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Who's this old geezer with his untended moustache? Looks like a toff but apart from being an ex-PM he earned a crust from publishing, as did I. Wounded three times in WW1 (No spurs to his heel!) he was eventually undermined by The Profumo Affair. But before then his government's housebuilding record was second to none. A Tory, of course, but with evidence of a heart. |
Brexit was “done” by signing up to an agreement that the
then prime minister (The Untidy One) fully intended to renege on. Any warnings
were said to be scaremongering. I felt ashamed to be British.
Need I summarise more recent happenings? A new broom in 10
Downing Street tried to convert our feeble democracy into a sort of plutocracy
(government by wealth). It failed, but should it ever have been considered?
What comes after shame? Despair, I suppose. That’s me.
I’m a leftie by fairly recent conviction. I believe in the NHS
and feel it cannot be run as a profit-and-loss concern. I feel certain
industries essential to our existence (eg, water) should be nationalised. I
believe countries are judged by the way they look after the most vulnerable. I
don’t resent income tax. I hate
nationalism and its cohort: antipathy towards foreigners. I hate delusional
nostalgia, the yearning for Golden Days when our comforts were achieved through
the exploitation of countries conveniently over the horizon.
I didn’t always despair. I’ve lived through other Tory
governments - Harold Macmillan’s 300,000 houses in one year, Edward Heath pushing
us into a logical union with our nearest neighbours – without too much
teeth-grinding. Now, I view a House of Commons consisting mainly of members
whose only experience of life is via a life in politics. Hollow creatures.
I moved to a more comfortable life in the USA and did OK.
But in the end, for a complexity of reasons, I returned to the UK. What expectations
did I have of what lay east of the Eastern Seaboard? I’m not sure.
But not this. This fatal mixture of greed, ignorance and
incompetence.
Britain, says sickening Rule Britannia, never, never, never shall be slaves. Except when slavery is home-grown and self-chosen.
Watch here (only ten minutes of your time) and tell me what to make of it: https://youtu.be/pofTr1QKiBk
ReplyDeleteSabine: I'm a Guardian reader, ergo, I'm aware of M. Monbiot. I don't read him regularly, it takes energy to do so. Selectively, when I feel like it. I didn't watch the whole of this clip because I didn't need to. Two weeks ago the New Statesman (VR and I are subscribers) had a lengthy and definitive article on neoliberal economics; it was new to me and I read it carefully. In well-chosen and non-jargonistic language the author (whose name I regret to say I've forgotten) laid out the horrors one by one and it fitted the Truss phenomenon exactly. Monbiot uses a somewhat more demotic approach but I have no argument against that. His aims are the same as the NS author: to show there is a rationale, however perverted, behind what has happened in the UK. But thanks for directing me to this clip; the worry is that the pro-arguments for neoliberalism are complex and hard to explain and thus even harder to refute in a way that the wider electorate would understand. Try and predict future. It's a mug's game.
ReplyDeleteAs is obvious from the post, I was aiming for a personal view (We bloggers love the vertical pronoun, don't we?) but interlaced with one or two facts that haven't already been chewed over. I was also aiming to grab readers by the lapels; thus there is quite a lot of stage management. And not necessarily in a predictable order. There is, too, always the risk of appearing facetious but at 87 this leopard's spots are, I fear, permanent.
The best - and uplifting part - of this video is in the last five minutes, do yourself a favour and watch to the end.
ReplyDeleteSabine: Oh dear, dear, as Charles III said to Liz Truss when - after curtsying like a stricken horse in abbattoir - she paid her PM's visit to Bucks Palace and he seemed miles ahead of her in recognising the disasters the country then faced, and still faces. Reminding me why I tend to read Old George selectively.
DeleteDon't get me wrong. Monbiot's heart is in the right place on this and - more particularly - on climate change. But to communicate he is required to simplify and in doing so he paints a picture that is strictly black and white. Whereas real life is a sequence of merging greys. The fact is democratic government virtually everywhere is based on compromise not on rigid principles. More often democratic government is a case of "What we can do" as opposed to "What we should do".
And if we need a clear insight into this think no further than the former leader of the Labour Party in the UK, Jeremy Corbyn. He got there by mistake, almost a joke. He'd spent a professional lifetime opposing whatever government was in power on pure-as-driven-snow Marxist principles. Young people were charmed and joined the Labour Party in droves. Then came the last General Election and constituencies that had voted Labour since the 19th century abruptly switched to Tory. Boris Johnson was in by a landslide. Corbyn was unelectable.
I could go on. Yes I agree with George but coming up with solutions that might work is a damn sight harder than merely presenting the disasters we presently face. Enough, enough. I'm a great Angela Merkel fan and no doubt you can tell me a dozen reasons why I shouldn't be. But she seemed to know how to grind things out. And grinding in my world beats brief flashes of left-wing brilliance that turn out to be unworkable. Sorry about that.
Ah, "Unflappable Mac". A WW1 veteran. Tory landowner. Holidays spent shooting on the moors. A good PM, who cared for the people (some would say "patriarchal", but why not?) and actually got houses built. Most of his married life his wife was having an affair with rogue MP Bob Boothby and he knew it, but managed to carry on his life to his own high standards. A publisher too - the MacMillan press.
ReplyDeleteAs you say, current politicians are little people who have no life outside this, their "career". I despair of our current lot. How did that Truss woman become PM? Where are we to find a leader and party to get this wretched country back on course again?
Avus: Hey, just a moment. I mentioned Macmillan`to show I was capable of appreciating some Tory achievements. I wasn't in the business of canonising him. The sobriquet "unflappable" was two-edged, hinting at Macmillan's inertia over certain problems. You will also remember he was known as Supermac and that was clearly ironic. His off-the-cuff assessment of the country in "never had it so good" was disputed among those who were looking up rather than looking down. And whereas I didn't give a toss about how he treated his colleagues, others had a different view about The Night of the Long Knives when he abruptly fired half his cabinet. Granted he didn't sleep with a young woman who also shared a bed with a KGB officer but The Profumo Affair rebounded on him via suggestions of cronyism. Being a landowner and needlessly shooting birds aren't necessarily pluses when it comes to character assessment.
DeleteWhen you ask the question "How did that Truss woman become PM?" I take it you are referring to the matter rhetorically. It was only too apparent how it happened (Oh how that leadership process dragged on.) and how unrepresentative - even of many Tory views - the final result was always going to be.
How eloquently you describe my own feelings about the current state of the country.
ReplyDeleteI believe that some services should never be handed over to private companies, they are too important for the nation's health and welfare; public transport, the NHS, the water and energy should not be at the whims and mercy of profiteers, many of them in foreign countries.
I heard that Boris is now earning a small fortune on the after dinner speaking circuit - in the USA, I hear, entertaining the oil bosses who have a vested interest in keeping energy prices up while burning the planet to a crisp. Boris never ever cared about anyone or anything other than himself. Doesn't he still have a constituency to run?
Jean: Your penultimate sentence exactly summarises BJ's "charm" and your final sentence asks a very cogent question. It is said that if the Tories were forced into quick general election the polls indicate that both BJ and the serpentine Rees-Mogg would lose their seats. Amen to that.
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