https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-announces-new-funding-in-fight-against-spread-of-coronavirus

Recall how when 2 or 3 years back confronted by pressure from the public and media to 'do something about' plastics - their ubiquitous consumption and their terribly adverse environmental impacts – the government of the day handed the problem over to the private sector to dispose of?

How when a media furore was raised about the massive usage and wastage of plastic carrier bags; the 'solution' was to hike the price of bags by way of raising the tax revenues levied on them

Now we have corona-virus and our Great Leader announced last week, notably on a visit to health laboratories, again in the private sector, that he (the government?) was granting the medical research industry £46 million for it to use in 'finding a vaccine' to combat the virus.

Hailed by our devoted media as a Great Leap Forward, this donation of public money which had been raised from taxes on the people, caused the 'splash' that it was intended to cause.

Little was said about the Great Leader having toed the Tory line and handed off to the Private Sector again responsibility for a problem which is one for government.

That £46 million was a 'wash my hands of it' donation – de facto if not de jure – it was a sum of money paid over which gave the pay-off to Boris and his clan that they no longer face the limelight of public scrutiny asking them 'What are you going to do about the corona-virus?'; “What are you going to do for us your people?”

Boris and co have thus bought their ways out of public perception of government responsibility and liability – and by use of public money have absolved in the eyes of many their duty to do something.

Of course you can't tell me that the men and women in the media – radio, TV, newspapers – the journalists - with that high moral code and purpose they bang on about so full of themselves – did not notice this feint and sidestep by Boris (did you know the English for the Russian word 'Pasternak' is 'Turnip'?)

Indeed no. BBC News is fond of telling its audiences that 'BBC news and its presenters tell you everything you need to know and cover every angle'. Excepting for those angles and those things which are as plain as the nose on one;s face but which when 'hushed up' are lost on most of us.

Such brilliant minds as BBC and other media claim to possess could not have missed by accident that Boris was buying off liability here.

Now his 'gift' of money was not true Charity in any way. To begin with it was not his money. Then also it was no given without expectation of some return – which he got – the media 'splash'.

In regard to donations to Charity however I tend to think that giving money, especially for those people with too much of it anyway – the widow's mite – is an easy thing to do. It is not missed. No sacrifice of standards of living, or of nice things, is made by the donors. It's quick and easy to donate money. It generates admiring goodwill amongst people who consider things inadequately. It is clean, uninvolved and remote from the sources of the ills it is allegedly trying to curb. No rolling up of sleeves is required – just absurd aplomb.

People who give up their time for Charity are on far more holy ground in general. Some more than others. If you fund-raise you are not as worthy as if you were on the ground a working volunteer, even for a few hours a week. If you give over your working life to Charitable work and draw a modest living wage in doing so; you cannot be expected to do much more that would be more commendable with yourself.

Boris has given away money – even by standards of Charitable doings he falls down at the first hurdle. It's the easiest thing in the world for him and his government to give away money -not theirs – to another body for good uses.

Have any of them given any sweat or labour to any good causes? Like his future-self Donald Trump, Boris had failed at the right and proper time to do the right and proper deed so many times. Grenfell. The Floods. The TV Election Debates. It seems clear to me that he doesn't sweat and labour things simply because he doesn't care enough about others. Yet Boris is an honourable man.

The Tory prejudice – they term it uglily and mistakenly an ideology – is to allow the private sector to solve issues – even issues which government has respectably and by way of a general public consensus handled carefully for many decades previously – housing, utilities, railways, prisons, NHS, real estate, the list goes on – and the Tories are now handing over a pay off, thereby disburdening themselves of effort and care to help the nation in this time of corona virus epidemic.

£46 million – job done! – Boris ticks it off his bob-a-job list.

Now this £46 million was hailed on the government propaganda site as being given to assist British 'scientists' in leading the world in the fight against corona virus. Now these 'scientists' are all British. Is it important that Britain should be 'leading the world' in corona virus anti viral research?

