What you don’t know doesn’t worry you

One of the tangential issues that the Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted for me – amongst all the others that it has brought to public attention in a more direct sense via its health ones – is the apparent disconnect between what we as UK citizens instinctively and fondly like to believe regarding how the nation goes about things and the realities of what is actually happening.

[Even as I neared the end of that opening paragraph/sentence I realised that I might need to explain myself further!]

Let me give an example – the ‘number of immigrants willing to risk their lives to cross the Channel’ problem.

The ‘battle lines’ are easily drawn. Those who concerned about the dangers of the UK becoming overcrowded and eventually unable to sustain an ever-growing population cite their staples:

You cannot plan properly unless you know the full extent of the problem, yet the Government seems to have a decidedly imperfect handle on exactly how many legal, let alone illegal. immigrants are coming here annually, never mind the similar who have arrived here in the past 25 years – so how on earth does anyone know how many dwellings (let alone amenities, infrastructure schemes, schools, hospitals, roads etc.) to build in order to house them all?

By international law/convention those refugees fleeing from war zones etc. have to ‘register’ in the first safe country they reach … so why are so many taking so much trouble, paying so much to exploitative gangs etc., to travel through two, three … anything up to six … EU countries in order to make it to the good old UK? And why are those self-same EU countries ignoring their responsibilities and effectively “waving them through”, all too happy to pass the problem straight onto us?

It must be (some of the thinking goes) because the UK’s welfare system is so damned generous that many of these hordes are expecting – if not also automatically getting – e.g. free housing and all sorts of other freebie benefits if they ever make it to this “Promised Land”.

It is not unknown for elements in the media to feature stories about impoverished Brit families who have been waiting on housing lists for yonks who are having to sit by and watch as “newbie” immigrants from some war-zone somewhere in Africa pitch up out of the blue and immediately get given six-bedroom houses and all they need to feed their extensive families without ever being required to work.

“’Tain’t fair, Mr Poldark, tain’t fair …”

On the other hand there are treaties on things such as universal human rights to which the UK is signed up.

As a comparatively wealthy Western First World country, we have certain responsibilities to those less fortunate than ourselves.

There are agencies, charities and campaigners who specialise in espousing the cause of refugees and immigrants the world over. They say that most immigrants are more than willing to do their share of work to contribute to the nation which has given it shelter – and often in industries and jobs which yer average out-of-work Brit seems unable or unwilling to do, so what’s not to like?

And so on …

Let me broaden my theme, which is the purpose of my post today.

Take the Covidiot phenomenon which has become part of everyday life and also the illegal raves and other gatherings seemingly highly popular with the younger generations which (if the media is to be believed) worry the authorities to death because of the pubic health imperative of preventing the spread of the virus.

Getting straight to the nub of my theme, I suspect that the bulk of the UK population broadly buys into the cosy (1950s, warm beer, village cricket, cucumber sandwiches, law-abiding, “British sense of fair play and looking after our own”) image of how this country proceeds.

Which is why “middle England” – or however you choose to describe it – raises its eyebrow when innumerable do-gooders constantly hit our airwaves pointing out instances of officialdom’s uncaring neglect of those living below the bread line, having to use food banks to survive etc. and/or generally banging on criticising everything that moves.

My hunch is that – despite both “fake news” and waves of Government propaganda clogging up social and other media – the authorities know a hell of a lot more about what’s actually happening in the country than they let on.

They don’t tell us all they know because some of it is so mind-numbing that it would “frighten the horses” … and that includes everyone from the occupant of Number 10 to the road sweeper who daily cleans the streets of central Manchester.

That’s why the Government sits there, taking flak from all sides about its failings, U-turns and incompetence and keeps comparatively silent. As Jack Nicholson (as Colonel Nathan Jessup) famously spat from the witness box during his famous courtroom scene in the 1992 movie A Few Good Men:

“You can’t handle the truth! …”

Like – and I’m venturing into the realms of lazy reporting/research here because I haven’t done any – the fact that (for example) if you added together all those UK citizens who routinely break the law, make a living from criminal activities, “abuse the system”, don’t pay their fair share (or any) tax … I’m not referring just to those who get apprehended, charged, found guilty and then punished accord to the law, but also – most particularly – to those who rarely (or never) get any of the above … you’d probably find that somewhere between 5% and 10% of the entire UK population are “on the take” in one form or another, despite the fact that, like the rest of us, most of them have Sky TV subscriptions, follow sports teams, go to church, do good turns for their neighbours, get irritated by yet another rise in the Congestion Charge and tut-tut at the latest BBC  news bulletins featuring the hundreds of thousands who travel to Bournemouth on hot sunny days to cavort on the beaches (all of them less than a proper social distance apart).

The reason, of course, why “the authorities” don’t ever mention this kind of stuff is because they have neither the funding nor other resources to do anything to deal with it.

Better, therefore, is it not to suffer the incessant “incoming” from the campaigning media-tarts in comparative silence than to counter it with a knockout blow by revealing the truth that the country has an “underworld” whose size and extent would rock the nation to the core if we knew its details?

Just as the impact of the pandemic (directly health-wise, but also its economic, educational and “the way we live” aftermaths) exposed the essential truth that all Governments can realistically hope to achieve is a “least worst” – e.g. acceptable number of Covid-19 deaths and/or impacts upon other aspects of life – perhaps somewhere in the depths of Whitehall and/or Number 10 is stashed a report detailing the UK’s “acceptable” degree of ongoing “lawlessness” … though, of course, nobody can reveal what that is for fear of the potential electoral consequences.