I posted this on Twitter whilst dinner was being prepared last night, based on a conversation taking place in our kitchen:
It seemed that a lot of people agreed.
Many were of similar age to my wife and me, but not all, bit not all.
We are in a mess, and few see a way out as yet.
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couldn’t agree more Richard, your wife is spot on, her being a doctor she must have seen it all!. Keep up the good work,, Mel
Let’s just say that at the start of my and my new partner’s eighth decade, we find the old jests about the likelihood of a new majo domestic purchase being likely to “see us out” rather wobble at the thought of whether the same is true of the earth itself!
Agreed
Earth will survive but not perhaps in any form which supports life as we know it. As for us, a new Dark Age approaches.
Riddley Walker seeming ever more prescient
The “see me out” strategy is fine from the narrow point of individual domestic purchases. It makes sense in this limited frame. What does not make sense is the collective ability of a skewed, elderly electorate’s capacity in an FPTP system to turn this personal practical measure, of “seeing them out” (and ‘seeing out’ determines the nature of the world from their particular perspective as operating exclusively with short term returns), into the prime command of the present and future Government’s purpose and execution of policy and strategy for the State. That is why we have a serious demographic crisis, but an electorate and politicians, who are persuaded they need do nothing to fix it; indeed must not fix it. The result is that all politics becomes a pretence, and policy nothing more than a fiction, bullt of sound-bites.
Incidentally, while I sympathise with the sentiments of the Tweet; I would focus on the critical words in its expression: “more … than … ever thought”. What we all thought, optimistically and erroneously about the world (for whatever reasons), twenty or forty years ago was, I suspect, always – more or less – at best built on illusions, or ignorance.
It’s not just the aged whose view of prospects is dire. My son, 41, is a jobbing gardener. He, his partners, his friends at the pub, all believe the world in general, and this country in particular, is a total mess. And they think this with an anger and a vehemence more strongly felt than mine.
I agree. Looking back is instructive. Two snap shots.
1990s – I could walk through Heathrow and wave my passport – literally – at a passport person – one did not even need break one’s walking pace.
1990s – few homeless people – none in Bx (there was one nut job with a poly bag on his head walking up & down Rue Joseph II asking for “change” that was about it).
Transport yourself to the start of 2003 – 19 years ago. Then start telling people what would happen (wars without end, starving children, UK leaves the EU, mass poverty) – they would lock you up in a mental institution.
The contours underlying the events that occured mostly in the period 2000 – 2023 started in the late 1960s. 1980 was the pivot point when finance coupled to a particular political outlook (governments are useless at anything & markets rule) finally got a firm grip on how things will be. Think of 1980 as the date when gestation started and 2000 onwards when processes became “fully formed”/embedded in the body politic – operationalised if you like.
The most interesting aspect is the incapacity of people to take a step back and try to gain a perspective, or indeed, to understand the processes that have got the planet/people where they are.
The history of passports is often confused with ‘safe conducts’, and over time the approach of states has fluctuated. In 1872 the Foreign Secretary, the 2nd Lord Grenville said this: “all foreigners have the unrestricted right of entrance into and residence in this country” (John Torpay, ‘the Invention of the Passport’, 2009; p.91). It is war between states that typically concentrated the mind of governments on passports, but until the 20th century and the general application of photography they had relatively limited use. At the same time passports provide an insight into the way nation-states think of themselves, the ways in which such thinking changes (and what influences change), and is simply changed itself by the operation of passports and the mechanisms used in pursuit of knowledge of the movements of people.
Mike
I often read and respect your contributions to this blog but must object to your use of the term “nut job”. People with mental health problems didn’t choose their affliction and do not deserve to be derided by such terms.
Thank you
Simon
Fair comment
And true
I will be more careful
“… than she ever thought it was when she was younger.”
Typo? (!) : “than it was when she was younger.”
Our generation had intimate contact with those who had lived through a global war and wanted to “un-f*ck” the world. We grew up and reaped that desire, but **we dropped the start of that rebuilding, that legacy.
