Porter’s Pensées

I feel better prepared for the present situation than most. That’s due to my long guilty obsession with Science Fiction, and in particular 1950s SF and disaster movies. Our current situation continually reminds me of the opening scenes of many of these: deaths, deserted streets, an unseen enemy, and arrogant and obstinate politicians; until at last the scientist-hero – often a mere teenager – comes to be taken seriously, and the world is saved.

I’m not saying that all this is truly prescient: for a start I can’t see the scientist-hero emerging anywhere on the horizon just now. And the wilder theories behind a lot of these old films – superior races deciding that humanity doesn’t deserve to survive, aliens taking over human bodies, viruses arriving in asteroids, H-bomb tests releasing the earth’s inner core, the evil billionaire behind it all; or modern conspiracy theories like David Icke’s idea that it’s all an American or Jewish or alien reptilian shape-shifter’s plot against us; or religious ones, that the coronavirus is  God’s punishment for abortion or homosexuality or being nasty to Trump, or whatever – are clearly not to be taken seriously. (But you never know. Every sceptical person ought to leave a one per cent opening for some of these possibilities in his or her mind.) But it’s the first half-hours of most of these films that strike me as a good mental preparation for what we’re seeing now. Sci-Fi has always taught me that even the basic and most taken-for-granted things in life don’t always have to be the way they are – or were. (That’s helped me as a historian, too.) So it’s no surprise to me that the whole natural world – including the ‘natural’ laws behind capitalism – seems to be collapsing about our ears now. Where is that adolescent scientist when we need her?

It’s that guilty passion of mine that is making me look forward to the ‘classic’ SF season that the ‘Horror’ TV Channel has announced for the Easter weekend. I just hope that the genuine classics of the 1950s and ’60s get in there, and not just Star Wars and Star Trek. The former at least were cerebral. They made you think. And prepared you mentally for the spookily deserted city streets of today.

Maybe it wasn’t such a bad election to have lost after all. Just think what the Tory press would have made of all this state dirigisme if it had been ordered by that commie Jeremy Corbyn, instead of by the cuddly Boris – now making the ultimate sacrifice for his people by dying (or probably not) in hospital. Dulce et  decorum est… That may be his lasting claim to fame, if he snuffs it now. Otherwise he’ll go down in history as the upper-class liar and cheat who couldn’t be relied upon for anything, and simply wasn’t fitted to see the country through this unprecedented crisis, which requires judgment and intelligence, rather than the blind optimism, public school jokeyness and mere cleverness which have always been the trademarks of our new ‘world king’.

Of course none of us non-experts can say whether the government’s strategy for combatting the coronavirus was or is the right one. We’ll have to await the dreadful denouement, and the count of each country’s bodies, before we can begin to tell. The provisional judgment, however, seems to be that the British government was at least late to do the things that the WHO recommended from the beginning: ‘test, test, test’; and may even have been wrong-footed by Demonic Cummings’s Malthusian advice to let the disease rage through us – ‘take it on the chin’, in Boris’s own words – so weeding out the old, weak and useless in the population while letting the young and fit recover and gain immunity in order to keep the economy going. Boris is also coming under criticism for boasting of ‘shaking hands’ with what he believed to be coronavirus patients in a hospital, directly against his own government’s advice. That’s how he may have caught it. (His dad didn’t help by insisting that he would be going to the pub whatever the medics said.) Whatever the public’s instinct may be to get behind any government in a time of national crisis, this lot will be unlikely to come out of all this well.

But of course no-one in the government foresaw this (though they might have been expected to do so, in general terms), or was chosen or elected for his or her competence in a crisis situation. They were elected, and then appointed to the cabinet, on the basis of their loyalty to Boris and to the cause of Brexit, which of course has been the only political issue over the past three years, and one which – it has to be said – now appears depressingly trivial in the light of recent experience. ‘Deckchairs on the Titanic’ come to mind.

It’s because all ministers are aware of these criticisms, and might even accept them underneath, that the Government’s daily televised press conferences are so toe-curlingly defensive these days. ‘We’re working like blazes – are following the scientific advice – have tested a few – are ordering PPEs even if they haven’t arrived yet – are doing as well as any other country – can’t be blamed for running down the NHS because nations with better NHSs are getting infected too – just trust us…’; all of which comes over as a pitiful attempt to protect their political reputations, whatever the truth may be. It’s a bit like Trump’s line in America, albeit not quite so brazen as his. Let’s hope Trump gets it too. He after all claimed the coronavirus was fake news at first – a Democratic trick to get him impeached. (‘Me, me, me’, all the time.) So if he got it, it wouldn’t be undeserved. Not too seriously, though; it would be better if he felt really nasty but then recovered, to go down to an ignominious defeat in the November polls. The same goes for our Boris. Get well, you bastard.

