Up is down.

I wrote this before the awful murder of David Amess, so have been sitting on it for a bit wondering if I’m being unreasonable. But watching some quarters attempt to use such a tragedy to supress genuine criticism of those (on both sides of the political divide) whose actions are leading to the enrichment of themselves and their donors and the ruination of so many other things made me think that actually, I’m not being unreasonable to expect a certain level of decency and care, and not for it to be okay for companies owned by overseas interests to dump raw sewage into our watercourses in the interests of their shareholders (yes, I know there's supposedly been a U-turn. We'll see.) So, I published it anyway:

Get back to work. Playtime’s over. Everyone knows that we’ve just been dossing off during the pandemic. Working from home? Give me a break. They worked from the office in the ‘40s with bombs raining down like explosive confetti (except, they didn’t; they very sensibly hid when the bombs actually fell). What do you mean the war wasn’t contagious? What’s that got to do with it? What do you mean they didn’t have home computers or wi-fi? Things have changed you say? Progress you say? Progress isn’t for the likes of you milado. Progress is the problem, it’s why you lot go around thinking you should be free to be who you feel you are. Get back in the boxes we’ve always put you in. Too many minorities these days.

Get back in the office. No you’re not going to be paid more. You should be grateful to spend your time and money on commuting, parking and lunch instead of doing your work from home. Unless you’re a woman. Then you can stay at home and do caring, cooking and housework. Like in the good old days. Care begins at home donchano, and with three-quarters of people on Carer’s Allowance being women, we can force women to do more of that at-home stuff they always used to. Win-win!

Never mind that the last couple of years has been such a strain on the wellbeing of the majority of the population; we pay lip service to your mental health and that should be enough. Anyway, the best thing for mental health is to work, work, work. Work unto death; it’s the future! Look; even the opposition agrees. When you felt mildly hopeful for the chance of a better world when you were younger, you were just being naïve. Childish. It’s time to grow up and get back to work.

Just look at me. Born rich. Inherited wealth. Funnelled into investments and offshore so I don’t ever have to pay fair taxes; to, shudder to think, contribute. That’s for you to do. Work and pay tax. Not my fault you weren’t born rich. We’re all in this together you know. The same storm, that is, not the same boat. I’ve got a yacht.

At least you’ve got a boat. Or a dinghy. It’s more than some should have. Migrants? Shirkers. They don’t deserve a boat. Send the boats back. Not our fault if they drown – I promise you’ll face no legal consequences for letting people drown. If I had my way, I’d chuck you in the slammer for savin’ ‘em. Up is down, you know? Let Europe have them. Isn’t Europe safe enough? What do you mean most of them probably speak English as a second or third language and not other European languages, so it stands to reason they might feel more comfortable here? Don’t they know they speak English in Europe too? Even though it’s usually in a funny accent. Let Europe have them. Many European countries already take in loads more than we do? We don’t take our fair share of refugees? So what? We’re closed. Too many as it is. Of course, nobody to drive the lorries, or work in the hospitals, or pick the fruit. Still, good to know we’ve taken back control of all that rotten fruit eh? Makes you all misty eyed to see all that control of failing supply chains, and those farming and fishing industries that have been decimated. At least they’ve been decimated on our terms, yeah? Makes you feel proper patriotic it does.

Anyway, get back to work. Up is down. Wrong is right. Freedom is slavery, and the future of humanity, to borrow from Mr Orwell, is a boot stamping on a human face forever. ‘Cos I’m the boot and you’re the face, so I’ll never let you get even.

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):

Arcade Fire: My Body is a Cage – “I’m living in an age, that calls darkness light.”

Still they do nothing.

About a fortnight or so ago, the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report was published. It reports that there are visible signs of climate change all over the globe and that those effects will continue to intensify. It noted that without immediate massive change to reduce carbon emissions everywhere, there isn’t any chance to prevent the climate warming by more than 1.5C. Doesn’t sound like much does it, but in actuality, it means catastrophe on a global scale.

