Hands up. I’m not worried if I have to eat less or perhaps miss a meal or two and go without. The upside is that I could do with and would be happy to lose a few pounds.

But for my elderly mother (73) and her husband (87) who are as good as housebound and rarely go out, what those of us who are out shopping on behalf of the people we care about are experiencing has passed the stage of being ridiculous and has now become negatively profound.

Many of us have responsibility for someone else, whether it is each other, children, parents, relatives or someone else that we care for normally day-to-day.

But even if we live alone and have not one other person to think about, the reality is that the Coronavirus does not and is not going to recognise any of the differences that we might usually use to build ourselves up, to blame others or to simply use as an excuse to differentiate ourselves against others or to make ourselves out to be special or entitled in some or other way.

We really are in this together.

As I walked around the local Tesco Store this morning, looking for the aisle where the tinned potatoes should be available, I was already thinking the shopping list on the envelope containing the money from my own set of oldies was itself some kind of surreal joke. And as I stood there, looking at the collection of baked beans that at one end don’t seem as popular as the loo roll at the other, it became clear to me that the guy who was stood there surveying the carnage in the same way as me, was having the same, if not very similar thoughts. As he walked away, he looked at me, smiled and said “Thank God we aren’t at war”.

The whole experience, following on from the pictures of stripped shelves and queues of people with trolleys from across the Country made me realise just how shameful our collective behaviour has really become and question yet again how it is that things have really got this far?

We are not at war.

There is no shortage of food or essential items available to retailers.

Yet the experience that normal people are now facing in shops and supermarkets tells us something very different.

And it’s not that there is a shortage and we are demonstrating any form of rational need.

It says that the panic buying, fuelled by the non-stop ‘Coronavirus Show’ in the media and online, will quickly play into the hands of a Government led by politicians who got themselves elected for all the wrong reasons and are as fearful of the unknowns that are accompanying this dreadful outbreak as anyone else is including you and I.

Talk of being on a war footing and using emergency legislation to effectively turn this Country into a dictatorship – albeit an apparently temporary one – should be cause for concern in itself for us all.

But our behaviour, whether that be our attempts to fill up on everything at every opportunity – because those rules were meant not for us but for others, or because we are saying damn the ‘advice’ we have been given in London and elsewhere – because coffee, beer and socialising as if everything is normal remains the priority and overriding cause, is increasing the risk exponentially that the politicians who are leading us today will not only create but then use those very draconian measures to restrict all of our lives indefinitely and disproportionately. Simply because their own fears have been amplified by what is on the part of too many of us a self-serving, selfish and completely unnecessary response.

Think back to when you have been upset or you have been angry. Think about how you have spoken and acted. What was your response?

Did you ever get it wrong?

The politicians that we have today are no different. And when they cannot, will not consider or are unable to understand the bigger picture, the added pressure on them from the avoidable breakdown of what should and still could be a fully functioning supply chain today, to how we will choose to behave as the negative spiral that panic buying has started escalates into anger, frustration and potentially much more in the days and weeks ahead, will in all likelihood at some point precipitate a knee-jerk response from the people we have put in power, with consequences for us all that will be far-reaching and considerably much worse.

If we don’t do our bit to help others and to help ourselves right now by following the advice that we are being given – no matter how ridiculous or how it can only really be there for others as we might see it – we will all have played a part in giving our inept leaders reason enough to act in the way that you can be assured that they will do, just as soon as it is clear that they do not have any more options to try to get things moving and to get people to cooperate.

All-too-late, it will become painfully clear that our elected leaders simply lack the real world experience and understanding to think outside of the Westminster box, whether the Country is in the middle of a National Crisis or not.

The Chancellor’s failed attempt to help the majority of workers and businesses affected financially by Coronavirus this week has already demonstrated the lack of ability within this Government to step up and take responsibility because they do not understand the reach and depth of the responsibilities that we have entrusted them with, or will not make decisions to help the people who elected them that many of their funders and supporters simply will not like.

Either way, these are politicians that we cannot trust to act equitably, fairly and in the best or better interests of us all in each and every way that either they should or that they can.

However, surviving this Crisis is not about them. It is about you. It is about me. It is about the people we care about and know we can trust. It is about the power of decision that each and everyone of us has to do the right thing now on our own and with the people who are around us, that when taken and done together will become worth a hell of a lot more.

Let’s use the example being set by neighbours, by pubs and by volunteers across our local communities as the real guide. People like the Salvation Army man I saw with a shopping list and trolley this morning who are out there doing everything they can to fill the gaps and keep each other going in practical ways that are human and about a real sense of selflessness and community.

Let’s be inspired by real people helping other real people in real ways.

Let’s join them doing something that we all have the capability to understand.

The shop shelves will refill for us all if we stop overloading the trolleys and only take what we need for ourselves and the people we care for in the immediate term. That’s pretty much what we can carry safely in our own hands.

 

image thanks to The Sun / Mercury Press

The words added to the picture ‘There’s enough for everyone’s need but not for everyone’s greed’ is paraphrased from the quote attributed to Mahatma Gandhi ‘The World has enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed’.

One of the most rotten aspects of culture today is the overriding need that some people have to be able to blame someone or something external to themselves for everything that they consider that they have suffered in some way.

It doesn’t stop there.

Being able to blame someone or something else for the misfortune that they have suffered means that they simply must be compensated – most often financially – in some way.

Money is nothing. It is simply an idea. And giving it value as an emotional currency that can be used to ‘pay someone off’ is helping nobody and least of all the person making the claim.