I’ve been working hard on a review for the Jacobin (a left-wing US internet journal, as I understand) of a book about the Arab-Israeli conflict. I may post it here later. Hence the lack of comment – from me – on the latest extraordinary events in Britain and all over the world. That will resume soon, and will probably feature our Prime Minister, currently languishing in St Thomas’s Hospital with the virus he’s proved so incompetent at dealing with up to now. De mortuis nihil nisi bonum, they say (or used to); so I’ll try to get my comments in before that point. I really hope it doesn’t reach that. I’d prefer to see him live and be humiliated.

Before then I must clean my house. I usually, of course, have a woman in to do it – I’m a  professor, after all (joke) – but she has to isolate herself too. Otherwise I’m doing OK, with kind children and neighbours to keep a distant eye on the old bugger, plenty of booze, and a freezer stuffed with pre-prepared junk meals. I worry a bit for myself, with an ‘underlying condition’ (but doesn’t everyone have that, even if it’s a healthy condition? Sorry, but academics are prone to be pedantic); but I’m far more concerned about others, especially NHS workers and my brave paper boy, and the country generally. But it’s good to know that I’m serving the nation by lounging lazily on my couch.

For reading I’ve just bought a book on Viking women: Johanna Katrin Fridriksdottir’s Valkyrie, which looks terrific, and terrifically feminist; and may help me understand Kajsa and my other female Scandi friends better.

The virus has suddenly reminded us of how dependent we all are on external structures. EM Forster anticipated this as early as 1909. See his short – and uncharacteristic – novel The Machine Stops, which has been resonating with me since this crisis began. As has much of the other dystopian science fiction of that deeply troubled pre-war period. (HG Wells was not the only one.)

I’m as scared as anyone just now; not for me personally – I reckon I’ve had my time, and been pretty lucky up to now, and can hardly wait to meet the Great Historian in the Sky (‘was I right about imperial absent-mindedness?’) – but on behalf of those close to me whom I love, and for humanity, which I also love in a more general way. And in the meantime, as well as being shocked by the actions of some of our great capitalists – Richard Branson, Tim Martin of Wetherspoons, that bloke who runs Sports Direct – I’m warmed by the generosity and ingenuity of many of our public enterprises, trying to make social isolation more bearable for us.

An example is the National Theatre in London, whose offer to relay its performances to our televisions and computers free via YouTube will ease the pain for the theatre-going portion of our population: a small minority, perhaps, but not to be sniffed at. From this week on, the NT will broadcast one of its productions every Thursday at 7 p.m. GMT – though I believe they can also be watched at other times over the week. Kajsa and I, inveterate theatre-goers when we’re together, will be watching them simultaneously from Hull and Stockholm, holding hands spiritually, and nipping out to our kitchens during the intervals for identical drinks. If anyone wants to join us, here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/user/ntdiscovertheatre. (Thanks, Ken, for the hint.)

That’s what I call public service during a crisis. You don’t get Wetherspoons offering to deliver free beer to us at a time like this, do you?

One of the reasons for the public’s reluctance to follow the government’s advice over Coronavirus – self-isolating, social distance, no panic buying, etc. – may be the lack of trust they have in government just now. And that must surely have something to do with Boris Johnson’s – and, over the pond, Donald Trump’s – inveterate habit of lying, now so well-known and well-documented as to be no longer a partisan argument against them, and indeed to have become so accepted and tolerated by their supporters as no longer to be seen as a criticism. Which has obviously worked for them, in the political environment we (Brits) were in at the time of Brexit, when it played into the Brexiters’ hands and gave them their victory; but may not work so well in a genuine national (and indeed global) emergency, when the need for trust is vital in order to get all citizens to play their essential parts. A global pandemic requires transparent honesty in the world’s leaders to be able to counter it, which Johnson and Trump conspicuously lack.

Just look at them, at their televised press conferences! Ducking, weaving, hesitating, dissembling, bluffing; concerned only to say what they think will go down well at the moment, even if it has to be shamelessly denied and disowned the next day. In a circus that might count as leadership; but not at a time like this. We’re told that Winston Churchill is Boris’s hero and role model; but all he has taken from Churchill are certain superficial features of his style. It’s pathetic. (Literally: from the word ‘pathos’.) No wonder that idiot shoppers and pub-goers don’t necessarily go for it.

I’ve written about Johnson in previous posts. (Search ‘Boris’.) Most of that has been about his ‘character’, whose significance I’ve always nonetheless wondered about: shouldn’t I really be concentrating on his policies, rather than on what he’s like as a ‘chap’? It’s likely, however, that character does matter when people expect you to guide or lead them in times of real crisis. Games-playing with the truth won’t get you far when people’s health and lives are at risk.

