In conversation with a dying friend yesterday, I was
forcefully struck by the real weirdness of Boris Johnson’s lack of care and
idiotic priorities as we stagger haphazardly into the 8th month of
the year and the 6th month of a failed approach to an inevitable
pandemic in a supposedly developed country. We still have no fully functioning, overarching track and trace programme
– never mind a coherent policy on any kind of protective measures - measures
that frankly are 6 months too late anyhow.
The question posed, with a raw level of incredulity
by the friend in question, who is trying to approach his last few days with
dignity during this mess – was “Why are people being encouraged to take risks
for a pint in a pub?”
Is there a better question?
We realise that unless society is going to stay in
lockdown long-term, and that would be to the long-term detriment of the many,
especially the young, we have to open up. But some things are more worth taking
the risk for than others. Two things that fall into that category would be
mental health (I know of more people under 40 who have committed suicide than
have died of covid-19) and education. Neither has been at the top of the
government agenda. Flying to Spain and drinking in pubs however, have taken up
much political blether and media air time. It is pathetic.
The second conversation which informed this week’s
post took place at the weekend.
I was fortunate enough to be with family at the
weekend but unfortunate enough to therefore to be in the vicinity of a TV and
thus more exposed to the trite mainstream media and popular rubbish that passes
for news in Britain and the god-awful drone of privileged people whining about
the privations of their comfortable lives. I then spoke to a neighbour who has
worked in parts of the world where every day, parents are forced to give their
healthy children water that they know may kill them. The contrast of the bleating
over cancelled holidays and not being able to eat out or go to the pub made me
feel truly sick – and ashamed.
Now the West has had a very small taste of
insecurity – would it be a good time to care about those whose lives are like
that ALL THE TIME?
Now that the UK has had a taste of what it’s like to
face a deadly disease with no cure – might we find (finally) some compassion
for countries that face this annually? Could we even perhaps think of making
consistent efforts to help those in poor countries who die daily of diseases
for which there IS a simple cure and or prevention but who suffer needless
deaths every year – often in the very young – simply because there is no
adequate healthcare or those countries are so broken by paying back corrupt
loans to wealthy countries like the UK that they are unable to spend on
education and health.
Now that some in the UK (not Dominic Cummings of
course) have experienced the restriction of lockdown – albeit in homes with
indoor sanitation, TV, internet and more food in the fridge than some see in a
month – might we have some compassion for those living weeks, months, sometimes
years in squalid, unsanitary, unsafe refugee camps; sometimes living and dying
there never having known freedom.
Might we for once – think about those whose experience
of life is a little like our experience of covid but much worse and all the
time?
NB – for the
bizarre members of the public who the BBC somehow manage to find (under a bush
somewhere – or in a cupboard in a studio where they’ve been deprived of
sunlight for over 48 hours) who claim to think Boris Johnson has done a good
job –
According to the government’s own Office of National Statistics – which reported at the end of last
month – between the end of February and the middle of June the excess mortality
rate for England was higher than for ANY OTHER EU COUNTRY. ‘Excess mortality
rate’ is the only truly reliable comparative figure.