I suppose you’ve still gotta hope, right?

There’s been a lot of stuff getting me down lately. Following the 2016 illegally fought and won advisory referendum on our membership of the most successful peace-project in human history (yeah, alright, I’m over-egging the pudding a bit; I know the EU isn’t perfect, but it’s a damn sight better than any possible outcome we’re now faced with), the UK press are still pushing for this fucking catastrophe and since then we’ve gone from ‘£350 million a week for the NHS’ to ‘People will have the food they need’ and ‘Nah, we won’t abide by the law if we don’t feel like it’. This is not the same thing.

Over the pond, people are still sending ‘thoughts and prayers’ to families of shooting victims, while at the same time making it easier for any Trump-inspired numpty to buy an automatic death machine.

Still no sign of governments anywhere doing anything to tackle climate change that might actually make an appreciable difference – no, setting fire to the Amazon rainforest doesn’t count. But, there might be reason here for hope. For young people all over the world are no longer content to sit back and watch their future burn and are fighting back. Awareness of the scale of the issue is increasing everywhere and rich old white men are working hard to discredit the movement by launching consistent personal attacks on young figurehead Greta Thunberg. So far, little significant change has happened, but the movement is gaining ground and if the tide turns, then maybe climate change won’t be the civilisation-ender it’s gearing up to be.

Too many powerful people with a vested interest in things staying the way they are preventing real change for there to be anything more than a tiny chance, but you never know, and I’m trying not to take the ‘it’s a lost cause, might as well give up’ route, like Jonathan Franzen, who, quite frankly, appears to be trying to convince people not to disrupt the status quo so he can live out the rest of his life not having to give a shit. (I'm not linking to his article, because it's the last thing he deserves, but I will link to this glorious counterpoint.) It’s hard and there are still days when all feels lost, but kids with a lot more to lose than I have (I’ve already had 40 years, they haven’t) and people much, much smarter than I am haven’t given up yet. I suppose I can do no less.

Occasional feature: Ending with a song loosely related to the post (or more like a lyric I can take out of context and loosely relate to the post):

The Strokes: Heart in a Cage: “So don’t teach me a lesson, ‘cause I’ve already learned; the sun will be shining and my children will burn.”