I at first thought that I’d just wait and see, and avoid opining about Cornonavirus until the whole ghastly episode was over and we were all back to the new normal, whatever that turned out to be. But, having waited, I am already now seeing. It is becoming ever clearer, as a few were loudly asserting from the get-go, that this bug is far more widespread, but far less likely to kill you even if you get it, than had at first been proclaimed. I do not care who Professor Ferguson is bonking, but I care very much about how wrong he has been, about so much, for so long, and yet how the governing classes around the world, including the British government, still chose to listen to him. (Is it known (comments anyone?) what Ferguson thinks about climate change? I bet he’s been a fanatical catastrophist about that also.)
Someone who has done a lot to persuade me to get off the fence like this is Mick Hartley. As I mentioned in passing at the end of this earlier posting here, Mick Hartley has been very good on the subject of the Lockdown. His typical posting on the subject has tended to consist of a big quote from someone else, often dragged out from behind a paywall, with a few comments from him topping and tailing his posting. But, in his piece on Saturday, entitled Lockdown politics, although there are links in it to the thoughts of others, Hartley writes for himself.
On the whole I’d say that the left is more supportive of the lockdown than the right. Yes I know, left vs right doesn’t mean so much any more, but it still means something. The left more supportive of the state, perhaps, vs the right more concerned about individual freedom. I haven’t looked, but I imagine somewhere in the Guardian comments someone has said that the right only want to get back to work because they want to make money and don’t care about people’s lives. And, seen this morning prominently displayed in a window: “Capitalism isn’t worth dying for”. …
Which is odd in a way, because the lockdown might be seen as a left-wing cause. Against the lockdown, that is.
It’s clear that the poor are having a much harder time than the middle classes at the moment: stuck in worse accommodation, with worse facilities, desperate for an end to this, and, for many, worried sick about their jobs and their future. We hear almost exclusively now from the middle classes – what books they should read, what films they should watch, and how to keep their kids active and up-to-the-minute with their education. These are the people, generally, who don’t have big financial worries, can work from home, and feel perhaps rather smug about how well they’re coping. But it’s obvious that there’s a whole mass of people that we never hear from … destitute, miserable people stuck in lousy over-crowded housing wondering how on earth they’re going to cope.
The longer the lockdown continues, the worse it’s going to be. …
And for what? Who are we protecting? Well, Covid-19 is deadly serious notably for the very old – not at all for the young – and especially for men. So, we’re protecting old men, at the expense of just about everybody else. …
Whatever happened to the attitude embodied in the slogan “women and children first”?
You might think this would resonate with the left, but it doesn’t seem to. …
Will Keir Starmer start pressing Boris on ending lockdown? I hope so. He should do, in the name of the people that Labour claims to represent. He did, to be fair, make some noises to that effect some weeks back, asking for the government to set out guidelines for the return of schools and getting businesses back to work. I haven’t seen much since. …
And then this:
… I hope he pushes it more, because I’m beginning to lose faith in Boris ever getting together the necessary determination.
Me too. Read, as they say, the whole thing.
Labour, it seems to me and to many others I’m sure, has mutated from once upon a time being the party speaking for the poor, often against the government, to being the party of government, even when they aren’t the politicians in titular charge of that government. These people are now “supportive of the state”, to quote Hartley, even when they’re not personally in charge of it. It’s the process of government, whoever is doing it, whatever it is doing, that they now seem to worship. It is, as similar people in earlier times used to say, the principle of the thing, the principle being that they’re in charge. Many decades ago, Labour spoke for, well, Labour. The workers, the toiling masses. Now they represent most determinedly only those who labour away only in Civil Service offices or their allies in the media, in academia, and in the bureaucratised top end of big business.
