Webcam whimsy

With each passing day we’re becoming accustomed to seeing all sorts of politicians, personalities and pundits speaking to us directly from their homes.

Surely I can’t be alone in finding this trend absolutely fascinating. For while the online contributors imagine us to be hanging on to their every word, in reality we are busy conducting a detailed inventory of their furniture, light fittings and choice of curtain fabric.

There are very few of these domestic backgrounds that have nothing to offer. It is simply a matter of taking the time to look carefully. A few examples will suffice to illustrate what I mean.

Firstly, here is a still from a recent interview with Chris Hopson, CEO of NHS Providers.

I can’t quite put my finger on it but I get the distinct impression that he’s doing the interview from his mum’s house. One doesn’t require Sherlock Holmes’ powers of deduction to arrive at this conclusion - the evidence it right in front of you.

To start with: where is he sitting? Behind him we can see two easy chairs arranged so as to suit watching TV, but judging from the camera angles Chris is clearly sitting at a table or desk. Furthermore, the short sections of wall to left and right are strongly indicative of the kind of home conversion that consists of ‘knocking through’ the wall between lounge and dining room to form a larger space. This isn’t the sort of living space you would normally associate with the chief executive of a major public body. If he were in his own home, he would surely be doing the interview from his private office. No, Chris is in his mum’s house, having requisitioned her dining room table as a place to put his laptop.

And then there’s the other evidence: that lamp, for example — the sort advertised in those leaflets that fall out of your Sunday paper and aimed at ‘the serious reader’. That is an old person’s lamp and those easy chairs look like old people’s chairs. Of course I might have it all wrong; Chris might just be an old-fashioned kind of guy.

By way of a complete contrast let’s say hello to the physicist Carlo Rovelli in his home in Canada.

Here, Carlo has clearly opted for the bookshelf theme and, it has to be said, has done it with a degree of enthusiasm. His books, furthermore, are not organised by size, style of binding etc. - as is so often the case with those of more modest intellectual abilities - but in accordance with an entirely different organisational principle - albeit one that is not immediately apparent to the rest of us.

Of course, without being able to examine the titles we can’t be absolutely sure that his library does not include such classics as Cosmology for Dummies or Fun Pictures on your PC in 3 days. Unfortunately, the webcam used is of lamentably low quality so, for now, we must grant Mr Rovelli the benefit of the doubt.

David Liddington’s method of organising his library couldn’t be more different.

He appears to be in the habit of storing his books in piles, which is oddly disturbing. I don’t quite know why — but I find it impossible to shake off the impression that his office is in a converted garage. There’s a hint of trouble here. Has he been banished from the main part of the house and forced to take his clutter with him -- and in a hurry at that? While we’re unlikely to know, it doesn’t stop the imagination from getting to work.

And it is not always a matter of what is there; it can be equally intriguing to speculate on what is absent. Here is Shami Chakrabati pictured against a neutral, whitish background - blank except for the small, brass picture hook behind her, demonstrating that it is possible for there to be something even emptier than a featureless wall.

But the prize must go to a recent Newsnight interview with Ian Duncan Smith, which has since achieved cult status on account of the fact that, in it, IDS appears to be literally incandescent.

This video has since given rise to a whole wave of comments on twitter to the the effect that he had forgotten to activate his cloaking device and so on. Quite apart from the startling appearance of the principal character, the image has many more small jewels on offer including, to the right of IDS’s head, a disturbing picture reflected in the mantlepiece mirror. This would appear to be a picture of someone laughing - or are they screaming?

Of course, all good things must come to an end and it can only be a matter if time before people in the public eye get themselves set up with anodyne home studios. So we have only a brief time window in which to enjoy this rich field of study.

When it comes to choosing a setting for my own videoconferencing, I am considering an entirely synthetic approach in which I contrive to be pictured in front of a raging sea or some other dramatic backdrop, chosen to suit the occasion

The Calm before the Storm

There can’t be many people who aren’t worried right now. I for one, find myself flicking between a slightly dreamy sense of unreality and a state of mild anxiety.

Of course, watching the news or listening to the radio can be something of a mixed blessing. There is no shortage of people eager to explain how we are heading for a health service meltdown with social unrest, troops on the streets etc. And then there are the people who say that it’s all a lot of fuss about nothing, that it’s just flu and that, like Stanley Johnson, they’ll be damned if someone tries to stop them going to the pub.

So it was with a degree of trepidation that I decided to listen to yesterday’s The World This Weekend at 13:00 on BBC Radio4 (22/03/2020). 5 minutes into the program there was a lengthy piece on Queen’s Hospital in NE London as it prepares itself for the predicted wave of COVID-19 patients. The presenter, Jonny Dymond, spoke to a number of health service professionals — admittedly all in more senior positions — the chief medical officer, the clinical director of the emergency department and a respiratory consultant.

