Thoughts from a boiled frog

I arrived at work today as a boiled frog. When I left home this morning on my bike it was barely drizzling, so it wasn’t worth putting on my waterproofs. As I cycled the intensity of the rain gradually increased, until I was soaked. If it had been raining like this when I set off, I would, of course have covered up: I’m not (that) stupid. I had become a victim of the boiled frog syndrome (which I was reminded of recently by Christopher Brookmyre in his dark, but hilarious thriller, Boiling a Frog.)

How do you boil a frog? If you put a frog in boiling water, it has the sense to jump straight out. If you put it in lukewarm water and gradually increase the temperature the situation never gets quite threatening enough to provoke alarm and action and the frog relaxes in the increasingly warm, and apparently comfortable, environment - until it is boiled. (Note to readers: no frogs were hurt in the writing of this blog; I have relied on secondary sources for descriptions of this behaviour.)

Is this syndrome only of concern to frogs, cyclists and thriller writers? No. Imagine you wanted to introduce a police state in to Britain, with few restrictions on the arbitrary actions of police. Would you legislate for unlimited powers of detention immediately? Not if you were wise, subtle and determined. You would play a long game, increasing the historic 24 hours limit to detention without charge and court appearance to 48 hours then to 7 days then to 14 then, say to 90, then to … It is of course possible that moving from 14 days to 90 days in one leap, would be to clumsy a hand on the regulator and it would wake up the frog. Never mind, you are playing the long game, turn the dial back to 28 and the frog will go back to sleep, warm and cosy, there is always next year for 90 and beyond.

There are of course other frogs, in other pans. One marked CCTV surveillance; another marked identity databases; another is the frequency of gun use by police. The great thing is that the frogs are warm relaxed and somnolent and never talk to each other, never make the connections which enable them to see they are all being boiled alive (sorry make that dead).

The government and the police have learned an important lesson in life. You don’t take the money and run: you take the money and walk slowly away without drawing attention to yourself.