I reckon I’m lucky. I can work at home, with no children to care for: I’d like to, but oldies are banned from our traditional role of looking after grandchildren; with kind neighbours and Tescos bringing me essential supplies; lots of books to read and ‘saved’ telly to watch; and the possibility of ‘virtual’ socialising via the internet. I dearly miss Kajsa, stuck over in Stockholm: if we’re going to die it would be nice to do it together; but I’ve never been a naturally gregarious person, and don’t much mind loneliness. I must say I’m scared by the news coming out of Italy, but at the age of 79 I reckon I’m nearing the end of my time anyway. And there are things to enjoy: like politics, thrown into disarray by the sudden conversion of the neo-liberal party to Crisis Corbynism, and the entertaining – in a ‘gallows’ kind of way – inanities of Trump and Johnson. Beyond that, no-one can predict.

That all sounds very selfish, and is; but it doesn’t stop my deep empathy for those who are less lucky than I am, and my admiration for those on the front line of the ‘battle’ against the Coronavirus: doctors, nurses, ancillary medical staff, my Tesco delivery drivers, parents of school-age children, and Gove’s much-maligned ‘experts’ in this field.

I’ve stopped listening to the BBC World Service at night – my usual way of trying to get to sleep, but too disturbing now – and started playing music instead. Last night it was a video of Gluck’s Orpheus and Euridice, in the 1859 version made by Berlioz. In fact I think I may play that every night from now on; the most beautiful music, expressing perfectly the sweet sorrow of the death we all need to prepare ourselves for at this moment.

Who wouldn’t be glad to see Gordon Brown as PM again now? But of course his jokes weren’t as good.

About fifty years ago I had the brilliant idea that if everyone were paid a subsistence wage by the government – that is, out of taxes – without having to work for it, it would solve many of our social problems. Those who didn’t want to work wouldn’t have to, without being stigmatised by having to claim ‘welfare’. I’ve never felt judgmental towards those who haven’t wanted to work for money, especially if it left them free-er to do other things that might be equally beneficial to society: composing symphonies, for example. (Elgar would have been able to write at least another two if he hadn’t had to teach violin.) Another advantage would be that the work that had to be done would be left to those who really wanted to do it, or were attracted by the additional money they could make through working. This might require rotten jobs (refuse collection, proof-reading, being a minor royal) to be rewarded more generously than they are now, if people couldn’t be forced into them through the threat of utter poverty; but wouldn’t that be a good thing in itself? It might also require that inherited money or property revert to the State , so as to really ‘level the playing field’; but that should also swell the coffers out of which this ‘universal basic income’ would be paid. Additional sums could be given to people in case of genuine need, especially medical and child allowances; but this would be on top of a ‘wage’ that otherwise would enable them to live at a basic level. There would be no more of this ‘deserving/undeserving poor’ stuff. Everyone would deserve to live.

It’s only recently that I’ve learned that this is called ‘universal basic income’, and that I wasn’t the first to think of it. In fact the idea goes back to Thomas More’s Utopia (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income), and has been tried out in a number of places, including most recently – I believe – Finland. (Ah, those Finns!)

And here it comes up again: in a proposal arising out of the present Coronavirus crisis, and its probable effect on employment and wages (see  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/19/calls-for-uk-basic-income-payment-to-cushion-coronavirus-impact.) Another ‘plus’, perhaps, to add to those I suggested a few days ago: https://bernardjporter.com/2020/03/15/looking-on-the-bright-side-3/. – Although I can’t see the Tories looking kindly on the prospect of the proles getting something for nothing, can you? (Next day: and here we are, right on cue: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/coronavirus-uk-update-universal-basic-income-iain-duncan-smith-a9411251.html).

I also, incidentally, invented highlighter pens, decades before they first came on to the market, as I can prove from my early research notes. If I’d thought of patenting that idea then, I wouldn’t have had to work for money myself. But then Thomas More was probably ahead of me there, too.

I wonder whether the sudden and, as I understand, unexpected resurrection of Joe Biden in the Democratic primaries, eclipsing Bernie Saunders, has anything to do with Coronavirus? Quite frankly, if a general election were to be declared in Britain just now, I’d prefer a safe pair of hands to guide us through this present crisis, rather than a revolutionary, or – for that matter – a clown. (Jeremy and Bernie, of course, are the revolutionaries; Boris and Donald the clowns.) A pandemic on the present scale is no time to be radically upending the traditional verities. We can see to that when it’s all over. Until then, the only imperative is to steady the ship! Which is why, even as an enthusiastic admirer of both Saunders and Corbyn, if I were back in the USA I’d probably go for Biden; and for Starmer in the UK. Perhaps my American friends can tell me if there’s anything in this.