{"id":826,"date":"2020-03-24T09:36:19","date_gmt":"2020-03-24T09:36:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/?p=826"},"modified":"2024-04-13T09:52:34","modified_gmt":"2024-04-13T07:52:34","slug":"brits-ignore-social-distancing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/brits-ignore-social-distancing\/","title":{"rendered":"Brits Ignore Social Distancing"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Being British is Bliss<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Published: 23 March 2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is hard\nto imagine the people of any other country in the world, except for Britain,\nignoring the advice of the government and health professionals and in the midst\nof a pandemic that is killing thousands around the world and plunging countries\ninto chaos heading off to the seaside for the day. The fact that this behavior\nin Britain is exempt from surprise is not surprising either. We are immune to\nit. Every day we are treated by the tabloids to scenes and stories of sleazy,\ntacky, crude and crass Brits competing for top place in the league of\nobscenity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Brits
(Photo credit: cottonbro<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0from\u00a0<\/em>Pexels<\/strong> <\/em>\ud83d\ude2e[Sorry, silly sanction block; link removed] ) <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When we lived in Britain my wife had the great misfortune, like the police and NHS, of being on the frontline. My wife was a teacher, which has to be one of the most thankless and God-forsaken jobs in the country. Never a day went past when she would return home with the sordid details of grossly behaved, self-centered school kids and their equally obnoxious parents. There was, in the several schools in which she worked and, we can presume from what we hear and read, throughout the entire British education system, a deeply entrenched, extremely disturbing and highly toxic ethos, a morally corrosive undercurrent that had seeped out of the PC mindset and (sorry to use this word) infected everyone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At its core there was a contagious admixture, a poisonous combination of entitlement, egomania and absolute selfishness. My wife defined this psychological-emotional malaise as the \u2018Me, Myself, I\u2019 attitude. It was rife in almost every school she taught in, and what was more disturbing was that it was systemic as well as endemic. The more she experienced it, or rather the fallout from it, the more convinced she became that it was a product of 70-plus years of so-called progressive liberalism, which had, in its Tony Blair heyday, all but completely disempowered adults in favour of child empowerment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The clue lies in that most celebrated of liberal words, the High Priestess of Political Correctness, \u2018Rights\u2019. Rights are everywhere, and everywhere you look are Rights. Not that teachers have any rights at all: it is open season on them. There were no signs on the school walls where my wife worked, as there are in banks, Job Centres and doctor\u2019s surgeries, stating \u2018Our staff have the right to work in a safe and abuse-free environment \u2026\u2019. Empowered school kids know ~ they have been taught by their parents (by government and the media) that they can be as disruptive, offensive and abusive as they like towards teachers, and can act this way with impunity, as they have the Rights and teachers have none. But this glib, blas\u00e9 and malicious attitude does not end there. It is extended to adults in every sphere and at every level and is manifest in blatant disrespect for teachers, parents, neighbours, police, government and society at large. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brits ignore social distancing<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

But we\ncannot blame everything on Tony Blair (can we?). Historically, the rot set in during\nthe 1960s and has travelled \u2018progressively\u2019 down, mutating in strength and vileness,\nthrough subsequent layers of generations until it hit rock bottom, which is\nwhere we are today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c\u2019ere I\u2019ve\ngot my Rights!\u201d was a mantra that was thrown at my wife when she was a teacher\nday after day after day. What was most telling, however, was the conjoined\nabsence of the words \u2018obligation\u2019 and \u2018responsibility\u2019, and here was the rub: a\n\u2018do as we please life\u2019 underpinned by Rights but no acknowledgement of, no\nunderstanding of, indeed no knowledge of the fundamental prerequisites by which\nthose Rights are granted, ie personal obligation and social responsibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTwo things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.\u201d \u2014 Immanuel Kant (1724-1804): Critique of Practical Reason<\/em> <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Fast forward now and, as I have said, we are where we are today. In the midst of the greatest crisis that the UK ~ the world ~ has experienced since World War II, and with people facing death all around them, the Rights-infected British public ignore advice to self-isolate, ignore the need for social distancing and continue to congregate en masse at the coast, in parks and wherever they know they should not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brits ignore social distancing<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

If it was not so pathetically sad it would be laughable. I am tempted to call it Carry On Infecting<\/em>, but that would just be cruel: it would be cruel to the people they will infect, to the people that will die, but cruel, most of all, not to mention insulting, to the doctors, nurses and health clinicians who are laying their lives on the line each day in administering to the sick and dying whilst trying to contain this dreadful disease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is the\nsituation as hopeless as it seems? Possibly not. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In perusing The Guardian<\/em> and The Independent<\/em> recently (yes, I am sorry, but I do that sometimes), have you detected a distinct change of attitude in some of the columnists, one that suggests that even the most dizzy-headed kite-flying liberals have come down to earth with a jolt? Rights are important things, and let us not forget it, but there is a line where political theory ends and commonsense starts <\/a>and that line today (and always) we should not be allowed to cross, either guided by a conscious respect for decency and humanity or where selfishness subverts this by any measure necessary to ensure the best result for the greater good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne who makes himself a worm cannot complain afterwards if people step on him.\u201d \u2014 Immanuel Kant (1724-1804): Critique of Practical Reason<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Copyright \u00a9 2018-2020 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Being British is Bliss Published: 23 March 2020 It is hard to imagine the people of any other country in the world, except for Britain, ignoring the advice of the government and health professionals and in the midst of a pandemic that is killing thousands around the world and plunging countries into chaos heading off […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[69],"tags":[219,216,217,218],"class_list":["post-826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-meanwhile-in-the-uk","tag-brits-ignore-self-isolating","tag-brits-ignore-social-distancing","tag-political-correctness-breeds-contempt","tag-selfish-brits-coronavirus"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t