It made the news for a bit, but a great deal of the reporting tended towards opinion pieces. Climate change denial has pivoted in recent years from ‘it’s not happening’ to ‘we can’t afford it’ or ‘there’s nothing we can do about it’. We can do plenty. We can stop emitting carbon. I don’t mean me and you – our individual contributions to this, like recycling tins, or watering your flowers with your washing up water, or punishing your anus with recycled toilet paper, they’re all great, but without the rest of it it’s a fart in a windstorm. One of the best (I use the word ‘best’ here in the most sarcastic manner possible) things BP ever did for themselves was to start this whole individual carbon footprint thing as it gaslights us into believing we could solve this if only we made enough small individual changes. Don’t misunderstand me, I think small individual changes are great, and when enough of us make them they can have huge impacts, but in actuality, without massive systemic change to go with it, it’s merely a louder, more intense fart in the aforementioned windstorm.

Not long after the report was published, the Spectator, that bastion of balance, and not a far right wing mouthpiece at all, ran a cover with a picture of a hole into which money is falling, bemoaning the ‘cost of net zero’. First, net zero is bullshit – it’s governments and companies trying to offset carbon emissions. But they’re still emitting the carbon. Climate change doesn’t give one shit about your nonsense economic wriggling. Nobody talks about the cost of not halting carbon emissions, which will be, at the least, billions of lives and at the most, well, everything.

The cost isn’t actually that much either; in the UK and the US it is estimated that the cost of converting to a non-carbon setting is less than what is spent on military budgets each year. And yet, they continue to do nothing. Nothing but organise summits that accomplish nothing and talk about far future net zero targets that shift the responsibility on to the next cabinet/generation.

THERE IS NO MORE ROOM TO SHIFT THE RESPONSIBILITY.

THIS SHOULD BE EVERY GOVERNMENTS' AND EVERY COMPANY’S NUMBER ONE PRIORITY. BAR NONE.

IT SHOULD BE FRONT PAGE NEWS EVERYWHERE UNTIL IT’S UNAVOIDABLE – HALF-ARSED REPORTING IS ONE OF THE MAJOR REASONS SO FEW PEOPLE GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THE IMPENDING COLLAPSE OF THE ECOLOGICAL NETWORK WE RELY ON.

Spend the money to roll out the infrastructure. Install solar panels on every roof, and windfarms in every coastal water. Make every car electric. Replace every petrol station with recharge points.

It’s a start, isn’t it?

None of that is a perfect solution, and there will be some problems with it, but we have run out of time to wait for the market to provide a low cost, profitable, perfect solution. The market won’t. The market will let us all die as long as the profits keep rolling in, right until there’s no more food.

Think I’m overreacting? Being alarmist? Negative? The tipping points we’ve been warned to look out for are starting to tip. The Amazon rainforest now emits more carbon than it absorbs. We’re now seeing visible signs of the collapse of the Gulf Stream (something we have known for a while is at risk). If that goes you can kiss goodbye to UK agriculture and expect to start relying on imports for all of our food, which thanks to our newly-minted non-EU status, might be a tad tricky. (Also, I know I keep linking to Guardian articles re: climate change. It’s not bias, it’s that no other source is doing a whole lot of climate reporting, even now.)

We’ve known about this for over 100 years. Perhaps almost 200. We’ve had decades to incrementally ween ourselves off our reliance on fossil fuels. But we’ve suffered an endless misinformation campaign waged by companies, media outlets and governments that rely on the profits generated by burning fossil fuels that caused us to question if it even existed.

And still…in the face of absolute undeniability, they do nothing.

So, the worst of all possible combinations then.

At this point, I’m not convinced there’s a right way to resolve the situation we’re in. If we’d have acted sooner, more decisively and for longer with proper support and enacted a working test, trace and isolate system, then things would most likely be, if not peachy, a good deal peachier than they are. But shoulda woulda coulda ain’t gonna do a whole lot about the now. Not that I think it’s okay, what happened; taking the opportunity to give out contracts to donors and friends – which has proven to be most lucrative, while they were crying out for PPE and then attempting to gaslight half a nation by claiming there never was a shortage.

But what’s going on now is a little difficult to fathom. Basically treating it like flu, even though it’s not flu. Claiming we’ll just have to live with it and a whole load of people will just have to die, because, you know, Costa’s been low on profits for a while. Which is obviously worse.

