335. Are Western liberals plummeting into Bunyan’s ‘slough of despond’?

The howling you hear in your dreams is not just the collapse of Democracy – it is the inescapable end of Empires. And it is the sudden, seeming inevitability that is crushing.

The revulsion at seeing social and political achievements rotting before our very eyes is something we should get used to because it’s not fixing any time soon.

As we look on in horror at the US impeachment farce the UK Brexit farrago, one thing might at least save us from waking up every morning with the collective used-to-be-a-democracy hangover.

Whether it was The Romans, The Mongols or The Conquistadors –  we know  that Empires rot from within. They begin with high-minded if misguided people full of energy and self-confidence (and violence and acquisitiveness) imposing their ideas and culture on others while plundering other countries but often imposing strong administration and co-operative structures to shore everything up. They end with the promotion of mediocrity and the corrosiveness of cronyism and nepotism.

Ironically – one thing that helped the UK’s international credibility after the empire fell away and we became "the sick man of Europe" was its association and closer connection with the EU.

And I wonder if, as things imploded in the past, Roman or Mongol or Spanish people watched and asked ‘how did it come to this’? As their leaders failed and the mediocre were promoted and nepotism infected every branch of administration and corruption became normal – did they eventually sit back and despair? Did they drown in the slough of despond?

In The Pilgrim’s Progress John Bunyan’s 1678 Christian allegory, the reader is exhorted to recognise despair as a sin. Bunyan's hero has to be constantly wary of “the slough of despond”. But just how do you avoid despair or despondency? How do you avoid slipping in if you are an intelligent, humane human being in the US or UK for example? Part of what leads to a sense of despair, I am sure, is feeling that nothing works. And that is something many must be feeling now. 

If one regards the very extensive list of undesirables in high office and seemingly immovable, it is hard to imagine there isn’t some outer force working on behalf of the self-serving low-lifes. How do you end up with half-wits running countries? How do you end up with known liars, cheaters, thugs and corrupt delinquents running – not banana republics and communist or fascist states but Western democracies – because that is what we have.

As the UK’s opposition remains non-existent and Democrats in disarray seem ready to help let Trump in for a second term, neither the US or UK look like bucking the trends of the past by rebalancing with strong cohesive opposition to become the first nations to reign things in before hitting the rocks of history.

334 Coronavirus & Carillion show us that in a crisis you either need co-operation or control. Britain now has neither.

As Johnson’s government acquiesces to China doing a ‘bit’ in our internet infrastructure (oh please) it might be worth looking at some other technical know-how that has the UK looking rather pathetic and behind for a supposedly developed nation (Rule Britannia blah blah blah…)

 No. I’m not talking about the failing, under-invested rail network. No. I’m not talking about the stumbling school system. I’m not talking about the horror show which is our privatised energy sector or the privatised water companies that are failing so badly on so many levels. I’m talking about hospitals.

As the coronavirus shows us some of China’s failings, mainly the ones we already knew about, it also shows us that a modern country with modern technology should be able to build standard blue-print structures quickly as needed. So contrast the 1,000 bed hospital in Wuhan being built in about a fortnight with the embarrassing abomination of The Royal Liverpool hospital – initial tax payer bill £335 million – and not usable or even finished three years after its due completion date.

The construction company Carillion – was a mess of a mega monolith with sub-contracted companies so spaghetti like it will take as long to work out who screwed who as it did to build the still-unusable hospital. 

As Carillion was collapsing in full view it was still receiving lucrative government contracts. The hospital Carillion was supposedly replacing has not been kept up to date because there was meant to be a new one on stream. The unfinished structure is unsafe which brings into question why a previous Tory administration (in 2010) took away the right of local authorities to inspect buildings on their territory built by the private sector. Why?

Coronavirus and Carillion show us that in a crisis you either need co-operation or control. Britain has neither.

Related – a recent letter of mine published in The Independent (fuller version in The New European) 

333. How to be 'Brexit' British.

Being ‘Brexit British’

Shrug off a paedo prince

But sneer at Meghan Markle

Waste years and billions of pounds on a

Faux EU debacle

Elect a clown Prime Minister

Jingoism’s all the rage

Elevate mediocrity

Set all thinking to beige

Xenophobia is so popular

But actually we sold

Everything that was British

The family silver and the gold

(to foreign corporations, princes and oligarchs)

Fuel flag waving hysteria

Cheer passports that are blue

Business experts aren’t impressed

But Boris said ‘fuck you!’

