WHERE YER FRIENDS DON’T TOTE A GUN

I am struggling to find a positive note on which to end this week.

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I had thought it would happen but it still filled my heart with dread and sadness to wake, yesterday, to news that Russia had invaded Ukraine. I’ve never been closer to Kyiv than Mussorgsky’s, Pictures at an Exhibition, but the sounds of sirens from the radio felt as if Putin had just walked through my back door. It seemed scary and ridiculous all at the same time until I bumped into a friend who is a Russian emigre. He’s sad and horrified - but in no way surprised. And also inclined to think you can’t trust anyone, on any side, because everyone - equally - is lying.

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It reminds you just how much trust - and not just money - makes the world go round.

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You’ll know by now that I worked in the City where, famously, your word is your bond. Well, until wasn’t. And then the whole golden house of cards came tumbling down. But, economically disastrous as the crash of 2008 was, it was, ?nonetheless, only money.

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Today this isn’t just livelihoods, it’s people’s lives.

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I could now try to link this in some way – and I am aware some of you look out for the weekly twist - to the way health and safety in the built environment works best when everyone is able to rely on one another. Or how the current Building Safety Bill is a direct response to what happens when that bond is broken. Those things may well be true but it seems entirely trivial in the light of current events. So, I’ll just point you to our new briefing on the state of play with the proposed legislation - it can be found at: www.aps.org.uk/building-safety-bill .

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I’ve no idea what should be done to support Ukraine. Whatever it is, I think it needs to be more than we are doing. I have a fear, from any casual glance at European history, that a tyrant will keep pushing on until they’re stopped. I worry sanctions appear a near neighbour to appeasement and unlikely to cut off sufficient finance to put on the brakes under Putin’s tanks.

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But I know nothing of war – except that it is a failure. My Dad was so sickened by what he’d seen during service in the Second World War that no war films or Wild West epics [except comedies and the peace-loving Destry Rides Again] were screened in our house. My brother was the only child I ever knew whose cowboy outfit came with no gun.

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And war leaves its traces even when you are not a participant and have been insulated from its effects. I remember – just! – the Vietnam war. But that may have been because I’d switched my affections from Andy Pandy to the BBC’s ace reporter Julian Pettifer. And I have friends who experienced the last Balkan crisis at first hand and a former colleague who saw news action in the Gulf.

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I know not all war is unnecessary - or that advances do not result from conflict. Good can come from bad: it’s just that the gains so rarely seem to outweigh the losses. My ladder-resist tights are an insult to the ghetto. I fervently hope something positive may result from the current conflict in Ukraine. Just as, closer to home, I hope some good will flow from the disaster at Grenfell. I just wish that the casualties won’t extend further than the truth. That is more than damage enough. And, sadly, increasingly a forlorn hope.

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Peace seems so much the preferred way to live. But a collective unwillingness effectively to face down Putin’s escalating overseas ambitions and interference has, perhaps, made this aggression possible and taken a peaceful solution off the table.

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All conflict will undoubtedly end at the negotiating table. I always wondered why - in battles large and small - we couldn’t just cut to the chase and go straight to ‘jaw jaw’ omitting the unnecessary loss of life in the ‘war war’ phase. I’m not so na?ve not to know it’s all about the point you are at when you reach the table and the land you hold when you do. So, much as I try, I can’t see a solution without some military might forcing the pace.

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I wish it was not the case. It may be of no use at all but I’m off to light a candle - and pray for peace.