Anyone official and highly educated sounding who challenges whatever happens to be the prevailing supposed wisdom of this governing class, on Coronavirus or on anything else, must be scolded into irrelevance and preferably silenced. The governors must be obeyed, even if they’re wrong. In fact especially if they’re wrong, just as the soldiers of the past were expected to obey their orders, no matter what they thought of the orders or of the aristocratic asses who often gave them. Whether they were good orders was an argument that those giving orders could have amongst themselves, but that orders must be obeyed was a given. “Capitalism” isn’t worth dying for, but this new dispensation is, right or wrong.
Our new class of entitled asses, together with all those who have placed their bets for life on carrying out their orders or trying to profit from them, seems now to be the limit of the Labour Party’s electoral ambition. And who knows? The awful thing is that this class and its hangers-on could be enough, in the not too distant future, to get them back into direct command of the governmental process that they so adore.
Meanwhile I note, with a twinge of satisfaction amidst all the gloom, that the British politician speaking up most loudly for the right of workers, especially poorer workers, to get back to work is this excellent man. The sooner the campaign gets under way to replace Boris with him, the better.
Capitalism isn’t worth dying for? I beg to differ, an awful lot of people have died due to a lack of capitalism in their part of the world. People tend to take the benefits of capitalism totally for granted.
Better late than never.
CCPvirus was an obv damp squib from well before the LD.
That the oh-so-clever-ancient-Greek-speaker-+- Oxford-Debater Blojo was dumb enough to swallow Ferguson’s ordure is a testament to the limitations of intellectualism vs common-sense.
That Bloj can’t grasp that goods/services aren’t delivered from on high and shutting down the UK /world economy would have dire consequences is near inexplicable. Except perhaps for his BlueLabour pseudo-Keynsianism ( pseudo cos big K himself never advocated stimulus by printing). Leading to the concept that money itself is a concept and that the lack of limits on the mind somehow transfers over to cash.
Last night was moral cowardice. Open by June for Shops and August for the leisure/Hospitality business the econ will be down from its present 30 % gone perhaps to 50% gone and most of the pubs/cafes /hotels etc will never re-open. I suspect Blojo knows this and instead of acting to save–even if he avoided admitting mistakes and just said “time to change course”–he has chosen to hide his errors behind the tail-end of the “deadly pandemic” bullshit. Even tho’ our state–and his –will be far worse when the LD nonsense finally HAS to end. He choose the easier path now in exchange for much worse to follow shortly.Plain stupid.
All the more stupid and cowardly when Keir Stumour is playing into his hands by insisting only that Blojo’s hysteria is not hysterical enough.
Johnson made a lucky choice by joining the Good Guys with Brexit and was rewarded by having everything on a plate as a Christmas present.
Not 6 months later he has been played for a mug by the SCS and has fucked e’thing up.
He is a true buffoon.
Brian Micklethwait: “The awful thing is that this class and its hangers-on could be enough, in the not too distant future, to get them back into direct command of the governmental process that they so adore.”
Brian, you’ve missed the obvious. They are in control now.
APL–They may be giving orders but they aren’t “in control” of the proverbial Jack Shit. Add in what happens when millions realise that their “furlough” is permanent on £90.24 dole a week not 80% wages (others have said this before)and the wannabe boss class have stored up vast trouble for themselves.
It won’t be any kind of takeover and esp not a trouble-free one.
People need to start thinking NOW of every possible action we can take against the British state. Anything from ensuring cameras need a Lot of maintenance to sending millions of letters (not each obv) to sending statepals to Coventry–anything large or same that will help us fight back.
HAS any government, other than the UK gov. listened to Prof. Ferguson? Or is it just that you Brits don’t like to think that only Boris could possibly be taken in?
Count me in, with a Big Emphasis on titular. I have been saying this for a long time…and the US Democrats are just as bad if not worse.
Not from where i am looking. What i see is “the left”, e.g. Xi and DeBlasio, staying in denial as long as possible, and slamming on the brakes only when it is too late. Just like Boris, in fact.
