[Nero Welcome Reality Deluxe Edition 201124
Oludare Padilla
The other day, I posted something about me being stupid. It was, I admit, somewhat tongue in cheek. But today I wonder if I really am stupid, because something has just happened in the United States that I utterly fail to understand.
It concerns my favourite Antichrist, Donald Trump, who today appears to be at least $3 billion richer through a deal that on the face of it seems as solid as the bridge in Baltimore that collapsed late last night.
News of an interesting piece of research on the cognitive ability of people, such as me, who have had COVID. Depending on the variant of the virus that infected us, it seems that our cognitive ability might have declined by between 4 and 9 points on whichever IQ scale the researchers used.
This time four years ago, my wife and I flew back to the United Kingdom from a holiday in South-East Asia. As it turned out, we were just ahead of the first wave of the COVID pandemic. Within a couple of weeks the country was in lockdown.
Whether Breathtaking will end up being as consequential as Mr Bates vs the Post Office , the other British docudrama that hit our screens at the beginning of this year (which I wrote about here), remains to be seen. That seems unlikely, because we all went through the pandemic. Breathtaking will be a dramatic accompaniment to the COVID Inquiry report, just as the Navalny documentary was a compelling backdrop to the sombre commemorations in Moscow. The ITV series on the Post Office prosecutions caused the whole scandal to blow up in a welter of outrage. It was already known about before the series, but only by a small minority of the country.
But when was that era of unimpeachable rectitude, when a minister caught lying risked instant career death? I was going to write a few words lamenting its passing. But then I thought further, and realised that it probably never existed.
The unforgivable started becoming survivable when New Labour turned political communications into an art form, and after the turn of the century the social media wrested control over methods of mass communication away from traditional outlets such as press and TV.
My experience is that whatever the material consequences, a reputation can take the blink of an eye to shatter and a lifetime to rebuild. And that reality applies as much to an organisation as it does to an individual. Which leads me to wonder why so many people are prepared to risk their good names on flimsy lies. Are they arrogant enough to believe, like Trump, that they can get away with it? Or are they just stupid?
All I know is that many people, myself included, find themselves mistrusting individuals and organisations whose honesty we would never previously doubt. Who would imagine that the Post Office, of all creatures, would turn on and harass so many of its employees without exploring all the possible causes of the allegedly missing funds?
In any event, I have a feeling that Alexei knew that his fate was sealed once he was taken off to his first penal colony. The only thing that might have saved him was some form of coup that got rid of Putin. But even if that happened there would have been absolutely no guarantee that the coup plotters would have welcomed Alexei back in Moscow. Would Prigozhin have been pleased to see him? Highly unlikely.
As for me, as I sit among my imaginary cabinet at 10, Downing Street and bark out orders, I have the comfort of knowing that William Gladstone only stepped down from my office at the age of 84, 12 years older than me. And Winston Churchill finally retired to Chartwell at 81.
Why would I think about returning now? After all, America seems to be in the grip of a lunatic cult that defies logic and reason. Its messiah is one of the most repulsive individuals to have held high office in any democracy, let alone the United States. Surely that would be a good reason to continue to stay away.
But at some stage I also want to look beyond the sound and fury and revisit America before my memory of the country I once loved has been completely erased by the brutal portrait that Elon and his headbangers are painting. Has that welcoming, kind, and generous country for ever been marginalised and cast aside by the likes of Trump and his serpentine followers?
Perhaps the root of my outrage is that these people could have been my neighbours. They could have been friends. They, their kids and grandkids could be seen walking the dog in the park. They were not a bunch of sinister chancers who lived in alleys and back streets and came out at night to rob us.
Secondly, the idiots who were allowed to take over the Post Office in the 1980s gave it the appearance of a private business, even though it was always owned by the government. The intention was that it be prepared for privatisation, even if the final step was never taken. Its performance since then, crowned by the Horizon scandal, would seem to have banged yet another nail into the coffin of privatisation.