True Brexit Brits will tell us that

Britannia ruled the waves

But leave out any reference to

The history of slaves

Come Brexit Brits all celebrate

The greatest trick conceivable

Getting turkeys to vote for Christmas

Was actually achievable…

(…and then they stuffed themselves – The End)

Extra! Extra! Read All About It!

for FREE.

As a weekend extra I’d like to add that girls need to see themselves as leaders  now more than ever as privileged males continue to trash the world – and that can start with young readers…

For example - not all adventure books need to have boys as the central characters and not all girls in such books need be the sensible side-kicks.

So, just for a change, check out my Eleanor trilogy and try bk 1 FREE (in the kindle version – and no you don’t need an e-reader for this) until Tuesday Jan 28th. 

Eleanor & Dread Mortensa Bk 1 (UK)

ELeanor & Dread Mortensa Bk 1 (US)

332. The Human Algorithm, Cosmic Irony or Divine Retribution?

Here is something to consider - if you really have nothing better to do with your brain space. Is the current inexplicable political self-destruct in countries that have plucked disasters off the didn’t-need-to-happen shelf, just part of what I think of as the Human Algorithm? Is it Cosmic Irony or is it Divine Retribution?

Here is something else to consider – as they’d often have the same result does it really matter?

I’ve mulled over this idea before in relation to Brexit. Struck as I was by the huge irony that the very attitude that spawned the empire and grew it literally on the backs of African slaves should bring Britain so very low in the form of the hideous pointless jingoism of Brexit – I did one of my doodles a while back…

And yes, I’m not lost on the fact that as a descendant of slaves I’m caught up in the mess but I’m not sure Cosmic Irony is – or would be if it existed -  particularly discriminating (pun intended).

The Human Algorithm is an idea I’m keen on. By it I mean that if you look widely enough and are prepared to take in huge swathes of history, certain things seem to balance out. And everything has its own self-destruct or balancing mechanism. Take disposable nappies for example (stay with me this won’t take long) If you are a lazy parent who doesn’t give a shit about the planet (another intended pun) and you keep your kids in disposable nappies/pull-ups til they are  nearly 4 (not something that happened when mums had to use Terry nappies) – the chances of a male child growing up infertile increase. Hence your lazy not-caring genes are limited. Get it? That is what I mean by The Human Algorithm. Equally, fail to deal with the jingoistic, we’re-better-than-johnny-foreigner attitude and you get – well – the self-destruct of Brexit.

In 1066 King Harold (Earl of Essex) was killed by William the Conqueror. Fail to deal with the nonsense of monarchy and hereditary privilege (and snobbery and racism) and in 2020 Harry (Duke of Sussex) ensures that by the time its bro Will’s turn to be king the monarchy will be an obviously big bad implausible joke. Tadaaaa - The Human Algorithm.

Last weekend The Independent published another letter of mine, this one concerning the concerning Scott Morrison – the ridiculous idiot running Australia and still in denial about the effects of the climate calamity even as his country literally burns The Independent (letter Jan 12th) This was the letter if you can’t access The Independent online.

‘Dear Editor,

When the evangelical Scott Morrison won a surprise election victory in Australia with his inhumane treatment of migrants and his mocking of the climate crisis – he joked that it was divine intervention.

I’d like to know what the ‘divine ScoMo’ now makes of the devastating apocalyptic fires.

Amanda Baker

And now of course Australia has floods – they just need plagues of locusts and frogs and there can be no argument.

Then we have America – being daily degraded by the orange idiot. Note; the US is not being dragged down in just any old way in any old mud. America is appearing more, under Trump, like the very countries he sneers at – the ones he referred to as ‘shitholes’. America looks like a third world, third rate mess, headed by an ignorant bullying thug, supported by yes men, the corrupt, the criminal, the cowardly and the fawning.  America’s credibility which you could literally take to the bank – will pass to China. If they don’t all get the new flu.

You can only stretch ‘coincidence’ so far before it snaps. If it’s not Divine Retribution – it is something remarkably almost darkly, comically similar.

*

And ok – I admit that this is one of my crazier posts…

331. Last time the queen contacted me…

...I was about 8, Britain was unashamedly racist and sexist and was about to join the European Economic Community (having joined the EU in 1970).

I’m not expecting to hear from QE2 again any time soon as my interest in royalty waned shortly after it started. But just as its ok for a young girl to think she will be a concert pianist with no need to practice or to decide she won’t be an inventor because everything has already been invented (see newspaper cutting below)

it’s also fine for that same little girl to assume that kings, queens and princes and princesses are a good idea. It’s really not something an intelligent grownup should still adhere to and I don’t. This has obviously come to an interesting juncture as the nastier elements of the media, the establishment and the royals themselves get into much more of a lather over Meghan Markle wanting to get away from those who’ve shat on her pretty much from the moment she was associated with Pr H, than they ever did over paedo-Epstein-loving Andy.

