The SJWs are back

I read a rather troubling piece on the BBC website today which suggested that TV presenter Ben Fogle had got into a bit of trouble for suggesting that we could all open our windows at 9am on the Queen’s 94th birthday this coming Tuesday to sing happy birthday to her.

Cue the entrance of the Social Justice Warriors, whose pissy scripts have changed very little since the Coronavirus crisis began:

"Next Tuesday will have been many people's birthdays. Some of them may be dead due to Coronavirus” 

"The Queen is a very wealthy woman who could be donating £millions to NHS and opening up one of her palaces for use as a hospital.”

"Let's save the clapping/singing for the frontline heroes shall we?”

And then the obligatory pompous dig: “Really misread the room with this one Ben."

Patently Ben Fogle is not a bad man for suggesting that the country unite to sing to the Queen. She is beloved to many and frankly, I rather like all initiatives which enable people to come together in these lonely and difficult times. Plainly Ben Fogle wasn’t suggesting that anyone should be forced to do something they didn’t want to do. He was just mooting an idea, which, it turns out, had come from his 8-year old daughter. 

The idea that ANY of the Queen’s Palaces would be appropriate for use as a hospital is laughable. This is not the First World War. You can just see the decision makers can’t you; “right, we’ve been offered EXCEL in the heart of London where the virus is rife with its huge, concrete-floored rooms where thousands can be treated… but, wait, the Queen has offered the dusty ballroom and drawing rooms at Sandringham in Norfolk. She says she’s got a special deal with the Big Yellow Storage Company and can get the Whistler paintings whisked away in an appropriately socially-distanced way.  We reckon we have space for at least 17 beds...” 

Accusing someone of not being behind NHS Workers has the same ring to it as the empty cries of racism which blighted the internet last year. Only the most horrible people would try to argue that the NHS isn’t vital and wonderful, but it seems it’s incredibly easy for a twisted mind to warp someone else’s words to make it look like they’re arguing just that! It’s a form of thought-control. It’s gas-lighting. It’s mean-spirited, pathetic virtue-signalling. 

There is space in the world for those who want to sing Happy Birthday to the Queen as WELL as those of us who want to applaud the NHS. Doing one absolutely does not preclude doing the other. Neither is regulatory. 

We’re all doing our bit - or trying to at least. We all get it wrong from time to time, or snap under the pressure. There isn’t a hierarchy of pain during this crisis. There’s only love. And I’m still not sure this message is quite getting through. If you can't be kind, use your spare time learning a foreign language or a musical instrument. It's better for your soul. 

Turn down the suspicion

I watched the deputy chief medical officer making an announcement on the television a few days ago. She seems to think that we might be in this lock-down scenario for another six months, which is information I’m sure the majority of us took with an inward gasp of air. It really got me thinking: Obviously people are dying at the moment - in almost staggering numbers - and for the time being, health professionals probably need to be taking the lead in guiding us through the early stages of this pandemic. But, at a certain point, if the economy collapses because no one is allowed to go back to work, we could face a far deeper crisis. We are justifiably protecting the vulnerable in society at the moment, but, as lockdown measures continue, a whole new set of people will find themselves in deep water, and the government can’t keep bailing us out - particularly if there’s no hope of our economy being kick-started. 

Of course, there’s a lot of talk of kindness at the moment and, almost every time I look at social media, I find myself moved by the genuinely altruistic gestures of others. But I’m also seeing a lot of self-serving posturing and general virtue-signalling, which I think we could all do without - particularly from celebrities who seem to take great delight in posting their marvellous messages of hope from beautiful houses which look out onto enormous gardens. And, furthermore, in the process of demonstrating that “we’re all in this together”, others are taking to the Internet and being quite horrible to those they feel are not towing the virtuous party line. 

After what we went through last summer, it was no surprise to me that a knitter decided to use the “clap for our carers” initiative as an opportunity to “call out” Nathan, whose weekly online knit-a-long happens to start at 8pm on a Thursday, the very time that those of us who felt moved to do so were opening our windows and applauding our over-stretched health service. This knitter’s tone felt horribly smug and self-righteous, as she admonished Nathan for “making money” whilst the rest of us thanked our brave NHS workers. And to that knitter I say the following:

1. Nathan’s online knit-a-longs are for people around the world and not just Brits
2. Nathan is running them (without any form of monetising) so that people, at the same time each week, can check in with members of their community in a period where many are suffering great loneliness
3. Gestures of kindness and solidarity like the “clap for our carers” initiative are only magical if people take part in them because they want to, and not because they’re told it’s a duty. 

We really need to stop focussing on what other people are doing and start focussing on what we ourselves are doing during this crisis. Quietly turn the negativity into positivity.

Let me make this statement: We are all different. We are all dealing with this awful situation in the best way we can. Some of us are coping better than others. Some of us are better placed to cope than others. Most government advice, in my experience, seems to assume that the majority of us are part of a nuclear family. But many people I know, of all ages, are living on their own and this lockdown is causing anxiety and waves of terrible loneliness.

The other thing I have observed in the few days I’ve been out of the house for walks since my Covid-19 quarantine effectively came to an end is how people, certainly in London, are really icy with those they pass in the street when they’re out on their constitutionals. I understand that we’re all terrified - but we’re not going to pass coronavirus onto anyone by smiling whilst we’re doing that hysterical do-se-do around them, whilst, simultaneously (if you’re me) holding our breath. It really isn’t very kind to look at everyone you pass like they’re plague victims. 

Nathan and I went down to Hampstead Garden Suburb for our walk yesterday. It’s now 18 days since we got the virus, so, by every calculation we’re now fully recovered. I celebrated by getting a vegetarian pastie at Daniel’s, a kosher bakery in Temple Fortune. There were only three people in the shop and two women were queueing behind us. As we turned to leave, one of these women scuttled to the other end of the shop. The woman behind her, somewhat confused, asked if she was still in the queue to which the scuttling woman replied “yes, I just wanted to get away from THOSE people.” She pointed at us like we’d just shat on the floor. As we left, Nathan addressed her, “it’s very difficult not to be offended by that remark…” I’m sure, had she found out that we’d actually had the virus, she would have considered her dreadfully unkind statement to have been justified. As it happened, it just upset me. Coronavirus, it turns out, isn’t a great deal of fun. I have had a pretty awful pair of weeks and I was actually really excited that I had sufficient energy to go for a walk and enough appetite to want to eat a pastie. I get that we’re all terrified, I really do, and perhaps it’s easier for me to say this, as someone who’s recovered relatively unscathed, but we really need to turn down the suspicion by a notch and start to treat those we’re forced to interact with with a little more respect.