More Moaning

On a minor level, what has annoyed me this week has been something that has annoyed me often in the past - namely, the New Yorker house style when dealing with profiles of people. Their edict seems to be that they must always inform the reader about people's white belts and bootcut blue jeans and tailored, pale salmon, silk shirts and softly waving, slightly sunbleached hair. 

While I can appreciate that whoever first thought of it imagined that this would be a good way of bringing a subject to life, it has now become a really annoying verbal tic. 

This week as usual I noticed the device in an article I was reading and as usual I came to a screaming halt. I can't remember who the article was about but when his wife, (or partner?) entered stage left she was described as "a graceful blonde woman in clogs".

While the woman's graceful blondness might give me a clue to the subject of the profile's discernment and alert me to the possibility that he likes women who possess those traits (it might even be intended to imply that he is a typical bloody man, the kind who would never equip himself with any other female appendage than a blond and graceful one), why tell me about the clogs? No man has any say over his wife's footwear, unless he's a brute and beats her into wearing black patent leather high heels with ostrich feather pompoms. 

So what are the clogs there for? Are we being told that he isn't a brute, that, because he doesn't insist she wears other more glamorous shoes but is tolerant of her foibles, he must be a really good guy? Or are we being told that his taste isn't that great because, graceful and blond as she is, she wears clogs? Or that he chose her for the clogs, that he is even more limited in his choice of females than most men, insisting not only on grace and blondness, but also a fondness for the wearing of clogs?  It is so hard to deduce this, since we can't be sure whether he knew she wore clogs when he first got to know her, or whether she concealed her clog wearing from him until it was too late. Or perhaps we are being encouraged to see his tolerance of a clog wearer as a sign of weakness - surely a more discerning man would have divorced her as soon as he heard the things clonking along the corridor on her feet?

Or perhaps is it just another sign of the New Yorker being tedious.

I suppose I should just stop reading the magazine. It is certainly not of my politics, (and the very fact that I know what its politics are is a sign of how far it has fallen). All the same sometimes still it has a wonderful piece of fiction or a really fascinating account of something I didn't even know existed, and so I go on.

And anyway I have much bigger fish to fry in the moaning stakes, namely my rising frustration at the realisation that individual responsibility is being thrown out of the window because of coronavirus.

I should, by the way, make it clear that I am not part of the lobby that says the virus is not dangerous. I understand that it is extremely catching and that, if one is over 60 or a bit tubby or suffering from the famous 'underlying conditions',  there is a reasonable chance that, if caught, in a minority of cases it can result in a very nasty illness and also in death. I don't argue with the idea that it is a very unpleasant thing.

What I do argue with is government passing rules dictating my behaviour and making blanket rules to cover a range of citizens who are facing very different risks. The argument is that, if they don't do this, the young will all get together and catch it off each other, and then infect the old, and everyone will die like flies. As a result of potential fecklessness, we must all be looked after by authority. 

No. I can manage. I will assess each situation and decide whether I am prepared to take the risk it involves. And everyone else I know can do that too - and they want to. In most cases, in fact, we are probably more cautious than is strictly necessary - but by our own choice. 

We are adults, we can make up our own minds. Let us do that. Inform us, and then inform us some more, and then maybe a bit more again - but don't decide for us. 

A sense of individual responsibility is key to a properly functioning nation. Most of us are already making informed decisions about all sorts of things. No one suggests that we cannot balance the risks and make our own decisions about taking to the roads in our cars, in the full knowledge that there is always the chance that someone careless may hit us head on. Similarly, it is up to us to decide whether to drink ourselves silly, regardless of the consequences for our livers. I raise these two particular activities because the number of people who die from either liver disease or traffic accidents is almost exactly the same as the number of people who die from coronavirus, yet no one has closed down the economy and restricted our freedoms to prevent drinking or driving. 

Sadly, Australia and England, my two home countries, have gone bonkers very fast. The rules that have been brought in in each country are extraordinarily restrictive and destructive in lots of different ways - and it is far from clear that they are actually beneficial. Worst of all, what has suddenly become apparent is that there is a large section of the population in each country - possibly the majority? - who like regulations and who enjoy bossing each other about and dobbing each other in. When will it all end, I wonder, and, if it ever does, will we ever get back to true freedom?