Following the Leader

“Now is not the time for soundbites … I feel the hand of history on my shoulder.”

That quote actually belongs to Tony Blair but it could work well for our present PM, Boris Johnson.

What a time he has had of it. He survived a near-miss with Covid-19 and then, in the same month, became the father of a baby boy who looks to have inherited those strong Johnson genes. Our PM has stamina and he is clearly going to need it.

Back to the quote. 

Boris Johnson and his band of merry men are facing their moment of history. How Boris is perceived and how he manages it will all depend on what happens now. 

Time for the PM to take a lead

Currently, I have my concerns. The Government started off with an extraordinary majority given to them by those who sought Brexit. An unimaginable 80 seats. The future held such promise.

And then along came Covid-19, a new and unknown virus from which thousands of people have died within a very short space of time.

First, the no-blame game. It was not our government’s fault about Covid-19. We have big cities with diverse groups of people, most of whom live in close proximity so, when it happened, it was bound to have a calamitous effect on the population. Even though some said the UK should have been shut down more quickly, there can be no certainty that was the right thing to do. Government ministers, particularly Boris, were very conflicted about what to do and took a while to lockdown - lockup? - Britain. 

To ministers' surprise, the people accepted the decision with ease. Fear can have that effect and all of us were very quickly made to feel very, very frightened.

The problem, as I see it, comes after that. I observed a terror of ministers running around like headless chickens. They seemed to be locked in their own forever “frozen” stage of fear where the alternative fight or flight reflex did not get a look in. “Stay at home! Protect the (it soon became ‘our’) NHS! Save lives!” The mantra was repeated so often it became a cliché and, instead of appreciating the message, I began to feel irritated. 

In my last blog, I wrote that we as a society needed to have a rational head during the present situation.

More than six weeks after lockdown first began, I fear the Government has abandoned all pretence of rationality and is a living breathing example of when blind panic goes bad. Where gut reaction leads, reason gets elbowed aside.

An example of that is being forced to stay indoors to protect the NHS because it couldn’t cope with a pandemic. (Why not? I have to ask, a lot of money is spent on it).  Putting cynicism aside, I am prepared to do as I am told. But I also wonder why, while I am locked up, millions of people have been allowed to travel into this country and less than 500 of them were checked for Covid-19 symptoms on entry. Where is the logic in that?

My problem is, I am adult by age and a rebel by inclination. I am also, as many human beings are, a mass of contradictions. As an adult, if you reason with me and explain, I will be inclined to obey.  Talk to me in the right way and you will have no trouble from me.

Surfing suddenly seems tempting

However, tell me I MUST do something - and maybe get a little shoutie (from the Minister of Health school of governing) - and my rebellious side is right back at you. Before you know it, I'm planning a trip to Cornwall to ride the Newquay surf - something I’ve never thought of doing before. I sense I am not alone.

Better therefore, to treat the population as adults and address them accordingly. You are likely to get adult behaviour back, responsive and responsible and what may be needed to help contain this terrible and contagious virus. 

So why then, do I feel I’m being told what to do by a group of unknowing arrogant prefects who want to get on and are using me as a punchbag to achieve their aims. It does not bring out the best in a person.

Talking of arrogance, if you want people to comply, you need to lead from the front. It is no good telling everyone to do one thing when you and your cohorts are doing another. If you tell me to keep my distance and then go around shaking hands with everyone, I am going to get a confused message. Similarly, if a scientific guru and the architect of lockdown tells me it is a matter of life and death that I stay at home, I am prepared to trust his judgment. But when I discover he has been breaking his own rules, I am inclined to wonder what else I have been told to do that is wrong. And while isolation may be good for my physical wellbeing - although we are not entirely sure of that either - my mental health does not enjoy being separated from my loved ones. 

I hope that one day we will look back at this as if it were a bad dream but we still have a way to go. For now, we need encouraging and thoughtful leadership to give us confidence as we travel along this bumpy road. 

We are told Boris Johnson has wanted this job for a very long time. Now is his moment. I want his decisions to make me feel safe and I want to believe there is more to him than an optimistic soundbite. I’m not yet feeling it.

By Lulu Sinclair

Coronavirus - official information

Coronavirus - current statistics

Photo 1 Hello I'm Nik 🎞 on Unsplash

Photo 2 Ben Shread/Cabinet Office 

Photo 3 Harry Brewer on Unsplash

Lockdown and the Power of Persuasion

Currently, we are facing another three weeks of lockdown, possibly even longer. So it feels ever more important to look at the way this situation is being presented in order to work out the best possible outcome.   

We hear evidence that social distancing is effective in controlling the spread of Covid-19 and that we may even be over the very worst of the death tolls.

And yet the unrelenting deprivation of lockdown for so many people may be extremely hard to sustain.

It feels to me like a tinder box which, if not handled very carefully, could conflate to bring about a very unwelcome outcome.

A recent headline in The Times read: "Public being treated like children in lockdown situation." Many of us feel that, from the outset and after a shaky start, the Government's approach has been to order and instruct. Adults used to running their own lives and making their own choices are not comfortable being put back into childhood roles.  

Decision makers have categorised people into groups that show no appreciation of the wide disparity of individual situations within such groups, as well as seemingly ignoring those who may not have a home to stay in or those whose homes are far from a safe refuge.

Generations of families are being kept apart

We have witnessed an exponential rise in domestic abuse since the lockdown, and for those already suffering from depressive conditions and addictions, being isolated in your own space can quickly lead to acute loneliness, self-harm and despair.  

