There is discussion in newspapers today of MPs being fearful for their physical well-being. I think it profoundly unfortunate that they are. I also think that it is apparent that their safety must be ensured. Whilst safety can never be guaranteed it is apparent that more can be done to protect them. I think doing so would be wise.
But I want to add a discordant note. I do not in any way wish to undermine the significance of MPs' fear. I wish to show no disrespect to the late Sir David Amess. But MPs are not the only people to know the reality of fear in the UK. Nor was his the only unnecessary, and so to be regretted, death on Friday.
Around 1,000 people died unnecessarily of Covid last week.
The same will happen again this week, and for a long time to come. Many live in fear as a result.
Others without access to healthcare are also living in fear. A person died of a heart attack in an ambulance whilst waiting to get access to Accident & Emergency this week. There is real fear amongst many as a result.
Those who are working out how to live without £20 a week from universal credit are living in fear.
The Treasury is reported to be trying to undermine planned green investment in the UK. There will be countless, especially younger people, who will be profoundly fearful as a result.
And across the world people are fearful of populist philosophy that seeks to artificially divide people from each other by pretending that there is always an elite we can despise.
My point is simple. Fear is widespread. It is real. It is disabling. It is costly. It destroys well-being. It undermines society.
Politics should be about creating freedom from fear. That does not mean we simply manage fear. We should seek to eliminate the causes of fear. That is the real challenge. And that demands real political reform and not just better security for MPs, however important that might be.
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Every single one of the thousands of lives unnecessarily and knowingly killed by the government’s decision to discard all the protections which are protecting people in other European countries, was just as valued and loved as Sir David Ames.
It would be a fitting tribute to him to save thousands more lives by bringing protections in enclosed spaces and vaccine checks on events and clubs and CO2-monitored standards for schools, work places, and public premises etc. Vaccinating children has almost stopped, and they are going to have only one dose when 3 are necessary.
How do you compare a killer who stabs one defenceless man,with one who is knowingly killing thousands but using a virus?
Experts such as Prof Christina Pagel are in despair:
https://twitter.com/chrischirp/status/1449437841260531717
Freedom from fear.
Freedom from want.
Freedom of speech
Freedom of religion.
The four freedoms proclaimed in 1941 by Roosevelt and Churchill.
Freedom is never won and then we can sit back because we’ve got it.
It is something we have to strive for continuously.
With my cap on of a former counsellor, I found fear to be the root of so many behaviours which are ‘unskilful’ in dealing with life.
Alongside the “four freedoms” are the five giants identified in the Beveridge Report – Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness.
It is rather sobering that we are currently backsliding on the fight against all five.
Agreed
Well said, Mr. Stevenson (and an excellent, heartfelt post from Prof. Murphy too). Four freedoms which I have been able to enjoy for most of my increasingly long life but which are now being trashed on a daily basis by the current administration of an increasingly fractured and so-called “United Kingdom”.
I fear that the forthcoming COP26 in Glasgow will only further add to the embarrassment that is the governance of the constituent parts of the “UK”, exacerbated by the determination of the prime minister to exclude the one possible contributor who has the diplomatic skills to help persuade delegates of the need for urgent change. I refer, of course, to Scotland’s First Minister whose government is light years ahead of Westminster on many things but especially on climate change matters.
There is ALWAYS a wider debate to be had as a consequence of these awful events and the media is, by and large, not having it. It didn’t with the greater number of deaths just weeks ago from a US drone strike, for example. That was just an intelligence error! Now why is it that an ordinary family being massacred out of the blue (literally) by an aircraft with no right to be where it was is worth less coverage and less discussion than the murder of an MP! Had an armed drone taken out eight MPs sitting having a picnic under Churchill’s statue in Westminster, would that have been an intelligence failure? The government and the media appear to have a ranking order of human worth. The only thing that seems uncertain is precisely how nationality and ethnicity interplay in the assessment! There IS a common element to these disparate events. Both are the consequence of a morality that does not rate the sanctity of human life very highly. There is also a very big difference. One of these events is evidence of moral bankruptcy on the part of an individual or, possibly, a group. The other is evidence of the moral bankruptcy of a superpower and its allies that made little noise about this and innumerable similar incidents over the last decades.
I too do not wish to disrespect the late Sir David Amess nor detract from the horror of the events leading to his death, but this government’s modus operandi has been to scapegoat specific groups of individuals in our society. Aided by their friends in the media they have attacked immigrants, asylum seekers, judges, footballers taking the knee, human rights lawyers, teachers and the list goes on. The BBC, RNLI, National Trust and now they are even coming for your GP.
Stoke the fear, identify a scapegoat and create the anger. There’s a lot of angry people out there.
Like.