RANT

The wrong people are in charge. All those who crave power should not be let anywhere near it. It proves too much for them. Their humanity melts in its presence like Colonel Breen before the re-activated Martian ship (ok that’s too esoteric for anyone who is not familiar with Quatermass and The Pit-but believe me it fits them only too well –watch the movie).

It’s always the people who think that their life experience is typical who try and tell the rest of us what we should be doing. No one’s life experience is the same as another’s. We all live unique lives. You cannot know the emotional weather inside another. The more you crave power the less empathy you seem to exhibit. Also what works for you will not necessarily work for me-life is not that simple.

No politician has the strength of conviction these days to look beyond the next sound bite. The next election at the most. Governments seem to be happy being told what to do by big business-when did this change? It used to be the other way round.  The time for the squabbling that the political parties seem to delight in has gone. We are in too much of a mess for that.

Politicians have failed us, as we have failed future generations. We have let those people in power erode our rights. Their wilful determination to pretend that an infinitely expanding economy is a good thing-let alone even possible on a finite planet with finite resources, insults our intellects.

I have no answers. I think we need to talk. Talk to our neighbours. Take stock of where we really are, how much oil is left, how many fish are left, discuss how we can have sustainable power sources, how we can feed ourselves without flying food half way round the world.  Take unpopular decisions to reach a balance-the sort of thing our politicians seem incapable of doing. 

Here is a brief poem. John Whyndam was a popular SF author in the 1950s and 1960s. He wrote stories of catastrophe that focussed upon a few well drawn characters. My brother remarked recently that on a bad day it seems like we are living in one of those stories. I have to agree.

John Wyndham’s Blues

Allegiances have altered.

The weather has stopped being our friend.

We can no longer count on it being on our side.

We feel its anger already,

A wettest year in memory,

the hottest summer ever recorded.

Soon it will rage,

Shake our fragile hold.

This is our future.