Never Attribute to Conspiracy What You Can Assign to Stupidity, Ambition, or Cowardice

The problem is that the alternative narratives are mostly conspiracy theories, and in some cases pretty batty ones. Now I like a good conspiracy theory, and a good one is plausible.

One of my favourites is 'bureaucratic cover-up'. If you have ever worked in a bureaucracy, you will know that there is no need for anyone to arrange a cover-up of a cock-up. The people involved do it as automatically as they would arrange a working group to to delay a decision.

Combine the cock-up theory of history with the need of politicians and other members of the Establishment to maintain their position and privileges (and that's another motive no-one even needs to discuss), and you have a powerful explanatory tool.

The only reason we were in the shameful position of having a Prime Minister threatening his electorate with the Army is because of a half-robust broadband internet network in the towns and the wide availability of reasonably capable laptops. In 2000, there would have been no thought of sending people home to work, nor, I suspect would there have been in 2010.

Almost the entire Covid farce follows from the availability of high-speed broadband and laptops.

The rest follows from the fact that while politicians always were a bunch of morally-flawed people with latent personality disorders, once upon a time, even as recently as the 1970's, some of them were capable people with moral flaws and latent personality disorders. Now none of them are capable. Capable people can make much more money in other jobs, without needing to stain themselves with politics. Or university teaching. Or working in local or national government. There are no Civil Servants as capable as Sir Humphrey, though many may be as smug.

Have the sheer nerve to make those judgements out loud, and the need for elaborate conspiracy disappears. A converse of Asimov's Rule might be: any sufficiently stupid group action or decision is indistinguishable from a conspiracy.

If you stop thinking that the world is being run by smart people with stable personalities, and malign ambitions and flawed morals, then you don't need a conspiracy. Never attribute to conspiracy what you can assign to stupidity, ambition, or cowardice.

Whitty and Vallance don't say the things they say because they are conspiring to create Project Fear. Whitty's experience is with contagious diseases in Africa, which will lead him to think of zebras when he hears the sound of hooves, and Vallance comes from the pharmaceutical industry and wants a silver-bullet cure for everything. The man who caused the panic, Neil Ferguson at Imperial College, has never seen a virus he didn't think that culling thousands wouldn't stop. All three of them are willing patsies.

The truth is that the UK Cabinet could not stand the pressure from the press, and the peer-pressure from other governments who had already locked down. Weak-ass bitches.

It is fairly scary to think you live in a world run by dumb, often malicious, people with personality disorders. Even though the current situation has made it fairly clear that many of the Democrat politicians and elected officials in the USA are all of those things.

Over here, Nicola Sturgeon needs some quality time with a psychiatrist, Boris Johnson needs a while with a therapist, and Matt Hancock needs to grow the **** up? None of them understand that their job is not to tell us what to do. Their job is to oversee the large companies, and the institutions and organisations of the State, and stop them from cheating and swindling us. Oh and there's something about secure borders and putting the interests of the UK electorate before any other country's electorate. But I'm just old-fashioned, I guess.