the world, many people are horrified…” Exchange ‘Ukraine’ for ‘Chechnya’ and you realise how Corbyn’s words resonate in 2022.

No doubt nowadays Blair keeps his mouth shut about Putin’s supposed statesmanship. But another well-known British politician is less reluctant to express his admiration for the warmongering Russian ogre. Right-winger, Europhobe and wannabe broadcaster Nigel Farage has said of him: “I wouldn’t trust him and I wouldn’t want to live in his country, but compared with the kids who run foreign policy in this country, I’ve more respect for him than our lot.” Meanwhile, the donkey-faced, and full-of-donkey-shit, Farage has made copious appearances on Russia Today, coming out with such gems as the claim that Europe’s modern democracies have been run ‘by the worst people we have seen in Europe since 1945’. Worse even than Putin? Yes, I’m sure Nige thinks so.

By the way, let’s not forget Aaron Banks, Farage’s compadre in the Vote Leave campaign that managed in 2016 to tear the UK out of the European Union, possibly helped by a wee bit of Russian funding. In 2017, Banks did his bit for the Putin cause by tweeting: “Ukraine is to Russia what the Isle of Wight is to the UK. It’s Russian.”

Elsewhere, there’s multiple evidence suggesting that Boris Johnson’s Conservative government, if not totally in love with Putin’s habit of inflicting atrocities on neighbouring countries that annoy him, is certainly in love with the wealth of the Russian oligarchs who surround the man. Recent claims about the amount of donations the Conservative party has received from such oligarchs have ranged from 1.93 million to 2.3 million pounds.

Johnson seems particularly enamoured with members of Russia’s mega-wealthy elite. In 2018, while he was serving as Theresa May’s foreign secretary, he was seen stumbling about an Italian airport suffering from a hangover, and lacking his security detail, after attending a shindig thrown by Russian media magnate Evgeny Lebedev at his castle near Perugia. Lebedev subsequently received a peerage and now, technically, is ‘Baron Lebedev, of Hampton in the London Borough of Richmond on Thames and of Siberia in the Russian Federation’. Johnson has sheepishly denied allegations that he used his influence to secure the peerage for his buddy.

© Private Eye

Though late last week the British government announced it was freezing the assets of seven Russian billionaires (including Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich) with close ties to Putin, this only came after weeks of prevarication. Originally, it looked like the UK wouldn’t be clamping down on dodgy Russian money until late in 2023, which would have given those likely to be affected a good year-and-a-half to sell their assets and move their money off British soil. Even with this new change of heart, Abramovich and co. have already had a fortnight’s grace-period to shift some of their wealth. Basically, Johnson’s regime is reluctant to do anything that might sully London’s reputation as a haven for dodgy money.

Summing up the absolute state of the Conservative Party on this issue is its wretched co-chairman Ben Elliot. Simultaneously, Elliot’s been sourcing donations from super-rich Russians and been offering services to them in Britain through his ‘concierge’ company, Quintessentially. “Quintessentially Russia has nearly 15 years’ experience providing luxury lifestyle management services to Russia’s elite and corporate members…”, ensuring that from “restaurant bookings to backstage concert access, a bespoke lifestyle is at our clients’ fingertips.” So drooled the blurb on Quintessentially’s website until recently. Then, suddenly and mysteriously, this obsequious drivel was deleted from it.

While we’re heaping abuse on the British government, we shouldn’t overlook the smirk-faced Priti Patel, who – until another apparent U-turn last week – seemed determined that the Ukrainian refugees Britain was allowing in should be vastly outnumbered by the Russian oligarchs it was welcoming with open arms. At one point, while other European countries had taken in Ukrainian refugees in the tens of thousands, the UK had dished out a mere 50 additional visas to them.

Besides Patel, it’s worth castigating government minister Kevin Foster, who advised people fleeing Ukraine to apply to Britain’s ‘seasonal worker scheme’, which would allow them to spend their time in the country picking fruit. Such humanity, Kev! Also, some hatred should be directed towards whatever nasty piece of work in the Home Office complained to the Daily Telegraph that Ireland had allowed in too many Ukrainian refugees. All those shifty Ukrainians, claimed the anonymous source, would “come through Dublin, into Belfast and across to the mainland to Liverpool”, thus creating “a drug cartel route.”