The whole piece had a strangely surreal air. With routine appointments cancelled and all but the most unwell patients having been discharged from the wards, there was something about the acoustic quality of the interviews that conveyed a vivid picture of this huge, virtually empty hospital as it readied itself for the storm to come. 

Each of the contributors offered a clear and straightforward account of the challenges they were about to face. There was nothing grim in their manner. They simply described how they planned to go about their various tasks, about the unique aspects of treating COVID-19 patients and some of the difficulties and shortages they faced in caring for them and protecting themselves. It was both terrifying and reassuring; something both planned for and unparalleled in living memory.

I found the whole piece immensely moving and it left me with an enormous admiration for ALL the people working in the NHS.

Vernal Equinox

Down the hill from where we live is the little Hamlet of Washpool - so named on account of an old stone-lined basin worked into the course of the stream which, in former times, served as a sheep dip.

We walked down there last night, on the way to the woods, to find a group of our neighbours, well-spaced apart and working together, clearing the ground of brambles and other thinnings and heaping them onto a large billowing fire.

Today is the Spring (or Vernal) Equinox, Ostara in the Wiccan calendar — traditionally a time to celebrate the end of winter and the promise of warmer days. On the face of it, nothing would seem more at odds with the frightening plague that promises to change all of our lives.

We have it easy here — so far. The virus seems far away, like the sound of distant thunder. It will touch us eventually. Right now we watch the thick smoke spiralling from the fire and exchange smiles of encouragement.

The Pied Piper

If there is anything good about the present crisis it is the fact that, mercifully, coronavirus does not appear to cause anything but the mildest symptoms in children.

The emergence of the virus, whilst it might have entailed a number of careless and inadvisable practices, was clearly unforeseen. Nevertheless, our lack of preparedness in the UK has been inexcusable. Austerity, after all, was not the unavoidable necessity we were told it was, but a calculated, politically-motivated policy that has been responsible for the present fragile state of our health and social care systems.

The dogma that, until very recently, has shaped government thinking — namely that unrestrained capitalism is capable of fulfilling every legitimate human need — all that is gone now, at least in a form that can be given a veneer of respectability.

At the same time, years of growing inequality and social polarisation have given rise to shocking levels of child-poverty, homelessness and ill-health - both physical and mental. Young people have borne the brunt of this and little children were to be next in line.

The recent closure of schools will no doubt affect children in different ways, according to their age and family circumstances. Nevertheless, in the long term and taken on balance, it is difficult to imagine it being anything other than a negative experience. For many children, and in particular those for whom school represents a refuge from a stressed or chaotic home, the present disruption risks leaving them further alienated from the rest of their peer group.

One also has to feel for teenagers, whose examinations have been suddenly cancelled and who find themselves unexpectedly confined to the very nests they were about to fly.

Thinking about all of this brought to mind the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. In case you need reminding, it goes something like this:

In 1284, the town of Hamelin was suffering from an infestation of rats. A piper appeared, dressed in multi-coloured clothing, and offered to get rid of them in exchange for a reward. The mayor of the town agreed and the piper used his pipe to lure the rats in the River Weser, where they all drowned. The townsfolk however, reneged on their promise and accused the piper of deceiving them. He stormed out of the town, vowing to return later to take his revenge. On St John and St Paul’s day, while the adults were in church, the piper returned and, playing his pipe, led the children of Hamelin out of the town and down into a cave under the mountain. With the exception of a little boy who was lame and couldn’t keep up, not one of the children was ever seen again. 

I don’t propose trying to draw too many parallels between the Pied Piper and the present pandemic, for while it is tempting to see the rats as a reference to the Black Death, this did not appear in Europe until the 14th century and, in any case, it seems the rats in the story are the result of a 16th century embellishment.

Nevertheless, old stories like this, having been retold, reshaped and added to over many years have a power of their own that is capable of resonating with contemporary experience.

For some reason (that is not particularly clear to me) the story highlights the fact that, over the coming months, our children and grandchildren will, of necessity, see their horizons narrowed and that, when we emerge from this crisis the last thing we should think of doing is to get things back to normal. 

The children who are now confined to their homes will eventually re-emerge into a world in which the air is cleaner and CO2 emissions are lower than they have been for years. They might go on to show how it is possible to live in harmony with one another and with nature without the need for grotesque excesses. The experience of taming the virus might even teach us how to confront the threat of climate change, with the difference that in applying ourselves to that task we can, once again, enjoy the power and satisfaction of working together.

Goodness - though I mean every word, I might have got a bit carried away here. There have been other occasions, after all, when it seemed as if everything was blowing up, only for us to watch in disbelief as the fragments, unexpectedly and disappointingly, assumed their former positions. 

But — as we are beginning to appreciate — this is a big one.

