#CoronavirusUK random thoughts - early Easter Monday

It is Easter Monday. All is quiet. I am just back from an early morning bike ride. As forecast a big change in the weather today. The cycle back was into the teeth of a cold north easterly. I had to stand on the pedals to make progress. Sand being blown horizontally off the beach - fair-weather exercisers not out this morning.

Coronavirus is dominating. My mind is like a bagatelle on the subject - so I will have to try and show restraint. I thought I would get some points down on paper for posterity! Thoughts might be no coherent order but just as they percolate to the top - ha!

The Queen in her recent address to the nation said something along the lines of "when this is all over we will look back and ask ourselves - how did we do - how did I do - did the nation stand together - are we proud of how we responded - did we cope well - did we behave well?" This is a powerful message for everyone.

I think I want to recount this. You decide if it is relevant. I was one of a crew of 18 on a long distance sailing race. Harsh conditions and no landfall prospect for about a month. We were in it together. In the first few days it became apparent there had been a major miscalculation on food provisioning. The victuallers had got it wrong. How did it happen. Who was responsible. What are we going to do about it.? The crew understood. We had to make the best of it! We had to deal with it. There would be a need for rationing. And what about the individuals directly responsible - did they do it deliberately. Was it wilful. Were they dismissive? No of course not - they were good people. On a small boat the crew are tight knit. As you would expect the crew pulled together - team spirit and morale was paramount - so no complaining - no recriminations - no wisdom of hindsight - no points scoring - no greediness. You can see where I am going with this?!

In a national emergency as the coronavirus pandemic surely is - with lives at stake and our economic future on the line - you might expect the nation to rise above party politics for the national good. Generally speaking I think our political leaders are trying pretty hard to achieve this - but of course party politics and the search for good opinion poll ratings will never go away completely. The Liberal Democrats are keeping a very low profile - and the new Labour Leader while understandably trying to make an impact politically is at the same time trying to be prime ministerial like too. The Tories are clearly not focused on scoring political points either - the burden of responsibility is weighing far too heavy for that. 

The new Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has said he will hold the government to account and focus on the things they could do better on. This is not unreasonable providing the calls are objective and constructive. How will his comments make things better - how will they help? - should be the yardstick. The only thing I would say is it is much easier to say I would have done something earlier of differently if you have the full benefit of hindsight and that is not constructive.

A question I would like to ask you. Are you the sort of person that moans because the council have not cleared the snow from the roads the morning following an overnight snow storm - and you say things like - in Sweden the roads would be open by now !?

This virus is unprecedented - but some people expect the government to have all the answers and all the ducks lined up right from the start. In the same way they criticise the government for not having state of the art snowploughs in storage ready to go (even though we rarely get snow) they expect the NHS to have everything it could possibly need right from the outset even if it is being faced with the worst pandemic outbreak for 100 years (and unlike snow - every virus is different in its nature.)

It comes back to the same sort of issues as my sailing race. How does it help carping on about what might have been. How does that help us acquire the things we need.How does it improve things? It doesn't! As a nation we are where we are. It is our obligation to help our nation get through it by responding positively to the challenge. We need a national team spirit. 

I am proud to say on the whole our nation is responding well - but certainly when that reflective moment comes as the Queen wisely emphasised it will - some in our nation should hang their heads in shame because they have set out to undermine the governments leadership and efforts for small minded political partisan objectives and/or self promotion. The media have been particularly guilty. Shame on them. 

Any recriminations should come afterwards - with analysis in the cold light of day when all the facts are available. It is not for now - we have a fire to put out - it is not the right time to consider if it could have been prevented or if we could have been better prepared. The best way to put out the fire and minimise the damage is good team work in dealing with this national emergency and all pulling together.