Taking stock but always in vain
When the time comes to look back over the course of UK’s coronavirus crisis – and possibly the world’s too – one aspect that will need examining in depth is the general degree of public semi-madness, concern and anxiety generated by the endless amounts of rumour, speculation, fantasy, specialist investigation/reporting and even ‘fake news’ in both the established news giants and the modern phenomenon that is social media.
Every day we wake up to hear our morning broadcasters to the nation detailing the latest developments and then – with the assistance of guest interviewees, both great/learned and celebrity/silly/trite – picking over the entrails and/or discussing matters they have but a passing a small understanding of … simply to fill up the airtime and “set the agenda for the day”.
From where I sit, a lot of it is distinctly unhelpful.
One of the eternal and inevitable truisms of history is that the human race always ‘gets used to whatever it gets used to’ on both the macro and everyday level.
Wherever we have reached at any particular time, we singularly assume that everything that applies to our existence in the present is an already-banked ‘given’ and that – as has always seemingly happened in the past – all future progress will be generally positive, despite the occasional (or even persistent) unwelcome evidence to the contrary.
For example, the resources of the Earth are, so far as we are aware, finite.
Climate change is happening.
From time to time natural disasters, virus pandemics and wars are inevitable.
Mass extinctions occasionally occur. Nothing – and indeed no member of any living species – exists forever.
When the national public inquiry report into coronoavirus is published, it will no doubt highlight the failures to predict the crisis, therefore also the failures to plan and/or prepare accordingly for it in advance and then the errors of well-meaning judgement made along the way as it progressed.
Then tens – possibly hundreds – of recommendations as to how all of the above could be improved will be set out.
And then guess what?
After a period of self-flagellation and bold promises that all lessons will be learned, the ‘powers that be’ will almost certainly implement some eye-catching major ones, fudge implementation of the bulk – and finally ignore the rest.
Another inevitable product of the exercise is that, for all the hot air generated, it will leave things pretty much ‘as they are’ – in the vital sense that we will probably be rendered no more ready to cope with the next ‘unforeseen disaster/crisis’ that might strike us than if we had done bugger-all.
Why?
The unfortunate fact is that – in life, in business, in politics, (let’s face it) in everything – in practice it is virtually impossible to plan for the future.
(Or, perhaps that should read ‘In reality’).
One of the hardest but most important lessons of history is that reviews of past military failures or inadequacies – even if followed by implementation of every recommendation they contain – very rarely do more than prepare one’s military forces to fight the last war or battle they took part in in a slightly better fashion.
They do practically zero to help prepare for the next one for the simple reason that nobody knows what its circumstances will be and how events will unfold.
Similar applies in every other area of human activity.
The other factor that hinders preparation for the future is the fundamental obstacle brought into focus by a howler of an adaptation of Abraham Lincoln’s famous dicta “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time”.
It is that, given the fact governmental (financial) resources – however great, or potentially great, they may be – are always finite, they can afford to pay for some of the demands upon it all of the time, all of the demands some of the time, but never all of the demands all of the time.
Politics – and issues in need of assistance or funding – being what they are, all Governments know before they take office that they’ll never be able to satisfy the financial and other demands of every aspect of life, department, issue-specific charity, lobby organisation, disadvantaged minority, gender, race and medically-challenged or put-upon community.
Thus, from the get-go, they begin making decisions and balancing impossible-to-satisfy opposing views as to how to deal with every possible difficulty facing its citizens. And thereby probably end up causing innumerable “spending on one problem directly results in another not being dealt with” situations.
It’s what is called “fire-fighting” – i.e. frantically dealing each latest ‘issue of the moment’ (in reality, or possibly otherwise created by the media by taking up the cause) simply in order to dampen down any impression that the Government is uncaring or only pandering to its core supporters (or whatever other similar criticism could be levelled at it).
And every pound sterling spent upon the military is another pound sterling that cannot be spent upon the NHS. Or vice versa. Ad infinitum.
Of course, if there was enough money sloshing around in the coffers, every UK Government – of whatever hue or persuasion – would simply spray it in every direction, get all the plaudits and ultimately (for that is always its primary goal) get re-elected to serve another term.
Why wouldn’t they?
The trouble is that for the next three years money generally – and Government revenue in particular – is going to be in short supply and under intense pressure. However, at some point in the future, I suppose we’ll get used to that as well!