** Where “we” indicates those who became complacent, and thought that tweaking the edges was “enough” to satisfy the electorate, where the daily renewal of political philosophy was deemed unnecessary.
I don’t think that’s a typo. I thought the world was f**ked up during the Cold War and Vietnam. I now think it is a lot worse than I thought it was then.
From a young age I had lots of access to books and periodicals plus also the supplements to newspapers before all that ‘lifestyle’ bollocks was created so I had a good idea from reading about the Jewish Holocaust, strife in the African continent and Vietnam too that life was not a bed of roses.
As for 1979/1980 – I am proud of the fact that at around 15-16 years old I took one look at Margaret Thatcher and felt instantly repulsed by her and her party. Since that time all that has happened is that I have deepened by understanding of just how repulsive she was – or should I say – still is!
I think that fact that a part of me that has never grown up has meant that I have retained a child’s ‘sixth sense’ about being around dodgy people and an almost automatic sense of when things are unfair.
I’m currently reading about America at the time Bush Jnr got in, and Britain now seems exactly like the U.S. then, with nothing working anymore and rampant inequality all topped off by a morality vacuum at the top of society.
What is disappointing is that our opposition parties seem to be ignoring that to get us to this level of national cluster-fuckery, all that has happened is that the money to do things properly has not been made available and all we have to do is put it back.
But this simple fact seems wantonly overlooked and we risk normalising low public investment forever as a result.
Labour have announced their financial advisors today. We are to be ruled by creatures from finance, including, unbelievably, Charles Randell, who seems to have left (ie bolted from) the FCA where he was Chairman (itself also unbelievable) under something of a cloud. Gina Miller, I gather, has a (in my view, justifiably) low opinion of him https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/gina-miller-open-letter-fca-charles-randell-london-capital-and-finance-135944178.html
Now that I am in my sixties, I wonder whether recognising the imperfections of the world has something to do with my age. I am certainly more aware than I was as a naive 20-year-old. I only discovered MMT a few years ago, and likewise neoliberalism. Reading Chomsky has connected a lot of dots. Age has certainly enabled me to assess sources better, and strive towards becoming a more cynical, woke, grumpy old man.
Ian, Chomsky was 95 a couple of days ago. You have a few years to go to catch up with him.
Thatcher, that dreadful PM who built more social housing than New Labour: ….”the Blair and Brown governments built 7,870 council houses (local authority tenure) over the course of 13 years……… Mrs Thatcher’s government, which never built fewer than 17,710 homes in a year.
Between 1997 and 2010, of the 2.61 million homes constructed under New Labour, only 0.3% were local authority tenure. Mrs Thatcher’s government supervised the building of a similar number of houses (2.63 million), but 18.9% were LA or ‘council’ properties.
https://fullfact.org/economy/who-built-more-council-houses-margaret-thatcher-or-new-labour/
Politely, she inherited the policy and then destroyed it.
And few suggest the Blair years were an example to follow here.
So, your point is?
John Gardner, shouldn’t you read the whole article rather than just the bit that suits your premise?
There were more social housing units, which includes those built by housing associations, under labour than tory.
Perhaps you also ought to look at the graph, which shows how local authority tenure declined under Thatcher.
Councils built council houses, then had to sell them off at discounts and were not allowed to keep the money to replace them. I thought that was well known.
Your wife has a knack for succinct summary.
She seems to have successfully summarised a lot of your posts. 😉
Imperfect as all things were in the 1960s, there were many outlets & forums for Public interaction
and taking some form of action. Communities were engaged through Church and other civic
institutions. Strikes and protest marches came about through people discussing. Then our mass media was diverse. 2-3hrs of focussed current affairs were shown peak evening. 10 million more, sat & watched together the satire of Saturday evenings’ TWTWTW. (Where is peak hour satire now?)
In the 1960s, we were trying to un-f*ck things.
As to why our world seems so fckd-up now, two main points to help:
1) Where now are our real statements & stateswomen with ideals?
