What is the role of the politician ?
To my mind, the critical task of the politician must be to balance and manage the many conflicting forces and interests which make up the functioning of any society. I expect them to do so in line with their general view of the world, be that conservative or ideological.
The headline policy of the party I voted for in the December 2019 UK General election was “get Brexit done”. That policy accorded with my vote in the 2016 Referendum for the platform whose key idea was “take back control”. Yes, they are campaigning slogans, but they do encapsulate central policy.
Yet what do I see today in the first month of 2021 ? Answer, politicians totally fail to perform their essential function: managing power. They have abdicated responsibility to scientists of a particular persuasion whose approach is manifestly failing to meet the situation.
We now have a third so-called ‘lockdown’ in the UK in less than one year. Why did lockdown not work the first time around? Their policy doesn’t work because governments aren’t listening to doctors like Roger Hodkinson in North America or Malcolm Kendrick in Scotland [links below].
Economic and social interests are in severe conflict with the very real crisis in health care management. In previous years, politicians in Britain have simply ignored the crisis in the NHS every winter. But now they go to the opposite extreme, treating that crisis as the only Issue of any importance. This reaction is so extreme, they fail to take account of the fact that the obsessional focus on Covid 19 is creating a crisis in all other areas of health care management eg routine surgical interventions.
Worse, they multiply crises into every other domain – the economy, employment, mental health, and vital civil liberties. The cost of these government generated crises is incalculable and will certainly outweigh the cost of letting Covid 19 take its natural course.
Politicians in democracies think no further than the next sound bite and what will best serve their electoral image. They have shut out the consequences to the economy, to people’s psychological welfare and to civil liberties. They are creating the sort of conditions which obtained in the 1920s and 1930s – they are generating a crisis of a magnitude I dare not contemplate.
It is now routine for politicians and the mainline media to deal in the aspects of the truth they want us to know, and to suppress uncomfortable reality which conflicts with the view of the world they insist is the right one.
If they were indeed so right, they would not be afraid of the whole truth…
Democratic Opposition totally fails to consider strategic ramifications. Instead it criticises government tactics, not the pursuit of a demonstrably failing policy. Sir Keir Starmer, the Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition in the United Kingdom, talks of “a race between the virus and the vaccine” and has called for legislation to suppress views which question official policy on vaccination and the mainstream media view of Covid 19.
For decades now, we have suffered from the encroachment of what Edmund Burke termed the spirit of atheistical fanaticism. It is militantly anti Christian; anti our unique, English tradition of liberty. It advocates instead abstract conceptions of “Rights” in place of the fundamentally realistic injunctions to RESPONSIBILITY espoused by Christianity.
Man is his own god, and must work out his own salvation. Our only hope now is in a man made concoction called a vaccine. Arising as it does from Man’s superior scientific knowledge of our existence, it cannot be questioned.
Now, I do not dispute for one moment the value of science and medicine. Nor that vaccines can be very effective. I do dispute, however, the fervent reliance on such measures regardless of all reasonable questions and observations [see links below]. For example, in France, Covid 19 intensity corresponds to areas of high population density – industrialised areas with intense vehicle use ie where there is serious existing air pollution causing respiratory problems. Ditto northern Italy; ditto south east England; ditto New York, USA etc.
It all arises from Materialism. Excessive Consumption. Man’s worship of Mammon. The manifest abuse of God’s creation, entrusted to human stewardship.
Behind so much world pollution is the massive Chemical industry. The petro-chemical industry fuels the cars and industry which cause air pollution , while the drug companies respond to health issues arising therefrom, but leave the root problems in place.
If I can ask such questions, why don’t politicians do likewise ?
Ray Catlin
Link for Roger Hodkinson
Leading Canadian Health Expert Outraged at Government Response to COVID • Children’s Health Defense
Link for Malcolm Kendrick What is left to say? | Dr. Malcolm Kendrick
Conservatism Institute 