"Don't worry about it, nobody died" - But they did!

With the brashness and confidence of youth my son, many years ago, would often say if either my wife or I came home from work with some problem or other that was causing us anxiety "Don't worry about it, nobody died". We always had a laugh about his flippant comment but accepted that he probably had a point and in a way, I suppose, it all helped to keep things in some kind of perspective.

A grim faced Boris Johnson -
regret but no responsibility

I've thought much about his "words of wisdom" in the past day or two as I have kept up with the news. Firstly, earlier this week a suitably grim looking Boris Johnson told us that the 100,000 UK Covid deaths landmark was a great source of sorrow to him and "difficult to compute" but, he added, that his government "truly did everything they could". And then yesterday we residents of Nottingham read the Coroner's Report following the suicide of a young Nottingham mother Philippa Day. She had committed suicide following grave and accepted errors by the DWP in the payment of her various benefits resulting in her getting seriously in debt and this leading to her suicide. I listened horrified as the TV news played her last pleading and harrowing phone call asking for help.

Both of these bits of news have one thing in common - people died; it doesn't get much graver and more serious than that - as I'm sure that my son would agree!

Both Boris Johnson and a "spokesman" for the DWP expressed their respective sorrow and condolences at these events but whilst they expressed sorrow and regret, neither took responsibility. And so, our world moves on. Apologies like Johnson's and that of the DWP are given to paper over the cracks and provide a modicum of "decency"; honour (if there be such a thing in our modern world) is satisfied. But two days later these easily spoken and cheap words of sympathy, accompanied with grave faces and sombre words, are forgotten - like yesterday's news they become today's fish and chip paper and the day after that they are forgotten as they fill our paper recycling wheelie bins - gone, blown away, unheeded in the maelstrom of our frenetic world.

So, I ask myself - following my son's youthful pearls of wisdom that the death of someone (or in Boris Johnson's case 100,000 Covid "someones") is of some grave significance and therefore a legitimate cause for concern and anxiety - shouldn't something serious happen to ensure that these grave matters are treated with due seriousness, that justice is served and that full and appropriate action is taken in respect of the deaths these almost certainly "innocent" people? Or will it, as I fear, be allowed to just pass like water under the bridge - a bit of unfortunate rather sad and messy collateral damage arising out of the world in which we live? Something that is regrettable but not a matter to get "out of perspective" or (to use a modern phrase) that we should "beat ourselves up with". Maybe we should just follow the advice in another clichéd bit of contemporary vapid and vacuous popular street culture posing as profound wisdom and "move on, get over it". I think not.

From what we read and know, both of these tragedies in their different ways could have been avoided or at least minimised with a different set of priorities and decisions. The crocodile tears of our PM and the weasel words of the DWP are, in my view, not acceptable. For years now successive Tory governments have promoted the policy of "naming and shaming" when people in other walks of life doctors, teachers, social workers, police officers and the like fail in their perceived responsibilities - so why not governments and their ministers and government departments? But no-one is named and shamed, no-one resigns, no-one falls on their sword as a matter of personal and professional "honour". The reason for this is simple, namely that naming and shaming would not work for governments and ministers because that policy only works if those who are being vilified have any personal or professional "shame" - in other words they care about how well they do their job and so do feel shamed if they fall short or are accused by their superiors of falling short. In contrast, our current government and its ministers - and most of all our PM, have no shame or indeed honour - if they had then they would have gone long since.

Philippa Day in happier times; her
 tragic and unnecessary death was  proof
 of the truth of Camus' comment.

The whole episode reminds me of a famous point made by French author/philosopher Albert Camus who said "Every wrong idea ends in bloodshed, but it is always the bloodshed of innocent others". Quite; the wrong ideas of successive Tory government austerity policies meant that we were woefully and criminally unprepared for the effects of this pandemic, the wrong ideas of Boris Johnson and his cronies in managing our national response to the pandemic then made that situation immeasurably worse. And in the case of poor Philippa Day (and almost certainly many others) the wrong ideas of successive Tory governments and ministers (most notably Iain Duncan Smith) in respect of protecting and supporting the most vulnerable in our fragile society have been both directly and indirectly at the bottom of these many and tragic events.

