Throughout my long life, I have been told off for my outlook on people in general but sometimes I am driven very close to despair by my fellow human beings.

When Bunter Johnson and his merry men eased lockdown restrictions a couple of weeks ago, it was over a sunny weekend so people flocked to the countryside and beaches. I certainly did not begrudge them enjoyment of their ‘freedom’ but why on earth didn’t they take their rubbish home with them. Resort towns and villages were left to cope with piles of discarded wrappers, uneaten food and disposable barbecues. Some even reported human waste left in bottles or just where it fell. And I am sure these people look on themselves as vastly superior to animals.

I consoled myself with the thought that visitors to Dartmoor tend to be the outdoor types who generally care for their surroundings but a few days ago when returning from nearby Yelverton, I drove past a large and usually well used layby to see an old washing machine lying there, obviously abandoned.

Since then I have read about old furniture and other discarded household items also chucked out on that stretch of road.

Now where is the logic in that, I ask myself. Whoever left the stuff for others to clear away would have had to drive out from where they live, presumably under cover of darkness, throw the stuff out and drive home again. Why? Surely it is just as simple to take what they don’t want to the public tip in Tavistock and not risk being prosecuted for fly tipping while spoiling the pristine beauty of the Moor. Or is it that they deliberately set out to spoil lives for other people?

Travis you were quite right. Vultures do indeed serve a far more useful purpose than human beings.

Meanwhile in America, a black female activist, Candace Owens is in trouble for saying that George Floyd was not a martyr but a ‘horrible human being.’

Last Wednesday, Owens appeared on Facebook Live and explained the problem she had with people holding up Floyd as a martyr. 

‘We are unique in that we are the only people that fight and scream and demand support and justice for the people in our community who are up to no good,’ she said of black America. 

She also maintained said that no Jewish person, or Hispanic person, or white person would embrace someone who had done five stints in prison. 

‘George Floyd was not an amazing person,’ she told her viewers and went on, ‘As soon as the video of his death hit the internet, I did just basic searches.’  

‘First and foremost George Floyd, at the time of his arrest, was high on fentanyl and methamphetamine,’ Owens said. She also mentioned a 2007 robbery that Floyd was charged with that involved a pregnant victim and Floyd holding a gun to her stomach. 

‘And this was the biggest instant I had that made me realize this is a horrible human being, that I’m not going to pretend is a good person,’ she told her viewers.  

She said her criticism was in no way defending what the police officer Derek Chauvin did, by kneeing Floyd in the neck, until he was unresponsive. 

‘But why are we pretending that this criminal should be upheld as a citizen, as a martyr, or black America?’ she asked. 

Since then I have done a bit of digging myself. Floyd had a history of criminal convictions and had served five years in prison for assault and robbery.  The County Medical Examiner’s report has concluded he died of a heart attack not asphyxiation, that he had Fentanyl in his system, had recently used methamphetamine, had coronary artery disease and hypersensitive heart disease.

However, footage showing a white policeman with his knee pressed into Floyd’s neck for nine minutes has caused international outrage and triggered mayhem among black people and white liberals around the world – mayhem that will doubtless escalate over this weekend because it seems that many people like nothing better than a nice big riot..

I couldn’t help asking myself why the world reserves all its public fury for the relatively rare occasions when whites are responsible for the death of blacks. In America approximately seven thousand black people are killed in violent incidents each year and over ninety percent of those murders are committed by blacks. And where was the apoplectic media and ‘Black Lives Matter’ outrage when just under a million Tutsis were having their heads hacked off by machete-wielding Hutus in Rwanda. This colossal crime against humanity closely followed the mass riots in America after the beating of Rodney King by police in Los Angeles in 1992. But America, led by Bill Clinton, the UN with Kofi Annan then responsible for responding to the slaughter, serial rabble rousers, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and virtually the entire world stood idly by and did precisely nothing and the international press corps were quiet. Is it somehow acceptable if blacks kill blacks I wonder?

And now the South African government are to register a protest with the Trumpet about the Floyd killing. South Africa of all places – a land of brutality and tragedy among the beauty and abundance; an abundance that is being steadily looted by elite black Africans. They should look at themselves before casting aspersions anywhere else. The murder rate in South Africa is amongst the highest in the world but where are the protesters? Where were the Black Lives Matter people when the Matabele tribesmen were being brutally murdered in their tens of thousands by Robert Mugabe’s Korean trained Fifth Brigade? Were there any knees on the ground for them? Were there any apologies for their murders in supposedly Christian churches all over America and the rest of the world? Were there hell! The world was eerily silent and would be just as silent were the same thing to happen again now. Black lives only seem to matter when they are taken by white people, whether legally or illegally.

Black Americans nowadays like to refer to themselves as African Americans. Well, if they do not feel safe in America, why don’t they move to anywhere in Africa. Would they do that I wonder? Would they settle in South Africa or the ‘Democratic’ Republic of Congo or even oil-wealthy Nigeria? Of course they would not. Their lives might be in real danger in the continent that they claim to have come from.

I was also somewhat sickened to see photographs of British police officers kneeling at the London protests. I presume this was in solidarity with the protestors but can only suggest to these fairies that they look hard at a picture of their unnamed and unarmed fellow officer whose face was slammed against a wall by a ‘peaceful protester.’ Apparently, the protester could not be identified because he was wearing a red hoodie but surely the other coppers should have made extra efforts to throw him in the cells?

