My New Year's Resolution, How Anti-Vaxxers are killing us, Coronavirus - Time to Move On and You Stay Classy, San Diego

My New Year's Resolution

It's going to be hard, very hard.

I have decided, for reasons I will list below, to avoid buying Chinese manufactured products in 2022. I realise that this will be almost impossible but I think it's really important that we reflect on where we spend our money and what we want the world to look like in the future. Where and how we spend our cash is one of the only ways that individuals can influence the future. Arguably, it's more powerful and influential that voting and campaigning. Money talks loud. Here are my reasons:

• To play my part in global emissions reduction, I prefer to buy locally and certainly avoid having something shipped half way round the world unless it's really necessary.
• The Chinese have eaten the West's lunch. Over the last few decades, China has become the manufacturing engine of the world. We have exported our know-how and jobs to China and are now dependent on it for so many things that we could still be making locally. Read more at BBC News.
• Chinese manufacturing has little regard for health, hygiene and environmental standards, often breaching them intentionally and finding ways to cover up. Did you know much of the honey consumed in the West appears to be cheap Chinese knock-off substitute? Read more in The Guardian.
• Cheap Chinese manufacturing has led the West to become addicted to unnecessary mainly plastic goods. Just think about all the Cheap Chinese Crap (CCC) you have bought over the years, whether it be children's toys, Christmas decorations or anything else that usually ends up in landfill a few months later. We are seduced by cheap prices, slick marketing and the power of spending little and getting 'lots'.
• For me, More is Less. That means I try to buy higher quality, more locally produced goods. I don't spend more money, I just buy less. And I try to buy stuff that is going to last for many years and not break or become reductant in no time. Avoid CCC.

CCC ?

Anti-Vaxxers are killing us

I feel very sorry for the people who are unable to get vaccinated against COVID-19 due to a medical condition. I wish we could do more to help them. I feel very privileged to have had two jabs and a booster all in 2021. I am playing my part in reducing transmission and progression of the virus.

However, I am angry with the millions of people in the UK who refuse to get vaccinated for a variety of spurious reasons. People are dying because of them. The unvaccinated are the majority of COVID cases in our hospital ICUs across the country - and it's the same throughout the world. As our hospitals are full to over-flowing, many operations for people on waiting lists are being postponed and ambulances are experiencing longer wait times than ever as they can't discharge their patients and get to another call. This short video documentary on BBC News shows just how hard this is on people who are waiting for life-saving operations.

It sounds harsh, but Anti-Vaxxers are really responsible for the deaths of people who would otherwise have been operated on. We also know that vaccination slows the propagation and mutation of the virus. So are they also responsible for speeding up the rate at which the virus mutates to kill more people? The irony of all of this of course is that they themselves are at the front line when it comes to being struck down by COVID-19. Survival of the fittest?

Coronavirus - Time to Move On

Despite my thoughts above on Anti-Vaxxers, I believe it's now time to move on from COVID-19 and to a post-pandemic world. COVID-19 is here to stay. It's like flu or the common cold for most vaccinated people. We should have regular booster vaccinations as recommended by our scientists and we should open up our economies to 'business as usual' with simple precautions such as mask-wearing and distancing where appropriate. 

But it's time to scrap the restrictions imposed on big sectors of our economy such as travel and hospitality; they have little effect on the virus, at best slowing down the inevitable spread by a few days whilst they have a huge negative impact on people's livelihoods, mental health and wellbeing.

It's time for everyone to act like grown-ups.

Quote for the Month

"You Stay Classy, San Diego" were the final words from Andrew Marr, speaking on the final broadcast of The Andrew Marr show on BBC on December 19th, after 16 years of interviews with high profile politicians, presidents, actors and singers from across the globe. He is referring to the film Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy with Will Farrell.