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Tuesday 7 September 2021

400. From White Van Man to Square Grey Sofa People - explaining public inertia in the face of the UK’s degradation at the hands of Boris Johnson...

 

Square grey sofas show us why so few folk are raging against this catastrophic government, the lies of Brexit and the rotting pile of consequences we can no longer pretend are to do with covid.

It was Emily Thornberry who stepped down from Labour’s front bench under Ed Miliband after tweeting a picture of a house with a white van and two St George’s flags hung outside. She should have learned from Gordon Brown that we now live in a country where you can be a xenophobic bigot but you cannot intimate that someone may be bigoted or xenophobic. In Thornberry’s case – it was not just the white van it was the juxtaposition with the two English flags. And – for what it’s worth – I make the same assumptions she made when I see anyone hanging national flags on their houses.

But that is past history. In fact – judging from the content of much of the media these days – what happens at breakfast is history by teatime. What happened last week or was said by a government minister two days ago is ancient dusty – barely remembered antiquity – never to be contradicted even if the same folk are saying something entirely at odds with what they said or promised in their last interview.

A few days ago I was perusing Gumtree while my partner did the same on Fb, searching for a cheap sofa. What we saw was item after item ad infinitum (!) of square grey sofa. Punctuated by the occasional more colourful settee, obviously from an older household.

Odd – I thought – in a country where all advertising and marketing seems aimed at targeting a person’s individuality. ‘It’s all about you’ says the sexy, whispery voice or the humorous laddish tone – whether its interiors or cars or new kitchens. And somehow – everyone ends up with much the same. And they are bored with it before it’s been paid for.

I then went down a thought alley which meandered around how people also sound the same. Whichever part of the country you happen to be in – people talk in Soap Opera / morning TV / cheap drama soundbites. Everyone is ‘going on a journey’ ‘struggling with my mental health’ (no one is ever just having a bad day anymore). The comedy clichés have worked their way in ‘did you see what I did there?’ after any mundanity. No one seems to be themselves.

I began to get the uncomfortable feeling that the whole of Britain had become a sluggish, less shiny Stepford. Thinking for yourself is dangerous.

Then the alley got dark and thorny. Is this why no one seems to think independently – no one seems to critically evaluate what they read or hear or what is fed to them on their one-line news feeds? Is this why the media seems so lame – just a vehicle for government press releases and staged photos? Is this why the level of anger at the way the poor / disadvantaged / immigrant population are treated is less than tepid. Is this why – unlike me – the vast majority of folk do not seem to be pissing themselves that fairly soon there will be real food shortages and infrastructure breakdowns in even wealthy countries? (Starting with the wealthy country that voted Brexit)

The grey sofa people…

Not stupid just worn out – like their sofas. Not unkind – just flattened by life - like their sofas. Not liking the current situation – just unable to get up – off their square grey sofas.

And – yes – you may argue that the fact that so many square grey sofas are being sold is a sign that the SGS People are coming  out of their stupor – their malaise – their do-what-everyone-else-is-doing or die mentality. But no. If they have all got over Square Grey Sofaitis – it’s only because the next version is due – like the next smart phone or the next shade of eye shadow or the next hairstyle that EVERYONE will have to make themselves feel individual… Maybe this time it will be blue – nothing too startlingly different. Just enough to make the SGS People buy into the next thing that everyone else has that makes them feel a. they are individual and b. like everyone else…

And this mind balancing act takes up time, energy and money so who can worry about global warming or your kids breathing poison air or killer amounts of sugar and fat in food or that fact that the country is run by a dumb arsed, self-obsessed shyster and a circus of cretins whose only instinct is to cream off more wealth for their own tribe?

It’s really a perfect solution to the problem of people not being happy with an unfair world.  It’s a simple solution for a species that – in its natural state - questions and looks with a critical eye at the world around. A final solution. To all our problems.

It’s Stepford Britain populated with the Square, Grey Sofa People fed with the fat and sugar of media candy and talked into a blank torpor by the endless ramblings of their crazy-clown overlord.

No rebellion necessary.

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Should have another comedy gig coming up in October. I'll post details when its confirmed.

Meanwhile - do check out My BOOKS all available on expanded distribution so you can buy from alternative, independent online bookstores. And remember while I'm not on Fb/twit/tik/inst etc etc - there are corresponding youtube videos for ALL the poems in  Fun Poems for Children performed by ME.