What is wrong with the following description?
I ask just in case you don't have a TV or other access to news from virtually every corner of the planet!
Television viewers worldwide have been commenting on the appalling pictures that have appeared from the UK in recent days of commuter trains jam-packed to breaking point with passengers forced in to extremely close proximity.
Add to those disgraceful images those of construction sites with workers in equally close proximity, literally tripping over each other, many looking entirely nonplussed at the unfolding pandemic all around them. Such idiocy risks all of us! The most amazing aspect to me is that these workers are often nonchalantly chancing taking a little more home to their families than their 'daily bread'.
This is during a 'supposed' NATION-WIDE LOCKDOWN!!!
Do these workers really have such a blatant disregard for their own lives and those of their nearest and dearest, or is there something more than meets the eye?
Well, the answer is twofold, maybe threefold, oh heck, maybe even more... Yes it is true that some of these workers just do not take what is currently happening seriously. Secondly some workers are terrified of losing income, despite promises from the government to compensate them by way of 80% of their normal wage for staying at home.
I mean I ask you, could you imagine such a thing as a lying government? can anybody spell I R O N Y...?
So here's the background to this. In accordance with similar laws passed almost everywhere in the world (to varying degrees)our government announced a serious of measures, the like of which has never EVER been seen before in the long history of our nation. These measures included:
You must only leave your home:
- To go to stores to shop for basic necessities
such as BBQ's, 96 packs of beer and the occasional drone. - For health reasons. (Ironically the same reason for staying home...)
- To take one form of essential daily exercise. (OMG it is essential I do this???)
- To go to work, if your job is deemed to be essential ... Damn I knew this lock-down stuff was too good to be true.
Furthermore you must not meet family or friends. I understand entirely but I gotta be honest it's a little depressing, right? When you do come in to contact with others social distancing etiquette should be adhered to, this involves staying 2 metres away from them and moving along quickly to avoid a potential contamination scenario.
If one does begin to develop symptoms the advice is to self isolate at home for 7 days or if there is more than one person in the household this should be increased to fourteen days. one of the drawbacks to this of course is that the very word itself ISOLATION conjures up a whole raft of adverse mental health connotations but we are informed that this is both right and necessary. There was a quote in a report in the renowned medical journal The Lancet recently that summed the psychological impact up in a way that resonated with me immensely...
“The people who make policy in this area live in big houses with gardens,”
I think we all intrinsically know this to be true and many of us harbor at-least a small degree of resentment due to that very fact - despite seeing the wisdom of keeping people apart during a pandemic.
So to the initial reason for writing today, suggested in the title to this post...
How did the corporate world react to this advice?
- Well one national sportswear retailer in the UK stated that his merchandise was (in his eyes) essential and stated that he would stay open regardless of any governmental advice.
- The famous global paint company that my partner works for (in a paint store) decided to fight tooth and nail to redefine themselves as a hardware store in order to grab more of those lovely profits while competitor stores were closed.
- One nationwide chain of Pubs/restaurants stated openly that they were essential and would stay open for the duration of the crisis.
- Construction sites almost nationwide decided that they would stay open and were backed by government to do so despite being utterly enable to enforce social distancing measures to protect their workers.
There were many, many more shocking and flagrant abuses and a complete lack of 'duty of care' concerns for the workforce employed by them and the families they went home to at the end of each perilous workday.
I think we can all sympathise and empathise with the devastating effect on businesses and the far larger nationwide and indeed global economy BUT when faced with the facts I would hope that most of us would have a far more enlightened and caring philosophy than weighing those workers lives on the opposite end of a scale counter-weighted with gold!
I stated when this began and the supposed lockdown was enforced that many businesses would be locking their doors for the last time and their businesses simply wouldn't survive. I can imagine the army of business owners who have quite literally shed an ocean of tears due to the labours of their lives disappearing without a trace in the current global pandemonium.
I feel deeply for the Mom and Pop stores that are just not equipped to deal with a crisis of such epic proportions through no fault of their own. When I think of those who have plunged their life-savings, inheritance or cashed in their pension pot to begin the small business thy have dreamed of for so many years of working for the man I could cry myself.
