Wednesday, 1 July 2020

Whack-a-mole

If, like me, you have no idea what Boris is talking about when he uses the whack-a-mole phrase, look no further! I have answers.

Originally a fairground game using a wooden mallet and (presumably fake) "moles" which keep popping up, the fiendishly clever Japanese invented an early arcade game in the 1970s called Whac-a-mole. モグラ退治 (mogura taiji, "Mole Buster") 

[I hope fiendish isn't thought of as racist; to me it's a term of endearment]

Why whack moles? Why not crocodiles? Wasps? Ants? I guess ants are too easy, wasps too hard and crocs more likely to counter-attack. Those moles have such cute baby faces with their twitchy whiskers and bobbing heads and ..... wait! You mean you wanna whack these little guys? What kind of person are you? I know, dear readers, you'll be thinking of me killing enemies in my computer games. But spaceships, yes. Weird aliens, fine. Fellow citizens of our planet, not so much. I can honestly say I have never whacked a mole - real, fake or electronic.

Now I know farmers, greenkeepers at golf and croquet clubs and suburban gardeners will be telling me they are pests which cause damage. I don't care. Farmers, build some mole homes for the little guys and run an education programme to show them how anti-social their behaviour is (ASBOs for moles). Golf clubs, put your greens somewhere else - maybe in those lovely sand pits you have. Croquet lawns, build a maze of underground tunnels to direct the moles onto a neighbouring property. What do you mean the moles have already built those tunnels from the neighbouring property to yours?

OK, maybe they are a problem. But they're your problem, not mine.

Anyway, why does Boris keep uttering this phrase? I am told that it is a commonly used phrase to describe the process by which you solve one problem and another then pops up, and then another and so on. In insurgent combat, inner city law enforcement, computer program debugging and spam attacks. I don't think this colloquial usage necessarily implies that solving one problem can unexpectedly cause another (with which I am definitely familiar in programming) but that can sometimes be the case.

Boris uses it to describe the UK government's current strategy to control resurges in covid-19 infections. You ease the lockdown but retain measures to control local popups of the virus - as currently in Leicester.

But Boris there is a messaging problem with the analogy. First of all it implies a lack of control rather than mastery. Secondly it concedes the inevitability of such ongoing infection spikes. Thirdly it suggests that it's not a solution to the problem; rather a Band-Aid (other sticking plasters are available). Fourthly, it implies that the government is at the mercy of, rather than in control of, events ("Events, dear boy" - Harold Macmillan). Is that the message you want to give?

A good sound bite maybe needs to be a tad more substantive, Boris. Think again.

And stop encouraging people to whack moles!


2 comments:

  1. A fifthly, like everything he does, it trivialises the issue just enough that the muggles won't get too exercised about anything, hold him responsible and boot him out. Let;s keep the jolly old boy in. He's better than another Nigel we could have ended up with.

    ReplyDelete