Many years ago, my birthday fell on the first day of my first teaching job. It was going to be stressful enough but I woke up to find the bottom of my fish-tank had cracked and leaked over-night. Given that I’d just moved into a third-floor flat, this was not good news. I didn’t have time to deal with it but my parents were not so far away and while I went to school, they did everything they could to fix the damage. When I got back after a long (and what would become a typically exhausting) day, I found a small cupcake in my fridge with a candle on the top. It was a rather sad moment.
I remember it now because that fish-tank feels like a metaphor. It doesn’t just describe the draining away of expectations as I grow older but the fortunes of the world around me too. I think some people are yet to wake up and discover the truth of this. The fish-tank of our country is nearly empty. There has been a slow leaking of our position in the world, from the loss of an empire to today’s ignorant isolationism.
As parliament and government fight over the right to the last drops of water in the tank, it’s difficult to feel hopeful. There is no chance of rejuvenating the trading empire that we began in the sixteenth century when the Elizabethans founded their colonies in the Americas and fought with the Spanish for supremacy of the seas. Those colonies are now threatening us, our health system, and our food supply. The world we created can out-compete us and we can’t resort to gun-boat diplomacy anymore. We are now irrelevant to countries like India and Australia.
As the politicians attempt to extricate our country, either peacefully or with a brutal and sudden departure, from our last great union outside of our narrow parochialism, I can’t help feeling they’re making the leak worse. Every day, it seems to me, the level of the water is getting lower and those at the bottom are suffocating. Whether it’s political freedom in places like Hong Kong, or freedom from conflict in the Middle East, there doesn’t appear to be a solution in sight. Nobody is going to re-fill the tank anytime soon.
As I said in previous post, I sincerely believe we are in a second dark age. By any measure, life in the world, let alone this country, is not improving and in many cases, it’s becoming more dangerous. I find it extraordinary, for example, that children are dying of diseases like measles again (all because their parents believed some nonsense they read on the internet). Routine vaccinations for a variety of diseases like polio and diphtheria are on the decline – not by much but enough to be worrying.
It will probably take an out-break of cholera on the streets of London to prove my point – and if you think that’s unlikely, look at what’s happened in our hospitals as cleaning budgets were slashed to cut costs and look at the rise of diseases like MRSA as a result. Now look at what breaking away from the European Union means: there’s the threat of an interruption to medicines we once took for granted and if a deal with the Americans comes to pass, those same drugs will be more expensive.
There are other threats to our safety too. As the water in the tank gets lower, sectarian divisions are opening up again. For those that were not born before or during the Troubles in Ireland or those that seem to have forgotten, it was a vicious and terrible time. Fuelled by poverty, hatred and a history of violence going back more than a century, it was just as nasty as the terrorist threat from fundamentalism.
The Conservative Party more than anyone should know the terror of being targeted by IRA bombs; the assassination of Airy Neave and the Brighton bomb that killed five of their members and injured 31, should be enough of reminder of what happens when people hate enough. And yet, they seem to think it won’t happen again. I find it remarkable that the current Conservative leadership doesn’t realise, to its very core and in a very literal sense, how explosive the situation is.
Elsewhere, I can understand why Scotland’s nationalists would like their own tank, one that doesn’t leak, but I suspect the reality will be rather different. It won’t be full of water and they’ll find it difficult to swim on their own. What does surprise me is the Welsh attitude to Europe; they’ve benefitted more than anyone from the Union’s grants. Perhaps, in their pride, they thought it was charity. However, many of their industries, especially their farmers, rely on exports to Europe to survive. But as I’ve said already, these are not reasonable times.
I think was pitiful that the papers this morning gave almost equal weighting to a puppy arriving at Number 10 as they did to the chaos its new owner is wreaking on this country. It was a shallow attempt to garner sympathy and make us think our Prime Minister isn’t so bad after all – almost as bad as Theresa May doing her little dance. I imagine Larry won’t be very pleased.
I admit, it might be my impending anniversary that’s making me feel especially pessimistic. I can’t see around the corner so I don’t know what’s waiting for me. At the moment, I feel it’s likely to be a mugger with a knife rather than maidens bearing gifts – or to put it more realistically, another bill or a problem with the car. And yet, I see nothing in the wider world to be optimistic about.
Whether it’s trade wars, the burning of the Amazon or the disappearance of the Great Barrier Reef – these are all symptoms of a world that’s lost its way. With the exception of science community, who are struggling against exceptional odds to keep their discoveries and therefore our future moving forward, everybody else seems intent on self-destruction.
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