How the Irrational Does Prevail.

One of the main news items today concerned the high incidence of people driving their camper vans out to the coast and camping there overnight. Camping overnight is still forbidden in Britain under lockdown regulations, and the locals were none too happy about being invaded by scores of potentially plague-carrying strangers. The police descended en masse at dawn, apparently, and politely told them to go home.

Into the argument steps some man (whose name I can’t be bothered to go back and find out) from some camping and caravan organisation (the name of which I also can’t be bothered to go back and find out) to defend the ne’er-do-wells. We have to remember, he explained, that many of these people use a camper van as their primary form of transport. They even go shopping in them.

So is he suggesting that the owners of camper vans are obliged to drive out to the coast and remain there overnight, rather than driving out and driving back again like everybody else? Or is he missing the point?

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A few days ago I saw another report on the BBC News website on the subject of Covid (because they rarely report on anything else these days.) This one was written by a BBC journalist and said that CO2 emissions have dropped dramatically since lockdown kept most of the vehicles off the road. Well, I think we could have worked that one out for ourselves. But then it went on to say that the emissions may rebound when the traffic gets back to normal.

May? May rebound? Where does the ‘may’ come from? Of course they’ll rebound when the traffic gets back to normal. It’s like saying that if you place a glass under a running tap and leave it there, it may get full and overflow. (Personally I would prefer ‘might’, but that’s immaterial to my point.)

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The point here is that I simply don’t understand how people in positions of influence and authority can display such a lack of rational thinking. And it isn’t only journalists and spokespersons from organisations who are guilty of this. We get the same thing from politicians, Establishment figures and others in the public eye. Are they really that clueless, or do they think that everybody else is so they can say whatever they like and get away with it?

Really, I have to ask: What has happened to us British, or does the same sad state of affairs apply elsewhere? And is it getting worse, as it seems to me, or am I just noticing it more.