Remember avian influenza? The pandemic which began somewhere in Asia, was spreading to Europe, reached the UK in Norfolk, and was supposed to be the greatest cataclysm since the black death? We were told it would claim millions of victims: it was an issue of national security; veterinary surgeons were urgently interviewed; doctors and hospitals were placed on emergency alert; governments were producing medical supplies for millions of people, and the outlook was, to say the least, bleak and depressing.And then the media discovered a distraction. And the moment bird flu left our screens and departed the headlines, everyone forgot about it.
And millions did not die, and entire continents were not decimated, and nothing much happened at all, except that Bernard Matthews had a very lean year.
Cranmer has this feeling over the ‘Cleggmania’. He also has this feeling over volcano dust.
The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the Lord come. What better way to instill fear and terrify the population into voting for the status quo than to present them with an End of Days apocalypse?
Gordon Brown has already ‘saved the world’ from global financial meltdown. Today he has summoned a meeting of COBRA to sort out the air chaos. If he can rescue the world by spewing out billions in bailouts, save the people by mass-producing Tamiflu, and clear European airspace merely with his word, he can certainly save the United Kingdom from a bit of political hysteria.
The media love a crisis. In fact, they love a crisis as much as the EU, for each and every day the crisis endures, the only source of information is the media, and the only solution, according to the EU, is more EU. And so today our Prime Minister is video-conferencing with our masters in Brussels because nation states are impotent, and salvation is to be found in a Europe-wide coordinated response which only a European government can solve.
All that Cleggmania needs is a vaccine. And this is quite simply a good dose of Thatcherite common sense. The antidote to a state-induced crisis is not to inculcate fear of a hung parliament, for human nature inclines us to do exactly what we are warned not to do. One must diagnose accurately and understand ‘Last Days’ psychology.Cleggmania and volcano dust are just the latest terrors of the earth. The country does not appear to be able to function without an element of fear and insecurity. And these profound threats to our existence and way of life are just the latest in a long line – acid rain, the ‘Millennium Bug’, mad cow disease or variant CJD, global warming, Islamic terrorism, bird flu, credit crunch, pig flu…
The rulers of the earth are intent on diminishing our liberty by keeping us shackled to fear. We are in chains to anti-scientific rumour, media distortion and sensationalism. The only pox we have to fear is panic; the only toxin terror.
Perhaps it is time for the Conservatives to promise free surgical masks, for only they can prevent the spread of the Clegg virus. Do not shake hands with a Liberal Democrat. A kiss will certainly spread it from husband to wife; a cough gives it to a neighbour; a sneeze to an entire stadium of people. Precaution is common sense. Good hygiene should be encouraged, for we are always waging war against mutating viruses.
But there is more to fear from a confirmed pandemic of political hysteria than a conjectured pandemic of anything.
