Risk

A society unwilling to take risks will never make progress.

We chuckle when ill-informed American tourists cancel their British holiday plans because of an ETA terrorist outrage in Spain. ‘Don’t they realise that Europe is a big place?’ ‘Don’t they know that they’re more likely to be murdered in gun-toting Washington than almost any European city?’

But before we throw stones westwards we should examine our own glass house attitudes.

Some risks scare us silly but we close our minds to others

To say that Britain is becoming risk-averse is only one side of the story. More significant is how we frighten ourselves silly about certain risks and close our minds to others.

After the Hatfield train crash the government imposed sweeping restrictions on train speeds. People deserted the railways in favour of more dangerous car travel.

More and more restrictions are being imposed on smoking but the risks of alcohol abuse are being downplayed as New Labour deregulates pub opening hours.

A teenager dies on a school trip and government lawyers warn schools to take out liability insurance that can make trips unaffordable. The consequence is that more children stay at home. Rather than horizon-extending adventure holidays they lounge on sofas - shooting alien invaders on their Playstations and becoming the most obese and unhealthy of generations.

Play parks are closed down because councils can’t afford to maintain them to ever-higher regulatory standards and bored kids are forced to play soccer on city streets – dodging the traffic.

The socially-unjust consequences of risk averse politics

Media frenzies often drive politicians towards risk averse behaviour. If paranoid politicians know that a possibly revolutionary project will produce media hysteria if it goes wrong, they’ll probably choose a ‘safer’, status quo project. That will certainly be the advice of Sir Humphrey Appleby and the civil service bureaucracy.

This risk aversion is one of the reasons why Britain has such an expensive and dehumanising welfare state. New ways of tackling poverty are usually riskier – for politicians - than the failed status quo...

• It’s safer for politicians to carry on funding the inner city school that hardly ever sends a pupil to university than to trust that an innovative but privately-operated school with taxpayers’ money.
• It’s safer for politicians to carry on with the managerial approach to drug addiction than to fund radical faith-based rehabilitation projects.
• It’s safer for politicians to continue to fund politically-correct children’s charities that everyone has heard of, than to put money into new youth services that don’t think smacking should be outlawed.

All progress is delivered by risk-takers

In a major speech entitled ‘Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained’, Oliver Letwin reminded us that all of life’s big decisions involve risk:

“It is a risk to fall in love, to get married, to have children; to lend a hand, to have a go or to make a difference. None of these things can ever be without risk. Neither can starting a business, or changing a career, or making an investment.”

Whilst noting a big difference between risk and recklessness, he concluded:

”Whether fighting injustice, fighting a fire or fighting for your country, risk cannot be avoided. There is nothing new or untested, brave or heroic that is not a risk. The call to minimise risk is a call to minimise love, trust, faith, hope, enterprise, compassion, and courage. The call to minimise risk is a call to minimise everything that makes life worth living. The call to minimise risk is a call for a cowardly society.”

Comments

[Derek]

In order to put risk back into society, we need to allow notices such as "All those who use these facilities/this service do so at their own risk" to be able to mean what they say under the law.