Many years ago I attended the funeral of a 19 year old youth who had been making furniture with me on a government funded work experience scheme. His mum called him 'the gentle giant' and I remember he was indeed a lovely young man. She broke the news to me that he had overturned his landrover into a ditch one evening.
The family invited me to the funeral and whilst a thick plate glass screen silenced their crying anguish in the back of the funeral car I was in the front of the car next to the driver and all was eerily quiet except for the whine of the engine. In a desperate bid to make conversation I found myself blurting out 'how's business' and the undertaker replied 'really good this month, we've been rushed off our feet'. I not only realised my clumsy attempt at making conversation but that most of us are caught in a mindset and despite two thousand years of civilization are limited by our own experience and see the world through just our own particular window.
Economists are blinkered by the word 'growth' and yet in nature uncontrolled growth is a cancer. There are ultimately finite resources on this planet. Recent news of motorway carnage that cannot agree on whether it was white fog or black smoke is very quick to put the blame on an expensive firework display emitting dense smoke, using the health and safety trump card again, when on motorway sections nationwide, marked by chevrons (keep two visible in front of you) very few drivers distance themselves safely enough to stop in an emergency. Lorry drivers bunch together on most motorways daily and it takes a lot to stop a lorry. Meanwhile the road safety lobbysists have more fuel to attack the proposed raising of the speed limit to 80 yet the focus of blame is on one risk assessment officer at a fireworks event.
The media is very quick to blame and judge and the Police are now focussing on a criminal investigation whilst macho rugby players protest they are being used as a scapegoat. Solicitors will be rolling their sleeves up as more lolly comes their way. Meanwhile regulation will increase. I must say it does seems odd that such potentially serious road safety hazard as dense smoke is entertained anywhere close to a motorway and that according to one newspaper the winds were not forecast to blow that way on that evening.
Perhaps we should blame the meteorologists and dig up all the records of accident resulting from the London 'Pea Soup' smogs in the 1960's caused by industrialization and then we might take the argument further and consider which way the wind is blowing when there is a nuclear reactor disaster... perhaps we should blame God. It seems to be the human condition.
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