Pride kills a lot of people. What I mean is the refusal to take advice in the face of overwhelming evidence. In flying that’s ignoring bad weather and pressing on regardless. Alternatively, it could be; not seeing the ground rapidly come up to meet you. Yes, flying into hills or mountains a common way of crashing a plane. It’s often fatal. Experience shows that; being too slow to react to an oncoming threat is a sure fire way to crash.
To try to prevent pilots accidentally flying into terrain of any kind a clever piece of kit was developed that shouts out a warning. It calls out “pull up” when it thinks the aircraft is in peril. Even with this stern warning there are still cases where the warning is ignored and an accident happens.
This goes back to stubborn human pride. At what point would you admit you’re wrong and turn back or in the case mentioned forcefully “pull up”? For able and confident people, it’s hard to admit that maybe we made an error. Being objective, accepting a mistake was made and then correcting it is a successful strategy but it’s not at all easy.
I’m putting this notion forward as an analogy to Britain’s current situation. I have difficulty imagining at what point we would say; that’s enough social and economic damage, we were wrong. Now we are going take a deep breath, step back and fix the problem.
Political pride can be even more dangerous than professional pride. There’s a huge set of barriers to being objective and taking the long view. The recent EU referendum was all about short-term issues. A hunger for a quick fix overtook a majority of voters and drove us towards danger. The pending problem of Brexit is like that mountain in front of the aeroplane. Today we are flying right at a steep mountain cliff. So, at what point will the British Government say; right that’s enough?
At what point will the damage done be so great that the signal to turn back is sent? Surely there must be a point. If there isn’t one, then a crash is certain.
John Vincent 