Paying rich privileged people out of the tax system – people who have eye-watering private wealth – much of it from historically dodgy sources -  in a modern democracy where even people who actually do proper paid jobs are still having to go to food banks is mad.

And this is something the media and the establishment who first displayed their snobbishness and racism in MM’s direction should remember. Many people like me – sentient adults – are not royalists. Many of us softened just a little when a real human person appeared in their midst. Even if we had to justify it by looking at the whole cabal as over-paid celebrities and try and blank a little reality out.

I’ve written on this blog and in letters published in the press (god love ‘em they are still not sick of me after all these years across dozens of different publications home and abroad) about the abysmal way Meghan Markle has been treated. I would say the racism and abuse and snobbery is thinly veiled – but it wasn’t and isn't. It is blatant.

So the thing that is currently amazing and diverting me from all the real catastrophes around the world (see last post) is the utterly vitriolic way the press who mauled her are slating her for wanting out.

Since the last truly English and remarkable and even admirable (by the standards of the day) monarch got an arrow in his eye in 1066, there really have been no other English kings or queens of persistent merit. OR who have worked so hard to earn their place. And yet through the twists and turns of the nonsense of a 'hereditary' lineage thin at points and entirely swerved off that path at others, this idea of entitlement as persisted. I do not understand it any more than I understand why the very rich get out of paying taxes or the very stupid, inept and disordered get elected to high office. But the inbreds of Europe hanging on to titles and entitlement over centuries is something we all need to consider because while much has changed since 1066 I would argue that, in many ways, as much again has changed since I received my last missive from her maj in the very early 1970s.

The only thing that hasn’t changed is the bicycle referred to at the end of the piece. It was a very old, second hand bike back then and far too big for me even with the saddle right down. I still ride it today. Of the knackered old institution of the royal family and the rather wonderful, knackered old bike, only one thing was really worth keeping.

*

FUNNY TREAT!

If you need some comedy to get you through January try my new comedy novel in its kindle version or treat someone you think may also need a laugh to the paperback.

Sex Violence & the Wrong mobility Scooter (UK)

Sex Violence & the Wrong Mobility Scooter (US)

330. 100% cure for anxiety in 2020

Take a leaf out of our glorious leaders’ book – it’s just the one book titled ‘don’t give a shit’ even about a crisis - even if you caused the crisis.

Those who lead us a merry dance to Armageddon don’t experience it and anxiety has becomes an over-used euphemism for the self-pity of cosseted millennials. It’s also a fairly useless emotion. Let’s ditch the word for 2020.

Anxiety is a word now even being ascribed to concerns about the environment. Some of my favourite columnists began the year discussing ways to assuage our anxiety as if the biggest problem with global apocalypse is that it’s making middle class white people feel anxious rather than that its already wiping out poor defenceless coastal communities in places the UK doesn’t really care about as it happily disengages from the collective action of EU membership  and meanders towards the mirage of a perfect 1950s Britain where women wore pinafores, men did manual jobs until they died of emphysema and it was ok to be sexist and racist.

Permanently looking at the world all through the self-regard magnifying glass will just make you properly ill plus as I’ve said many times before– if you aint feeling anxious about the state of the world right now you’re not normal so then it becomes a case of my ‘got anxiety’ is bigger than yours. I bet it’s not.

In short – if you are lucky enough to have a doctor to go to who will confirm that you have ‘anxiety issues’ you are very, very lucky indeed and we really don’t need to worry about you. We actually need to worry about the people with Ebola / Malaria / Cholera who have no doctors or the people whose food sources are gone because of pollution or whose parents have died locked in a ‘factory’ in India making the jeans you wore to the doctor’s appointment where it was confirmed that you have ‘anxiety issues.’

BUT better still just don’t care. The US blob Trump doesn’t. He does do tantrums but that’s a whole different thing. He was quite happy to attempt – again – to start WWIII from his private golf course. The Australian blob Scott Morrison, who doesn’t accept that the climate and environment are in crisis, had to be dragged back from his Hawaiian holiday while Australia was literally burning. And our own blob Boris Johnson – having successfully steered the rotten Brexit tanker onto the rocks didn’t cut short his Caribbean holiday even though his brother blob across the pond had – as we established earlier – had another go at kicking off WWIII. 

So – join the blobs and don’t give a shit.