And Yet

I have in my pocket, the double sided coin of fortune/misfortune. It’s a coin I have no control over. I can’t flip it and make something good out of that which isn’t. I live in the UK. I’ve never lived anywhere else so admittedly I have little to compare it against. The UK was traditionally, a nation that levelled out extremism by not giving it the opportunity to appeal to the masses. We operated using consensus and using moderation. There were always troubles brewing and often, our governments wanted them quietly go away. This wasn’t good for racial injustice, poverty and inequality. We managed however to make steps in the right direction to right these wrongs. They were never completely resolved but at least they tried.

Then in June 2016, millions voted to leave the EU. They were promised a new dawn, a sunlit upland where national identity and pride could be restored. They were sold a lie which many to this day, still believe to be true. The subsequent five years have dragged the UK down to a second rate nation, struggling to put food on shelves and facing price rises.

But what about COVID I hear you ask? Surely this has changed everything?? First off, remember this is a GLOBAL pandemic. By its very nature, all parts of the world have been hit by it. I suggest that it has only made an inevitably hard situation in the UK, even harder. Things would have slid downhill possibly faster had it not been for the pandemic. Like everything this present Conservative government touches however, it turns rancid. The highest proportional death toll, the most chaotic mismanagement of a disaster possible and yet….

The British people have had two opportunities before COVID arrived, to get rid of these clowns that now control our fate and still they get returned to power. They have encouraged division, profited from inequality and lied to cover up their ineptitude. The main opposition party has crumbled, descending into witch-hunts, chaos and ineffectuality. I have left the party I was once a proud member of, not because I was a disillusioned left winger but because I do not know what they now stand for. They provide no opposition when it is most needed. I am now a member of the Green Party and hope that millions will begin to make the move away from other centre left parties to my party. I am living proof that no all Greens are sandal wearing vegans, obsessed with permaculture and cycling. And yet…

I am very lucky to live in an extraordinarily beautiful country. We have some spectacular countryside, a diverse and rich culture, more history than we can sometimes cope with. I love our unpredictable weather and loved our sense of decency and fair play. I say loved because these are being rapidly eroded by this culture of extremism that has infected our nations psyche. I’ve been lucky to spend some time at the coast, or more accurately, two coasts. We had a week in the Llyn Peninsula in North Wales and then a few days on the East coast of Yorkshire. Very different and both beautiful. I’ve also spent time in the Yorkshire Dales, East Sussex and Kent. My country has much to offer those in need of some form of restorative mind therapy. I just wish the majority of people who lived here, wished for a better, more sensible government to make living here something to be genuinely proud of. Pride comes from achievement and we are sadly lacking in that. I hope that one day soon, those who voted for these fools will see them for being so. They can’t manage because they have no plan. They react rather than anticipate. They lurch from one crisis to another, dragging uncertainty and failure with them. And yet you still vote for them. Who are the bigger idiots? Those who govern or those that enable them to?