Sound bytes and pop ups

Subject: Sound bytes and pop ups

I know there are times when we feel powerless and impotent to resist what is happening to us as individuals or collectively as a nation. We throw up our hands and resign any interest in what is happening, we, as it were, take the 5th amendment knowing that our silence will afford our enemies the space and time they need to entrench themselves ever further into the mechanism which governs our life in a parliamentary democracy.
Closing our eyes and ears and stuffing our mouths full of burgers is the fall back position for a monkey but not for an intelligent human being. One of the differentials which defines us is our ability to think and reason and to engage in reason one has to examine the facts or at least those facts which present themselves to you as being important.

I am not inclined to think a fox hunting ban or its reversal is important. I do not buy the argument that we as a nation are at risk of invasion if we did not have Trident. I am not elevated by the image of Scotland going it alone but if the Scott's were to do this I don't think the emotional union we have with Scotland would suffer. (Perhaps the thought of Queen having to show her passport before going on holiday to Balmoral ?).

No the things which make me angry is the state of our schools, the ongoing blight of our hospital system and the plight of affordable housing. These are the foundations on which we found our lives, these are the important elements which mark us out as a nation. When we fail in any one of these facilities we signal to the world our banality, our crass failure to provide for our people
People visiting the country and having read "The Road to Wigan Pier" would be distressed, having marvelled at Buckingham palace and the bearskin headed guards outside, walked amongst the fallen Kings in Westminster Abby, or crossed over the threshold of the up market shops in the swanky parts of the capitol,  to get off the train in any one of a number of our Northern towns or nearer to home, caught a tube into East

Ham and emerge into a different universe.
It is a disgrace that our schools are now staggering under class sizes of 33 children to a class, a figure not seen for decades.
It's a disgrace that our hospitals are now having to park patients in the corridors for lack of beds and where the 'waiting times' are back to those of decades ago.
It's a disgrace that people can now no longer afford to pay even the deposit on a house and worse not even afford to rent because affordable houses are not being built.
The black marks against government which in the past would have afforded the political opposition the opportunity to swing voters their way has been destroyed on the cult of personality.
The machine which poses for a free press has done much to ridicule the debate. To bring it down to the lowest common denominator, that of personality rather than political conviction.
Mrs May who was, until given the post of Prime Minister, an ardent remainer in the battle for Brexit suddenly has become the iron maiden in calling for us to leave. A U turn of stunning proportions.
When Jeremy Corbyn sticks to his lifelong belief in the un-viability of war as a mechanism for settling disputes he is called out of touch with the realities of the modern world.
When her Chancellor suggests having to raise taxes to meet the increased expenditure necessary to meet the crisis in our schools and hospitals he is roundly criticised by her.
When Corbyn suggests the same he is painted as some sort of demented lefty.
As in so many other things we have fallen under the allure of our so called cousins the Americans with their billions spent on glitzy advertising usually to project a negative image towards one or other of the contestants. Add the inevitable  sound byte designed to package in as few words as possible something which a book wouldn't do justice and we have as ill informed a platform to make a decision as it is possible to have.
The fact that it works shows how trivial we all have become, how our attention spans have shrunk under the onslaught of the constant bombardment by the advertising industry in all other facets of our lives. They are the informers on who we pin not only our next purchase but our next government.