Worth a Read and a Thought26 May 2020 12:16
This article was published in the Telegraph over the weekend.......................rather special too.
In a dark time, the eye begins to see. The words of the American poet Theodore Roethke felt especially resonant during the long weeks of the Great Pause. The well ordered, predictable life we had come to take utterly for granted was rudely overturned like a bar after a brawl. No one was untouched. Businesses have been lost, loved ones separated. Two members of my family had a nasty, persistent illness which we assumed was coronavirus. My son, stranded in London as the lockdown began, was unable to join us in the house of plague. Even worse was not being able to see elderly relatives who were frightened and alone. That’s the cruellest thing about Covid. They said, ‘We’re all in this together,’ but, too often, we have all been in this apart.
And yet, as the empty streets start to stir with life again, as shops lift their shutters and we emerge blinking from our musty lockdown lairs, there is a keen sense that the darkness glimmered with silver linings. In the rush to return to normal, we are able to consider which parts of normal are worth rushing back to. The world may never be quite the same again and, if we make wise choices, that could be a good thing. An economic system that bought in so greedily to globalisation and cheap labour in far-flung places must now reflect on the wisdom of relying on India for paracetamol and on China for personal protective equipment (PPE).
lockdown coronavirus
Sticking to the two metre rule CREDIT: Zoë Savitz
How many of us had any idea that we were so heavily dependent on drugs from India, or that Indian pharmaceutical companies source 70 per cent of their ingredients from Chinese factories? I certainly didn’t. Clearly, it was utter madness not to be making our own because, if the worst ever happened, we’d be desperately scrabbling around to get our hands on vital supplies.
Well, the worst did happen. And the UK was at the mercy of long-distance supply chains whose links blew apart when Wuhan, a city we’d never even heard of, unleashed a pandemic on the world. As a direct consequence, because we were in a competition to obtain PPE from Asia, there were valiant British medics in ICUs anddedicated drivers on buses and staff in care homes who got terribly sick, and even died. It was a brutal wake-up call. Turns out there was a high price to be paid for becoming dependent on cheap foreign stuff. Who knew?
The conventional wisdom that the United Kingdom, her once proud manufacturing base sadly eroded, could survive on services alone was left looking unforgivably foolish.
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