Travels of a Fish Nut

This is, as the title says, a rant. I'm throwing any claims of objectivity, balance and calm out the window. I'm angry. In fact, I'm fucking furious. I'm furious about the way the government has responded to the coronavirus pandemic. And this isn't because I'm a liberal leftie who would be furious with anything a Conservative government does. The Australian right-wing government - currently headed by a man who once brought a lump of coal to parliament in a strange attempt at allying the concerns of opponents of fossil fuels, and who handled the bush fires so badly he was told to "piss off" by victims - has managed to successfully lead their country through the pandemic with only 102 deaths and around 7,000 cases out of a population of about 25 million. This isn't about Left vs Right, this is about Competent vs Incompetent. And our government has been incredibly incompetent. That's not just my opinion, statistics bear this out. We currently ha...

The Black Lives Matters protests have reached Bristol. This isn't a surprise given Bristol's history. Bristol's wealth is built on slavery . It was one of the cities settled by the Windrush generation, leading it to become a focal point for anti-racial discrimination protests in the 1960s. And it has done a pretty poor job of addressing this history in any meaningful way. A particular cause for consternation has been the immortalising of Edward Colston. Colston (1636 – 1721), built his fortune through the slave trade. While there is no evidence that Colston directly traded slaves, he received huge dividends as a member of the Royal African Company which had a monopoly on trade between England and Africa. However, his involvement can't be dismissed as simply being a shareholder who had little or no idea of the details of company operations. Colston quickly rose to be a member of the board and was Deputy Governor (the most senior executive position) for a year from 1...

I love citizen science. I think it's a fantastic way of engaging people who don't normally engage with science and also a way of giving people ownership of their information in a way that traditional methods can't always achieve. So when I heard that Kings College London were creating a COVID Symptom Tracking app for people I jumped at the chance to take part. Last week I reported a sore throat. It was most likely due to me not drinking enough while the weather had been particularly hot but it was something out of the ordinary and I felt I should report it just in case. A few days later I was asked to take a COVID-19 test. They noted that, This does not necessarily mean you have COVID-19 as we are also inviting some people we believe do not have the virus. I was pretty confident that I fell into this category but have been curious about the Home Testing kits and felt I would take the opportunity to give them a go. Ordering the Test The first task was to apply for the test....