Declension

 With BREXIT there's talk about our further diminished status on the world stage. Perhaps we should ask ourselves does it matter. It seem to me to matter far more that we have squandered our time and money trying to act 'big' when at the same time we can't now raise the skills, never mind the capital to build our own nuclear reactor. We along with the Americans led the way and had a whole industry dedicated to designing and building nuclear power plants. Like our shipping industry, we were world leaders and we gave it all away to play in the banking casino. I suppose it was easy money and we have always hankered after easy.

It's dismaying to find that we no longer have the negotiating skills in government (the Civil Service) to start the round of negotiating to take us out of Europe and form new trade alliances with other countries. Leaders in Victoria's time, we now have to import the skills from countries that never lost touch with their identity and knew the importance of maintaining the skills they already had as well as learning new ones.

Where were our "elite", and  what were those lauded seats of education such as Eton Collage teaching the young privileged boys, destined to become our leaders in government and industry. They weren't all going into the media surely. 

The pipe fitters and electricians, the carers and the nurses, the small shop -keepers and the clerical workers, working away, some on close to minimum wages, many not receiving a wage increase for five years (whilst the boss was sprinting away with pay rises to drive a 200% earnings wedge between him or her and the people they employed) , doing their bit, holding their head high whilst believing that the business of governance was in good hands. 

It was always in someone else's hands. You never actually met the people who actually pulled the leavers, you read about them in the Queens honours day list as they received a Title but class got in the way of actually meeting them. And now we discover they were asleep on the job !!

Imagine replacing the "unemployed scrounged" show on TV with the "fast asleep gravy train", an insiders view of what I did (or rather to the point didn't do) since leaving the college. 

It's disgraceful "bring back the stocks", I would embarrass the lot of them. 

Is it any wonder that the definitive language by which each recognises the other is Latin. A dead language, characterised by its use of the declension, where nouns, pronouns, and adjectives must be "declined". 

No wonder after 5 years of Latin they also 'declined' the responsibility to maintain skills within the nation in things they had little use for, never mind any native comprehension.