A few – a very few of these demonstrators might sincerely believe in the cause they are carrying placards for but I wish they would get it into their pathetic little heads that All Lives Matter, not just black ones.

Let them consider the brutal murders that are continually going on among the farms of South Africa. In the latest incident that took place in Mpumulanga province, three attackers, two of whom were armed forced farm workers into the home of a seventy seven year old farmer and his wife. They beat the farmer and tied him up. After that, they tortured his wife with a blow torch, demanding money. Not content with the pain they were causing they then raped the woman with their pistols before driving off in the farmer’s truck.

In this case, the victims lived but in many others, they don’t and nothing is said either by the South African government or the rest of the world.

Surely their lives matter too or am I just an out of date fuddy duddy who is ashamed to be part of the human race?

What is it about twenty first century ‘civilisation’ that makes people think of themselves as so important rather than minute cogs in a very large world?

Take the current furore about racism in America and the huge ‘demonstrations’ held in London and other cities around the world. What are these ‘demonstrators’ trying to prove? Their actions, particularly the violent and illegal ones are hardly likely to change the minds of politicians or for that matter do anything other than make the situation worse than it already is.

I was brought up in Colonial Africa so have some experience of racism, albeit mainly from the controlling point of view. Yet I have spent a goodly portion of my adult life wandering among simple tribesmen and have never experienced any hint of racism or felt in any way superior to the people I wander among. They accept me and I accept them as members of the same species, even though our cultures, degrees of education and ways of life – indeed our views on the outside world – are markedly different.

Now I look on with horrified wonder as supposedly educated people riot for a cause and my heart bleeds for Mankind. Yes, the death of George Floyd was horrific but four policemen have now been charged with murder and depending on the facts that will come out in Court, face lengthy spells in prison. Yet only a few days later in the town of Tulbagh in the Western Cape province of South Africa, a prominent local doctor was murdered by unknown black men. Dr Roelof Botha was on his way home from a pleasant Sunday clay pigeon shooting meet and was a mere four hundred metres from his home when he was set upon and hacked to death.

Dr Botha is merely the latest among many thousands of white people (mainly farmers) to be murdered by black South Africans but like the rest of them, his death will go largely unreported and there certainly won’t be any mass demonstrations in his support. Not only was he a medical man who helped all members of his community, but he was also a devout Christian while Mr Floyd as far as I can tell from reports was a criminal engaged in a criminal act at the time of his arrest and subsequent death.

I watched Prime Minister’s Questions in Parliament yesterday and was immediately struck and somewhat horrified by the inflammatory antics of the pompously pretentious leader of the Scottish Nationalists, Ian Blackford.

‘Let him say it,’ this turnip thundered to the house. ‘Let me hear the Prime minister say that black lives matter.’

Bunter Johnson didn’t but if I could have lost all my proud Scottish heritage at that moment, I would willingly have done so.

Of course all black lives matter, Mr Blackford but so do white lives, brown lives and even lives of green or purple. If the demonstrators would change their slogan to all lives matter, I might have some sympathy but at the moment, they seem more intent of stirring up emotions and that must inevitably inflame and exacerbate the situation.

I didn’t know either Mr Floyd or Doctor Botha but they both died horrific deaths and feelings for them both should be the same.

Meanwhile, the Coronabug pandemic continues to become ever more bizarre and inexplicable. The government here seem to contradict themselves at every turn but in Switzerland – normally a model of sensible governance or so we are led to believe – prostitutes are to be allowed to resume working while judo and ballroom dancing competitions remain banned.

‘Sex workers will be allowed to offer their services again from next month subject to strict hygiene measures,’ Alain Berset, the Swiss interior minister announced.

‘There are certainly personal contacts but a concept of protection seems possible. I am well aware of the bizarre aspect of my answer,’ Mr Berset told a press conference. ‘To tell you the truth, erotic services could have resumed earlier.’

I can’t help wondering at that possible ‘concept of protection.’ Perhaps it is as a result of my sheltered upbringing.

Huh – I wish!

I have spent a goodly portion of my life mingling with and studying the wild animals of Africa. In the course of my bush sojourns, one animal in particular has always fascinated me and that is the hyena. He is generally held in contempt by human beings because he is basically a scavenger and gangs up in snarling packs to drive larger animals off their kills.

Yet hyenas – Crocuta Crocuta to the boffins – are a great deal more than the cowardly thieves of human imagination. They live in loving family groups, look after their offspring and their society is entirely matriarchal. They are also ruthlessly efficient hunters in their own right. Even though I once lost a much loved leather hat to a prowling hyena, I have developed a soft spot for Crocuta over the years. He doesn’t smell very nice but probably feels the same way abut human beings.

So what has this to do with the state of the world, you might be asking yourself. Well, my initial thoughts when I watched the mob of yelling, booing and cat-calling journalists and protesters outside Dominic Cummings’ front gate last week was that they reminded me of a pack of slavering hyenas. But that was not fair. There is honour among hyenas, whereas to see those people just made me cringe for the human race.

I do not and have never liked Mr Cummings. As far as I can tell, he is an arrogant little nerd with far too much power in government. When the news of his travels to Durham broke, I felt that the resultant uproar probably served him right, but it was only toward the end of last week that more details emerged.

For a start, Mr and Mrs Cummings feared they might both be confined to hospital with the Coronabug. That would have caused a problem as their four year old is autistic and terrified of strangers. So off they went so that the boy could be looked after by family, should the worst happen and not be sent to some soulless institution, where he would not be able to understand why he had been abandoned to strangers.