Re: Professor Ferguson:
I am most decidedly “not a fan”, there are always assumptions going into these models where proper data is not available, and where I can discern what those are, there are some that I don’t consider to be defensible.
BUT: He has been poorly served for decades by press reporting only his top numbers, not updating us when new data allows him to make narrower ranges of projection.
I think if you go back to his actual reports (rather than the press reporting on his reports) you will find as I did that his predictions were always a range, the early predictions in any “crisis” might have missed high –– but not by much from the lower bound to his range, and once good UK data started coming in his predictions always “on the mark”, to the extent that a prediction that a final number will fall within a range encompassing several orders of magnitude can be called “on the mark”.
“In fact especially if they’re wrong, just as the soldiers of the past were expected to obey their orders, no matter what they thought of the orders or of the aristocratic asses who often gave them. Whether they were good orders was an argument that those giving orders could have amongst themselves, but that orders must be obeyed was a given.”
The picture this gives of the aristocratic asses giving orders that the people disagree with, but obey because they’re orders.
But in the UK, the situation is the other way round – the great majority of people *agree* with the ‘aristocratic asses’ ordering the lockdown. There is a minority who don’t agree, but who think their view should nevertheless prevail over the views of the majority. I’m not going to comment here one way or the other on the rights or wrongs of that.
All I’m suggesting here is that we recognise the true picture. This is not a case of an elite giving orders to lockdown the majority of people oppose and disagree with, but a case of the elite and the majority of the public being in emphatic agreement, with a separate minority group (an alternative ‘elite’, if you like) having a different opinion, and thinking they know better how the country should be run. Maybe they do. Maybe they don’t. But it’s not the situation described.
Agreed. I’ve been keeping a very close eye on “public opinion” of shops re-opening, in my professional capacity; as are the people within my organisation who are actually in charge of customer insight and so on. It’s not cut and dried, obviously, but the broad executive summary is that people are in favour of lockdown, most people (but not all) are in favour of gradual re-openings of (for instance) gardening centres, largely from a mental health perspective, but a significant minority are worried about people going out for non-essential items, and think it’s stupid.
Costa and their ilk seems to have borne the brunt of the negative feedback (people queueing in their cars for a caramel latte hasn’t impressed many people…)
So it’s a mixed bag, but skewing very much towards support for lockdown, a frustration at the “idiots” who can’t be trusted not to perform a conga line down their street, and an acceptance that a cautious re-opening – very much supported by social distancing measures – is a sensible approach.
The people who think the lockdown is tyrannical are a small enough number to “comfortably” be ignored – ie. there’s not enough of them to make a difference.
The people who still think it’s just a flu, or that the numbers are overblown, are largely considered to be fruitcakes of the highest order, and shouldn’t be allowed out in public without their grown-ups.
(I don’t yet have data following Boris’s effort last night, the report I have was as of Saturday, post VE Day)
What I do know is that a whole bunch of emails went out last night from CEOs or designated HR types, across the essential industries, to the tune of “Do NOT come back to work tomorrow! I don’t care what he said, do NOT come in! We’ll decide when it’s safe, between us, not him!”
And a whole bunch of companies are looking at the “If you are allowed to open, you must open, and your staff must travel to work” thing, and going “Yeah, no. I’m not doing it.”
Whether that’s because they don’t want to risk the lives of their staff and customers, or whether it’s a calculated PR move (people may well remember who did and didn’t “behave well” during this) I leave to the reader to decide…
Cutting off the flow of magic money might focus their minds a little.
The “left”, as defined as “those who are against hierarchies and hierarchical control”, were betrayed by Labour from 1997 onwards. We’ve not forgotten, nor forgiven.
And the Guardian is (largely) the paper for graphic designers and media agency types with gravel driveways who host dinner parties and put Moby on in the background whilst serving the breseola and rocket with an oil and lemon drizzle.
If Labour and The Guardian represented the poor, I’d have no qualms in offering my full-throated support to both.
