Cometh the time

  

Subject: Cometh the time.

We’re we always designed for decline, was it inevitable after the timing of Empire and a dominance of world trade that other nations would catch up as we squandered our lead and became complacent. All nations are prone to cycles of success and failure and one is born lucky to have experienced a good period. It may have been the result of the end of war time conditions where as the winner you could claim reparations, it might have been  that your country was sitting on a wealthy commodity like South Africa with its gold and diamonds or Australia with it’s bauxite and iron ore, the USA and its comprehensive lease lend after the two world wars led to their dominance in the currency market becoming  the worlds creditor and the European nations  who's countries had had a succession of periods of world dominance, with France and Germany rising and then falling back, only Germany being able to resurrect itself largely with massive  US stimulus. Nations then rise and fall only to be subsumed back into the pack where they nip at each other like ferries in a sack without doing much damage.

The ethos of a country is often built on its success, that success supposedly heralds its skilful characteristics but as suggested much of the success  is built on luck and good fortune.

Perhaps the best thing we can tell our individual populations is that that we are not special and that the rainy day was inevitable.

So with our own decline where will it stop and what sort of a country will it leave us.  

It’s hard to think that we might become like Greece (without the sunshine) in debt to our system of pension provision and a middle class demand for their status quo to be preserved.

We won’t become technology led like Singapore our democratic institutions wouldn’t allow it. Italy perhaps, also dreaming of past glories but riven by fragmentation. We haven’t the the dream of French egalitarianism or the housekeeping of the Netherlands.

We lack the stoicism of Germany who genuinely did reinvent themselves from a Teutonic Kaiser led de facto political monopoly to a genuine meritocracy with worker recognition and participation within the management structure. Unfortunately we are far too class conscious for that, with our society divided along ‘school and money’ which in England means the same thing.

How do we become a true meritocracy, not the bamboozling sound bite of “levelling up“ but a genuine rejig of all our sacred cows, particularly that of entitlement.