Credit crunch vaccine

Cherie Blair’s recent disclosure that her children were vaccinated with MMR opened up fresh wounds in the continuing MMR debate. However these wounds were not as deep as those inflicted by a senior Labour MP. Mary Creagh has suggested children who are not vaccinated should not be allowed to start school.

Ostensibly such a sanction seems valid when public health officials are trying to achieve ‘herd immunity’. Notwithstanding the obvious benefits of mass immunization there still remain several caveats. Haven’t we all been living under the threat of a measles epidemic and a bird-flu pandemic for the past several years? Maybe the reluctance of these viruses to appear provides a subtle indication that our immunization programmes need new government targets.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the increase in school truancy rates. Getting children into school in the first place is surely paramount for politicians rather than providing kids with a ready-made excuse for absenteeism. Especially when Ofsted is saying one in five 11 year-olds are failing in the three Rs. Such figures become viral, dispersing a contagion of low expectation like a Black Death. Arguably “no-notice” Ofsted inspections would inoculate the lives of young children from the malady of illiteracy.

Yet school isn’t just about the National Curriculum, it’s also about learning the hidden curriculum. The playground teaches children a raft of social skills, which acts like an immunity system, allowing our children to deal with the complexities of life outside the school gates. Lacking this form of social ‘vaccination’ is just as threatening to our children and ultimately our society as missing the MMR jab.

Indeed many adults might wish medical science developed a more diverse array of vaccines. There would undoubtedly be queues of people willing to be inoculated against the alarming spread of infections like instant gratification, indifference, arrogance and self-interest. Richard Sennett describes this disorder as ‘infantilism’. For those infected, the world is not for sharing; as it is a playground and absolutely nothing is going to stop them doing what they want in it.

Haven’t we all notice the squadrons of motorists who fly along our roads indifferent to any restrictions. These people have their new toys and they want somewhere to show them off. This Top Gear mentality encourages role play, as these pseudo-babies suckle on the Jeremy Clarkson mindset by racing along with a mobile phone firmly glued to an ear. So eager are they to play in life’s playground that celebrities fail to consider the price we all pay as their conceit mutates into contagion.

Contempt is now viral, and has spread way beyond its suburban homelands. Just glance around Poole Harbour on a summer’s day, and witness the ‘deserving rich’ at play. Their brash boats splash playfully in and around their playpen, discharging multi-faceted faeces of noise, fumes and hubris over us all. And it doesn’t stop there. Turn your head towards the coastline and witness our landscape is being systematically blighted by the avarice of developers. Such a noun is a euphemism for a self-righteous parasitic creature we all need inoculating from.

Not long ago it felt as if there would never be a vaccine against the epidemic of self interest. Paradoxically the very market mechanisms which fuelled this virus have turned on themselves. The Credit Crunch has unwittingly initiated a ‘herd immunity’ programme of its own design. Like little children receiving their first inoculations, the initial prick of the credit squeeze, is like most injections painful. But the long term protection and benefits all forms of immunization bring for everyone, is both necessary and priceless

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