Whose minds?
We’ve been magicking money ever since we started with fractional reserve banking. Everytime someone takes a loan out, we magic money into existence, apply a usurious interest rate, and *boom* there’s even more money flowing back to the banks.
We should remove the monopoly on “legal tender” (whether specie or fiat) to get the economy going again.
NiV /neon–All v nice until the economic-come-to-find-out arrives. Unlike the fantasy bullshit of the remainiacs–this little set of financial consequences will be all too real.
Then we’ll see if masses and so-called elites still agree.
They’re two very different groups, though, son.
The “elites” are worried about their stock porfolios, the “masses” are worried that they can’t buy food. There’s no “and” about it, we’re properly into the realms of “or”, now (or at least soon).
Thanks for info, neonsnake (May 11, 2020 at 5:55 pm).
1. As regards
Guido informs me today that a over third of Tories think reopening should be faster, over half of them think Boris is reopening at the right speed, and, as far as the Tories are concerned, it is only a small minority who think it should be slower.
I guess we’d think “Poll finds majority of Tories agree with leader” was a headline from that book of obvious headlines that gave us “Crashed plane was too close to ground, probe finds” and “If strike is not settled, it may last a while”, were it not for the strange upheavals of the last few years. 🙂
HOWEVER that leads into my next point.
2. Do the lockdown-supporting polls you spoke of reflect what people think – or what they think they should think (and say). We know comically well that there’s a huge gap between what (and who 🙂 ) Professor Ferguson actually thinks he should do and what Professor Ferguson says he and we should all not do. To what extent are these polls being heard by people as the question:
My guess – that this is a very mild case of preference falsification that can (I hope will) die away in a Tories-plus-others assumption that any speed of opening-up that says it is carefully considered will be safe enough – is a guess that goes with my preferences, to be sure, and so I discount it for that. (I chance to be able to get a daily view of the behaviour of random groups of Scots who wish to take a little more of the air than their urban street affords. My vague and non-statistical impression is that even in sterner-lockdown Scotland there is a willingness to temper the proclaimed rules with ‘common sense’ – common sense of that kind that is convenient to its owner. That’s the only minimal actual evidence I have.)
I also wonder how much of the “come in when we tell you, not when Boris’ tells you” that you see in some companies is merely a safety-PR spin on “come in when we’re organised for you”. I’ve seen company websites talking about the open-up and saying ‘Wednesday’ or ‘Next Monday’ but very clearly getting with Boris’ programme. I also wonder if any pro-Brexit / anti-Brexit divide in companies or departments could be affecting the differing spins various companies are putting on this (as in the media it clearly does).
Opinions welcome.
The “left” as defined above was betrayed by Labour in 1945 if not before. And too many people have forgotten, if they even noticed in the first place.
I’m really not sure. Those sorts of polls are outside my area, so I’m having to rely on the skills of the team that pulls that sort of info together to get unbiased info. As a retailer, we “want” to open, but there’s two aspects – can we do it safely (and I believe that there is a genuine humanitarian consideration for our staff and customers), and how will the public react – ie. will they see it as a good thing, or as reckless profiteering?
So the polls that I’m referencing are asking questions completely geared towards “should we open or not”, and gauging opinion on the lockdown itself, as well as opinion on how dangerous the virus is, is only a part of the overall suite of questions asked.
It will be interesting to see how people react to the garden centres, when they open. Arguably, they’re first “non-essential” to open, so that might well be a good bellwether of public opinion.
Apologies for being quite vague in some of what I’m saying, I’m nervous about giving too detailed answers based on internal documents and discussions.
