Irk The Purists
Shed 2020
It’s Tuesday, I think.
My shed’s been renovated/rejuvenated. There isn’t much to be done about the settlement underneath it, but I have had someone in to do a proper job of sanding back all the weather damage of the last few years, applying a preservative and applying a stain. There are a few things to be done around about it now, including levelling the area where the greenhouse will go, but I’m really pleased with how it turned out.
I’m also please that I got 700 words of fiction down late this afternoon. That will expand and contract on revision, but it pushes the story forward, which is the main thing. I also meant to write at least one 1970 music post, but time ran away from me.
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So what irked me, then?
The main scientific advisory body to government is known by the acronym SAGE (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies). For some reason, a collection of academics who are not part of SAGE decided to set up an alternative, shadow body which published a report today.
Several things annoyed me about it. One was statements such as the following:
The position in which we now find ourselves in the UK is of a substantial variation across its four constituentparts. The death toll and number of cases show very large variation and makes it clear that at no stage of this epidemic should the territory of the UK have been treated as one homogenous whole.
Whoever wrote that and signed it off seems entirely oblivious to the separate approaches taken by the devolved administrations in accordance with their powers in their jurisdictions. There are also some things that had to be UK/GB wide (I know GB and UK are not the same, but the report flipflops) and the principle one of those was the economic approach; another would be international relations.
But what really irked me was that the report produced a wish list of things that the government ought to/must do. I’ve no problem with that as such, but it does seem to me that if you are going to do that–but then make no policy proposals for how to achieve those goals, then you’re just standing on the touchline calling the linesman a wanker.
For example: lockdown is a nightmare if you’re in a seventh floor flat with three kids and an abusive partner. So: what is an acceptable runrate of domestic violence to prolong lockdown? The correct answer is obviously zero; so how is that to be achieved? A normative statment that it should or must be achieved is pointless by itself: how are you going to do it?
Without policy proposals it has no value; it’s shaking your fists at the clouds. It most certainly is not a ‘Powerful report’, as one of its promoters asserted.
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Music: there can be only one: Irk The Purists tonight.
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