There was a programme on TV, a couple of nights ago, about a
guy called Dominic Cummings. If the programme was to be believed, then this is
a guy who had a fairly lengthy history of either being chucked out of or
walking away from a whole series of attempts to get into a position of
influence in British politics. That, in and of itself, wouldn't be anything new
or worrying. However, this is a guy who comes across as not only wanting
control, but out of control. There are accounts of physical bullying and the
like. Blow the froth off and you have a description that psychologists would
most probably recognise as psychopathic! Politics has a habit of attracting
those people who are, by their very nature, least suited to hold public office
(although there are some notable exceptions to this (dangerous politicians with
a grasp of something called integrity).
There is just one current problem about Mr Cummings' love
affair with politics, he seems to be the chief adviser to Boris Johnson. Let's
face it, Boris doesn't come across as the sharpest knife in the drawer. Most
politicians would have taken the opportunity of polishing up their oratory
skills, but perhaps Boris thinks that beginning the same sentence two or three
times and stammering make him seem more endearing. Sort of the lovable idiot
kind of image!
Political advisers are nothing new, neither have they been
absent during various crises (Peter Mandelson and Alistair Campbell were
shadowy figures at the back of Tony Blair, during the Gulf War… remember the
total absence of weapons of mass destruction and the cover-up that is the
record-sized Chilcott report)! However, it does seem as though we've got an
idiot being utilised by a psychopath during a global pandemic. An opportunity
to break the rules, mess around with legislation and generally do whatever you
like that is a perfect gift to somebody who has always wanted to be a supreme
control freak!
We are now conditioned to accept daily briefings, courtesy
of our TV set! You've probably noticed how things are being closed down left
right and centre and yet there is no government money (to speak of) being
pumped into the situation to keep the economy from collapsing. Watch this
space, taxes are about to go up, but this won't be reckoned into any inflation
index.
It's not exactly a closely guarded secret that the National
Health Service has been haemorrhaging staff, in recent times. These are not
people that are just simply retiring. My local GP has been quietly making
arrangements to retire early and it's because he's now more of an administrator
than a doctor. This wasn't what he signed up for! Now the government wants to
entice nurses and doctors, who have left the service, into coming back. This
will include a whole raft of people who probably breathed a sigh of relief when
they finally got out of the NHS. Ever since Margaret Thatcher, our national
health services had far too many managers and the biggest casualties have been
patients. I had a stay in hospital, last year, and I was treated appallingly. I
was given a lot of painkilling drugs, that were guaranteed to cause
constipation and not a laxative or an enema to be seen, even though I kept on
asking for them. I was the blind guy in the corner and I could be ignored!
It's possible that Mr Cummings didn't figure on being the
power behind the throne during a national/international crisis and it's likely
that his ability to bully people will only carry him so far. If nothing else,
people distance themselves from bullies and this does seem to have happened to
Mr Cummings on a number of occasions. Bullies usually have something of a
fragile personality! Maybe Dominic Cummings will go mad, crash out and be fed
on a diet of largactil in a private psychiatric hospital, in leafy suburbia. In
the meantime we do seem to be edging our way in the direction of martial law,
perhaps freedom of speech will be another casualty, quite soon!