The 60s was blessed with Martin Luther King, JF Kennedy & Bobby Kennedy (Both of whom grew ethically once in office to become more radical) and also the UN’s Dag Hammarskjöld.
Those were slaughtered by the vested interests they opposed. But their ethics & messages lived on.
Mandela barely escaped death to eventually become a beacon of international moral leadership.
Even Heath, whose war experiences ranged from the observation of the Spanish Civil war to fighting
across Europe, culminating in liberating a concentration camp, championed the positives of investing in the best of European culture & post-WWII ideals.
2). We live in a new ‘techno-fix’ age of Myths & Matters not interrogated
That Neoliberalism & the unshakeable idea of Economic Growth is the reality.
That exponential growth in global resource can simply continue.
That technological Carbon Capture & Storage will ride to our climate rescue.
That we can have an efficient UK Parliament, when its chambers are just padded benches and its supporting committees are under-funded & parliamentarians are untrained amateurs.
That we can have Democracy without proper transparency & the highest journalistic standards.
[This link about the BBC seems relevant to illustrate: https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/45466 ]
We delude ourselves as we ‘couch-potato’ and imbibe the narrowly curated news. That is why circa
25% of the US believe it’s OK to elect their ‘Orange Jesus’. God save us from yet more ‘f*ckd-up’.
Beyond ALL of those above, I would say the most important is: people, communities engaging.
That real Democracy is impossible without people meeting & talking together, and without having a
cultural obligation of active citizenship. Societies can and must be also driven from the bottom up,
which is what Grabber & Wengrow’s book, ‘The Dawn of Everything’, helped shine a light on.
That’s how we birth grounded & enlightened politicians, and not through party-machine advisers.
But Richard’s site & those who respond help enormously to interrogate and equip us for lucid thought about some of the crucial understanding we need to share with others, to help us promote change.
The first duty of a citizen, is to seek understanding. Failing that, we are then a bit ‘f*cked up’.
When the best description of how F***ked Up we are comes from a natural Conservative, an ex political writer from The Telegraph, then I know its not my ancient Lefty self just thinking we are truly F***ked.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/09/boris-johnson-empty-populism-covid-inquiry.
Tory Baroness Warsi: “Most Tories used to believe in democracy, the rule of law, and decency. We weren’t toxic mad fascists like some of my colleagues are now.” – The Last Leg, 8 Dec 2023. https://twitter.com/CerdynJones/status/1733265662829621279
She is right
I would welcome Baroness Warsi as PM, frankly. She WAY outclasses the members of both the Cabinet AND the Shadow Cabinet – peopled as both are by Keystone Kops 4th-raters.
Actually, she outclasses most MP’s – it’s the Lords that contain both the highest political quality AND the absolute dregs of the barrel, both because of the way they’re selected.
The quality shines out (eg Prem Sikka) demanding to be selected, while the dregs are served up my corrupt timekeepers such as Johnson.
VERY occasionally the timeservers hand up quality, thinking it’s the usual Party line dregs. That’s Warsi – she’s in the Lord because she was Tory Party Chairman or Deputy or some such – assumed to be “a safe pair” of “bought and sold” hands.
Actually, she’s a smart, intelligent, highly capable, old school Tory, who actually CARES about people, community values and principles – the sort that made up the bulk of the Tory Party, before Thatcher led it, and the whole country, up the UK’s backside.
I might not have agreed with their actions and policies, but no one doubted the Macmillans and Heaths, even the Alec Douglas Homes and and Rab Butlers of the Tory Party, CARED about the UK and its inhabitants.
Can anyone say that has been true of the post-2010 Tories? Hardly.
If you have got a copy, read Benjamin Zephaniah’s Funky Chickens book of poems.
There’s one in there about Good Hope. It begins
I believe
There is enough food
On this planet
For everyone.
I believe
That it is possible
For all people
To live in peace.
It made me feel more positive, even though I know he died a few days ago.
My grandson told me about all the books we have read by Benjamin Zephaniah. He loves reading them.
I discovered I have none by him, to my shame, and despite having a lot of poetry books. I only have his work in collections. I must remedy that.
