I try to keep this estate in a zone of light-hearted good humour but as you may have noticed from our occasional rants, I fear that we (and I mean us Brits), have taken the wrong road somewhere along the line.
I read three pieces this morning which are worth pondering. If you have five minutes, and part of the problem facing us all is that you probably don’t, please feel free to wade in.
Snap
The Man Utd defender Nemanja Vidic is quoted as saying he’s fed up with Blighty because the residents are so miserable. He complains that they spend all week working themselves into the ground, with no time for each other, and then binge drink at the weekends to get over the stress, monotony and the incessant rain. Cynics might argue that he’s paid enough to keep his trap shut and stop moaning, but note that his comments are directed at the quality of life for the ordinary citizen who can’t kick a ball for a living.
This miserable UK population is projected to increase by more than 10% over the next 50 years – up to 77m – which has today been greeted as a cause for celebration, presumably as it’s good for business and future Olympic medal tables. Many of the existing migrants we have mercilessly exploited as cheap labour to keep food costs down have had enough, packed their bags and gone home. Can’t say I blame the poor souls for getting sick of ripping up leeks in a freezing, windswept East Anglian field for a paltry pittance. But apparently there are plenty more desperate enough to be used on the land when we have exhausted eastern Europe. Shortly after World War II we were almost self-sufficient in food production – when the population was closer to 30m. So where are we going to get the fodder, water, energy and homes for these extra millions when we don’t have enough of anything for those currently perched on this small island? What happens to the quality of life in this workhouse which is one of the most densely populated nations on earth? Will there be enough room to breathe let alone play football or ride round a velodrome?
Crackle
Don’t get me wrong. I love my sport and I’m quite looking forward to the London Olympic Games, the jocular rivalry with the Diggers, the Celtic cyclists upsetting the strutting superpowers in the medal race. But why do we have to pay for the imperious Mr Bolt to belt round a brand new temporary stadium when he can jog home to a brand new world record at a brand new permanent Wembley? And unless his eminence Jacques Rogge is going to whistle La Marseillaise, naked, whilst balancing on a giant, flaring bottle of burgundy then ejaculated to one of the moon’s of Jupiter I’d rather not stump up the cash for another perverse circus.
Simon Jenkins writing in the Guardian brilliantly illuminates the point, puncturing a large hole in the Olympics hysteria in the process. He argues that while we can rightly enjoy and be proud of the achievements of the athletes who provided such entertaining sport, the IOC edifice is a grotesque, crooked, self-serving, chauvinistic profligacy, financed and operated on this occasion by a totalitarian state, and in 2012 by…well…us, the miserable, hard-working drones of the UK.
I won’t spoil the subtlety of his reasoning by lifting a sentence. You can read it here.
I find myself in agreement with Messrs Vidic and Jenkins. Isn’t it time to go back the other way – scale back, retract, shrink, kick pay-per-view 24-hour-everything into the long grass? It’s the kind of talk which is anathema to politicians, bureaucracies and economists who want nothing less than eternal growth.
Pop
Personally, I’d like to see a return of Sunday closing and shorter shop hours, more public holidays, trucks banned from the road at weekends, less stuff, better quality stuff, no growth, no irrelevant dogs, reality TV made a crime, greater creative freedom, more fun, more sport, more time…and to hell with the economy, stupid.
PS. At the start of summer, the top-brand middle-class columnists were crowing about their low-carbon, British seaside holiday, introducing Tarquin, Jemima and Trixie Tweedlechops to a quaint, old-fashioned, family-value break as they all felt the pain of the credit crunch. It’s with some amusement I notice that after suffering Nemanja Vidic’s incessant downpours along with the rest of us plebs, they would rather give up champagne than ever do it again. Ah well, more room on the rainy beaches for the poor.
…”discuss” as I shall shortly be saying to my students.
