End of year report: improvement needed

 In times of crisis the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers. We must find a way to look after one another, as if we were one tribe.

As we creep ever closer to the edge of the year, there are still so many issues that we thought might have been solved by now.

And yet…not.

Allow me to share a few random thoughts on some of them for you to peruse as you ponder whether you should eat that last mince pie. As a general rule, I find mince pies are like roast potatoes, there is ALWAYS room for another.

The Covid Inquiry: Four years after rumours reached us of a strange new flu-like respiratory infection doing the rounds of the Far East and Europe, we are still not done with Covid. 

The point of public inquiries is often to apportion blame, to work out whose fault it all was, and, usually to a lesser extent, how to prevent it happening again. Covid though, is slightly different in that it wasn’t anyone’s fault, not really. What we are finding out is who made some decisions that were, with hindsight, less than wise. 

Do we really need to know about the thousands of WhatsApp messages that have been lost or deleted? I’m not sure I do. Does it matter who argued for or against the Eat Out To Help Out scheme? Is it just being used as another stick with which to bash the Prime Minister? Ask Kate Nicholls, CEO of UK Hospitality whether it was a good thing, and she’ll say yes, it saved jobs. A lot of jobs. Talk to anyone who caught Covid from an ill-judged trip to the pub for a pint & a scotch egg, and they’ll say probably not. 

The inquiry is likely to fall foul of the problems that beset most inquiries, because it will get bogged-down in the minutiae of who said what, to whom and about whom. There should instead, be a big list of every decision, rule, stipulation and edict that came out during that time, to be graded, in the manner of exam papers. 

The rule that said Builders Merchants were essential workers and could therefore open: A*. 

The initial drive to help ease pressure in the NHS by limiting human – and therefore viral – interaction: B+. 

The one about fining college students £10k for having a snowball fight, or stopping two ladies taking their dogs for a walk whilst – the horror, the horror – drinking coffee: E. 

The decision to put political point-scoring above the educational needs of thousands of children and teenagers: F

Not reading the runes properly, and partying while telling the rest of us to stay home: a big fat U – ungradable.

The Post Office Horizon Inquiry: a year after I got Nick Wallis’ splendid book The Great Post Office Scandal  and still the revelations come through. The latest one being that the Post Office Head of PR was drafted in to produce reams of documents to support the Post Office ‘story’ that there were no issues with the Horizon IT system. How no-one has yet done jail-time is beyond me.

Ukraine: How is it possible that we are about to enter the third year of this? I don’t mean to go all ‘we’ll be home for Christmas’, WW1 about this, but the Putin who addressed his press conference last night looked a very different man from the one who sat at the end of the world’s longest dining table at the beginning of the war. He looked like he was still up for a fight, and in it for the long term.

President Zelensky on the other hand, has the weight of Western expectation on his shoulders. We cannot let what has happened in the Middle East (more on that in a minute) take our focus from supporting Ukraine. If Putin succeeds in his ambition to take over, not just the Donetsk region but, probably the whole shebang and install a pro-Putin puppet, then which former Soviet bloc country would be next? Georgia? Estonia? Latvia? Poland? Doesn’t bear thinking about. We have to keep up Western support, and that means US support too. Lord help the Ukrainians if Trump gets back in. 

Gaza: I haven’t found myself agreeing all that much with David Cameron over the years – Scottish independence and Brexit being probably the main ones – but I find myself in agreement with him now. The call from him and Annalena Baerbock, the German Foreign Minister, published in the Sunday Times (here without the Times paywall) was measured and accurate. There has to be a stop to the killing in Gaza. There has to be a return of the hostages. Israel and Hamas both need to stop.

Hamas started this on October 7th when they massacared, tortured and raped innocents, thereby sacrificing their own civiians to the wrath of Israel. They knew what the response would be. But no-one with an ounce of humanity can look at the pictures from Gaza and not wonder whether the price the Israeli army is extracting is too much. 

Rwanda: Blimey, where to even begin on this one? Do we need to do something to prevent people – desperate people in very many cases – risking their lives trying to cross one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world in tiny crafts of questionable seaworthiness, or under the floorboards of refrigerated lorries.

Yes. Yes we do. Is this the right way to do that? I’m not sure it is. The scheme seems to have cost a ridiculous sum of money already, without a single person being removed there yet. With the UK finances what they are, this seems quite a cavalier attitude to spending. 

Part of me wonders if Suella Braverman didn’t simply get her African countries muddled up, and when she said Rwanda, she was actually thinking Wakanda. 

Anyway, unless something major happens in the next week or so, upon which I find myself compelled to comment, this is the last Editor’s Blog of 2023. To those of you who have been kind enough to say nice things about this blog, thank you. There will be more next year. 

Seasonal greetings, and enjoy the break, however you choose to celebrate it.