Nostalgic pessimism

 Subject: Nostalgic pessimism

"Nostalgic pessimists", is that what we have become.

All nations are made up of interlopers, some who stayed and made the place their own and, if there were enough of them, they changed the society or hopefully were absorbed and along with the absorption they also changed. It is argued that mankind has an inbuilt capacity to change but its also argued that a leopard never changes it’s spots.

The English, who suffer nostalgic pessimism more than most have the habit of searching for the best bits in their history and continually parading it forgetting that the English man or woman of yesteryear were a very different breed of person. Centuries of top down, cap doffing subservience made the commoner easy dough to kneed into the shape the Squire required for the task of the day. Fighting battles, settling in newly claimed colonies with the aim to develop and fertilise the land as a staging post for economic expansion. The empire created as much by the man in the street as the city investor it also created him in the image of success, he bathed in the victories, his book shelves sagged with the dare do stuff of explorers and navigators, his pride rested on the surety that his nation was the best.

But now as we slide down the league tables, countries who were colonial second class, now surpass us in wealth and expectancy. Where is our talisman now to come from as we jingoistically sing Rule Britannia on the last night of the Proms, working ourselves up into a lather only for the reality of tomorrow’s headlines to dampen our ardour.

We are becoming distinguished by being second rate. Whilst others invest we shy away at the thought of the national debt. We would rather buy from the Chinese than train a workforce to manufacture here. We don’t trust our ingenuity or the markets to sell to, we mislead our citizenry with unfulfilled promises and downright lies and the politician has replaced the secondhand car salesman as being the most dishonest.

Our countryside is still unique awash with quaint places and quaint people, good solid dependable people who have been let down once too often. Our tomorrow’s are clouded, like the sky, the future inclement and unstable but still we proclaim it the best place on earth which of course it is so long as you don’t watch too much television.