The dread phrase joined-up government would be once again invoked

The dread phrase “joined-up government” would be once again invoked.Luckily, though, this is not government advice and so we can take comfort in it, and in the feeling that we are just getting on with things like plucky and heroic individuals fighting for the survival of our families against the odds. Hurrah! This strategy may be absolutely useless in reality, but as a soothing placebo acting against powerlessness, worry and the reading of science fiction, it’s unbeatable.* One problem with the whole bird flu thing is that it seems designed not to be taken seriously. Otherwise, stock up on tins, because once the virus hits, the only thing to do is stay in. Keep the children out of school; don’t answer the door, and don’t accept deliveries from outside.

Sit it out, because it’ll probably last only a month.When they explain all this, it sounds like good fun. Which are as follows:If you’ve got room for a big freezer, get one and fill it with food. My friends are not at all panicked, and don’t seem hysterical. They simply point out that since more scientists than ever before concur that a pandemic is long overdue, then it is reasonable to have some contingency plans. They have actually laid plans, and these plans don’t seem bad. That’s what all the obsessing about Tamiflu stockpiles, and how much the Swedes have got and so on, is all about.I was amazed therefore, when some friends offered another approach. We may feel sorry about this, but few of us seem willing to do a great deal more than attend a pop concert in order to change it.
The scary thing about “the coming pandemic”, though, is that it will be a great international leveller.

Western panic about the idea of a “global viral event” is always predicated on the idea that the Government could, if it got its act together, have a fool-proof way of saving our own little island. It’s a fact of life that diseases that are anachronistic in the West continue to kill millions in less “developed” countries, usually for reasons of “copyright” or “brand value”. Dying in the manner that the rich world tacitly agrees is acceptable for those unlucky types living in those unfortunate places where “human life is cheap” is fine, even if such a death would not be acceptable in a country able to avail itself of the technology to stop it. Who, by any definition of normality, would choose to cut open people’s stomachs for a living? How can a person of flesh and blood take satisfaction in a ledger? What man, not desperate to reveal something untoward about his gender orientation, would believe in the Virgin Birth, smother himself in incense and dress in women’s clothing?

More from Howard Jacobson.

I was mildly struck the other day, when Sky News announced that the Turkish children they’d been giving us minute-by-minute updates on for quite some while had not died of bird flu. The deaths of these little tots had been, briefly, a tragedy of global proportions. Suddenly, though, they were just dead foreign kids, of no significance in the wider scheme of things whatsoever Whatever they had we were not going to catch So nothing was heard of them again. Both institutions – government and education – exist only so long as there are crazies to staff them. You could say the same of the army, the police, ophthalmology, television, dentistry, religion, accountancy, surgery. It is pathological to believe you can change society for the better on the basis of a preference for one socio-economic system over another, and it is a dysfunction in an adult to want to spend his working hours with children.

How can I best put this? Schools need the sexually peculiar in the same way that politics need the ideologically deranged. Having been reared in the old East Germany, she at least really understands why we Americans keep banging on about freedom, democracy and the glory of the markets To which one replies, if only it were that simple.. Thank goodness for this unflashy and trustworthy lady, this “German Thatcher” with her sensible trouser suits, who means what she says. Good riddance to that frightful Chancellor Schr?, who trashed us to win an election, broke his word over Iraq and, retired from politics, has sold his slippery soul to a Russian energy company. It was all smiles when Angela Merkel came to the White House yesterday – and no wonder. As far as the Bush administration is concerned, a key European ally is back in the fold.