I don’t even think that’s safety-PR, I think genuinely that a lot places just aren’t physically ready. Which is fair enough, in my mind. Thumb-print scanners, crammed desks, that kind of thing, all needs to be considered, particularly in office contexts – less so for building sites etc
If the “public” are as worried about corona as they seem to be (which isn’t necessarily the same as wanting to be locked-down), then safety measures have to be very obvious to make people more comfortable, or they just won’t go out. I’m thinking here of things like restaurants; were they to open tomorrow, I very much doubt if they’d get full bookings if everyone was crowded 2 foot away from the nearest person. Whether it’s theatre or not is, in a sense, less relevant.
I don’t think pro-Brexit/anti-Brexit is entering into it – yet – at anything more than an individual level. Very, very, very anecdotally, in my circles, the people who think lockdown is a terrible tyranny are the properly “rabid” Brexiteers (as opposed to those who recognise that it will have it’s challenges, but are still very “pro” Brexit) and also think Boris can do no wrong and hasn’t put a foot wrong in the past few months.
But that’s low-level, I think at a higher-level it hasn’t made much difference yet. That’s very anecdotal though, and I wouldn’t be prepared to hang my hat on it.
I did my weekly shop at ASDA this morning and noticed that more people are wearing masks. I’ve been wearing one when I go shopping, I don’t know whether it makes much of a difference but my sister in law has been making them and distributing them to friends and family so I thought that I might as well use it.
I live in rural East Yorkshire and I actually don’t know of a single person who has had the illness much less died from it. I have an octogenarian uncle who has just died but I don’t know if Covid virus was involved.
I know one colleague who has definitely had it, and another colleague whose flatmate’s father had it. The direct colleague definitely survived, I’ve no idea about the other one, but I’m guessing so.
I echo the note on increased mask-wearing; I’d also say that town seems noticeably busier over the last couple of weeks than, say, early April.
(Sorry to hear about your uncle. Best wishes)
No need to apologise; I completely understand your situation there. (I have sometimes had to be similarly restrained myself.) As always, thanks for info.
I suspect I need not point out to you the abstract theoretical possibility for some slight contradiction in that. 🙂 I have a more hopeful view than several here, but could not echo the last phrase as regards the lockdown, though the rabidity of my Brexiteerness is not trivially exceeded. We have what we voted for – and have reason to think it much better than certain threatened alternatives. What you describe reinforces my believe that Boris’ supporters will lean to “this fast or faster” for opening-up and that’s better than the reverse.
Stonyground: “I live in rural East Yorkshire and I actually don’t know of a single person who has had the illness much less died from it”
I know one person who claims to have had it, and that he caught it from his flat-mate who works as a paramedic ( that person claims to have tested +ve, apparently ).
I also know two other people were diagnosed with pneumonia – which in my experience is unusual ( to know so many around the same time period in one year ). I think pneumonia is a characteristic of COVID-19.
So, that’s it. One claims deffo to have had it, three possibly had it.
I occasionally have to restrain myself from somewhat forcefully pointing it out myself…but it’s partisanship, largely. And I’d say that your eagerness is not the same as being “rabid” – it’s a similar thing to the difference between a Remainer and a Remoaner, I’d say.
On a purely personal level, I’m not keen on “faster” – but I am keen on “open, slowly, cautiously”. Whilst I thought Sunday’s message was shocking in it’s vagueness of delivery, once you pick it apart, it feels sensible enough. Opening garden centres, for instance, strikes as particularly sensible. Low-risk, compared with most other businesses, a good PR thing for those who are still stuck inside – I’m thinking of the “mental health” aspect, and also (and I don’t know how deliberate this is), they’re sitting on stocks which are very quickly going to be unsellable, due to their extremely seasonal nature, so they’re a “good” business to help out.
Oh yes opening fucking garden centres is a masterly ploy that will certainly halt massive unemployment and business collapse. Not to mention providing a tax take sufficient to cover the £212 billion estimate that Funny Money Sunaknackered’s 80% handouts will cost.
