Faerie Son: Set a Crisis to Patch a Crisis

Set a Thief to catch a Thief

This old idiom is, I think, fairly self explanatory, a sort of 'hats off' to counterintuitive thinking. Undoubtedly, there is a logic here, that we might search in the darker corners for the solutions to darker issues. But would we? Would we really work closely with or employ the more disingenuous reasonings of those who are well practised at bringing about an opposite conclusion to that which we had hoped to achieve?

Or maybe instead, 'set a crisis to patch a crisis,' might this instead suffice?

The potential potholes with the former idiom, might be that the employment of those seeking to undermine a stated aim might also serve to further hone the skills of the wrong-doers. I guess that ultimately, within a system where money is the new religion, money will, more than likely, win the day. Ergo, can we more-lucratively bribe the 'thieves' within the system, than they will be able to asset-strip the same system from within?

Such a society- we might well chuckle at the very idea- would have us promoting the criminal classes to places where they might do battle with other criminals, yet all-the-while on our behalves. What an outrageous state of affairs this would be... and we would have good cause to know.

On the other hand, 'setting a crisis to patch a crisis,' well, isn't this exactly where we currently reside? To clarify, I think that it would be more than fair to consider the UK as having more than it's fair share of constitutional crises. For the sake of argument let's draw up a short list, shall we?

So crises of a constitutional flavour then, as opposed to those of a more arguably fundamental nature: certainly 'the survival of the NHS,' undeniably 'state education,' definitely 'housing,' and then there's 'the creation of an accessible public transport infrastructure,' oh, and 'the regulation of the banking sector, and dare we include 'the monopoly of energy provision?'

This is by no means an inclusive list; such a list might almost run away with itself. And with each further addition, we might argue that subjectivity has begun to slowly to usurp objectivity.

For example, might we include 'flood defences,' should 'the provision of information' feature? Is 'gambling' yet enough of a national issue? Does the inclusion of 'the rise of the food banks' overstep the objective ideal? Would 'obesity' be far too judgemental? What about 'litter pollution,' what about 'democracy,' what about 'deregulation,' what about 'financial inequality,' what about 'taxation,' what about 'the legal system?'

It could be argued, and I am doing just this, that it has become something of a fashion to 'declassify,' or else to diminish any looming crisis. Declassify a crisis and it not only enables some people to pretend that it is no longer a crisis but, worse than this, it enables the reclassification of any 'solution.'

We might accept any crisis at face value, this as a first step to finding a solution. Or we might instead seek 'patch' things up. And, if we opt instead for this, what are these patches going to look like? Are they going to work? And what do we mean by 'work?' Might we not just end up 'hatching new crises to patch old crises?' And, if we do this, aren't we just reshaping the crisis? Cite 'tackling national debt' by using 'austerity.' Or we might conveniently actually create new crises, from 'situations' disingenuously ignored, to patch newly inflated issues that were never there in the first place. Cite the 'deregulation' of TV gambling sites.' Now we are 'betting better,' apparently.

A minor interjection; it should be accepted that any given constitutional crisis remains just this, even if it has been so 'kind' as to exempt your good self. Should the most recent spate of floods not have taken with them the entirety of your worldly goods, this should in no way disqualify the prefix 'national' or 'constitutional' from the crisis. One person's good fortune with Saturday's football scores is not reasonable cause for the nation to celebrate. Nor is the acquisition of a further terrace of 'bargain' homes- until recently somebody else's- reason to celebrate 'investment property buying' on the BBC.

Where money rules the roost, one person's crisis is another person's opportunity. There's nothing quite like a recession for a chance to accumulate an abundance of cheap assets. So, rather dependant upon from where you're viewing any crisis, even those high mortality crises might offer more than their fair share of good investment opportunities.

We might patch things up, but what are those patches going to look like? Are they going to work? And, what do we really mean by 'work?' Perhaps we really hope to falter, so that we might redefine our goals, our aspirations, even the very crisis itself! We either aim to solve, or else we aim to deceive. We might not always hit the intended target, but if the aim was never to hit the target in the first instance...

I would contest that we are currently setting crises to patch crises, rather even 'hatching crises to patch crises.' So familiar have some become that we might even give these hatchlings names: Michael Gove, Iain Duncan Smith, Jeremy Hunt, watch them morph, watch them excrete, watch them pretend that they 'are' the solution, and watch the cancer grow!