Drifting towards we know not what

As – six months on and in a collective state of near-chaos – we dive into the coronavirus pandemic’s vast ocean waves crashing onto our section of the beach of global humanity it occurs to me that one item we are sadly lacking at this point – and the one thing we desperately need – is quality leadership.

After a depressing couple of overnight hours scouring the UK’s news websites I offer Rusters the following digest of worrying developments:-

The Tory Government, seemingly devoid of coherent strategy and reduced to operating via ‘on the hoof’ decisions, is verging upon disarray, torn between protecting public health and re-starting the economy before it becomes permanently damaged – a balancing act that will almost certainly end in tears.

It now increasingly looks as though Boris is going to cave in to the aggressive business and Tory backbencher lobbying that the current “two metre” safety rule should be reduced by half in the cause of reviving the commercial fortunes of the retail and hospitality sectors, without any regard for the potential public health consequences.

Or rather, at this stage, taking the view that such “collateral damage” [alternative description: ‘rising death toll’] as may result from this move will be a regrettable hit worth taking.

On its website this morning The Guardian is offering a story that the permanent secretaries to the Treasury and Cabinet Office told the Commons public accounts committee yesterday that no planning at all was done for coping with the consequences to the economy of an international flu pandemic after the now infamous Government simulation exercise of 2016.

Separately, several leading scientists have underlined to the House of Lords science and technology committee the potentially catastrophic possibilities that may result from the UK ‘coming out of lockdown’ including the near inevitability of a ‘second wave’ – see here for a report by Robert Booth, also in – THE GUARDIAN

Elsewhere housing secretary Robert Jenrick – a below-par performer when he takes the daily Downing Street press conferences – now looks to be “toast” because of storm gathering around his controversial decision to give entrepreneur Richard Desmond the go-ahead for an enormous property development in London, just before a new tax measure came into force that would have cost him tens of millions of pounds … and after which Desmond then donated £12,000 to the Tory Party in advance of the General Election.

With the Government having back-tracked on its decision to get the UK’s children back to school in the face of teacher union, local authority and other condemnation of its planning so far and general safety concerns, it is now beginning to take ‘incoming’ from all sides for having bottled the issue.

A good deal of the criticism is being fuelled by the results of research and surveys showing that, since the pandemic crisis began,  fewer than 40% of school-age children have had regular (or any) contact with their teachers and that up to two million have done no homework at all.

Part of the explanation is that kids in poor or deprived areas are likely to have little or no access to computers or smartphones.

More of it is down to the inability of parents either to ensure their kids do any school “work” and/or their failure to appreciate how important education is for their descendants’ life chances, or even just their general lack of interest in such matters.

A related issue is that of school meals.

In normal times, these are widely regarded as vital because in some quarters – effectively – they can be the only chance a child of school age will get of a daily well-balanced nutritional meal.

At the moment the Government is also under pressure because of its decision to discontinue the practice in some areas of the country of providing ‘school meals’ during the school holidays.

These issues come under the heading that, where – because of poverty or sundry or other reasons – people are, or appear to be, unable or unwilling to take responsibility for themselves and their families, ‘the authorities’ ought to do it for them.

After the developments of the last week I am left with the uneasy feeling that a collective schizophrenia has overtaken the British public.

On the one hand, we’ve decided the lockdown is now “over” and that the coast is clear to behave irresponsibly, ignore all advice and simply get out there, return to ‘normal ‘and act as if the pandemic had never happened.

And on the other, we’re feeling deeply anxious, nervous, worried and desperate for some organ of Big Brother Government to take control of the situation, tell us what to do, look after us … i.e. “make it all go away”.