Learning from the Beveridge Report

In the Guardian (19th March 2020) Martin Kettle wrote:

"The second world war remains the foundation myth of modern Britain. Invoking it is a familiar default setting in British party politics. It has a Conservative version, embodied in Churchill, with whom Johnson compares himself. And it has its Labour version, in the form of veneration of Attlee and the post-1945 welfare state."

One of the things that has never ceased to amaze me about the Second World War is that, at the moment of greatest existential threat, when the bombs were still falling, detailed plans were being drawn up for the kind of country that might be built once peace was restored.

The Beveridge Report was the result of a study undertaken in June 1941 by an inter-departmental committee of the wartime coalition government who were tasked with looking at widespread reforms to the system of social welfare. The resulting 300-page document entitled “Social Insurance and Allied Services” laid the foundations for what was to become the Welfare State - a blanket term covering the National Health Service, Pensions and National Insurance, Family Allowances and Rent Control.

There is something almost unbelievable about the idea that such an ambitious, visionary and seemingly idealistic set of recommendations could be drawn up during the darkest days of the war. But then these ideas didn’t just emerge from nowhere. They were rooted in wartime emergency measures designed to address fundamental issues of survival. Thus there were initiatives to provide milk and nutrition to nursing mothers and school children; an emergency hospital service provided free treatment to those suffering from war injuries, whilst rationing — maybe surprisingly — led to significant improvements in the diets of poor families.

I have been thinking about this and trying to write down my thoughts. As fast as I do so however, I find myself overwhelmed by further questions. Nevertheless, there is one insight that appears to have taken root, namely that it is in times of crisis that the seeds of change are sown. Just as in the Second World War the threat of military annihilation and subsequent occupation forced the British government into an unspoken pact with the people to do ‘whatever it takes’ to survive, so the present government is asking people to subject themselves to a number of distressing restrictions in order — as Johnson puts it — to ‘see off’ the coronavirus.

But there is always a contractual aspect to such impositions. If people are to confine themselves within their own homes and to home-educate their children then it is reasonable for them to expect some protection from profiteers and ruthless landlords. Similarly, at a time when thousands of people are being made redundant it is essential they have the means to obtain the basic necessities. The idea of a universal basic income — a monthly distribution of money made without preconditions — is a sensible and efficient way to ensure this, as well as a means to prevent economic meltdown. We are still in the early days of this crisis but it seems reasonable to expect the government will be forced, however reluctantly, to do something of the sort.

To return to the Beveridge Report: it is worth noting that its publication during the war was met with enthusiasm from all sections of the community. The Ministry of Information Home Intelligence found that the Report had been "welcomed with almost universal approval by people of all shades of opinion” and seen as "the first real attempt to put into practice the talk about a new world"

Nevertheless, once the war was over Churchill found all sorts of good reasons why the proposals for social reform should be watered down or delayed. In this, it seems, he misjudged the mood of the populace who, after years of deprivation and austerity were eager for change. The Labour Party won the 1945 General Election and set about implementing the report’s recommendations through a series of Acts of Parliament. The rest, as they say, is history.

And here we are now - not strictly at war but in a time which, by common consensus, has many of its characteristics. The concept of the ‘small state’ is suddenly out of the window; there will undoubtedly be government initiatives designed to ensure the supply of basic necessities as well as the introduction of ‘special powers’ justified on the grounds of maintaining order. Along with these state interventions, we will also hopefully see the growth of community-based networks whose aim will be to foster social cohesion, support the vulnerable and to build and sustain resilience.

When we emerge from this crisis however, one thing is sure: we must on no account allow things to go back to normal. 

A Journal of the Plague Year

In her column for last Saturday’s Guardian, Marina Hyde chose to talk about Daniel Defoe’s account of the 1665-1666 London Plague — A Journal of the Plague Year (which, somewhat confusingly, was written in 1722). This gave me an idea. Since I am highly likely to be holed up at home for some time as a consequence of the coronavirus pandemic, I thought it might be interesting to write my own journal and to publish it via my blog.

Of course one of the many unusual things about the current pandemic, is that there are few people whom it will not touch — either directly or indirectly — and consequently the prospect of not only dealing with your own stuff but reading about mine as well might strike you as a bit too much of a good thing. With this in mind, I have decided against sending out an email with every new blog post, as I have done till now. Instead I propose limiting email notifications to the occasional reminder that I’m still around. Of course, you are free to have a look at the blog any time at the usual web address.

But I can’t recall a time when there was a greater sense of impending change and over the coming days and weeks I intend largely to reflect on how this story plays out and, frankly, on anything else that comes to mind. For the most part it is likely to be a reflective, interior narrative as that is the sort of person I am, but hopefully there will be a few laughs to be had as well.

Please email me if you’d like to — most of my email appears to be spam these days so I would welcome the interchange.

Wishing everyone the best over the coming days.