Every week I go to my local Tesco and I’ve come to know some of the staff quite well. They have had a very good crisis. For a couple of weeks there was panic buying, but the staff remained capable, friendly and calm. Soon after that stock was back to normal. A one-way system was introduced, some perspex screens were introduced to protect the cashiers. I learned to go shopping when the store was less busy, but otherwise Tesco has been completely normal. It has been a model of how to keep the economy going during the crisis.
Lockdown is easing a bit quicker in England than in Scotland, more shops are opening more people are going back to work. At some point in the summer we may find that pubs and restaurants begin to open. It might one day be possible for men to meet women and not be continually two metres apart. But when the last lockdown measure is eased, there will still be one further task. That task will be to open schools and universities.
I work in a university. Every year I have to perform a health and safety audit in my office. Could a book fall on my head from a shelf that is too high. Is there a box that I have not been trained to lift properly? If there is, I must go on a manual handling course. I work in about as safe an environment as could be imagined, yet it is treated as if it is infested with crocodiles.
Every now and again when I look out of my window, I see the local primary school going on a class outing. Each of the children has to wear a fluorescent yellow bib. It would be far too dangerous for them to go for a walk if they weren’t wearing one.
It may have been for the best of intentions, but Britain became obsessed with keeping risk to the minimum. I think this happened precisely at the time when almost all of the illnesses that might have killed us in childhood had been cured.
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See Also:
(2) Nicola Sturgeon on brink: How secret SNP papers exposed crippling impact of independence
(3) Brexit BOOST: UK launches trade talks with new country as EU talks stall
(4) Boris Johnson scraps foreign aid department – major revamp announced in Commons
(5) Britain’s BONKERS overseas aid grants – including give China £150m two years ago