Well, ok, but better to try that when we have more of us vaccinated yes? Because you know, this is a virus that mutates as it spreads. So just letting it go nuts on a partially vaccinated population means a good chance of more variants that the vaccines are not effective against that are more deadly to more people and are more transmissible. It’s already happening; hello delta variant. Then there’s the mounting evidence that surviving it isn’t just a case of ‘that’s it, well done, off you go’; it affects the brain and the body in ways that won’t be clear for a long time, not forgetting long covid, which is present in all age groups, children included. No other country in the world is trying this experiment of just giving up and letting the population just get infected and see what happens, and it seems to be baffling the international community (I admit I laughed when CNN compared our PM to Lord Farquaad). It is entirely unsurprising that the new health secretary is a mega fan of Ayn Rand, and I don’t see why we should be happy for them to take this risk with the lives of people they are entrusted to safeguard. Of course, they’ve left us with little alternative other than to forever go on the lock-down/reopen/lock-down/reopen carousel. Might it just have been a bit better to have held on until the vaccine roll out was complete, or near as dammit? It’s weird how anti-lockdown folk tend to also be anti-vaccine folk. So what, your preferred option is for as many people to die as possible? Why?

Being sick of experts unfortunately doesn’t stop them usually being right. Ignoring expertise has led to the most bonkers strategy to deal with the virus; to leave the EU in the most nonsensical manner imaginable and I’ve no doubt that scientific expertise will continue to be ignored regarding climate change.

Like some kind of Sunnydale-on-Sea (it genuinely does look like a hellmouth), we’ve actually managed to literally set the ocean on fire, and we’ve allowed a small town in Canada to literally burn down to the ground (note the ridiculous journalistic standards on that article that still make no mention whatsoever linking the temperatures and wildfires with climate change – the media are fully complicit in this being as bad as it is), but we still won’t move away from our dependence on fossil fuels with the urgency that was required decades ago. The response to this, and the growing protest movement from Extinction Rebellion? Change the law so the right to protest is rendered powerless and, according to the recently-passed bill, noisy protests can carry a 10 year jail term. So you can now be jailed for longer for, say, pulling down the statue of a slave trader than for rape. Well, they shouldn’t have inconvenienced people trying to grab a Costa should they? (Granted, the change in the law is likely also in response to Black Lives Matter in addition to Extinction Rebellion, but you know what? Black lives do matter, and they are still largely treated as though they don’t, or at least that they matter less, and until that changes and there is some kind of proper social justice, there are going to be those protesting about it.) Those in power call themselves libertarians? When they want to jail you for a decade for disagreeing with the endless corruption and incompetence that is leading to the actual end of our civilisation as we know it and the death and forced migration of billions of people (not as far away into the future as you would like to think)? I don’t think that word ‘libertarian’ means what they think it means.

Somewhere in the multiverse there is a reality where Murdoch, Koch, Rothmere et al don’t have the kind of influence they have here and we don’t have such a significant portion of the population that are so enamoured with populism, nationalism and jingoism, or so happy to get apoplectic about whatever culture war nonsense is used to distract them that they are happy, to borrow from Christopher Nolan, to watch the world burn so long as they can be mean about a princess from another country with brown skin. A reality where the statement given by an expert that has spent their entire life studying a subject isn’t given the same weight as some fool that’s read something online and now thinks he knows more.

I want to go to that reality.

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):

Dirty Pretty Things: Bloodthirsty Bastards: “Bloodthirsty bastards making plans for no one/but themselves.”

Ugh.

Getting fed up of it now. Acting illegally. Bigging up a deal to increase corporation tax while at the same time trying to sort a loophole for your mates in the city. Mates that are still funding the destruction of us all. An opposition that appears to do literally nothing to oppose. And yet, what gets focused on? Vilifying black footballers that would like it if people stopped showering them with racist abuse. Vilifying a group of students that didn’t want a picture of the queen up. I mean, I had a picture of a queen up when I was at Uni, but it was the queen known as Buffy Summers, not Liz Windsor. More non-news. More culture war bullshit to distract from the endless corruption.

And people continue to lap it up.

As I said: ugh.

Good…and bad.

