I also enjoyed this take on VE Day. A little bit aggressive but some pretty good points made about the usual delusions of grandeur and rose tinted spectacles we as a nation have. That said, what nation doesn’t need to use some level of propaganda to make itself feel united? We are no different. Don’t like the reality of the past? Just make up a new one. ‘Mock-patriotism’ and ‘mythology’ - hard to argue with that. And if we need some level of fudging to make ourselves feel more important in the world, then so be it. Loads of people do it in the workplace every day to get ahead. Same difference I suppose. Just don’t get upset when someone calls your bluff...

Because it mires us in an idea of the past that is a myth, and stops us from moving forward as a country. Most of what people "remember" about the war is myth peddled after it. During the war the powers that be had to find something to console the public that was being bombed to s***, otherwise morale would collapse, so the "Blitz Spirit" was born. It was propoganda. As was the victory that was "The Battle of Britain" which was not won, Germany just had bigger war aims elsewhere . Of course the men who fought were brave, but they "won" nothing, as Churchill well knew. Overall, our role in the victory of Nazism was very minor.

Since the war, we look back as a nation continually. Our response to being beaten by better trained and more sophisticated and progressive football teams is to sing songs about how we won the war. Our response when we have to do something new is to call on the old Churchill spirit, and bring out the old totems. All of which stops us seeing ourselves honestly, as a declining post-imperial power with a destroyed industrial base and a service sector that makes us beholden to international companies who avoid tax and in the long run impoverish our nation. We rely on immigrant labour but we need to feel superior to them so we indulge in casual racism and our national flag is central to the iconography of innate British superiority. We have an outdated and inefficient political system, so we deflect to our beloved Monarchy so we can accuse anyone interested in political reform involving citizens with rights and responsibilties rather than subjects with obligations as anti-British. We wallow in patriotism when our athletes win Olympic gold whilst ignoring thefact that sports facilities are sold off, health and fitness ignored by government and as a nation we are more obese every year.

And amidst all this, we are asked to celebrate those brave people who went through the war, knowing that we sent covid infected people back from hospital to where thousands of those brave people now live in care homes, knowing they would get infected, knowing they would die, which they have been and will keep doing, and we are supposed to stand on our doorsteps and cheer because non-taxpaying oligarchs who own our press tell us its a good idea and a compliant media echoes them? There's patriotism, which is fine, and there's the self-conscious boastful display of mock-patriotism, which is what all this VE day nonsense is about. And each year, the fewer there actually left alive to honour, the louder the self-justified backslapping gets.

What VE day is about is not patriotism, it's about propping up our self-confidence by looking back to a mythic time when we were allegedly a great nation. I'd prefer if we were honest about who we are, looked forward and got on with making things better.

English football hooligans were under banning orders.

Watched the latest joe rogan / Elon musk interview yesterday.

He makes some good points - mortality rate has ended up way lower then previously assumed. Yet we are still persisting with the same high mortality strategy.

Any person that dies and tests positive for COVID is being classed as a COVID death, irrespective of whether it was the main or a significant contributor, which is mental, and skews the data.

People reporting with symptoms - note not tested, are being logged as cases. The list of potential symptoms is huge. Again, bad data.

I suppose it’s made me question the legitimacy of full lockdown now, vs at the start, when it absolutely made sense. But usually you’re supposed to adjust strategy as you go, right?

The general takeout was retain social distancing and focus money and effort on protecting the most vulnerable, whilst allowing some level of normality to return to keep the economy ticking over. This is of course what is being announced tomorrow but all the while the numbers reported are inaccurate due to insanely loose criteria then is the problem actually as bad as they are stating?

I think someone posted the amount of deaths vs the average - that would be a more accurate gauge of mortality and therefore severity.

If they started to record cases and deaths in a more focused manner then I have a feeling the figures would see a cliff edge drop off straightaway.

Britain’s role and ‘Victories’ in the war were hardly minor. If Britain weren’t a free country for Americans and their war machine to dock then most of the world would’ve been screwed. Only access via Russia during so many months of the year or an American-German-Japanese agreement would’ve been the options until the Americans possibly threatening the atomic bomb before it’s rivals had their spies get hold of top secret files. Everywhere played its part, apart from the capitulation of France, although we would’ve been the same, and the Italians siding with the winners of the moment.