Running in isolation

Subject: Fw: Running in isolation.

 

 

Watching the start of the Great North Run one is drawn to the sight of so many people culminating hours and hours of training with a race to see how they compete with their peers. "The loneliness of the long distance runner" by Alan Stilliteo is a story of a young lad who races to release himself from the harsh reality off living in a depressed northern town. I wonder how many of these marathon runners who pound the road, early morning and evening, obsessed with their fitness and the time they take to complete the race but also with the pull which isolation brings. Is it a question of being so self absorbed that the runner avoids the chores into which they become ensnared through the overall commitment of marriage and raising children. 

The race like all these events is fully covered by television and attracts it's fair share of attention seekers who dress up in bazaar costumes. I remember a few years ago a chap ran in a full deep sea diving suit, well I say ran, he rather stumbled around in his lead lined boots and finished six days later. His was an effort to raise money for charity, he deserved every penny as do the others who desire to put their time into charity work. 

It a feature of the modern world how reliant we have become on charity to raise money, to provide a service which in the past the funding for the service would have come out of general taxation or municipal rates. In the non too distant past the municipality would organise and provide a plethora of vital social services  such as an old people's retirement home or a youth centre.
Sadly no more as Government withdraw their responsibility  for the big social picture, believing in the American obsession of small Government, whilst at the same time shrinking the funds they used to supply to local government. 

I wonder if sometime in the future we will look back in pure amazement at how benign the populous were as the things which made society function were taken away, one by one. Hardly a murmur is raised as old people's homes are privatised and the charges for accommodation skyrocket. Youth centres close their doors and we wonder at the increase in youth crime. Playing fields are concreted over or make way for more 'unaffordable' houses leaving little relief from the congestion of suburban living.

Will we think this Thatcheresque Paradise was inevitable, that as the employable work force become more difficult to employ their understanding of what is permissible is due for a massive new rewrite.

There is simply no alternative to a diminution of standards when the population are so submissive. Brain washed they go along with what they are told by the tabloids and subjugate their own desires for the good of the corporate agenda. An agenda for which we are told we must be grateful since, along with the financial manipulators they pull all the strings these days.

Living not quite in a mud hut along the banks of the Limpopo but occupying a small semi in Otley along side of the River Wharf each society suffering the pangs of outrageous capitalism. Empire turned on its head.