I feel like some days I might be two different people in one ragged overweight shell. I feel like some days I’ve been trying to hold two realities in my head at once; both equally true, yet both very different. The personal and the external.

My life is going ok generally. Yes, there is an awful lot of extra stress at the moment from being stuck at home a lot. There is boredom from not being able to see friends and colleagues socially, or to take my kids to the local swimming pool or to the cinema or even to my local for an overpriced mediocre meal. But the rest of it’s going well.

Staying at home isn’t so bad because I’ve managed (with help – still impossible to do without help) to buy a house, and it’s a house that we love. I still have a job when so many others are struggling. I live with my family. You know, I’m not king of the world or a millionaire, but generally things are going well.

As long as I don’t widen that viewpoint, things are fine. If I look up beyond my own personal circumstances things get bleaker. Corruption and dishonesty in plain view from those tasked with governing us both at home and overseas, with a media that instead of holding them to account, spends its time trying to distract us with racist hit-pieces on members of the royal family they don’t like, a collective lack of effort to mitigate the numerous and linked challenges facing us in the near future, decisions made to increase, rather than reduce, the grave imbalance between the ultra-rich and the destitute, still refusing to pay staff on the front lines of this fight against the pandemic what they’re worth, paying them instead with claps.

The existential nature of the fear and the threat of climate change-caused ecological breakdown and how it will affect every part of our lives with increasing extremity, coupled with the fact that those tasked with preparing society to face it are chained to the will of those still profiting from fuelling the breakdown and the way most of us face the situation with apathy.

All of that causes a weird feeling in me some days. The peace I feel at home from the generally positive place I’m in personally feels unearned and somehow disrespectful when the wider view of the world imposes itself on me. Some days I think the cognitive dissonance is enough to make me crumble to dust and just stop doing anything.

It's a strange thing.

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 Doors: Strange Days: “Strange days have found us, strange days have tracked us down. They’re going to destroy our casual joys.”

Happy New Year?

2020 was undoubtedly a difficult one. Understandably there is a lot of sentiment about this year being better. And in some ways, I’m sure it will be. There are multiple vaccines being distributed (although we still have the worst death rate in the entire world) and the Orange Menace is gone, although there is no sign of the conditions that made far right populists able to attain power so easily both over there and over here going anywhere anytime soon. Moaning about news outlets filtering everything through an ideological filter is pretty much the sum total of what I do on here, but it’s still the reason why nobody can see eye to eye – nobody knows what the actual truth is, just what the owners of the news media they consume want them to think the truth is.

Even when a concerted effort is made to appear balanced, the curse of false equivalency rears its head. Take the BBC, insisting on hearing ‘both sides’ on every issue from climate change to COVID, even when there isn’t really a ‘both sides’ to it at all – just what is true and what is not. It’s damaged the corporation’s credibility to the point where those on the left see it as little more than a state-sponsored Tory mouthpiece and those on the other side of the political divide rant about it being biased against them, leaving basically everyone to consider the news and political coverage not worth paying attention to. And they’d be absolutely right. This piece by the Byline Times sums it up better than I can.

The thing is, I don’t think 2020 being largely shite is a freak occurrence. I think it’s a symptom. I think we’ve been warned for decades that the way we live, the way we consume, will rob the world of its ability to support us, and I think that’s what’s happening. I think the consistent warming of the planet (we’re up about 1.2 degrees on average and 1.5 is where things start getting cataclysmic) is beginning to break down the weather and ecological systems we rely on. I think the flooding and the fires and the other indicators of climate change will continue to get worse. I think there might be other, more deadly pandemics on the way. I think we’re at the point where our species’ consistent excess is starting to come back around and demand we start reaping all the sewing we’ve been doing.

That’s not to say I think we should all give up. Things are turning around, albeit too slowly. We might yet be able to secure some kind of future that isn’t apocalyptic, but it’s going to be touch and go for a few decades.

Wish us luck.

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):

Queens of the Stone Age: …Like Clockwork: “Most of what you see my dear, is worth letting go, because not everything that goes around comes back around you know. One thing that is clear: It’s all downhill from here.”

Sometimes hypocrisy isn't hypocritical.

