LEGACY

Carol (my late wife for those who don’t know me) loved Hydrangeas; we had several planted in the garden. Unfortunately, they all died in a drought several years ago. At least I thought they had, but some have now resurrected themselves to a degree. This one has done particularly well. It just needs a bit of judicious pruning at the back end to give it a better shape.

INFAMY, INFAMY THEY’VE ALL GOT IT IN FOR ME.

“All” being “The Man” or the establishment and “me” being not just me personally but all those who take them on and try to hold them to account or even question what they do. The establishment has now expanded to include just about everyone who is very wealthy and/or in a position of power. It includes the senior management of big companies, most billionaires; there are millions of millionaires now, and all those who have control over a lot of people’s lives. It is no longer just about the traditional establishment, the judiciary, lords, press barons, Tory governments etc. whose natural habitat is gentlemen’s clubs in London. The traditional establishment is still there but they have had to swell their ranks with plebs, so long as they are rich or influential plebs. The plebs will never be “one of us”, but their money and influence is needed by the establishment now. In fact, it has long been so and there is a traditional symbiosis of titled British men marrying American heiresses.
The vast majority of “ordinary people” will never knowingly come into contact with the establishment and do nothing except mutter darkly. They don’t seem to realise that if they took the example of the establishment and joined ranks with each other their solidarity would ensure that they got a fair share of the cake. They wouldn’t even need to overtly protest or glue themselves to anything; Mahatma Gandhi in India defeated the might of the British Empire with civil disobedience. They outnumber the establishment by tens of thousands to one, but unfortunately, they are easily manipulated, and the vast majority of them are apathetic. The last time significant numbers were prepared to take on “The Man” was my generation back in the 60’s and 70’s. Perhaps Extinction Rebellion will prove me wrong? The establishment has wasted no time in changing the law to thwart them and destroying more of our freedoms in the process. My generation would never have stood for it, and I am happy to see that ER have the same resolve. Back then we had them on the back foot for a while, they had never seen the like and didn’t know how to handle it. However, they learned fast and made some concessions while they regrouped, by which time they had absorbed many of my generation. The ones they hadn’t, were concentrating on having a good time and the whole “revolution” fizzled out in haze of dope smoke.
The last time that politics benefitted the man on the Clapham omnibus was just after WW2, with the founding of the welfare state and the NHS. Incidentally a Labour government but a Liberal idea. State Pensions were also introduced, and it is said that people in the countryside who up to now had led lives of grinding poverty, wept with gratitude when they collected their pensions from the Post Office. Since then unfortunately, everything has steadily got worse.
I have just come back to this post after breaking off and I have had a “Revelation on the road to Damascus” moment. THIS IS JUST THE SAME OLD, SAME OLD.
From now on I am going to change, I will be giving up trying to save the world, we are all doomed anyway, and fighting “The Man”. I have been doing it all my life going right back to my school days. It was arrogant of me to think I could single handedly change anything. In my lifetime, have I changed anything? have I buggery? I have had a few victories which have given me satisfaction, the best one costing the MOD millions when they privatized my job, it’s in the book, but nothing changed. I am getting too old now and “The Man” too powerful. This latest fight could have cost me over half a million bucks, in Court costs and having to demolish my house, and it has damaged my health. Back in the day I didn’t have anything to lose. I am just grateful that my enemy’s victory was a pyrrhic one and I managed to get out with only £1 cost and some conditions, all easily circumvented. Time to retire and come in from the cold. It is no longer enough to be vastly more intelligent than your enemies, the facts are irrelevant now; they can use their financial resources and establishment solidarity to ensure that they grind you into the ground. They are scum, Angela Raynor you were quite right and it’s just a pity that you had to apologise for telling the truth.
The only way you stand a chance is to get the regulators and authorities on your side but usually they don’t want to know. They are part of the establishment themselves. One exception in my case has been the Environmental Health Dept and my enemies at ENW have got the noise issue to come yet, when the house is first occupied.
Whatever I and others do, the environment is doomed anyway. We are way past the tipping point and there will be a mass extinction of humans and other species, it has to be said it is long overdue, the humans that is. Once freed from our damaging influence nature will rapidly heal itself. It is a pity that the ones who suffer most are not usually the ones who cause the problems in the first place.
Just like my fight with ENW most decisions made by those who control us don’t make any sense. First, we had the financial crisis, where socialists who have been waiting for a crisis of capitalism since the time of Karl Marx, bailed out the banks and let them carry on as usual when it happened on their watch. I wonder how many well-paid sinecures in banking came about as a result of that? Then we had Brexit, which has been estimated to have already cost us more than all our contributions to the EU over the last 47 years. It seems to me that there have been massive disadvantages and no advantages. We could do with the £350 million a week we were promised for the NHS, but Brexit is costing us more than that. Unfortunately, there has been no advantage financial or otherwise in leaving. The referendum if we needed one at all should have had to display a large majority wanting to leave something so important. Sometimes democracy is not a good thing especially when most of the electorate are thick. Then we had Covid. The NHS is a wonderful institution but there is too much emphasis on keeping people alive rather than keeping them fit and improving their quality of life. I spent the Summer of the first lockdown sat on my lounger in the garden, it didn’t do me any good. Vast amounts of time and money were wasted on Covid and as a result many more people will die of other complaints and it will take us years/decades to clear the backlog. Now we have war in Europe again and a strong united EU would have been more likely to keep Russia in line. Finally, we have the Queen on her last legs, I am not particularly a Monarchist but the Queen like Sir Cliff has been around for as long as I can remember. It will be strange when she is no longer around and the monarchy becomes just another branch of celebrity.
I sincerely thought about just drawing a line under my battle with ENW, I might still do that, but given what they have done they deserve to be named and shamed. I have done all the hard work and now it is just a case of getting my evidence together and emailing the various publications. Then that will be it and I will retire. In future I will not be dwelling on the bad stuff.
For some the world is a wonderful place (paradisio) for others it is hell (inferno) and for the vast majority it is (purgatorio). Where you fit on the continuum is mostly down to money and health, there are a few individuals who are poor and happy so perhaps I should add fulfillment to that, and all the states exist side by side. There are also some who are so intent on making money that they fail to enjoy what they have acquired already.
Whatever happens there will probably always be nice parts of the world, I live in one myself. It is just a case of being prepared for when everything goes tits up for everyone else and being prepared to fight off those who have not prepared. It won’t be necessary to do it for very long, the vast majority will soon be part of the mass extinction.
I will now be looking out for number 1 and my friends and family of course, so this blog will become much more optimistic and I will be getting back to what I started out to do. Provide a wry, alternative look at the world we live in, I have been hi-jacked by all the bad stuff that has happened over the last few years to me and the world at large. I know that the best part of my life is now behind me but I can hopefully still have a meaningful and enjoyable life. If ever that is no longer the case I will retire from life as well. At least I have plenty of money, a nice house where I choose to live and security. It has been brought home to me how easy it is to lose everything, especially if you take on “The Man”, who is merciless. It is only their incompetence that got me off the hook this time. I will be trying to avoid facing the possibility of that in future. I sometimes wish I had not taken ENW on over the mast and just let them get on with it. I always thought that I could take on anyone and win and that has always been the case in the past, but “The Man” has become pretty impregnable now unless we had solidarity which I doubt we ever will.
Just have to find some good stuff to write about now. I will still be throwing in a bit of propaganda now and then. Toodle pip