Back to the Jungle

We have the Covid inquiry going on in the UK at the moment. I've paid zero attention to it. It was always obvious that it was going to be fudge and smudge. Absolving blame, but in a way where it looks as though people have had a ticking off. I've just seen a tweet on Twitter with the classic "We should've locked down earlier" refrain. I don't mind admitting that hearing this instantly triggers me. A false choice between instant tyranny and tyranny a few weeks later. A fake argument that presupposes that locking down was not just correct, but the only option.

Generally, I'm always happy to let sleeping dogs lie. I'd have preferred there to have been no inquiry. For us just to move on. Like a bad night out everyone agrees to forget. The problem is law and politics often rests on precedent. At the start of lockdowns you could rightly say, "Look, this is something that has never happened in our history. It's a ridiculous way for a country with the rule of law to behave." In the future it'll be a case of, "The last guys did it, what's the big deal - we always respond to pandemics this way."

So any inquiry that doesn't come to the conclusion that lockdowns were categorically wrong just green lights future abuses. We'll forever be a newspaper headline away from mass curfew.

And this brings me to another tie in.

I've noticed that over the last year or so things have really regressed on our streets. Earlier today a friend sent me a story about a local stabbing. When I walk the streets these days I constantly see young lads in balaclavas flying around on motorbikes. I remember what things were like in the 80s and 90s when the streets were wild and feral in the UK. I feel like we're heading back there.

It might be biased to blame all this on the pandemic, but it's hard not to see a clear link. The inflation, the social dislocation, the infantilization of adults, the disregard for the development of children, the disruption of teenage life. The sheer focus on Covid to the detriment of everything else. Of course, you can draw a line from the masking to the balaclavas too. A society where the covering of the face is normalised. Where basic human empathy is restricted, and every passer-by is an unaccountable stranger. Just a pair of eyes behind a shroud.

Personally, I still prefer this feral-ness to the lockdown years though. I'd rather live in the wild west than the Soviet Union if I'm forced to make a choice. In fact, I can't help but feel that there's some kind of weird re-wilding happening after the suppression of the lockdowns. Like nature is reasserting itself. Back to the jungle. It's not what I would ideally want, but I do get some joy from the fact that official inquiries can't entirely paste their worldview over reality.