Some things are hypocritical. Being President of the U.S.A. saluting the military while doing nothing about Russia putting bounties on the heads of American soldiers? That’s hypocrisy. Getting yourself elected on the promise of an ‘oven-ready’ deal, when months later it’s clear there’s no such thing? That’s hypocrisy. Living as a migrant in a foreign country for 6 months of the year, voting to prevent migration to your home country and then being outraged that the result prevents you migrating to your holiday home? That’s hypocrisy. And idiocy, to boot.

There are some things that get called hypocrisy, but aren’t. Or if they are, they are a different kind altogether than the examples mentioned above. Feeling distraught because you see signs of a collapsing ecology everywhere, desperate for governments, politicians, billionaires and companies everywhere to actually stop this course we’re on that leads to the literal destruction of all, and then buying a product from one of those companies? Not hypocrisy.

It's an argument that gets used too often. ‘Oh, you want to live in a fairer society without the devastating effects of rampant unchecked capitalism? Why are you spending money on products then?’ Following such an inanity, these people then tend to leave the conversation with an air of smugness. Where would I end up if I just decided to not ‘take part’? Fucking homeless, that’s where. That doesn’t prevent me from putting forward an argument that the current system, that I have no choice but to take part in, is unfair and in its current form, will lead to the ruin of all.

Jeff Bezos has enough money to end world hunger, and every day chooses not to. I can’t even imagine having that kind of power and simply not doing it. Between them, a mere 100 companies could have prevented the utter climate destruction that will soon be unavoidable at any point in the last 30 years. Every day for those 30 years they chose, and continue to choose, not to. Jeff Bezos, and billionaires like him, instead keep the money that they could not spend on material items in 10 lifetimes, to themselves. Pointing out that that makes them awful, awful people – proper Bond villain stuff, while watching Amazon Prime, is not hypocrisy.

I don’t want to destroy society, so I still choose to partake in it. That doesn’t mean I don’t want it to be fairer and less destructive.

The good old days...

Worst single-day death toll in all of Europe. Seems quite possible we’re still weeks away from the peak. The people that caught The Virus from the people that went to Cheltenham and to see the Stereophonics are going to be amongst those dying in the coming weeks. It’s hard not to be freaked out and afraid. Still no sign of the mass testing and tracing that the countries successful at limiting the spread were using from the start. This isn’t going away any time soon it seems.

Seems the magic money tree did exist after all. It seems inevitable that this will cause a change in the way this and other countries are run, doesn’t it? Seems like all those important jobs like, I dunno, hedge fund speculation, can all be done at home, or even not done at all, and the ones that don’t pay enough to live on are the jobs that are actually important, doesn’t it? Seems like this minor trial run of the climate change-led catastrophe-laden future that is already underway might make folks think twice about continuing on this path, doesn’t it?

If I might offer a brief cold shower? The propaganda shat out by the press and social media trolls and bots have successfully caused us to lurch further and further to the right-wing, destroying, piece by piece, the very institutions we are all now reliant on for our lives and the lives of our loved ones. Truth means nothing. Sensationalist journalism and viral social media has made absolutely sure of that.

When the daily death toll in Italy was going up to 700, 800, 900 it was reported like the disastrous tragedy is was. It took us a couple of weeks longer to put similar (but less effective) measures in place, and now when our own death toll has exceeded Italy’s worst day, The Sun declared it really was Good Friday, focusing only on the fortunes of one man. As the Prime Minister, it’s quite an important man whether you voted for him or not to be fair, but the uplifting positivity in the face of all that potentially preventable tragedy is exactly what The Sun and papers like it do. Nearly a thousand people dead in one day, and it’s framed like a good news story.

I’m afraid, therefore, I don’t think this inevitable sea change that others see is necessarily on the cards. I’m afraid, I can see all too clearly all that’s happened being left behind for the continued quest for a Britain of the past that never really existed. It's currently 'not the time' to question or criticise apparently. But then it'll be 'why bring up the past? Move on' when questions are asked afterwards. They’ll continue to lead us ever onwards, telling us burning all of our relationships with Europe (like, I don’t know, telling them to piss off when they offered to help us source desperately-needed ventilators) will bring back the good old days.