The government rules for this lockdown are of course, vague and confusing – just as most of their actions have been so far. Regulation Six tells us that road journeys are to be avoided if the purpose is not ‘reasonable’ or even ‘necessary.’

But in English – which is still almost the national language – neither adjective is scientifically precise.

If one is in a car doing 90mph in a 30mph zone – that is easy to understand and technically provable, but what one person thinks is reasonable, his nosily vindictive neighbour next door may think is totally out of order.

There is nothing so merciless as hypocrisy and at the moment Britain is drowning in it. That howling pack of vindictive folk outside the Cummings residence were more like ugly vultures than Crocuta Crocuta I’m afraid. All they wanted to do is tear a fellow human to shreds.

Yet their collective behaviour was endorsed by the Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry, Mr Cummings’ local MP, who bragged that her constituents could be ‘relied on to say it as it is.’

Does that mean she condones apparent ‘lynch mobs’ I wonder? Quite apart from Cummings Junior, there must surely have been other children living in that street. What are they to think about adults and what lessons will they learn from the howling mob?

It is hardly the sort of behaviour expected from someone with the grandiose title ‘composer-in-residence’ with the Royal Opera House but among the ‘demonstrators outside Chez Cummings was twenty nine year old Oliver Leith, who is one of the brightest stars in the world of classical music. Yet this scion of a genteel world delighted in having his picture taken giving the passing Cummings a very vulgar two fingered salutation.

Whatever you think of him, why should protesters be allowed to intimidate Cummings and his family, including his four-year-old child? He has been sworn at and had ‘Scummings’ and other even worse abuse scrawled on walls around his home.

Peaceful protest is one thing, but hurling threats and insults at people outside their homes is despicable. Why isn’t it illegal, too? Yet the self-styled ‘liberal’ Left seem to believe that such thuggery is not only perfectly acceptable, it should be encouraged. I suppose they look upon it as their ‘human right’ to vilify those with whom they don’t agree but this kind of disgusting behaviour wouldn’t be allowed at a factory gate so why is it tolerated in a residential street?

Of course Dominic Cummings is not completely innocent and his own actions also smell badly of hypocrisy. Driving fifty odd miles to ‘test one’s eyesight’ is hardly reasonable, but I hope that were I to have been in his position initially, I too would have put the welfare of my child before yet another loosely worded government regulation.

But if only Cummings himself or his blustering boss could have eaten a bit of humble pie and explained the situation, particularly in that weird ‘press conference’ given in the Downing Street garden. That would surely have taken the wind out of the vitriolic sails of the protestors.

And as we come into summer, so the rioting season begins yet again. A black man is arrested in America, treated somewhat harshly in the course of that arrest and dies – presumably but not yet proven – as a result of injuries sustained during the arrest.

It happens I’m afraid, particularly in America. Their police officers do not need much intelligence or common sense to qualify to become a cop – in this case, it seems that both the police officer and the villain previously worked together as bouncers – and their laws of arrest and detention are a great deal looser than they are in other parts of the world. Arresting anyone is always stressful and while I do not know and don’t really care about the minute details of this case, I have witnessed many a fracas in the course of similar instances when the same thing could have happened.

However, the man who died was black and the police officer white. The latter has been arrested and charged but yet again, there was immediate hysteria throughout America. Riots, burnings, the inevitable looting and at least one other person dead. So of course, the Great and the Good (huh!) of London Town had to have their own march of protest yesterday. Why? A bunch of rabid Londoners are hardly likely to affect conditions in America and I don’t think the Trumpet is going to lose any sleep over Londoners’ worries.

They even held a similar ‘march’ in little New Zealand on the other side of the world!

No, I apologise to the vultures too. They do an excellent job of cleaning up and when compared to human beings, their antics are almost graceful.

I don’t think I like my own species very much. Time I was back in the bush, I fear.

With the current furore over Dominic Cummings and his trip ‘up North,’ the spotlight has gone off others who are deliberately bending the rules to their own advantage.

Take the case of Lord Fox for instance. This Liberal Democrat – that says it all really – peer runs a company of which he is the only employee. The company, which I believe is something to do with advertising has closed down for the duration of the Coronacrisis. All well and good but jolly old Foxy has put himself on the government furlough scheme so that up to eighty percent of his ‘wages’ are being paid for by us, the poor old tax paying public. At the same time, he claims his hundred and sixty two pounds per day for attending the House of Lords, even if he only attends via a video link.

Can this be even vaguely ethical?

Then you have the comedian Steve Coogan who used to delight in having his photograph taken with cabbage-grower Corbyn and lives in a four million pound home. He has put the nine members of his production company plus his gardener and housekeeper on furlough too.

And then of course there are the likes of Branson and other multi millionaires who are using government money to finance their various enterprises during the current crisis. How can this be allowed when so many of us are on the bones of our backsides and trying mainly to stay vaguely solvent?

Why can these people not dip into their own pockets for a while instead of sponging off the rest of us? Perhaps Dominic Cummings’ ‘crime’ is not so serious after all. It certainly is not worth the media time that is being spent on it.

I surely can’t be the only one worried about the health – both mental and physical – of our ‘revered leader.’ He has looked frail, befuddled, exhausted and watery-eyed in his recent appearances. Where has the barnstorming Brexit Bunter gone? I don’t know but we certainly are not seeing him at the moment. Instead we have the nappy-changing, NHS-clapping, overweight and obviously flustered Covid Boris. It’s neither a pretty nor a reassuring sight.

