Tuesday 31 March 2020

Outings Pun by Police

We have been treated to some arial footage from Derbyshire Constabulary which has sought to shame some people who drove to beauty spots for a bit of exercise. A new pun on "outings" eh?

There has been a fair bit of debate around this behaviour on social media both of the police filming and the behaviour of the public. What are we to make of it? The government advice is plain: stay at home, exercise once a day. The implication is that we should walk from home for our exercise. I can understand though if you live in the city and it's a long way to a park or the countryside from where you live, that it will be very appealing to get in the car and drive to a beauty spot. It's easy for me, with the open country literally yards from where I live, to get into the big spaces. I do think that this matter has to be a case of balance, flexibility, understanding and conversation. Many police forces for instance are "having conversations" with people they suspect of antisocial behaviour, and trying to persuade them to change their behaviour before resorting to more draconian measures.

I know that at some beauty spots there is such a build up of visitors that the whole thing looks like contagion world, and councils are resorting to blocking access. I think sometimes we do need help like this to change our behaviour. If the car park is blocked off it sends me a very clear message. You might say that it's a shame that councils and police have to resort to this, but when you have the behaviour of millions to try and manage, that I reckon is the deal. If I know that I am not perfect, then that should be explanation enough for me of your imperfect behaviour. Our imperfections manifest themselves in very different ways. I don't feel I am qualified to judge yours. Mine are quite enough to be going on with. We pay our taxes so that the complete idiots and antisocial nuisances can be managed in a civilised way. Occasionally I have been one of those who needed managing.

How do I feel about the countryside visitors? I truly believe that for some it is an entriely reasonable and appropriate thing to do. Where the parking is not crowded and people walk keeping their distance I would want to say, "What's the problem?" I know that there are counter arguments - the increased demand this creates for fuel, for the road rescue services, and the example it gives to those of us who are more conservatively minded. It's the same with hillwalking activities. The mountain rescue services are trying to discourage long mountaineering or hillwalking trips as they regard call outs which involve them working in close proximity with one another as something to be avoided. Now for me, a walk up my local mountain is just that - a walk. But if I did trip and twist my ankle, which is possible, and I had to call them out, what a selfish prat I'd suddenly have become.

There is also that really bad entitlement behaviour. A shop assistant was interviewed a few nights ago on the news, and her stories of badly behaved customers were to say the least, horrifying. People when asked to maintain distance telling her "Don't you tell me what to do....etc". Of course there are people out there who make it worse for all of us, and whose behaviour makes us want to have tighter restricitons in place and tougher punishments for the worst offenders. May I include in this category people who hang their dog poo bags on branches and never retrieve them?

So, it is difficult. Stay at home within the guidelines does seem the best thing. However I don't think I'm going to view every driver who takes his partner and their dog or their kids to a countryside location for a longer walk as a social pariah, but there will be some among them, for sure.  But if tighter restrictions come into force I shall simply have to shrug and see it as a necessary evil forced upon us by the heedless behaviour of a very badly behaved minority, who most of the time manage to look and behave like everyone else much to the consternation of the shop assistants who suddenly discover that nice Mrs Brown isn't quite so capable of holding her alter ego in check when push comes to shove. Ah, welcome to the human race. But that's why I like the message of Christianity: "You're bad. Let God make you better." Amen.


Tuesday 24 March 2020

Corona - what will it give?

This from an article by David Grossman in today's "Haaretz" newspsper. 24 March 2020. He is reflecting on some of the ways in which we might be changed by this defining moment in the history of humanity, and his thoughts include the following:

"There will also be those whose political outlooks will suddenly look mistaken to them, being based exclusively on fears or on values that disintegrated in the course of the plague. Perhaps some will suddenly cast doubt on the reasons that have made their nation fight its enemy for generations and believe that war is a divine edict. Perhaps going through such a difficult human experience will induce people to detest nationalistic views, for example, and reject attitudes that promote separation and xenophobia and self-containment. Possibly there will also be some who will for the first time wonder, for example, why Israelis and Palestinians continue to do battle against each other, afflicting their lives for more than a hundred years with a war that could have been resolved long ago."