Yes, it might. The overwhelming majority of people are taking this very seriously indeed, notwithstanding the odd street of idiots doing the conga which we see on the news. And we see it because it’s unusual and therefore newsworthy. And each time that happens, those people get a good sound kicking over social media and in the commments and HYS sections of whatever website you’re on, since they’re widely considered to be idiots.
People are predicting an outbreak of cases on those areas, which we’ll see in about a week and half, in a similar fashion to the outbreaks we saw around Cheltenham after the races in mid-March.
If people aren’t convinced that it’s safe to go back in the water, then they will stay away.
Garden centres are a good start. Largely open-air, largely quite wide aisles, easy enough to implement one-way systems in, with (and this is only an educated guess) an average transaction value of less than £45, so can paid with contactless. They’re also non-essential, so the public reaction to a non-essential business opening can be monitored, and used to inform the next decision of who can open.
It’s a sensible enough plan. If the garden centres open, and people see that social distancing can be managed, then they’ll feel happier and safer going out; when the next round of non-essential businesses open, they’ll be comfortable in visiting those as well.
This is really important. Because the amount of people who think it’s all a load of nonsense are so small as to be an utter irrelevance to policy-making.
Niall, grab yourself a sizeable pinch of salt (you can share the one I’m using, if you like, as long as you leave enough for everyone else 😉 ), but:
Apparently, that comment which I made almost flippantly and with no strong opinion on upthread, is more important than I thought. People are remembering who acted well, who acted “empathetically” (not my word, and the red squiggle indicates that I’ve either mis-spelled it or it’s not a real word), and are making significant changes to their brand loyalty.
The obvious example is Wetherspoons. I think it’s fair to say that they’ve done themselves no favours, but apparently that’s even more important to “the public” than I gave consideration to. Which pleases me, of course.
Following that through, it would “seem” *cough* that appropriate messaging would be “We’re open, but also we’re taking into account the safety of you, and of course our staff – heroes all – so please do likewise. All in it together!” – tapering the frequency of that message down from “very important” today to “less important” in mid-July/August, at which point “we have great deals!” can start to be eased in, tapering upwards into September and onwards.
Lots of ifs and buts and one hand nervously on the handbrake, of course.
My “pinch of salt” comes from a slightly cynical view (unusual for me, I’m generally the optimist about human nature round here!). Yes, I think people probably are thinking that right now. I suspect that in six months time, it will all have been forgotten, and Wednesday Night 2 for 1 Curry Night or whatever it is at will be as popular as ever.
(is it obvious that I don’t drink at Wetherspoons?)
I, of course, hope not, and I hope people do remember, but I’d need to see it before I’m prepared to relinquish my salt.
Neonsnake–Absolute garbage. Cheltenham swept with death was it –as if the ABC murderer was back on the loose.
The “overwhelming” maj are composed of half bedwetters and half externally referenced who think that what a fuckwit government says actually carries some weight–ot wait might be more accurate. There is sufficient ruin in the economy to allow them –and you–a little time to entertain their delusions.
Not for much longer.
I agree with neonsnake (May 12, 2020 at 6:48 pm) that, while we can wish for much more than just garden centres to be more swiftly re-opened, garden centres make lots of sense, and will encourage sanity. They will encourage sanity by giving locked-down people things to do in their gardens, houses and window boxes. They will help an industry whose product is time-critical – every florist knows that if you don’t sell a flower, it sells you (guess the ship has sailed on that one) and every garden centre knows that planting season is not something you can postpone for long. Garden centres have open areas and generally excellent ability to restructure to assist social distancing – and to graduate it for the fainthearted. (“I know I said I was staying strictly in the outside display area but those fuchsias look interesting and no-one’s next to them right now – I’ll just pop inside for a minute.”)
“Flower-arranging, on the other hand, …” was a joke way of saying “Should we move the conversation to a less controversial topic?” back in the day. Maybe it still has the ability to calm things down. 🙂
The situation is quite simple.
The Labour Party and, indeed, all the “Opposition” parties are even MORE committed to “lockdown” than Prime Minister Boris Johnson is.
