{"id":591,"date":"2020-08-19T22:03:30","date_gmt":"2020-08-19T22:03:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/thoughts\/?p=591"},"modified":"2020-08-21T21:24:23","modified_gmt":"2020-08-21T21:24:23","slug":"its-all-wombatularity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/thoughts\/?p=591","title":{"rendered":"It’s All Wombatularity"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\u201cNever ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained\nby incompetence.\u201d (Napoleon Bonaparte)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In these troubled times I have been drawn to that phrase in\nmany situations. It seems to me to be the best explanation for most of the important\nbut flawed decisions made by those in authority in the recent unprecedented\ncrises. It overlaps the similar remark known as Hanlon’s razor: \u201cnever\nattribute to malice that which is adequately explained by\nstupidity\u201d. For me there is another term which expresses the problem even\nbetter: Wombatularity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I first discovered this phenomena in 1979 on my first\nmorning as a secondary school teacher. In my new pastoral group there was a\nparticular student who will remain nameless, because he is now slightly famous.\nOr he is in jail \u2013 I can\u2019t remember which. As I was taking that first register\nhe made a simple mistake, which caused amusement for the whole class. When you\nare called Steve, how difficult can it be to remember whether your own name is\nspelled with V or PH? I casually remarked, \u201cWhat a wombat\u201d. Wombats are my\nfavourite Australian marsupials. They are adorable but not over-endowed with\nintelligence. The young man had made the kind of mistake which in my mind only a\nwombat would make. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So it was that the pupils of that class, and very soon all\nmy other pupils and amazingly other teachers too, began to respond to many foolish\nstatements with the acclamation, \u201cwhat a wombat.\u201d Almost twenty years later and\na decade after I had moved on from that school I was astonished on a return\nvisit to discover that the expression lived on among succeeding generations of\npupils and staff. Silly mistakes which are obvious to everybody but the\nspeaker, which self-evidently stem from foolishness or ignorance or failing to\ngive the question adequate consideration, were recognised for what they were: Wombatularity.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have spotted more wombats over the last six months than in the previous forty years. In this short time our Government has made so many poor decisions with predictably disastrous consequences. Their responses to the Covid19 pandemic have often been misjudged and even incoherent. Sending folk from hospitals back to care homes was incompetent. The failure to provide sufficient adequate PPE cost many lives. Delaying the introductions of lock-down was foolish. The partial closure of schools was badly managed and the partial return of pupils even more so. The steps taken in the lifting of lock-down and the timings of those steps are leading to rising infection rates of Covid19 and inevitably the re-imposition of lock-downs. The confused changing advice on social distancing and particularly on the wearing of masks has not helped anybody. Planning for the return of all pupils to full time education in September is creating all kinds of difficulties for schools. Now this week we have the debacle of A Level results, with the Government\u2019s predictable U-turn now creating enormous problems for the universities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In all these tragic situations and more, the frustrations of many people have been greatly increased because the disastrous consequences were entirely obvious in advance to everybody except, seemingly, to the individuals responsible for making the bad choices. Some people see self-interest behind some of the erroneous decisions. Others talk of nepotism or corruption. The narrow area which has directly impacted me most personally has been the lock-down regulations regarding churches and some people think they see a conspiracy against religions in these matters. In most instances I am persuaded by a simpler explanation. It\u2019s just Wombatularity. Too many of the people in authority making the decisions are wombats. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For half a century the Peter Principle has recognised that\npeople tend to be promoted to their level of incompetence. The Education\nSecretary suggested that awarding A level grades on the basis of teacher\u2019s\npredictions would lead in years to come to some people being over-promoted\nbeyond their competence and immediately many have joked that this has already\nhappened for many in our current Government. They are all wombats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It matters that we call out Wombatularity when we see it. In\nmy judgment too many criticisms of our Government and their decisions are actually\ninappropriate attacks on the character and integrity of our leaders. I prefer\nto believe that in general they are genuinely trying their best. The more\ncharitable interpretation of most current events is that these are not wicked people.\nMost just lack the competence to discern wise solutions to very difficult and complex\nproblems. They are charged with balancing medicine and statistics and economics\nand politics when few have any significant expertise in more than one of those\nfields. In a few countries politicians are required to have education and\nexperience directly relevant to their Cabinet responsibilities. I have the\nbiased conviction as a former teacher that a teacher would have avoided many of\nthe mistakes made over schools closing and opening and over exam results I also\nbelieve that during a pandemic a medic would have made a better health\nsecretary than an economist has. More broadly, many decisions have shown a\nstriking lack of the scientific literacy and fluency with statistics needed to\nwrestle with the issues. The skill sets of too many politicians are very poorly\nsuited to the challenges they have faced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With Global Warming in the background, the Covid19 pandemic\nwill not be the last major crisis our planet will face. Systems of government\nand electoral processes will need to change and nations will need to find ways\nto entrust power to those who will actually be competent enough to exercise it\nwisely and for the benefit of the weak as well as the strong. We will need the\nvery best and most capable people we can find to be in charge. Until then the\nworld will remain cursed by Wombatularity. And not even the wombats would want\nthat.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cNever ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.\u201d (Napoleon Bonaparte) In these troubled times I have been drawn to that phrase in…<\/span><\/p>\n

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