In the Commons, Johnson does not just collapse intellectually under Keir Starmer’s interrogations, he reveals, blustering back, the emotional void that accompanies his incompetence. Has anyone ever paid so many magnificent tributes to the British people, their grit and guts, fortitude and sacrifice, while caring so little about them?

Let’s face it, this Government has a large enough majority for the prime minister to lead decisively. Instead he blows about in the winds of public opinion and media pressure, facing first this way and then that, his pronouncements as chaotic as his general appearance.

The daily press briefings are becoming superfluous too, the graphs predictable and the message reduced to an ad man’s jingle. If I am told one more time that we are currently on alert level four but that because we have all been such good children and so damned well-behaved, we will soon move to level three, I shall be inclined to resort to an outburst of profanity. Let’s save the hearty self congratulations till this epidemic is behind us damnit.

Meanwhile, the Government has so thoroughly succeeded in scaring people that many are too afraid to go to work or send their children to school. No wonder. Standing in front of the flag and intoning a daily death rate, ministers have created panic among the impressionable.

Suppose they did that for winter flu or some other disease that hits us regularly? Life would be just one long panic. None of us expect the government to perform miracles so why on earth do they keep on with these ridiculous briefings? This is a new pandemic and some mistakes were made and still will be made, but I think we all expect firm leadership from the prime minister. That is something we are not getting.

At the moment, Bunter is still standing by Dominic Cummings and insisting that the man acted legally and ‘with integrity.’ However, given BJ’s record of consistency, I reckon Mr Cummings should start clearing his desk.

Sunday morning and our posturing government is in trouble yet again.

I mean, what on earth is one to make of Bunter Johnson, particularly now that his top aide Dominic Cummings stands accused of flagrantly disobeying the rules that he helped make up and then chose to ignore?

Anyone else would surely have been fired on the spot yet Bunter persists in defending the man. Yes, Cummings is probably a vital cog in BJ’s plans for running the government but he is now a huge liability, not only where the opposition and even Tory MPs are concerned or with the left-leaning media but also with the majority of the general public who are inevitably asking why they have to obey the rules, but this man doesn’t.

If Bunter J doesn’t act decisively over this, his own standing with the public – already somewhat rocky – is going to drop alarmingly as more and more people lose faith in him. And let’s face it, seldom has any prime minister fallen from grace as quickly as this man has. The more we learn about the government’s handling of the Coronabug crisis, the more it is revealed to have been bungled from the start. The frenzied attempts to cover all this up rather than put it right are being exposed one by one.

I have marvelled at Bunter J for a very long time and rather dreaded him ever having the top job, mainly because I thought the rest of the world would laugh at Britain for having such an obvious fop at the helm. Yet when he took that job with an overwhelming majority in Parliament, I was prepared to give him time to prove himself. That time is fast running out.

After all, Johnson has the qualifications to be a leader. He is an Old Etonian, a classics scholar (which should have taught him to pay attention to detail) a journalist (later fired for inventing quotes) and a political animal right down to his fancy cotton socks. Yet it is as the last of these that he has proved to have but a tenuous grip on reality and the truth.

Suddenly though, he has a new and very real threat to his pretensions. Facing him across the Commons is Keir Starmer, the new leader of Labour and he is lawyer, lawyer and lawyer to his little cotton socks. Since taking over from that bumbling revolutionary Corbyn, Starmer has been quietly firing the Hard-Left rabble that kept Corbyn in power.

With that necessary task almost done he can divert his attention to the Prime Minister and he is revealing at Question Time that he can take the blustering, rambling PM to bits and leave those bits all over the despatch box. He never raises his voice, waves his arms or shows off to the gallery, but like a cross-examining barrister he simply quotes verbatim, from previous government pronouncements to prove the PM’s protestations that the Government got it right are complete rubbish.

And it is about time someone did because the present shambles cannot go on or we’ll have no country left.

Yet it seems only a few short weeks since Bunter had it all. A long but successful campaign for Brexit, a stunning election victory with the Labour collapse in the North giving him an unassailable Commons majority of eighty and media adulation.

Then came the Coronabug and what will surely go down in history as the five-month cockup that tarnished Bunter’s legacy and has probably destroyed what last bit of credibility he had.

It seems that the police in Norwich – bless ‘em – have spoken severely to a teenager for going round the suburbs in a 17th century plague doctor’s mask, like a huge crow’s head and a long black cloak.

Citizens are said to have claimed he was frightening people. I can understand that very young children might be a little worried, but adults – surely not?

After all, people have been photographed wearing diving gear instead of facemasks in supermarkets and let’s at least try to inject a wee bit of humour into the sad hysteria of what currently passes as normal life in Britain.

Mind you, it is interesting to note that our new state militia think it’s a matter for them. Is it the law that only the Government are allowed to frighten people? 

And is the thing they fear most of all that we might laugh at them? I used to enjoy watching the evening news on BBC but the programme would now be laughable if it was not so pathetic and I certainly won’t watch the ‘bug briefing’ that takes place for interminable hours just before it. It does give me time to enjoy the garden in Spring sunshine but I really do feel that the Media in general have gone overboard in their desire to frighten us all out of our wits.

Because let’s face it, from the moment we take our first breath, death – or the prospect of death – sits on our shoulders. Yet we don’t let it stop us from living normally. We ride bikes, climb trees, smoke, drink, swim in the sea, drive cars, talk to strangers. And most of the time we get away with it.