Someone “hoping” Labour will do this or that, clearly HAS NOT BEEN LISTENING TO THEM.
Just listen to what these people say in the House of Commons and outside it. And read what they write.
No one in the political class is standing up for liberty – no one.
Even Steve Baker the Member of Parliament who is supposedly most pro liberty (although he came out in support of the Marxist “Squad” in the United States in the verbal spat these Congress critters had with President Trump – I was then told “Paul he does not understand who the Squad are” in which case why was he “tweeting” about stuff he did not understand?) just repeats Boris Johnson stuff on his own Twitter feed.
Mr Baker is not mocking it – he is repeating it (slogans and all).
“Ah Paul – but in private…..”.
I do not care about “in private” (what goes on in their soul is up to GOD – not me) – what I care about is what these “pro liberty” people do in PUBLIC – in the open battle of politics.
As for people who expect members of the Socialist party to stand up for liberty……
Well perhaps they should look up what socialism is.
The term “Under Socialism” should give them a clue. The view of the left concerning the “working class” is the same as their view of everyone else.
They want to put their boot down on our faces – for ever. They (the “activists”) are on top of socialism – and we are “under” it.
The virus is just an excuse for what they want to do anyway – and, fair enough, the left stands for tyranny and has done ever since Rousseau and his “Lawgiver” and his “General Will” being the opposite of the supposedly evil “will of all” (i.e. what ordinary people actually believe)
Rousseau was just Thomas Hobbes with a smiley face – and Thomas Hobbes was also a leftist, totally SUBVERTING what such concepts as “law” and “justice” and even “liberty” meant.
Mr Hobbes did not believe in helping anyone else attacked by the state – because he thought that “law” and “justice” were just the will of the state, and he did not believe in moral agency (moral liberty – the ability to choose to help defend the liberty of others against the forces of evil, if need be at the cost of one’s own life) even existed.
The left-hand-path indeed – leading to Hell.
The real question is, is there any party of the right (in the sense of righteousness) in our politics – and the honest answer is NO there is not.
We have a very real left – and a FAKE right.
No party stands for moral agency – for moral liberty.
I have now clicked on one of the bits of coloured text in Brian’s post. It would help if a post just said what it needs to say – but there we are.
The bit of coloured text leads to an article in the “New European” (that unholy alliance of Big Business and Marxists) – and they are quoting Mr Steve Baker, the very man I just mentioned in my own comment.
Mr Baker does not say anything like this in his Twitter feed – so I can only assume that these quotes are taken out-of-context.
Perhaps the words “as soon as possible” are the key.
In short “oh this is horrible – but I am going to support it”.
What matters is whether you support something or whether you oppose it.
Otherwise one is like the Empress Marie Therese – saying how terrible the partition of Poland was, but then agreeing to it and taking her share.
“She wept – but she took”.
Either Mr Baker believes most of the things he puts on his “Twitter feed” or he does not.
If he believes most of the stuff he puts on his Twitter feed, the endless government slogans, celebration of government departments, and demands that ordinary people not do XYZ, then Mr Baker is no friend of liberty. For example, Mr Baker even repeated (with no criticism) the anti “Hate Speech” message of the totalitarians of the United Nations – why do that, unless he believes in this totalitarian stuff?
Alternatively it is, PERHAPS, the custom of Mr Baker to “Tweet” stuff he does NOT believe. Under this view of his conduct, we must interpret the majority of what appears on Mr Baker’s Twitter feed as a sort of mask – hiding his real beliefs, which are the opposite of what he Tweets.
But if one can not tell the truth why lie? There is a third alternative – just say nothing.
Some Members of Parliament have no “Social Media” or “on line” presence at all.
I remember a Member of Parliament explaining to me how my life would have been saved if only I had “kept off the internet” – and he was correct.
You do not have to lie – just say nothing.