We cannot go back to our wasteful ways
SITTING in my armchair, looking at the lovely, blue sky and watching the birds going about their business, it is hard to connect this with the disaster ravaging humanity in the form of an invisible virus, unheard of before last Christmas.
It is also very humbling. We humans have come to believe that we are the highest form of life on this planet and our conceit, selfabsorbed obsession with money, property and materialism has suddenly crashed big-style.
I listened to a pre-recorded interview that Andrew Marr had with David Attenborough and a colleague. I was more impressed with his words than any of our current politicians.
His advice was simple. When this pandemic is over, we cannot go back to the over consumptive, wasteful, lives so many of us have been accustomed to. He said: “We must be less wasteful, or we will destroy ourselves.”
These are very strange times indeed. Nothing has happened like this before. A worldwide pandemic that has killed so many good people.
Apportioning blame will do us no good in this dire situation. I, as a historian, know the writing was on the wall, but our leaders have consistently ignored it.
Since the last war, billions has been spent preparing for a Third World War, but no contingency plan was ever devised to combat anything like this pandemic we are now facing.
There has been much criticism of our present government for not having sufficient PPE to meet this disaster.
In fairness, this pandemic has shocked the entire world. It overwhelmed the Government and little wonder there has been such confusion.
Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, should have closed all our airports after news that 16,000 people had died in Italy. He was too slow to act. Despite professional medical advice, he was left “holding the baby”.
There was much confusion and muddled information given out to the public during the time the PM, Boris Johnson, became ill. The media focused on him, but we’ve heard precious little since he retreated to Chequers to “convalesce”.
It is a shocking that an old soldier (Captain Tom Moore) at nearly 100 years old has to raise more than £25m and still rising, along with others. He is a hero.
This is money that should have come from government. Yes, he does deserve a knighthood, but the Health Service and the NHS has been under threat for some time; run-down with reduced funding and a shocking haemorrhaging of doctors and nurses over many years of deliberate neglect as part of “austerity”.
This was never needed and was, in my opinion, a government strategy to reduce and undermine the entire public sector, including education and health.
It has been further undermined by covert discussions that would have been part of the UK/US Atlantic Trade Deal (hopefully now shelved) to sell it off to American
“big business” to make profits for already rich men. Disgusting!
This is the nasty face of modern capitalism. The widespread praise for the NHS, I hope, will end immediately any talks of privatising the NHS. We all now know how much we rely on it. After this pandemic is over, it will be a very different world indeed and Britain will be a very different country.
We will need to re-evaluate what is important in life and value those overstretched workers we have come to depend on.
We must become less obsessed with money and materialism. We’ve a long way to go yet, but let’s heed Attenborough’s wise advice. We must stop being so wasteful.
Anlaby.