Let’s hope I’m full of shit. Let’s hope the worst is behind us, The Virus is defeated and we actually put in place decent pay for nursing staff and think about how amazing all these places around the world look without smog and put in place all the technology that already exists and build an infrastructure that isn’t built on making people rich at the expense of, well, absolutely everything.

But let’s not kid ourselves that it’s an inevitability, because The Sun (and others) are going make damn sure we continue on our path into headlong destruction.

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 Libertines: Good Old Days: “It chars my heart to always hear you calling, calling for the good old days. ‘Cause there were no good old days.”

Hubris. It’s what’s for dinner.

It seems we, the Great Britannia, don’t have to follow the advice of actual experts in contagious disease. Actual virologists. Image being the cause of passing a virus to someone with a compromised immune system, leading to their death, because you went to a Stereophonics gig. Or Lewis Capaldi.

No, I’m not that worried for myself. But that doesn’t mean I ought to be an arsehole about it. Based on the advice we’ve been given, we could be excused for not knowing what the hell to do, but we do seem to have more in common with the Trump approach than pretty much everyone else (not that we’re that bad yet – we haven’t refused the test provided and decided to make our own unreliable version, we haven’t refused to test in large numbers in case it hurts chances of re-election (although it does seem we’re not testing anywhere near enough), and we certainly haven’t tried to bribe scientists for an exclusive vaccine. Seriously, the guy is such a maggot).

Even if it ‘only’ kills 1% of the infected (at best – more like 3-4 at worst), it seems a little callus to immediately write that 1% off without even trying to prevent it. Doesn’t seem that difficult. Stay away from people if you can, especially those more at risk. Wash your hands more often, for longer (regular ordinary soap kills this thing in approximately 20 seconds, breaking down the protective barrier the virusy bastard has evolved for itself). Even if you don’t want to sing Happy Birthday twice over, just find something else (for sci-fi nerd me, it’s the Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear, spoken slowly).

I doubt there’s no cause for alarm at all like some muppets are saying (step forward, again, Ms Hopkins), but we do seem to be panicking in an entirely unhelpful way. It seems to be either one extreme or the other – either a ‘meh, who gives a shit’ or a ‘pandemonium! Sell, sell, sell! Tell your clients to invest everything in canned food and shotguns and get to the bunker!’ when neither approach seems sensible. Not that I actually know, of course. All I can really do is my best to keep myself un-infectious.

Oh, and if you’re sitting on a years’ worth of bog paper or hand sanitiser for no other reason than you are every man for himselfing or thinking you can sell it on at an increased price, may you be cursed with everyone always remembering what a selfish prick you were when this thing passes. When the much worse consequences of unchecked climate change bite, you’ll be begging for the good old days of pandemics.

This weird thing of us all thinking because we’re British we can just carry on regardless is actual insanity, and is born of repeated nonsense spewed out over years and is the same reason we’re doing that whole leave the EU thing. The Sunday Times spaffed out an opinion piece: ‘I’m 83. I survived rationing. The coronavirus doesn’t scare me.’ These things are not related. I’m 40. I survived Alton Towers. Getting eaten by rabid lambs doesn’t scare me.

Then there’s the data that suggests that during the peak of the outbreak in China, total mortality rates actually went down because day-to-day living and working in such a polluted environment is actually more damaging to people than a pandemic. That doesn’t mean pandemics are good things, but it does mean we (or, more specifically, the global economic systems we have in place to prop up this weird obsession with capitalism) are the problem.

The advice we’re getting from officials is contradictory and changing every couple of days:

Day One: Carry on as normal, taking in on the chin, and because of some pseudoscientific thing I heard, everything will be fine, and only half a million people will die. And more importantly, the money my rich mates cream off the economy will be saved. Hooray! What’s that? The World Health Organisation thinks that’s bullshit? To hell with them. We’re British!

Day Four: So you know a few days ago we said disregard what the rest of the world is doing? Yeah, actually, do what they are doing. Don’t go out, don’t mingle. Schools? Staying open (economy first, lives second, remember?). Businesses? Staying open – just don’t go and use them. That way, my rich mates in the insurance industry don’t have to pay out.