Every cloud they say, has its silver lining. Like Grossman I cherish hopes that there will be radical reassessments in favour of what is just, wise, good. Grossman ends his article on an ambivalent note - he wonders also if any radical effects might only be temporary, and in the end, we will all go back to business as usual once the threat has subsided.

The threat will only subside of course if we have an exit strategy that is as sensibly paced and uniformly heeded as the strict instructions we Brits heard on the news yesterday will no doubt be. (I know that there will be debate about how sensible this country's pacing has been, so please put the phrase "sensibly paced" above in quotation marks if you like. I'm not really interested (in this post at any rate) about debating that.) There is another factor too that will inform our behaviour and interactions in the future, and that is whether or not an effective vaccine against the virus will be found. A continuous threat in the absence of a vaccine will result in a very different world from the one we know now, and a threat rebutted by a vaccine might well return us to "business as usual" in the long run.

One of the things the pandemic has made us do as church and community where I live, and no doubt in most parts of the world, is to get us to use our technology to work collaberatively and imaginatively, and to reach out to one another to check and reassure. (Sure, there have been other not so welcome effects too, like the panicked stripping of consumables from the supermarket shelves.)
So we are dealing with the situation as best and sometimes as worst as we can. I believe that if those of us whose instincts and whose comittments are orientated towards the good of all and not merely ourselves hold to our vision, keep our hope for a positive endgame alive, and engage responsibly with the advice or instructions we have been given, the good will win out. There will be tragic losses to come, of that I have also no doubt, and if these losses do not teach us, do not inspire us to higher better things, then we will have dismissed the losses with crocodile tears, we will not have honoured their lives, their suffering and their dying. My prayer is, "Let it all have been for something worthwhile. Help us forge from this crisis something truly better. Give us the determination to make it so."


Monday 16 March 2020

Biden won't topple Trump but Corona might.

Until a few weeks ago Trump looked unstoppable in his bid to achieve a second term of office. The Democrats it seemed did not have a character who could really stand up to and compete with Trump. However it may be that Trump's reactions to the virus outbreak may be his undoing. He has been singularly or perhaps I should say, more noticeably in the eyes of the electorate than usual, wrong footed and misleading and not in command of his information. We'll see.

Corona may be responsible for more that just Trump's inability to win a second term. It is also making a hiccup in the process of Global Warming. Much drastic and quick response to the virus has resulted in the massive shut down of industry in China and in many other places too, along with suspension of much air travel. Now it may be that this will help many to wake up to the fact that we can do something which will have  a massive impact on that process (at massive cost), or at least help us to make more measured but effective responses which may well slow or halt the process in the nick of time. It may of course have the opposite effect. The big corporations having lost so many billions of dollars due to lack of economic and industrial activity, may well respond with a massive reaction in terms of redoubled industrial and commercial output which will only make matters worse. We have yet to hear of anyone making a link between the virus outbreak and global warming in terms of one affecting the other, and of course all the commentators and analysts are far too busy reckoning the impact in terms of human and economic cost in the here and now. But when a crisis hits, it often takes a counter crisis to help us find our way forward. Of course these crises have their cost both financially and humanly, but when did finding a way out of tough spot not carry a cost?

For the moment the arguments rage nationally and internationally about what procedures are most effective in combating the pandemic. Too much, not enough, just about right are all defended and supported by reams of experts. We just don't know. I suspect that no matter what, the thing will run its damaging course. Could a million be killed and 20 - 40 million be seriously sick or disabled permanently even? No, they reckon possibly tens of thousands killed at the end of the current outbreak. The drastic statistic above was the car accident annual statistic. Ordinary 'flu' takes out about half a million a year. The problem with Covid-19 is that it spreads easily and fast and the carriers have it before they know it. But just look up the stats for the outbreak of Spanish Flu (1918).

Meanwhile, let's take care, wash our hands as they advise, avoid too close contact with others, and watch out for and check up on the most vulnerable and at risk. We do what we can, right?