The Hard Conversation

We must lift the lockdown with immediate effect which means we should aim for June the 1 st . Meanwhile we should allow people to move around freely from a social perspective. Over the next 2 weeks businesses and other organisations should prepare themselves to open. This requires leadership and courage. Our leaders must balance the risks and the  implications of all options. Any sensible scrutiny will establish two things. Firstly that we can’t afford to keep the economy locked down and that it must be opened up fully, not partially. Secondly that the people will not agree with you initially because of the level of hysteria that has been generated in the past two months. We must all dig deep and have courage but the leaders must lead. They don’t have the luxury as has become common practice to check if the people will agree with them before doing anything. The initial reaction by governments was understandable. People wanted action and they needed to do something to sat...

Our leaders have got themselves locked in the moment. They know that the damage being done to ordinary people, businesses, education and the economy in general is far worse than the number of deaths which will occur from the coronavirus. They know we need to open the economy fully, not partially but they won’t do it. Instead they will fudge the situation, try to keep everybody happy and we will all end up in no man’s land whereby society is destroyed anyway and the number of deaths from the virus turn out to be no worse than had we adopted the Swedish model for instance. Peoples anxiety levels are such that they are not thinking rationally. That is when we need our politicians to show courage and leadership. This crisis has now reached a point where decisions need to be made. The politicians can no longer hide behind the medical advisors and the emotion of the whole circumstance. I believe we now have two groups, those who know that the strategy adopted was misguided and those w...