But these feelings can never trump those of human health, safety and indeed lives!
Many but by no means all of these business were later thrown a lifeline from the government but we all know the red-tape and bureaucracy that goes hand in hand with governmental help, bursaries and loans and we can probably imagine the many hoops that businesses must jump through if they want to be able to claim a subsistence payment to try and make it through the storm.
Do we all remember the great bailout of the banksters by use of public money? Feel free to put up both hands if your answer is a
"HELL YES!!!"
My point? Well of course it is merely that if governments can bailout those who have created a crisis then they can bloody well help those who are struggling and paid in to the system all their life!!!
I am a natural optimist and always like to look for the light in a situation and love to see the best of humanity but I gotta tell ya folks, to see this reduced to a balance sheet in the eyes of businesses disgusted me. The ability I've witnessed of being able to view public health in terms of profit & loss, risk & reward, well to say it left me disheartened would be a gross understatement.
Don't misunderstand me I am certainly not painting the rest of the populace as the Saintly, salt of the earth, caring masses. Nope not at all, pictures of those people raping and pillaging anything they could from supermarket shelves as this all began to unfold left me more than dismayed. The panic buyers and their 'grab for me before others get there' mentality confirmed much of what I would expect from such a situation.
Don't get me started on the smaller shopkeepers who doubled, tripled and quadrupled their historic prices of consumables when the situation became clear. Similarly those who bought up vast stores of hand sanitiser and masks and attempted to sell them at MASSIVELY inflated prices online to a desperate, fearful public make my skin crawl.
I hear many saying how this experience will change us when we finally come out of it. Damn! I hope they are right and that we will have learned some lessons that make us better people but I am not completely convinced this will be the case. There are certainly lessons to be learned from the current crisis no matter what you think of it, how it was caused, if there were any sinister conspiratorial undertones.
I would like to give mention to something that I believe we must all be mindful of and alert to in the coming months. It is an insidious creeping of authoritarianism of the highest order and if as I suspect it comes to pass then we must stand together and bring attention to it and ensure that life really does go back to normal (whatever normal even means...) I am referring to something that many of you will have given some thought to I am certain...
We must ALL ensure that Big Brother backs the hell off when all of this is resolved!
This is not some dystopian future dreamed up by Orwell!
There are some extremely unpalatable Draconian laws being passed all over the world right now, laws that would ordinary have us screaming from the rooftops, laws that send a chill to my very core. In the aftermath of 911 there were a whole raft of 'supposed, temporary emergency measures brought in to' PROTECT US! Many here will be extremely familiar with the uber-controversial Patriot act... Many too will be aware that all laws, bills and statutes were not fully revoked afterwards. This is unwarranted use of a crisis for controlling governmental wish-lists to be brought to fruition via the back door.
It is our duty as free citizens to ensure that any measures taken today are completely and unequivocally rolled back when this current crisis has ended.
When people are being fined for being out of their house without 'good reason' we know we have ventured down the rabbit-hole and something has gone dreadfully wrong. When the military are drafted in to 'take care of stuff' we can be forgiven if our minds drift back to some of the less stunning moments of history. When people are fined for leaving home without 'their papers' something is amiss, right?
I am certain many of us can understand some of these 'temporary' measures right now but they MUST be rescinded when 'normal service is resumed.'
Creeping authoritarianism cannot and MUST not be tolerated.
As ever I have gone on for much longer than I initially intended and shall draw my musings to a succinct close. All that remains is for me to wish you and yours the very best wishes for a safe travailing of the current situation, from me and mine. This is not as many fear a catastrophic end of days scenario, it is merely something that humanity has encountered, endured and overcome time and time again, somewhere in or DNA I m certain that memory remains but WE here today have never encountered it and so it feels incredibly dire.
The moment in which we find ourselves is most certainly not forever. In what will feel like the blink of an eye we will be looking back on the events of late 2019 and early to mid 2020 with a perspective that we cannot currently comprehend. We will hopefully be engaged in a global conversation that helps us be better prepared next time. Failing the semi-inevitable 2nd and maybe even 3rd wave of this virus, the next time is likely far, far in the future of our species.