I suspect that now, thanks to Alan Bates, Toby Jones, ITV and all those who had the courage to speak up against the suits, there will be no hiding place, even for those who thought that their connections with the great and the good would allow them to slink away unnoticed.
Third, I have some sympathy (though not much) for the dramatis personae who revealed their innermost thoughts on WhatsApp and ended up shredding their reputations. Back in the day, the only record of their conversations would have been in the form of minutes, from which the naughty bits would have been washed away by some diligent civil servant, or diaries published years later.
The Latin quotation in the title of this post comes from Tacitus, the Roman historian who imagines a speech from Calgacus, a Scottish chieftain, before he goes into battle against the Romans. In English: Where they make a wasteland, they call it peace.
Actually, these words are at the end of a sentence. The quotation in full reads: They plunder, they slaughter, and they steal: this they falsely name Empire, and where they make a wasteland, they call it peace.
I have no idea how it feels to be the descendant of people who were murdered in Nazi death camps. I have no idea how it feels to be the descendant of people who were expelled from lands that were home to them for generations.
On the less positive side, having a heart attack is a pain, literally and metaphorically. You feel your fitness being ripped away with every day in hospital. It turned out that one artery was completely blocked and two more were seriously narrowed. So they installed stents in two of them when I arrived, after which I felt quite normal. Four days later, I had the third one done. For some reason the after-effect of that one was far more debilitating. Perhaps it was the heart telling me enough already.
The nights were not pleasant. One guy moaning constantly, punctuating his high-pitched eruptions with invocations to his Maker. Another complained about gas and ending up deafening filling the room with a series of farts that sounded like a chainsaw in high gear. And a third guy spent much of his time belching like a bullfrog.
What of the little community of (hopefully temporary) cardio cripples among whom I found myself? To a man, the Brits were grumpy old men, including me. A moan a minute. Then there was a Brazilian, who seemed cheerful enough, boosted no doubt by a succession of noisy phone calls seemingly from all parts of the world. He was right to be cheerful, since he escaped after three days.
If we pay no attention to the actual people who want to represent us, rather than to the persuasion machines deployed by their parties, then we have no right to complain if those we elect turn out like Dorries or Pincher, or, worse still, the mendacious, the mediocre and the plain rogues who have led our government over the past ten years or so. Because those we elect are responsible, at least in part, for selecting our leaders.
Yes, enhanced language skills would surely be useful especially if they resulted in the student being able to write a coherent, error-free CV without the aid of ChatGPT, which was an ability I found surprisingly lacking, even from graduates of Oxford and Cambridge, when I was an employer of supposedly bright people.
And maths? Depends on the application. Not so many people are called upon to plot the trajectory of a moon lander using slide rules these days. But yes, understanding some basic principles before having to resort to software applications would certainly be helpful, though you would expect those principles to be embedded in the curriculum way earlier than the final two years.
Negotiating: One of the interesting aspects of leaving home and starting out as an independent adult is all the things you suddenly have to sort out for yourself: phones, cars, insurance and salary packages to name a few. I suspect many people do deals without the faintest idea of how to negotiate to their advantage. Need I say more?
Time management: the biggest shock for someone leaving school or going to their first job is transitioning from the regimented world of the classroom into a world in which success or failure can depend on how they manage their time. There are plenty of well-known time management tricks that can bridge the gap. I speak from experience because I was a lousy time manager. I flew from exam to employment by the seat of my pants. I know many, many people who did and still do the same. These days, with so much focus on stress and mental health, we owe it to our children to help them organise their lives better than we did.
Other changes have quietly slipped under the radar, to the point that the young take them for granted and even older generations quietly acquiesce in them, or embrace them without much thought as to their implications until they bite them on the backside.
True, the British government requires the banks to ensure that nobody is further than three miles from a source of cash, be that an ATM, a bank branch (a rare thing these days) or a post office. Which is fine, I guess, provided there are enough old folk with the energy to walk three miles to draw their precious notes.
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