In recent days, Twitter chat has turned to the subject of seeking reparations from China over the Coronavirus outbreak which we understand to have originated in Wuhan.

Whilst the cost to the economy and the Public Purse in monetary value and the far reaching cost to us all and not least of all those who have lost and will lose loved ones in emotional terms will be significant to say the least, that cost is not something it would be sensible to try and calculate and then present to anyone or any country to whom we might be able to attribute blame.

The reality is that whilst scientists have long suggested that a viral pandemic would be most likely to originate on the Asian Continent in some form, it is in reality just as likely that a problem like Coronavirus could have or still could originate from somewhere in the West in similar or alternative forms. Viruses by their vary nature constantly mutate and it is as feasible that an agent that exists in the UK and is currently viewed as harmless could at any moment change and mutate into a more virulent and malevolent form. All this without any attribution to the science of Porton Down and research into germ warfare being at any time involved.

Whilst conspiracists are already trying to gain traction with the story that Covid-19 was deliberately engineered by one or another Government and simply realised upon the World in Wuhan in its current form, the reality is that the location where this all kicked off was on the part of the Chinese simply a very big dose of bad luck. As such, this is not something in itself that any of us should be seeking to attribute blame or indeed seek reparations from them for.

We have been expecting a Worldwide pandemic for sometime and in the eyes of many, it has long since been overdue. 2020 has simply and unfortunately proven to be the time.

What we could and should be taking note of however, is the approach that the Chinese Government took to notifying and informing the World when the outbreak first took off, and how they may even now be approaching the management and manipulation of information and its flow even now.

Control is everything to the Communist Regime and it is very clear that they are involved in and have access to everything, no matter whether it is government, business or personal in nature – wherever they are involved.

The delay in providing accurate information to the rest of the World may well have prevented many Governments from being able to act sooner to address the spread of Covid-19. The reality is that we will never be sure.

But we should take the whole experience as a reference point for what the Chinese actually does, as opposed to what in parallel it desires us all to be told.

The new chancellor had a massive opportunity to look the Coronavirus crisis in the eye and do the right thing in his announcement today.

He has failed.

Lending – or rather underwriting loans to the tune of £330 Billion sounds like a big thing. But all it will do is line the pockets of the same old lenders in the finance and banking sectors, whilst shackling businesses and the people who have been or will be laid off or lose their jobs as a result of the crisis to years of debt, simply to stay afloat because of a situation that is not anyones fault.

Nobody should be able, nor allowed to profit from the misery of this situation. We should all be in this together and the Government should be using the responsibility and power that was entrusted to it last December to think outside of the perimeters of what normality tells them they have option to do, and implement solutions that are equitable to EVERYONE and not just those who are able to legally print money whilst creating an even greater financial divide between the have’s and have not’s, where it is the same old usual suspects who will realise a very quick win.

Managing and taking this Country through the Corona Virus Crisis is not something that should simply be contracted out by the Government and placed with private profit making interests and into shareholder-driven hands.

To do so now is fundamentally irresponsible, a surrender of responsibility and a sell-out to the very same people who are using the debt burden placed upon people right across our society to create every greater levels of profit whilst inflicting misery and what is becoming the 21st Century version of enchained slavery where simply remaining financially solvent has replaced the ability to simply enjoy life for too many of us as our priority and cause.

This is little more than looking after your conservative friends Chancellor. Do the right thing and help us all by putting this insidious debt-driven economy on hold and use the legal power that your Government has to create the Standstill Legislation that would help all businesses and all the people being effected by this dreadful outbreak to survive whilst things are critical and then pick up where they left off when this crisis is over and life is no longer simply put on hold.

 

Let me make one think clear: Coronavirus is very serious indeed and there are very few of us who would genuinely wish the horrid illness that can come as a result of catching it on anyone.

However, the question must surely be asked: Is the non-stop news coverage – that’s coverage that isn’t really news, but negative chat and in most cases very subjective opinion indeed – really benefitting and guiding an understandably concerned and frightened public at large?

We are faced with a situation where it is becoming very clear that even the Government – that’s the politicians we elected to lead us only three months ago – really don’t know what the hell they are doing – and they are in the best position to be and to stay informed.

So that being the case, how can it possibly be that the incessant negativity and speculation coming from journalists and in most cases the self-appointed ‘experts’ they are dragging on to their shows is actually helping anyone, rather than making a very bad situation even worse by frightening the living crap out of us all?

Sadly, this is the time that the ridiculous culture of celebrity, experts and the danger that their influence and their platforms has on the public view really shows.

Let us be clear, the term ‘expert’ in the sense of giving advice and looking forward to managing future events is at its best a misnomer. The experience that they have comes from past events or previously researched data. It is historic, cannot be accurately applied to any new or future situation even if very similar, because there are ALWAYS variables, even if those variables are just the different people, different locations and different times and dates involved.

The reason the Government has no idea what it is doing, is because there has NEVER been a 2020 pandemic of the Covid-19 Coronavirus in this Country BEFORE.

It would be at best the same for journalists and media stations – if that was they had been elected by the public and were in the position to appoint the people who are most likely to be able to give appropriate advice and direction to address a national crisis and a very public cause.

But journalists haven’t been elected to represent us and the best advisors helping the Government have already got their own jobs.

Isn’t it time that the irresponsible chatter and fear-by-saturation stopped, the news programmes went back to informing us with pure, unadulterated news, and we all were allowed to get on with making the best of a bad situation without a permanent noise and irresponsible commentary from people who have lost sight of what of is in the public interest when it comes to keeping us all informed.