Old people in care homes, deprived of family visits, can so easily lose the will to live. On the other hand, there are many people aged 70+ who are as fit - or even fitter - than their younger colleagues (look at Captain Tom, for example, the Army veteran who has lapped his garden over 100 times at the age of 99). Purely because of their age, these people have been pensioned off and made to feel like pariahs if they venture out at all.   

We even have the ridiculous situation of the NHS now having to beg people to come into hospital for their critical care treatments, such has been the fear brought about by the Stay At Home: Protect our NHS messages. 

We have heard many examples of the heavy-handedness of the police in challenging people's reasons for being outside, but this approach has also led to the very destructive process of neighbours policing each other and social media groups being set up to monitor  the activities of others.  

This is extremely divisive at a time when, above all, we need to be pulling together in our communities and as citizens, not just of the UK, but of the world.  

I believe this could have been avoided if there had been more focus on the "how" and not just the "what" of the incessant messages with which we are being bombarded. Those messages have been delivered in a way that is so sombre and threatening that it is difficult not to feel like a naughty child who doesn't really understand the situation - and certainly can't be trusted!

Ministers need to explain, not threaten

Research into working with resistance has demonstrated that, to be effective, it is necessary to be able to persuade the person that change is in their best interest and is motivational in over-riding the current behaviour.  

No one ever made a sufferer from anorexia start eating healthily again by threats – not even the very real one of death - and recovery in these situations is reached  by offering alternative lifelines which break through the fear that has created the resistance in the first place.  

We are living in a climate of fear and uncertainty and are receiving threats and orders on a daily basis with very little empathy and understanding about the hardships we all are experiencing. And, meanwhile, there are no positive suggestions about how to better manage the situation the government has imposed on us. 

This is a very demanding time for us all, but it doesn't have to be a wasted one.

There ARE ways to mitigate against even the most acute distress and the first and most important one of these has to acknowledge its existence.

I worry that ministers are those who are guiding them are not sufficiently aware of the psychological impact of this lockdown. And, because of that, I the tinder box could soon ignite.

If that happens, the consequential damage could be very long term.   

By Sue Sutcliffe

Coronavirus official information  

Current statistics 

Photo by iMattSmart on Unsplash
Photo 2 by Rod Long on Unsplash
Photo 3 by helloimnik on Unsplash         

   

The Best of Us ... The Worst of Us

“It was the age of wisdom; it was the age of foolishness.” The opening lines from A Tale of Two Cities, written by Charles Dickens in 1859, sound a strikingly familiar chord today.  

We have made extraordinary advances in science and technology but, at the same time, we have ruthlessly used and abused our environment, and we now find ourselves exposed to a global threat over which we have, as yet, no control.  

This has led an unprecedented level of fear at a universal level, and the way we respond to that fear will be critical in how well we survive the corona virus pandemic.

Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution and the survival of the fittest have been interpreted by some as every man for himself.  But in fact, if we look at animals in the wild, and what we now know about the way trees communicate with each other, it is evident that survival is about looking after your community (the herd or the woodland) and that individuals are significantly more at risk if they act independently of each other and do not collaborate with their tribes.  

Those who have emptied the shelves of supermarkets to stockpile for themselves are at risk of setting up a self-fulfilling prophecy, as they not only create the very shortage that they are anxious to avoid, but are also still vulnerable to contracting the virus and may have unwittingly deprived themselves of the very people they will need to look after them.  

There is a fundamental difference between a survival gene and a selfish gene, and unless we can all recognise and respect that we need to collaborate in order to survive, I believe we will exponentially increase our chances of causing our own destruction.  

While we have now been given strict orders from the Government as to how we should behave, specifically focused on what we should not do, I feel there has been little support or advice with regard to the mental health aspect of this epidemic. 

For those people with pre-existing psychological disorders  such as depression, addiction, anxiety etc, being isolated can feel very risky and, in some cases, is actively dangerous. 

The instruction to limit activity and freedom that the Government had to issue was not one that anyone wanted to hear, and it was predictable that there would be a wide range of reactions, ranging from denial to outright panic.  

Covid 19 is creating universal trauma

It threatened us all with being forced to radically change our normality on a daily basis while, at the same time, giving us no certainty of an outcome over which we had no control.  

These are conditions that are very difficult to manage and they needed to be presented in a way that understood that fear would be likely to provoke resistance. Uncertainty and lack of control creates an immediate need for structure and support. 

I believe it would have been helpful for a Government minister to have offered strategies to be put in place to help people manage on a daily basis. For example, it would be useful to explain how to maintain structure in our daily lives; (regular meal times, etc.); how to use the time that we are at home in a constructive way - learning a new skill, exploring new ways of contacting people and perhaps revisiting old friendships. 

Failure to give advice in these areas has left many people without direction or purpose and has provoked anger and rebellion among some and, in others, impotent despair. 

Fortunately, we have also seen very positive examples of people showing compassion and collaboration in supporting and reaching out to each together when, for the first time ever, we experience trauma on a universal basis.

This is a time, I believe, to take stock of our own choices and priorities and to question some of our decisions so that, going forward, we can perhaps, lead our lives in a way that is less driven by short term gain. 

We could also understand and show more awareness of the consequences of our behaviour so that, in the longer term, we can better care for the environment we live in. By doing that, we can learn to take better care of ourselves. 

By Sue Sutcliffe

Coronavirus official information  

Current statistics