Is it not far more important that the world finds a solution to corona virus? Yet this patriotic psychological misnomer that Britain has to be at the forefront is irrelevant to people who shall die because of the virus.

The £46 million was not give to an international pool of joint effort to find the solutions we need here. There is no such thing. It went to private companies as a free gift – an expensive publicity stunt of window dressing by Boris and co. Yet Boris is an honourable man.

The 'scientists' will hide whatever they find out to their advantage about the virus from any other 'scientist' belonging to any other private company. This advantage could make their own company billions if they keep the lid on their findings. So we have rival 'scientists', and British only, in a race against one another to find the Golden Ticket that lets them into the vaults of money where corona virus anti-virals are stored.

Just as we've heard constant proliferating whinings from companies and stock-markets about the 'economic effects' of corona virus epidemic, and endlessly over the news media, as if more than a few sacrifices in foods and in spending for a few months for a majority of people in Britain is at stake. So we have here the hallowed private sector and its dubious ethos of free and open competition being valued above the welfare of ordinary people some of whom will die from being infected.

There are of course many people still who will be very badly affected in the living out of their daily lives by the economic losses they will sustain by the cause of the epidemic – most usually these people will be those whose lives are economically and culturally deprived anyway all the time. For these people it will be very hard, harder than usual – we'll see whether there's enough kindheartedness to help them?

Finally I come to the big question: why choose 'scientists' and scientific research to give away money to in tis situation of corona-virus? 'Scientists' is a magic word in news commentary and in many people's minds. We hear all the time that 'scientists have done this' and 'scientists have discovered, found, invented, proved etc etc..' as if 'scientists' were some special folk who don't have bad habits and don't ever indulge a nasty thought.

Everything they touch we are led to believe is 'an improvement' or 'an addition to knowledge' – when in fact the case is that 'scientists' have got us into the environmental and pollution mess we are in today. They feed the outrageous ambitions of greedy men and women, seeking vaingloriously for a name and fame in history when they are dead – Branson and Musk going into space – Dyson and Saatchi being just cocky and too too assured – it would be laughable if the consequences were not so tragic and deplorable.

'Scientists' are led by their own over-confident presumptuous belief in themselves and their science. Most of what they do and find and discover and invent and prove is nonsense, or else a burden to ordinary people, or a weapon for killing, and most often just plain does not work or is not true. Why should we people place our hopes in them? Why should they have been the preferential choice for the £46 million?

Well Boris was 'cashing in' on this crazy blinded kudos which 'scientists' think they possess and that plain ordinary people are led to believe will tide us all over the crisis. Boris thought if he threw money at science he would appear the public benefactor – even though it was not his money. Science is the highlighted area to which our hopes have been pointed for a cure.

As with all our dealing these days, we home straight to the hoped for solution that is the Silver Bullet, the panacea – we don't want to do the sweat and toil necessary to get to a measured assured set of solutions for the real world. We want instead the final item and we want it now. Like a set of little kids on a football pitch – 22 boys and girls chasing after the ball in a bunch.

Why could not that £46 million have been used to put in place more of the resources we shall be in much need of so as to be able to look after the people who get the virus; and to provide food and shelter for the vulnerable who may find it hard to help themselves when goods and services supply chains slacken?

In other words working on the real situation and addressing foreseeable real occurrences; not baying for the moon for an anti-viral in a year's time. £46 million won't touch the budget needed nor the time required to find anti-virals. £46 million would have helped the NHS, and Social Services, Food-banks and Credit Unions greatly by comparison.

But no – we have instead the Grand Vainglorious Gesture from a government and a Prime Minister of vagrant incompetents bent on making 'splashes' rather than on governing. They are full of soothing words and of little else, and by their kind words show their dead sense of obligation and their dry hearts without compassion. Like his older self who is mockingly, ironically, officially titled The Leader of the Free World, Boris has lost the plot – in fact I doubt either of them ever had it - but Boris is an honourable man, and his cronies they too are all honourable men