Letter no. 2 : further to letter no. 1!
Posted 30th May 2020
The previous letter was, as I said, written prior to the change of government policy announced on 10th May. Already one’s applause of the government’s conduct had been moderated by the Health Minister’s conscious misintelligence on the number of tests that had been performed. But it was only with the return of the Prime Minister that confusion and irresponsibility were fully reinstated as immutable principles of government policy. For the announcement of 10th May, as well as its subsequent exegesis, bear the inimitable imprint of the mind of the Master. Certainly, the mind of a chancer.
For not only has his unwillingness to wait some further time before cautiously easing the lockdown enhanced the risks of a resurgence of Covid-19 ‒ and, should that, providentially, be avoided, almost certainly slowing its remission ‒ and ‒ oh plenty certainly! ‒ augmenting the number of preventable deaths ‒ but (having already delivered a body blow to European, and hence to general Western, solidarity) he has now, by his arrogantly unilateral action, contrived to give a further small encouraging nudge to the dissolution of the United Kingdom.
But one has the impression that the Prime Minister does not really know what he himself really thinks ‒ that he wakes up each morning and asks himself ‘Now what do I think today?’ And he has, on this occasion, epitomized his epiphanous guidance in the exquisitely vacuous prescript ‘Stay alert’: a refined variant, I imagine, of the maxim ‘Be prepared’ ‒ which is, as Tom Lehrer reminds us, ‘the boy scout’s solemn creed’. And in fact there does appear in Mr Johnson’s idiosyncrasy, when essaying a more serious posture, something of the scout master. ‒ Not that I would be depreciatory of scout-masters collectively: there are scout-masters and scout-masters; and I leave it to my reader to determine to which of these categories to assign Mr Johnson.
In sober fact, I feel I owe the reader something of an apology for my praise of the government in my initial blog, and I find myself convicted of a certain obtuseness in my failure to have perceived the grave mismanagement by the government of so many aspects of the case.
One further matter I feel I must touch on: the government’s insistence that ‒ some ‒ primary schools must reopen on June 1st: a step opposed by the Teachers’ Union, the National Education Union, the National Association of Head Teachers, the Secondary Head Teachers’ Union, the Association of School and College Leaders ‒ to say nothing (before the application of governmental thumbscrews compelled him to recant) of the Chief Scientific Adviser to the Department of Education itself. Asked, after the government announcement, if ‘we are potentially putting together hundreds of potential vectors (scil. asymptomatic children) that can then go and transmit’, Dr Osama Rahman replied, ‘Possibly’: before adding the ‒ essentially phatic ‒ rider, ‘Depending on school sizes’.
I have not the least idea in what hothouse crammer the members of the Cabinet may have received their education, but I do have to say that ‒ and ‘a fortiori’ at this stage ‒ one further single month’s absence from schooling ‒ and I have myself at various times been both on its receiving end and dishing the stuff out ‒ is highly unlikely to be of critical importance. There is little question but that the policy adopted ‒ again, for England alone ‒ will result in (to whatever extent) increased infection and, in the highest degree of probability, more deaths. And in defence of the policy, all sorts of sophistries have been deployed, as (for example) the need to ensure that poorer children are getting enough to eat. (There is indeed such a need, but … but ‒ do I really need to spell out the sheer stupidity and/or cynicism of invoking this in the context under discussion?) If the ‒ cautious ‒ reopening of schools is put forward to what would be the normal start of the fresh school year, in the first week of September, then, indeed, there may be reason to hope that the pandemic in this country, though not extinguished, will be sufficiently damped down to permit their reopening in tolerable safety.
And what does here strike me as disgustingly insolent, intolerable and offensive is the criticism directed at teachers and their unions by the abundantly well insulated ‒ the copertissimi ‒ great editors of our great newspapers: as well as such figures, from whom one might have hoped better, as David Blunkett. The medical front-liners, the teachers are admonished, are risking their lives ‒ so why can’t you? Here again ‒ for this letter is already too long ‒ I venture to leave it to my readers to supply the rejoinder to this impertinent sophism: impertinent in both senses of the word. It is generally held that courage is an estimable quality, and I have no doubt that it is; but what No-Dogge finds the very antithesis of estimable ‒ is vicarious courage!
However, coming back, at the last, to our muttons: if the Government instructs us to stay alert, we must, I suppose, do so; and thus, with eyes peeled, ears pricked up, nostrils a-quiver to the wind, and forefinger raised to detect which way it is blowing, we may, maskless or masked, dive dauntlessly into the rush-hour tube and relish the comforting warmth and contiguity of our fellow-man.
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