Better to correct your course than keep steering wrong

It takes courage to admit an error. After all, it’s likely to attract scorn from others. Especially others who start out ill-disposed towards you.

Not admitting an error, however, only leaves you open to repeating it. That’s why I find it particularly admirable when a political leader holds up his hand to accept a criticism and changes tack. Admirable and rare: have you ever seen Donald Trump admit he got anything wrong? Vladimir Putin? Boris Johnson?

Salvador Illa, Spanish Minister of Health
His second thoughts were good

Do you know the play What Every Woman Knows? It’s by J.M. Barrie, the same man who wrote Peter Pan. It’s a bit of a pseudo-feminist work, in that it seems to be extolling the greater intelligence of women, but only by having her engage in some devious and highly skilled manipulation of her husband to forward his career. He takes the limelight and the credit; she does the work he needs to puncture his arrogance and teach him a little self-awareness. At all times, she remains in the background.

Still, it’s an amusing and curious play, worth seeing or reading. One of the characters is a senior politician, who says:

I have always found that the man whose second thoughts are good is worth watching.

It’s an excellent notion. Anyone who thinks that a politician will be right every time and, in particular, right first time every time, is only setting themselves up for disappointment. Worse still, the fear of ridicule means that most politicians suffer from a terrible reluctance to accept that they can get things wrong, which forces them to stick with a mistaken policy long after it has already failed.

Here in Spain, we have perhaps the strictest Coronavirus lockdown in the world. The hidden victims are the younger children. Anyone over the age of 14 enjoyed the same privilege as adults, though it’s not much of a privilege: they can visit shops or a bank from time to time, or even, funnily enough, a newsagent to buy a paper. At the last, that way they can get out of doors from time to time, though infrequently and not far.

But from birth to age 14, there was no release, unless they had only a single carer: a lone mother, for instance, was allowed to take her children with her to do the shopping, so that she would not be obliged to leave them home alone. Most kids aren’t Macaulay Culkin, after all, though I suspect most parents wouldn’t want a child who was.

So the vast majority of kids have been drifting deeper and deeper into cabin fever as the lockdown persists, now into its sixth week.

The numbers of cases and deaths in Spain have been falling for ten days now. The government has already begun to relax the restrictions a little, allowing non-essential work to start again, after a two-week interruption. But now, Ministers have decided, it’s time to do something for the kids.

The proposal they came up with was – how can I put this delicately? – not perhaps the one most likely to enhance their reputation for competence. Or, frankly, sanity.

They announced that kids up to the age of 14 would be allowed to accompany their carers on the kind of trips adults were already allowed to take. In other words to the bank. Or the supermarket. Or the newsagent.

The outcry was immediate and loud. What, kids weren’t able to do what the relaxation was intended to achieve – get some air and some exercise? Instead of doing something healthy, they were to be permitted to engage in highly risky activity, going to enclosed places that are visited by more people than any others?

It wasn’t just the political opposition. It was doctors, in particular paediatricians and paediatric psychiatrists. It was public health experts. It was journalists. And above all, it was parents. 

So it was encouraging to see Salvador Illa, the Health Minister, come on TV with a modification to announce. He pointed out that his was a government that listened. And then he told us that from next Sunday, children will be able to go out, up to a kilometre from home and up to an hour, anytime from 9:00 in the morning to 9:00 at night, with up to three kids per adult. They’ll be allowed to do that simply for the sake of exercise and fresh air, taking toys or scooters or even bikes, without having to combine the outing with going to any specific place.

That’s in addition to being permitted to accompany an adult going to the bank, newsagent or supermarket, as originally proposed.

The government didn’t actually say, “we got it wrong”. But they changed their position and admitted they’d done so in response to the objections. 

That takes guts. They will, of course, be ridiculed by their opponents. But I hope enough people will see that what they did was the right thing to do.

After all, there’s a lot to be said for a politician, or a government, whose second thoughts are good.

Magic of a second chance after a first-time screw up

Charles Venables, the government minister in J M Barrie’s play What Every Woman Knows, tells us that the man whose second thoughts are good is worth watching.

Barrie strikes me as a deeply suspect individual (what is Peter Pan really about?) and this play is a vehicle for some pretty troubling social attitudes. Despite my reservations, however, I can’t help enjoying it and I particularly like the sentiment about second thoughts.

Of course, I work in business where it’s a fundamental principle that you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression. Where the mantra is getting things right first time. Doesn’t stop companies getting things wrong again and again, or not getting them done at all, very often, but the mantra’s there.

So it was wonderful to have a second chance to get something right this morning. I’ve already recounted how two weeks ago I screwed up by taking us to the wrong place for an early morning bird-watching walk, in the breathtaking splendour of Ashridge Forest. That meant that we were up at 5:00 a.m. for nothing, and I’d spoiled my wife’s birthday: she'd set a lot of store by the charms of early morning bird watching in a delightful setting.

Even at stupid o'clock, Ashridge is a magical place
for a walkin the sunshine

Fortunately, the Ashridge National Trust people had organised another walk for this morning and though it meant a 5:00 start all over again, it was a tremendous relief to have an opportunity to correct things so soon. This time, I made a point of checking the details the night before, even looking at the map to be sure I knew where we had to go (like instruction manuals, I feel a real wimp if I have to consult a map). We were at the right place and a few minutes before time. A major success compared to the last occasion.

We’ve had nearly two weeks of nearly summer weather here in England, which is pretty long for any kind of summer compared to the last few years. It was no surprise therefore that we left this morning facing a grim weather forecast, with the skies turning grey and temperatures 10 to 15 degrees down on the last few days (and that’s real degrees, not the trivial little Fahrenheit ones). Why, it was even beginning to spit a little rain as we set out on the walk.

But still, England’s weather hadn’t fully plunged us back into November yet (that didn’t happen until this afternoon), and we had moments of glorious sunshine when, if we got out of the wind, it felt positively warm. As the guides warned us, we didn’t do so much actual bird watching as bird listening: the leaves are out and birds are mostly concealed, but on the other hand they’re pouring out their hearts in song. The first two species we were introduced to were jackdaws and yellow hammers, and I was just enchanted: town dweller that I am, I’m much more used to the sound of the jackhammer.

Two hours walking through fabulous scenery in sunshine that kept constant quite a lot of the time more than made up for the stupid o’clock start. And finishing it all of with a full breakfast in the National Trust café really put the icing on the cake (not that we had cake: it wouldn’t have gone with the bacon or egg).

Second thoughts had more than made up for my total lack of thinking first time round. And my wife got her wish at last.

Happy birthday, again, Danielle. Just a couple of weeks late.

No bird pictures, I'm afraid.
But here's a Whitebeam catching the sun,
with all of Bucks and Beds laid out behind it