Life is all a bit of a gamble and part of growing up is learning to balance the potential for gainful living against the prospect of disaster.

Coronavirus has changed all that. Faced with this threat, we have responded by trying to eliminate all risk from our lives. The elderly (that includes myself) and vulnerable have been told to imprison themselves indefinitely. Children have been taken out of schools, the economy has been shut down, life has been put on hold. Fear is a prison of the mind, and we are all behind bars.

I can vaguely understand the reasoning behind this. Stay home, save lives, protect the NHS. That was the original government mantra and to do anything else would probably – by no means certainly – have resulted in a far greater death toll. But it is not and cannot become ‘the new norm’ damnit! Unless the government is prepared to accept complete financial, cultural and social ruin, we the ordinary people have to be allowed to re-acquaint ourselves with risk.

Let’s face it risk and man’s willingness to undertake it is the source of some of humanity’s greatest achievements.

From the electric light to the Moon landings, via almost every technological and medical advance you can think of, risk lies at the root. Risk is inherent in our greatest works of fashion, art, music and literature, expressions of our human desire to push boundaries in pursuit of discovery.

To be alive is to confront risk. To be really alive is to push one’s boundaries to the limit. If no one ever left their home or entered a place of work without a hundred per cent assurance of safety, no one would go anywhere and the world would be a very boring place to be.

Of course, there is a difference between diving into obvious danger and taking a managed risk, but surely it is time to start living again. Slowly, cautiously and with every precaution we must get on with our lives because none of us can cheat death. It is there on our shoulders throughout our lives so surely we must try and enjoy every moment that we are still alive. After a while, locking ourselves away takes away the will to live and the future for all of us seems horribly bleak. Man is a social animal and even loners like me need to occasionally meet up with our friends and family. We need our own chunks of normality back.

What we must have now from Bunter Johnson and his squabbling, buck-passing team of no hopers is a simple message advising us all, young and old alike to use our common sense. Yes, we must shield those with health conditions or other frailties but otherwise let us do whatever we can to get life back to normal and get the country moving again.

This general negativity has gone on far too long and we are all suffering now.

I suppose I have been interested in the practice of government for most of my adult life and I have long since realised that taken as a whole, politicians are not very bright – and sometimes they are dangerously gullible. They surround themselves with armies of respectful bureauprats and special advisers and make their decisions almost entirely on the advice of these desk jockeys.

If it is good advice and the politicians act on it, they emerge with glory. If the advice is pathetic, even disastrous and they take it, they emerge utterly discredited. One day this Coronabug crisis will be nothing but a fairly nasty memory and life will have moved on. Does anyone really remember swine flu, bird flu, MERS, SARS, BSE? We were told each marked the end of civilisation but we are still here and plodding on with our interrupted lives.

Does anyone remember the dire predictions of the Bank of England, the Treasury and the Confederation of British Industry that Brexit would virtually destroy the British economy?

Yet we voted against all their advice and were proved completely right.

Yet now we have another crisis in the Coronabug and the utterly useless advice that Bunter Johnson chose to follow has achieved what Adolf Hitler could not – it has trashed the fifth biggest economy in the world.

I am horribly afraid that the government and the media are still seeking to avoid telling us the level of the fiscal damage being done because they are scared of how the public will react. It is just too frightening.

Let’s face it, people and nations are resilient. We could have taken the extra casualties, buried the prematurely dead, shared our grief and got on with life. But from this advice and Bunter J’s decisions, the nation will be crippled for a generation.

Another thing about politicians, shared by bureaucrats, quangocrats and academics too is that when they screw, up their first priority is not to put it right. Oh no – the immediate aim is to cover it up or blame someone else.

We are told by political apologists that our leaders had no choice but to ‘follow the science.’

What arrant nonsense! The truth is that the boffins have their own agenda. They live off research grants, constantly renewed and hopefully increased. They need these regular dollops of public money to sit in their ivory towers shielded from most of the realities the rest of us have to face, and shuffle their graphs, slide rules and figures to produce their  ‘models’ in order to convince the rest of us that they can foretell the future.

I have more faith in fairground Gypsy ladies and their crystal balls.

Ninety percent of the scientific prophecies turn out to be wrong and the accurate ones are often a fluke. But they need those research grants and the moneybags will not pay for cosy reassurance. They need us to be scared. Predictions of disaster are lucrative.

Even more bizarrely perhaps, the boffins do not always say the same thing. Sometimes their models vary from one to another because they are human – even though they might feel they are superior beings.

A couple of months ago – it seems longer, Bunter J was offered a menu of possibilities, including a far more moderate and realistic forecast of what would probably happen from Professor Sunetra Gupta of Oxford.

He turned that one down I’m afraid. Instead on advice, he picked the scariest one of the lot. It was from Imperial College, London, in the person of Professor Neil Ferguson, now departed because he couldn’t keep his flies buttoned. It is frightening to think that if it wasn’t for his need of an adulterous bonk or two, this man would still be advising the government! He has always been a disaster damnit!

It was overlooked or ignored that on swine flu his ‘model’ was completely wrong. Up to forty million dead worldwide, it said. The actual figure was eighteen thousand five hundred! He was wrong too on SARS, MERS, Bird Flu, BSE and the others yet still Bunter followed his advice. Why?

On COVID 19 Ferguson predicted half a million possible deaths but more likely only a quarter of a million.

We are still below thirty five thousand. It may yet climb to fifty thousand, which sounds pretty awful, but it is half the annual British life loss for illness and accident per annum.

