"Reckless Caution"

Heard an expression today from a senior official at Cumbria County Council which sounds at first like a complete oxymoron but on reflection actually makes a very clever point.

The expression concerned was "reckless caution."

And she quite rightly said that it can be very dangerous.

She was talking in the context of budget planning, in which an overly cautious view can lead to very harmful decisions being taken when they don't need to be.

It applies in a whole host of other areas  - the most obvious being when one is a road user, when freezing in the middle of the road, unable to decide whether to go left or right (or back or forward) can make an accident inevitable which a quick decision in either direction would have avoided.

The popular image of the military disasters of World War One is that they were caused by overly aggressive generals who didn't care about their men's lives.

There were such disasters, but there were also instances such as the Gallipoli landings, where the exact opposite happened.

In that instance overly cautious generals who for fear of casualties failed to order their troops to quickly advance and take the high ground on which Kemal Attaturk had placed machine-guns and artillery, lost far more men because of their indecision. The poor devils were left in an exposed position where they were very vulnerable to the fire from those guns.

So yes, sometimes it is possible to be recklessly cautious.

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