Day Six: Um. Yeah, schools are closing. The science has changed. And by that we mean the science is the same as it always was, but we’ve just not listened until now, and it seems like we’d better start doing the same as everyone else.

Seems like nobody actually knows what to do. Or is putting the economy and the financial interests of the very wealthy above, literally, the lives of the vulnerable. Or simply doesn’t give a single shit about any of us. Or all of the above.

I hope that this thing will blow over with not much more damage than swine flu or bird flu, or even regular flu. But if it doesn’t, I really don’t think the mere fact that We Are Britain will do much to help us in the end. Seems unlikely this time, but eventually, our media-led, chest-beating hubris will be the ruin of us all on this fair isle.

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear, Frank Herbert's Dune.

Relief. For a time.

Something happened a few days ago that made me see I’d been tense and anxious without realising it. I’d been moaning about the amount of rain we’d had; almost, it seemed to me, constant since Autumn. Nobody else I spoke to about it seemed to notice much. They knew we’d had rain – you couldn’t not know. But it didn’t seem to bother anyone greatly that we’d barely had a 24-hour period without rain for months.

It's England. We’re famous for rain. I realise this. But the giant puddles and waterlogged woods I walk past and through on my way to and from work weren’t getting smaller or drying up. It turns out it hadn’t stopped raining for more than a day since September. Until just the other day.

It’s hard not to feel disingenuous moaning about constant rain in light of all that’s been going on in Australia and also when the rain we’ve had is inconsequential when compared to what Indonesia has been going through (what, you didn’t know? Your usual source of news failed to bring the terrible climate change-fuelled flooding to your attention? Funny that, with Indonesia being a country of people of a different colour or religion or standing on the world stage that your planet-destroying billionaire-defending press thought it wasn’t worth mentioning, what with a prince deciding to move out of his gran’s house being all that’s apparently newsworthy (a good backdrop for the upcoming likely economic suicide the country’s about to commit too – ‘take back control’ indeed. What a ridiculous joke). The day our hateful, lying, spiteful, complicit media go up in flames will be a good day. But I digress), it feels somewhat hypocritical to complain. But again, England. Complain is what we do.

We’ve had a mild Winter. That’s pretty much undeniable. And yes, to harp on about one mild Winter being down to climate change would be as bad as those that claim a cold snap is evidence supporting their denial. I know the difference between weather (the weather in one place, at one time, being evidence of nothing) and climate (weather trends over the world over an extended period of time, being evidence of our current way of life being somewhat doomed in a matter of decades, perhaps years). But a mild Winter coupled with knowledge of what’s happening to the climate has been leaving me sick with anxiety.

So when, over the last few days, the clouds cleared, and the stars shone at night, and the temperature dropped, and the morning came with frost, and the air was cold, I felt what I’d been missing. The muddy puddle I usually have to navigate through crunched underfoot. The leafless trees were gorgeous against a clear bright sky. The sunset was astonishing. It was such a relief. It was joyous.

It's already gone. Today was too warm again, and the ground was wet again. But I can hold on to that feeling, for a while. I can try not to worry too much about those moments becoming rarer until they disappear entirely in the years ahead.

People are asking the wrong question about climate change. The question isn’t ‘Is this drought/fire/flood/hurricane caused by climate change?’ All those weather phenomena have always been with us. The question is ‘How much worse is climate change making it?’ The answer is, a lot, but nowhere near as much as it’s going to.

You’re not the one that can fix it. Neither am I. Remember, about 100 companies are responsible for 71% of all carbon emissions. They are the ones that can, while not fix it exactly, certainly mitigate the absolute worst of it. They could have fixed it, in the 80s. They knew even then, but, you know. Money. Profit. Shareholders. BP. Exxon. Shell. Blood on their hands, all of them.

I suppose the point to make is take those moments of relief and joy where you can. While you can.

Alone? Not alone.