Though Thatcher appeared not to understand MMT (‘there is no such thing as public money’) many others did and she foolishly kicked off a veritable gold-rush to get hold of it, clearly aided and abetted by the Bank of England who held the purse strings. The result was a tsunami of money effectively funnelled to corporate business, fuelling investment and therefore rampant inflation, in property. Investers realised that the more they invested, the higher property prices grew. It was a real magic money tree. They could borrow money at rock-bottom interest rates and buy property inflating wildly. More buying meant more value. This inevitably trickled down to house values. Everyone gained – except, surprise surprise, the poor. But no-one cares about them because of course, poverty is a lifestyle choice.
I really think your logic is very confused
I see this thread has been quoted on Labour Heartlands on Facebook. I’ve just put a link up to this blog on there.
With so much unfiltered information, particularly bad news, instantly at our fingertips compared to 60 years ago, of course it looks f*cked up.
But is it actually?
There are always bits, bigger and smaller f*cked up bits, going on somewhere in the world.
There is no question that we are heading in a bad direction though …
Those on Facebook will know that they give you memories of your posts in previous years. Today’s was very interesting, an article by George Monbiot.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/10/break-embargo-expose-press-lies-labour
The press world hasn’t changed as a result of it, has it?
Jenw, depressing and terrifying article by Monbiot. And very prescient. The tories have brought in voter suppression measures. Sunak and all the other creeps in this “government” lie all the time, witness the ludicrous Rwanda debacle caused solely by the “government” itself.
This same “government” is continuing the running down of the BBC, which the tories have been doing since 2010, at Murdoch’s bidding.
Only the right’s lies must be allowed to be broadcast.
Stirrings in your kitchen.
To paraphrase your sentiments – mankind is at a crossroads and all the signposts around the compass suggest alternate routes to Shit Creek.
The eminent historian, Adam Tooze, analyzes and dissects the choices currently facing humanity, thus:
https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-carbon-notes-9-slouching?publication_id=192845&post_id=139636692&isFreemail=true&r=2nvyg
To quote: “In struggling to comprehend the multi-faceted global climate crisis, we need to distinguish two separate historical developments that are currently unfolding side by side.
One is the beginning of a comprehensive, though uneven process of technological change that will eventually transform a large part of the world’s energy systems… we refer to this as the “energy transition”. This “transition” is driven by policy, technology and economic impulses. It was originally fired by climate concerns but has now taken on a life of its own under the slogan of green industrial policy or green energy geopolitics.
The second trend, no less undeniable, is the escalating environmental disaster and the fact that the energy transition that is now underway is nowhere near large, fast or focused enough to deliver what was originally promised, i.e. comprehensive decarbonization and climate stabilization.”
As regards the latter:
“On the face of it, decarbonization starting with the rapid phase-out of coal in the largest emitters should not be contentious. It should be an obvious policy choice…The problem is that the models used to generate that anodyne conclusion do not capture what actually makes it difficult.”
Tooze concludes:
“The question is not whether decarbonization is desirable or even whether it is technically feasible. The steps we need to take by 2030 clearly are within our reach. The central question is whether a coalition can be built to breakthrough the inertia of the existing system and powerful vested interests and not only to add new power but to aggressively run down polluting fossil fuel sectors. Those decisions have to be made within the small group of polluters responsible for the majority of global emissions (G7 plus China plus India). A coalition for a new energy model is emerging but that is not the same as a model for decarbonization which is a far more daunting political proposition.”
(An anodyne is a drug used to lessen pain through reducing the sensitivity of the brain or nervous system, and also anodyne is a formal adjective that means intended to avoid causing offence or disagreement, especially by not expressing strong feelings. A Conclusion is something-inferred on the basis of logic or evidence, or it is the end of a sequence of actions, or both.)
Which begs the question, whether there is a course of action bearing on decarbonization that cumulatively would not conclude in *hit *reek?
Perhaps the conclusion, in both senses, is multiple courses of action, as recommended in: https://global-tipping-points.org/