Just another Thursday …
Surveying the ongoing wreckage piling up as the UK struggles on into its fourth week (is it?) of lockdown I’m very glad that my connection with the modern world of social media remains so slight and fleeting, partly because I don’t understand much of it and – even if I did – I wouldn’t choose to use it anyway.
My kids complain because, if they want to send something or speak to me on WhatsApp, they have to text to prompt me to go to my WhatApp icon first.
I see no problem with this because my general approach is that I ‘connect’ with people when I want to.
I believe this to be preferable to belonging to Facebook, having 136 supposed “friends” and having to spend seven hours per day keeping up with each other’s latest news … such as the fact that someone’s golden retriever has gone to sleep on their kitchen floor with its head inside a cardboard box.
Like old dogs, it’s quite difficult to reach humans beyond a certain age new tricks and/or new ways of dealing with the world.
One man’s meat is another’s poison.
Why change something if it’s not broke?
Disregarding the technological logic that every new thing is an advance, why learn a new way of doing something if the way you did them before worked fine for you?
(And why be apologetic about any of this anyway)?
Yesterday the UK public learned that:
Hordes of medical and scientific experts (most of whom, it should be noted, didn’t make the cut when it came to be chosen to advise the UK Government) are jamming up the airwaves with their criticisms of the Government for being too late to do everything that the rest of the world has been doing as they go about “dealing with the crisis”.
Or just being wrong.
Cancer doctors are complaining that cancer patients (new or existing) are being forgotten by everyone in the current coronavirus crisis.
Mental health charities are warning that, even after this is all over and thing return to “normal”, there’s going to be a huge problem left behind “sorting” the mental problems that will be affecting our NHS heroes, everyone who’s been locked down, everyone who has lost jobs, everyone who hasn’t lost their jobs, those who were (or are) in foster care, those who were homeless, those who were renting … and of course those who weren’t doing any of the above.
The feministic brigade are creating about the recent publicity given in several popular newspapers to women who are revelling in the joys of getting back to being house-proud as if this is the 1950s or something – see here for Eleanor Margolis’ rant as appears today upon the website of – THE GUARDIAN
And a lot of people are working themselves into a frenzy about how on earth we’re going to come out of the lockdown one day – and, of course, when we’re going to do it.
In my view, the media has a great deal to answer for.
Every week at least three new demands emerge – take (easy examples for this purpose) when are we coming out of the lockdown, how are we going to do it, why are we behind all the other countries who are head of us (if it’s not because the Government is incompetent?).
Yesterday we even had Nicola Sturgeon grabbing the headlines with her staged (but vague on the details) announcement as to how Scotland might come out of lockdown when the time comes – getting brownie points because this supposedly means she’s ahead of the UK Government in (1) having a plan at all, and (2) is treating her population like adults when the UK isn’t.
(This from a country that has a population of 5.5 million – i.e. less than Yorkshire’s).
As a result, over the past week at the daily UK Government press conferences, the media hounds asking questions have been throwing brickbats at the Government for not naming a date or indeed telling how exactly we’ll come out of the lockdown.
(Cue a reference to Jack Nicholson’s classic court room “You can’t handle the truth!” speech in the 1992 movie A Few Good Men).
I’d love to see either a minister of state or one of his scientific/medical advisers coming into one of the press conferences and saying:
“Okay, you know what? We’ll tell you the truth – and it’s quite simple.
You [the relevant BBC, Sky News or other hack] want a date for coming out of lockdown?
Tell you what, YOU choose one. 1st September? Your aunt’s birthday? 5th November?
Okay, let’s settle for that, then, why not … we could choose any. You’re only going to throw mud at us if that date passes and we haven’t come out by then.
And – whilst we are at it – why don’t you also choose how we come out of the lockdown?
And we’ll sit here and throw mud at you when it all goes pear-shaped and loads more people die than should.
Because it comes down to that, frankly, in the final analysis. Over 500,000 people die every year in the UK – maybe up to another 75,000 extra this year because of the coronavirus, given where we are today.
Okay, so businesses are desperate to come out of the lockdown because, if they don’t, they’ll go to the wall.
And I’m telling you that if we come out too early, our projections show that this will add another 50,000 deaths to the tally.
So, okay you belly-aching businessmen and women, you take the decision.
And then you tell me how you’re going to cope with ‘killing’ another 50,000 people … and then with having to tell their wives, husbands, kids, grandkids, friends and others that this was unavoidable because you needed to get your business going again. Go on …”
Yes, it’s is a cheap shot. But then now and again maybe we need a reality check in these extraordinary times.