According to available statistics, about ninety five percent of those will be the very elderly and frail or those deeply weakened by a pre-existing condition. There is an acronym that is apparently being very quietly mentioned in the corridors of power at the moment – WHDA.

It stands for ‘would have died anyway.

’Compared with our national population of sixty seven million, these figures are tiny. Yet all sixty seven million will be affected and their lives impoverished by the flattening of our economy.

Does Mr Johnson want that as his legacy I wonder? Somehow, I doubt it but unless he and his stooges wake up to reality pretty damned quickly, that is how this government will be remembered.

I used to think that Bunter Johnson was, at least, amusing, but I see nothing amusing in the landscape of ruin he is busy creating. Once people begin to realise what he has done, and how needless it was, I doubt that he will ever be forgiven. 

It was the eighth largest television audience ever in this country and like over twenty eight million other citizens, I sat down to watch our esteemed prime minister ‘address the nation’ on Sunday evening.

I now wish I had given it a miss.

Not only do I, like so many other folk feel more confused than before about what measures we are taking as a nation to beat this bug, but my faint – always very faint – hope that Bunter Johnson might prove himself to be a leader rather than a posh buffoon has been thrown right out of the window.

He huffed and he puffed but the only thing he succeeded in blowing down was his own precarious reputation.

Where on earth did he dig up the confusing nonsense he was spouting? We learn now that the speech was not approved by Cabinet beforehand, but why not damnit?! Surely that is what the Cabinet is for? Yes, I know that when he became the boss, Bunter threw out the big beasts who might have disputed his views and appointed a load of plastic stooges, but surely even they should have been entitled to their say.

It seems though that the director of communications in Downing Street is a man called Lee Cain, whose only claim to fame heretofore was to dress up as a bright yellow chicken when he was a Daily Mirror reporter and harangue senior Tories for dodging tough questions.

Yet now this nincompoop bans far more reputable hacks from questioning Bunter J about the current crisis and his lamentable handling of it.

Cain is obviously out of his depth and so too I fear is Johnson himself. He likes to think of himself as a mirror image of Winston Churchill, but he is far from that I’m afraid. Like him or loathe him, Churchill was a brave man who proved himself on the front line and as a war time leader. Bunter on the other hand hides behind a smokescreen of shambling braggadocio which doesn’t fool anyone.

Yesterday was the very first occasion that as the leader of this nation, he has addressed Parliament on the coronavirus situation. He hasn’t made a single Commons statement about the biggest crisis to hit this country since the second world war in the fifteen long weeks since the World Health Organisation announced that it was a global health emergency.

I know the man has been a victim of the bug himself, but if he was not in a fit state to lead, he should have resigned and made way for someone who could. A number of commentators have indeed wondered whether his illness is not the reason for his shambling performance on Sunday evening but I believe that for all his bluster, Bunter Johnson is completely out of his depth. Yes, I voted for his party but that was mainly due to the lamentable standard of Corbyn’s opposition and I am sure that goes for a number of voters around the country.

Even on Sunday, Bunter adopted a threatening tone at one stage and talked about doubling fines for non-compliance – with what I wondered – and in these circumstances, that is surely self-defeating. The British public have been wonderful in their compliance with the lockdown requirements and to threaten them at this stage was pathetic.

And of course, he prattled on about cycling and walking. Going back to Churchill, ‘Never in the field of human conflict have so many talked about exercise to so few.’ The right to bumble along the pavements and get in the way of other people is now dressed up as a key freedom. This exhortation to keep yourself fit in the middle of a pandemic is a peculiar form of denial, but again it is clearly about moving the narrative from collective to personal responsibility. And personal failure. We are told to ‘stay alert.’ For what damnit?! If alertness could conquer this virus, we would all be fine. The anxiety many of us are experiencing is actually because we are too damned alert. None of us can create an antiviral force-field around us and none of us can see the bug that is threatening us. How then can we be alert? Well, I suppose everyone being alert is cheaper than personal protective equipment, testing and all that faff – or so our revered Prime Minister seems to feel.

And what about the farce surrounding our airports? It is two months since my Sheepscombe friends came back from Australia and I expressed amazement that not only did they not have to be quarantined, but that checks at Heathrow had been non existent. Let’s face it, ninety percent of other countries – including Australia – have been imposing quarantine on incoming travellers since the middle of March.

We were told that the government was ‘following the science’ but now they seem to have changed their minds or perhaps lost faith in the scientists and will start imposing the necessary quarantines, but not until, the end of the month – still nearly three weeks away.

Isn’t there a proverb about horses and stable doors? Eighteen million people have landed in this country since March, many of them from countries where the coronabug is running rampant.

I’m afraid that Bunter J now wants us to ‘control the virus’ ourselves because he has lost control of this crisis.

Watching him on Sunday evening – I had lost interest by Monday – he looked to me like a big bumbling blustering rabbit in headlights who has no idea what to do next.

I feat that we, the people of Britain are on our own at the moment and can expect no guidance from our buffoon of a leader. I read a description of him last week as a ‘Churchill Tribute Act,’ but at the moment I don’t think he is even a Johnson Tribute Act.

Amid all the gloomy news about the Coronabug coming in from around the world, I was cheered by one report from Darkest Africa.

It seems that the erstwhile president of Tanzania, John Pombe Magafuli has decided that the best protection against the rampaging bug is the power of prayer. He doesn’t believe in the official testing kits, particularly after a goat and a paw paw (papaya to my English readers) tested positive for the bug.

