Thank God for Kettles

Father and son. The son is still providing useful material for this blog. Today he demonstrates npb anxiety about risks and how it works:

We simply don't know what kind of Britain will awake from all this 

The worst of the crisis is also yet to come....the shared experience of having the shadow of death hanging over our heads [I think 'shared' is the key word  here] ...the general anxiety about the future that is laid bare in an Ipsos-Mori survey this week.

The link takes us to a Kettle tweet citing one response from the survey, asking whether people find various tasks 'easier/same/less easy.' since the corona crisis. 'Getting what you need from the shops' is much harder -- who would have thought?- and 'staying positive about the future' and '[ditto] today' is harder too. It is such an absurd question that the 'data' might mean anything, of course. 

much of the speculation about this is struggling to adjust. Its feet are still firmly planted in the past. It is largely conditioned by earlier political divisions such as Brexit.

Dead right -- but that's because both crises tell us something about the class structure and how it is maintained by (of all ironies) social distancing (as in Bourdieu, not Boris)

Both left and right are currently guilty of acting as though nothing has really changed...It seems obvious to his critics that Johnson is the wrong man for the crisis and equally obvious to them that he is mishandling it so badly he may be overthrown. But the opinion polls don’t say that

Still puzzled about why so many people disagree with him. He misses a chance to insist there should be a GNU though.

There are still some upsides (?) in the strange world of Guardianistas:

The age of social media bragging is over. Now we are too busy knitting 

 coronavirus is still in some small ways a leveller. Only weeks ago, I wrote of the burden [luvvie] of “thrilled to announce” culture – the growing pressure to publicly declare every and any work win online. The universe [!] has since intervened, ridding us of opportunities....We are pivoting to sharing news about our personal hobbies– knitting, bread baking and gardening – instead of side hustling [what's that?]...[For example]...“PERSONAL NEWS: I’ve just made and eaten my third banana cake of the week!”

But, luckily:

there are tangible gains to be made during this strange period. The stock market may have plunged, but coronavirus has seen the clout economy [?] boom..“The Body Coach” Joe Wicks has become a household name, after conducting daily PE lessons from his living room for schoolchildren.

If that was the last offering from the Grud that I had read before succumbing to the lurgy, I would have been very cross indeed.