We should be very, very worried at the failure of those in power and those charged with making potentially life and death decisions to recognise the profound moral requirements associated with their role and equally worryingly their reluctance to accept the ultimate responsibility for their actions and decisions.

When False Belief Bumps Into Reality

Washington 2021

 The pandemic under which we are all currently living has brought the nation to its knees and caused suffering and distress quite unimaginable just a few months ago. It is unlikely to get significantly better any time soon. Having said that I am increasingly of a mind to suggest that there is another aspect of our national life that in the long run might have even more disastrous and distressing consequences.

In the past five years in this country we have seen a rapid and insidious growth in lying by those in power. We have a Prime Minister who casually and unashamedly lies to both Parliament and the electorate. He is ably assisted in this by other senior

Priti Patel Brexiteer and government minister
promising what cannot be delivered to the NHS

Tory politicians. The Brexit campaign was based upon and ultimately won on a strategy of lying - most obviously in the lie emblazoned across the Brexit bus promising £350 million pounds each week for the NHS once we left Europe. The lying continues, like Pinocchio's nose it grows and grows - so that now every other aspect of our political life is tainted by the the knowledge that we are almost certainly not being told the truth by those in power. "Fake news" - a euphemism for lying - has become the buzz phrase of our times and the most worrying and appalling aspect of the whole charade is that no-one seems to care; Joe Public now casually accepts that this is reality and we should just accept the fact. It's just what politicians do. And Joe Public now takes it further - rather than being appalled too often he jumps on the bandwagon and repeats lie, spreads the fake news even when it is manifestly an untruth. In short we have lost our moral compass.

Trump - a man who spreads lies
quite unlike anyone else on Earth

We are not, of course, alone. Across the Atlantic the once great USA is politically on its knees following the 4 year presidency of Trump and his henchmen. We should watch America and learn. When governments become tainted and corrupt because they lack integrity and when the electorate refuse to acknowledge the obvious - that truth and integrity matter - then things can get nasty very quickly. It is the starting point for unrest and insurrection - a condition that ultimately, and unlike Covid, there is no quick fix vaccine for. It is very easy for nations to slip into civil unrest and civil war - one only needs to look at other nations around the world throughout history and in our own times to see the truth of this.

Seventy years ago - at a time when integrity actually meant something in the political and social life of the nation writer George Orwell eloquently reminded us of this in his essay "In Front of Your Nose". He didn't use the phrase "fake news" and his main point was that people are often in denial about what constitutes truth and how we react to it. This is what he said:

"We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue. And then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite period of time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.”

The arch villain Dominic Cummings
a man who gleefully spreads deceit and
misrepresentation to further his own ambitions 

Orwell, as usual, was not wrong - the truth of his statement is to be seen on the "battlefield" streets of Washington and other US cities where "false belief" has indeed bumped up against "solid reality". It is a scene that can very easily (and I suspect will) come to this nation sooner or later unless we bring back to our political and social life some semblance of integrity and truth.

Boris Johnson - a serial liar -  a man who has
 built his whole career on lies and is probably
 unaware of when he is lying so deeply is it
ingrained into his psyche

The solution is not easy nor is it quick. To do this every single member of the electorate must win the first battle - the battle of the ballot box - by voting for those with integrity and commitment to the common good rather than the quick fix, glib solutions of snake oil salesmen like Donald Trump and Boris Johnson. They must then win the second battle - by being well informed, taking a pride in their civic responsibilities, and holding to account those that they have voted for. It is only in this way that the political pandemic of deceit, fake news and lack of moral compass which is sweeping the world and is at its most prevalent in the USA and the UK can be overcome.