Speaking to a cheerful crowd in Chato in the noth west, he told them that his officials had taken samples from a goat, a sheep and a paw paw, assigned them human names and sent them off for testing.

Lo and behold, the samples from the goat and the paw paw tested positive for the virus.

Well, if this wasn’t more of the political claptrap we are being bombarded with from around the world, perhaps he has a point, although churches in Britain have been closed down under government decree, so prayer can only be on a small scale.

Mind you, Zimbabwean officials obviously do not agree with Mr Magafuli. Deputy Minister for Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services, Energy Mutodi has mocked the idea that prayer can deal with the coronabug.

In a tweet last Monday, Mutodi said Tanzania now has six hundred and thirty COVID-19 cases while Zimbabwe has thirty one, proof he claimed that Zimbabwe’s strategy is working better than Tanzania’s.

Maybe so, but while Zimbabwe may have fewer COVID-19 cases compared to Tanzania, it had only done just over eleven and a half thousand screening and diagnostic tests as of 3 May. Furthermore, Zim at one point reported forty cases but revised the number to thirty four. Mutodi now says the number is thirty one so God only knows which figure – if any – is correct. Figures emerging from anywhere in Africa are notoriously suspect I’m afraid and can be changed at any official’s personal whim.

Meanwhile in Nigeria, President Muhammadu Buhari has – and not for the first time – appointed a dead man to a senior government post.

The appointee is the late legislator Mr Tobias Chukwuemeka Okwuru whose funeral was in February. Okwuru had been appointed to the Federal Character Commission but was not available to take up the position due to his death at the age of fifty nine.

This is not the first time Buhari has appointed a dead person either. In recent months, he appointed at least five people who were long dead onto several boards of government entities.

Meanwhile, Buhari’s media aide said that when Okwuru died, the information was not communicated to the Federal government.

Surely presidents are supposed to know when their personal favourites turn their toes up?

Back in Zimbabwe, the government has pledged to implement economic, political and governance reforms in its plea to International Financial Institutions to be given a financial bailout package.

In a letter to International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director, Kristalina Georgieva dated April 2, 2020, Finance and Economic Development Minister, Mthuli Ncube, accepted that Zimbabwe has made ‘missteps’ – a euphemism for ruinous economic policies which have pushed the country to the verge of implosion. However, he did not seem particularly concerned and promised that the government would mend their ways.

‘The Government of Zimbabwe fully recognizes that requesting a process for arrears clearance and debt rescheduling at this point in time, given the policy missteps during late 2019, is rightfully a cause of concern to our Development Partners. However, the Government wants to assure Development Partners of its resolve to implement a comprehensive and credible policy reform agenda.

‘In this regard, we detail below some important areas of reform that can be incorporated as part of the Arrears Clearance and Recovery Plan, including some reforms that can be targeted as prior actions.’

Ncube went on to highlight some of the economic reforms he said Harare will implement in order to unlock funding. They were all pretty extreme but even as he was penning this latest begging letter, President Emmerson Mnangagwa was chartering a private jet from Dubai to perform a thirty-minute flight to Mozambique. Hardly showing financial restraint I’m afraid. He could have driven there in a couple of hours.

Mnangagwa visited Chimoio, which was the headquarters of ZANU’s military wing, ZANLA, during the 1970s war of independence against the Rhodesian security forces. There he met Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi with the two leaders condemning acts of banditry and terrorism being perpetrated by Islamic fundamentalists in the provinces of Cabo Delgado, Manila and Sofala.

The two leaders also reviewed bilateral economic relations and compared notes on the world-wide fight against the Coronabug. As I said, I have little faith in figures or statistics emanating from Africa, but to date, Mozambique has recorded seventy six positive cases and no deaths, while Zimbabwe has recorded forty positive cases (later amended!) five recoveries and four deaths.

When compared with deaths elsewhere in the world and the fact that rural Africans in both countries live very much cheek by jowl, if these figures are even close to accurate, what are they doing right which we in the West are not?

In South Africa, President Ramaphosa instituted a public lockdown to the support of most thinking South Africans, but there is a definite sense of disquiet there now and the people are growing restless.

While Ramaphosa himself seems to have faded back into the shadows, the country would appear to be governed by a cabal of ministers, led by Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma (ex wife of that convicted thief Jacob Zuma who during his presidency robbed the country of many trillions of rands) and Police Minister Bheke Cele. Dlamini Zuma is passionately anti tobacco and Cele equally passionately anti alcohol, so those two crutches for the suffering have been banned outright.

Ramaphosa doesn’t say a word.

South Africans are only allowed to exercise outside between six and nine in the mornings with the inevitable result that everywhere is crowded and social distancing is largely ignored. They can buy cold food but not hot food and are banned from purchasing certain items of clothing.

South Africans are tough and resilient people but they are running scared at the moment. The country faces an economic decline the likes of which it has never seen before. To put this in perspective, during the 2008/9 global recession, South Africa lost one million jobs. The National Treasury is now projecting the loss of between three and seven million jobs. 

Without the considerable income that is normally derived from alcohol and tobacco, the economy – once the most profitable in Africa – seems doomed to collapse.

And still President Ramaphosa says nothing!

Here in Britain, last night was the seventh successive Thursday evening where mass clapping for the NHS took place at eight o’clock.

All very commendable I suppose and I have joined in on a couple of occasions but now the residents of Belper in Derbyshire have been taking part in a ‘mass moo’ – making collective cow noises in their gardens. 

