In 1933 the US president, Franklyn D Roosevelt, said in his inaugural address the famous lines "The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself." These words were said at the height of the Great Depression, with no end to it in sight and were the precursor of his New Deal designed to get the country back on its feet and to energise and encourage the American people.
Even though in Great Britain today things are very different (the US at the time had 25% unemployment, for example, whereas the UK today has more jobs than people willing to fill them), but nevertheless FDR's words still have a certain resonance for we, too, have been subject to a campaign of fear, sometimes subtle and sometimes not so subtle, over the last few years.
At first it was Brexit. The country voted - just - to leave the EU, but there were those who seemed unwilling to accept a democratic vote and campaigned vigorously for the referendum result to be either ignored or for the vote to be re-run as many times as necessary until they achieved the result they wanted.
In the meantime there were cries of guaranteed disaster to come when we left - there would be mass unemployment, a recession like we had never seen, our industries would die, the City and all its financial trade would emigrate to Frankfurt, and so on. Fear was planted amongst us to make those who voted for Brexit change their minds.
"Business is doing well"
In fact the opposite has happened. Employment is rising, business is doing well and the City's financial institutions remain where they should be, in the City of London. It is certainly true that we have inflation and a reduction of GDP, but this is more a result of coming out of Covid and lockdown than anything else.
And that brings me to Covid itself. Right at the very beginning one of the many foolish university professors anxious to claim their 15 minutes of TV fame by preaching doom and gloom, predicted half a million deaths within months. This was followed by daily figures and digital flip charts from more professors showing the growth of the pandemic and number of deaths caused by it, generating a fear which encouraged most of us to obey the government's "stay at home" command and wear masks.
In fact, of course, these figures were finally shown to be nonsense when the Office of National Statistics (ONS) produced the actual figure which showed that while a great many people had sadly died over the worst period of the pandemic, of the approximately 160,000 at the time of their survey, just 17,000 had died due to Covid. The remainder had Covid mentioned on the death certificate but the principal cause of death was another factor (many, of course, had caught Covid after admission to hospital with an entirely different medical condition).
Even today, such was the fear generated, that one can still see every day, someone walking down Rye High Street with their mask tightly strapped over nose and mouth when the need for this, if it was ever there (and even the TV professors agreed that masks were not necessary in the open air) is now non-existent.
Opening Granny's window
One also remembers the Christmas advice that to save Granny from Covid, she should be seated close to an open window, thus guaranteeing that she would die of pneumonia long before Covid could get her. Better still, have Christmas dinner outside. So even our own homes, we were told, were not safe!
With Covid largely out of the way, we now have a lack of power as the next fear. We have been told that thanks to the post-Covid resurgence in demand, and also Mr Putin currently being engaged in indiscriminate murder in Ukraine, there may not be sufficient gas (and certainly not renewables) to generate enough power to heat our homes this winter.
For this we can blame (a) successive governments for thinking that the UK does not need to be self-sufficient in power and (b) the eco-warriors who want to go back to the days of wearing animal fur (although they are all vegan, of course, so probably not animal fur, then, but maybe synthetic, but, hang on, isn't that partly a by-product of oil).
There is sufficient gas in the North Sea and more available through fracking (which has had a bad press, but today is actually quite safe, and no one's home will be destroyed by an earthquake). This could be a perfectly good stop-gap (especially with the latest carbon capture techniques) until renewables, and nuclear, can take its place.
Electricity - but from where?
This also begs the question of where the electricity is going to come from to recharge all our shiny new electric cars which, in eight years time, will be the only type of new car we can buy. But in fact it won't matter because by then all the roads will be blocked by superglued eco protesters.
We could always use trains, except that we can't because global warming will have buckled all the rails.
And that leads to the current stage of Project Fear that is being instilled into us. We have been given warnings for some time that the temperature was going to increase to a level that would make even Beelzebub himself break into a sweat.
There is no doubt that it did indeed get a little warm earlier this week. However did we really need the headline in one paper, "Thousands likely to die from the heat", or another one, that due to the warming of our coastal sees, great white sharks were likely to travel north to our islands. Hmm... well it might solve the Camber traffic problems.
In fact there were only a few places where the temperature reached, or exceeded 40c and one of these was Heathrow. Unsurprisingly, no one thought to mention that as it is an airport consisting of several hundred acres of flat heat-absorbent concrete, it was the very place where the temperature would be highest. Another high temperature was was found close to Gatwick which, surprise, surprise, is another place consisting of several hundred acres of concrete.
Where's common sense?
Generally, temperatures were nearer 38/39c with just a few places approaching the magic 40. 38C is not that uncommon and has been reached a number of times in the last hundred years or so (in 1911 this temperature was recorded, all the trains ran on time and none had to be cancelled!).
So we are only looking at a maximum of a couple of degrees above previous levels and did we really need to be told to wear hats, put on sunscreen inches thick, drink water, draw the curtains, open windows, keep in the shade, and so on. What happened to common sense? Every square inch of newsprint and programs broadcast from the mainstream media seemed to be full of it. Be afraid - we were all going to die!!
Except we didn't, we were never going to, and isn't it time that the media, certain politicians, pressure groups, and sometimes the big corporations stopped pedalling a lot of this nonsense? Yes, of course we have challenges from time to time, but nothing that human knowledge and ingenuity cannot cope with - matched with a little common sense.
We really do have nothing to fear but the fear engendered by others, often for their own motives.
