The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Keep calm? What a carry-on
Adequate. It really is a weasely little word, isn’t it? It just reeks of mediocrity and a lack of anything very much really except the bare essentials, the bare minimum, the line of least resistance.
With overtones of that good old Scottish expression, “fushionless”, denoting lack of fibre, wishy-washy, faint-hearted, dull, feckless, lacking ability, or simply, in the dictionary definition, “without sap or pith.” It smacks of “it’ll have to do”, rather than putting energy and thought into doing what actually needs to be done, and done efficiently, instead of going off half-cocked.
It’s not a word you want to hear much of when you’re thinking about your future or that of your job, your friends or your family, but it is, in all its halfbaked glory, the word used by Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab in response to the notion that there might be supply problems in the event of a no-deal outcome.
“There will,” he blusters, “be adequate food.” Oh, really? Well, since everything these days seems to be about making shadier and shallower deals rather than making a proper job of things, big deal, Dominic.
Of course, what he means by that is just about as clear as what anyone – pro or con, two years ago or two days ago – means by Brexit. And, I suspect, his idea of adequate might be a little different to your definition or mine, as I also suspect that what he and his colleagues consider adequate for you and me might just be considered to fall a little short for those crowing at the top of the social and political food chain.
This is, as we all know, a government under which the prevalence and use of foodbanks has been one of the few areas of booming growth in recent years.
Hopefully, however, by the time the critical stage of shortage is reached, the equally confidence-inducing Foreign Secretary will have worked out whether his wife is Chinese or Japanese as he decides on ordering sushi or spring rolls when the cabinet fetches up chez Hunt for a carefully rationed takeaway.
Remember Theresa May’s first speech as Prime Minister, in which she promised to help and support those who were “just about managing”?
The practical manifestation of that appears to have been to turn us all into an entire nation that is “just about managing” but won’t be doing so for much longer if someone doesn’t get their act together.
I blame the Keep Calm and Carry On brigade, with its in-built assumption that if we all get our heads down, put our shoulders to the wheel and just keep on keeping on, all will be well.
In actual fact, this “it’ll be alright on the night” attitude is redolent of driving in Broughty Ferry. What do I mean, I hear you puzzle? Well, when pedestrians in that leafy location cavalierly cross the road right in front of any type of oncoming traffic, they obviously believe that if they don’t look at it, it won’t hit them.
We’ve been brainwashed into thinking that the best way forward is to look back, to some kind of Dunkirk spirit or spirit of the Blitz when passports were blue, and the map and most of the faces that surrounded us were pink.
I just hope that the undoubtedly strategically delayed appearance of the American cavalry this time round will not take the shape of predatory US companies throwing food standards to the winds and privatising as much of the National Health Service as they can squeeze unacceptable profit margins out of.
Maybe that will all come to pass if the current state of what Irish playwright Sean O’Casey called “chassis” continues beyond the official leaving date that is scarily looming. Maybe not if someone, somewhere, actually comes up with something practical, rather than what seems to be a blueprint for the survival in power of a few, very wealthy politicos and their cronies. I, for one, wouldn’t put much of my hardearned money on that particular horse.
Whether for or agin leaving the EU, most of us have come to accept that more people voted for it than didn’t and thus we must find a way to reflect that. Hopefully, that can happen without grinding ourselves, our economy and our foreseeable future into the very depths of the lowest common denominator that seems to be becoming the expected norm, with cries of “betrayal”, “vassal state”, “the will of the people” and accusations of Project Fear round every compromise corner.
And while, at the same time, making it perfectly clear that, although the result of a vote may have been narrow, that does not mean that those who disagree with the eventual outcome have to stop making the argument for other potential ways forward.
Or at least better arguments for a better way forward than anyone currently at the negotiating table on our behalf seems to be proposing.
Otherwise, sorry. What is happening at the moment is really just not good enough. It’s not even, dare I say it, adequate.
Brainwashed into thinking best way forward is to look back