Needless to say, Britain’s resident community of publicity-seeking, rent-an-opinion gobshites have fastened onto the Ukrainian crisis like flies fastening onto a cow-plop. George Galloway, that fedora-wearing gasbag whose rhetoric seems to weave between old-school socialism (when he’s in England) and hardline British nationalism (when he’s in Scotland), and who’s a fixture on the Russian-owned Sputnik radio channel, tweeted recently: “Me, Farage, Hitchens, Carlson and Rod Liddle are a pretty broad front of people who think NATO expansion to the borders of Russia was a pretty bad idea. Maybe pause and think about that?” When I paused and thought about it, my immediate thoughts were: “George Galloway, Nigel Farage, Peter Hitchens, Tucker Carlson, Rod Liddle… Wow, what a team! Couldn’t Marvel make a superhero movie about them? Maybe call it Arseholes Assemble?”

Hilariously, Galloway’s Putin-sympathetic stance has ended all unity in the All for Unity party, the staunchly pro-UK outfit he set up in Scotland prior to the last Scottish parliamentary elections. Jamie Blackett, the party’s former deputy leader, and also the Deputy Lieutenant for Dumfriesshire and a Daily Telegraph writer, recently disowned his old boss and announced the disbanding of the party.

Meanwhile, Neil Oliver, the alleged Scottish historian and talking head on right-wing outlet GB News, lately delivered a bewildering monologue, the gist of which was: “I’ll be honest. I don’t know what’s happening in Ukraine. I don’t understand it either.” Oliver’s professed ignorance of the situation didn’t stop him talking about it for nine minutes, however. It’s also strange that when it comes to Putin and Ukraine Oliver is so hesitant to climb off the fence, considering how quick he’d been in the past to condemn, say, the Scottish National Party (‘disastrously incompetent’, ‘small’, ‘not worth bothering about’), or the Black Lives Matter movement (‘anarchists and communists’ eating ‘into the built fabric of Britain’). Very strange indeed.

One other thing bugging me about Putin’s current horror show is how certain people have pounced on it and tried to use it to promulgate the right-wing agendas they’ve been pushing for years already. Take the ‘culture wars’, in which Putin’s ‘anti-woke’ position had until recently won accolades from Western pundits on the right of the spectrum. Well, now that Putin is officially a Bad Lad, they can’t praise him directly anymore. Instead, they’re pushing the narrative that woke stuff no longer matters during the crisis that good old Vlad, sorry, bad new Vlad has created.

Here’s the absurd Daily Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson, recently opining: “The outbreak of war has shone an unflattering light on our society… Watch issues like LGBT, net-zero, Partygate, Black Lives Matter and farcical ‘Stay Safe’ Covid restrictions all fade into well-deserved insignificance now that war is back.” According to Pearson, in other words, now that Putin’s behaving like a c*nt, we should all stop fretting about being civil to our fellow human beings, about preventing them from dying of Covid, about preventing the planet from burning up, and about our leader Boris Johnson being a lying, unprincipled sack of shite.

And here’s the barmy Spectator pundit Lionel Shriver, writing: “Decolonisations, contextualisations, gender-neutralisations – it’s all a load of onanistic, diversionary crap, and the West having shoved its head up its backside is one reason that Putin feels free to do whatever he likes.” Though I suspect Putin would still have attacked Ukraine if fewer people on Western social media had been using the pronouns ‘they’ / ‘them’ in their profiles.

One last thing for which Britain’s right-wingers must be thanking Putin is the attention he’s diverted from the looming issues of manmade climate change and the dire state of the environment. Thanks to the headlines being dominated by Ukraine, not much attention has been given to, for instance, the apocalyptic floods that have stricken Queensland and New South Wales. And, somewhat inevitably, the afore-mentioned Nigel Farage is currently trying to relaunch his political career by demanding a new national referendum – this time, not about the UK’s membership of the European Union, but about the British government’s supposed adoption of Net Zero policies to combat climate change. Farage, of course, wants us to vote against them.

I wonder why he’s doing this. Could he be thinking of a country that helped finance his previous, successful referendum campaign? Or could he be thinking of an oil-exporting country that would stand to gain if Britain gave up on green energy and became wholly dependent on fossil fuels again?

I can’t possibly think of a country that falls into both categories.

Tag: Culture wars

Singapore unmasked

It’s time Putin’s pals were put in the bin (Part 2)