When hundreds of people spontaneously start mooing in perfect harmony, it’s probably time to assume that this lockdown has gone on too long. 

Howling at the moon can’t be far behind. 

As part of their Covid 19 lockdown, South Africa’s government – bless ‘em – have banned the sale of alcohol and tobacco.

Even by the standards of the ANC, this seems like suicidal madness. Quite apart from the revenue in taxation that they will be losing, in times of crisis and God help us this is a crisis, ordinary people turn to the basic comforts of life and to wilfully deprive them of those is asking for trouble.

Mind you, British American Tobacco have mildly suggested that the ban is rescinded by today (Monday) or they will take the government to Court. When one considers that BAT is one of the richest companies in the world and the South African government owe trillions of Rands in international debt, I am not sure that this is a case that the government can win.

Meanwhile in Fraserburg, a peaceful little town in the Karoo and a haven for tourists because it is so quiet, the people have rebelled against the ban and had their own riot, smashing up shops and causing a great deal of damage. If that can happen in pretty, peaceful little Fraserburg, it can equally take place in larger conurbations and the consequences will be far worse and very long lasting.

I wonder if the ANC government of Mr Ramaphosa will calm down and try a bit of common sense for a change.

What is it about senior politicians, wherever they are? Do they all have to be lobotomised before taking office I wonder? They seem to work with a supreme lack of common sense so perhaps that part of the brain is taken out before they can damage whatever party they represent?

Take Britain’s Health Secretary, the lugubrious and ineffectual Mathew Hancock. When taxed yesterday about the story that even if the general population is allowed out of lockdown in the near future, everyone over seventy – regardless of physical fitness – will be kept incarcerated, the self-important Mr Hancock told the questioner that this was completely wrong and referred her to a government website that he assured her explained everything.

That particular government website blithely tells us that everyone over seventy years of age, regardless of health or physical fitness will be required to stay indoors and self-isolate for the foreseeable future!

Does Mr Hancock read his own party propaganda I wonder?

When I was a teenager – many, many years ago! – I wanted to become a journalist. I studied the way the household names of journalism worked and admired their coldly factual reporting. In later life, I did eleven years reporting as a contracted freelance for the British Sunday Express on the Zimbabwe farm invasions. During those traumatic years, I tried my best to be even-handed and factual, even when that was not easy to do.

That job rather tore me apart but I did it to the best of my ability until a new News Editor wanted me to report on the antics of Chelsy Davy, the girlfriend at the time of the Royal Biscuit – as he was then. I assured that editor that I was not that sort of reporter and walked out.

Now I watch and read about the coronabug and find myself appalled at the way modern reporters on all media outlets are wallowing in tragedy, not merely reporting it as it happens. And it is not just me. Last week, David Goodhart, a senior member of the think tank, Policy Exchange, wrote the following, ‘On too many nights, the news bulletins at 6pm and 10pm run along tramlines: here’s something about Covid-19; here’s someone who died; here’s a sobbing relative or frontline hero telling you to stay at home, save lives and protect the NHS.

Do we really need to be shown so many interviews with the terribly distressed relatives of those who’ve lost their struggle with the virus? During my years as a policeman, I delivered many death messages in the course of my duties and know how people react on these occasions. I have been shouted at, insulted and attacked on at least three occasions. I have cried with many bereaved relatives so I know how it affects people. Now I am bombarded with ‘news items’ on how individuals react to news of deeply personal deaths. Surely we all know what grief does to us? It makes us weep; it makes us despair. I’m not sure it’s the job of news programmes to endlessly confront us with seemingly non-stop images of raw mourning and loss.

Why is this happening damnit? Traditionally in British society, grief is a private thing, something to be managed and got through with the help of friends and family. Repeatedly showing it as items three and four of that night’s news seems well more than a little exploitative and ghoulish.

Then there’s the finger-wagging we get from some newsreaders and, heaven help us, weather forecasters. I don’t object to being told to stay at home by a government minister or a public health official. That’s their job, and they have the authority to do it.

But since when did newsreaders have the right to tell us how to behave? One evening last week a weatherman told us it was going to be a beautiful day before bossily adding: “But remember – you mustn’t break the rules!” 

Who in the name of all that is holy does that turnip think he is? Just who appointed him as lockdown enforcer? Stick to the news, please and stick to the weather. Watch that finger-waving – and please, stop engulfing us in tidal waves of raw emotion.

That is not journalism. It is pure sensationalism and somewhat sick.

Then we have the creation of a creepy cult of state-worship, celebrated at eight o clock every Thursday evening – this in a country where church services and normal public gatherings are banned!

Again, the media are full of photographs on Fridays of various ‘celebrities’ and senior politicians clapping heartily, often in very close proximity to each other. How can this be news and when did we last hear an anti-government voice on the BBC, now little more than a servile state broadcaster.

I wonder how Kate Adie, John Simpson and the other genuine news reporters of times past would have handled this collective hysteria?

Then there is the Blood Transfusion Service which seems to have joined in the general wave of bigoted prejudice against all of us who have celebrated our seventieth birthdays. Try asking them why. All you will get is a computerised voice that tells you that the ban on over seventies giving blood is ‘for their protection’ and ‘based on government advice.’ What government twonk has given that advice, we are never told.

Having lived most of my life in Africa I have never been allowed to donate blood in any case, but the infuriating assumption that arriving at seventy means instant, doddering senility is offensive and just as bad a prejudice as all the others that are rightly banned.

So why is it allowed – and presumably encouraged by this doddering government damnit?