I was anxious about climate change back in the ‘90s. I wondered why, if it will inevitably lead to global catastrophe, nobody in a position to do anything about it was bothering. Throughout the early 2000s it became increasingly clear that the monster campaign of disinformation and bribery backed by the fossil fuel industry, influencing policy and media coverage, was able convince the public that the threat was vague, possibly not even real, and climate scientists, while trying repeatedly to get the message across with no funding, no experience, no backing and only research on their side, were side-lined and maligned at every turn. Each year that went by increased my anxiety and my fear and while I did what I could, the obvious truth was and remains no matter how much we recycle, reuse and repurpose, we won’t stop the ecological collapse without either overcoming or securing the backing of the capitalist machine that holds the media and the governments of the world in useless limbo.

Recently it’s become ever more difficult. The anxiety has morphed into a constant terror, a dull thudding knot always with me in the pit of my stomach, ready to snatch away any peaceful moment of introspection, semi-regularly spilling over into extended periods of frantic hopelessness that drive out other thoughts, robbing me of sleep and causing me to snap at my children.

Why, when extreme weather events are becoming ever more consistent, are Exxon Mobil still allowed to flood social media with greenwashing about how they’re funding bullshit, untested technology about sucking carbon molecules out of the air, while continuing to invest millions in fossil fuels? Why, when wildfires spread further and burn for longer every summer are we (that’s the royal we, as in governments and people actually in a position to invest) not building more offshore windfarms when it’s a proven technology that could replace coal (wind currently accounts for about 22% of energy sources)? Why, when research says we are currently waving goodbye to our chance to limit warming to 1.5 degrees and coming up on multiple major climate tipping points that will push us beyond 3 degrees (which will affect us all, ruinously) are we still increasing the amount of carbon we shit into the atmosphere year on year?

It didn’t seem like anyone else was being affected in this way. It seemed like the frightening reports just kept coming to a collective shrug from everyone else, while I quietly fretted more and more. Well, it turns out I’m not alone. Inspired by a child, almost one tenth of the entire population of the world walked out on a Friday to protest the criminal lack of action from those in positions of power and influence around the world. It turns out millions and millions of other people are terrified, and want things to change. It doesn’t sound like a good thing, but it sure made me feel less alone.

Slowly, too slowly, the needle is turning. Even the global disinformation network has mostly stopped denying climate change exists and is caused by humans, although it is still trying to stop anything being done about it, and business as usual on this front possibly gives us barely a handful of years before widespread collapse (and as that article points out, in some places, the collapse is already happening in a smaller scale in some countries). So far this year 100% of academic papers agree on the science.

It was women that helped me to get up and carry on, as usual. The doom and gloom articles, trying to get me to give up hope completely are usually written by men. The global strike was triggered by a girl, and it is the female climate scientists that are largely inspiring me to not lose all hope and acknowledge that yes, while catastrophic warming is now largely inevitable, leading to an uncertain and shitty future for my kids and likely curtailed old age for me, extinction is not yet a foregone conclusion. In the not-too-distant future, we’re all going to have to make a choice: Extinction? Or Rebellion?

Not a traitor.

We’ll start with a Final Jeopardy question:

The irreparably corrupt convincing the (mostly) uninformed to demand the incompetent deliver the impossible.

Answers on a post card.

It was intimated to me not so long ago that not wanting to leave the EU meant that somehow I was a traitor to the UK, siding with the enemy. I suppose the first point is that when did the EU become our enemy? Secondly, I have long established my dislike of obsessive patriotism, how it’s little more than mild racism, and how one of the best things for us as a species in the long run would be to stop allowing lines drawn on a map dictate where we can and can’t go, drop this infantile tribalism and just, you know, treat each other as fellow humans rather than allowing the country of one’s birth or one’s parents’ or grandparents’ birth inform how worthy we think people are of basic respect.

Feeling sad while posh twats cheer a person declare an end to free movement with a smirk on her face does not make me a traitor.

Thinking it's bizarre that said person seems really pleased about introducing an 'Australian-style points system' under which her own family would have most likely been denied entry to the UK doesn't make me a traitor.

Feeling bereft that my children and their children (if the species lasts that long) will be denied the chance to work, live, love and settle in nearly 30 other countries as easily as getting on a train does not make me a traitor.

Wanting to be part of a larger international community working together to achieve positive outcomes, and not wanting to retreat to a more insular existence looking to a rose-tinted past does not make me a traitor.

Being worried about people I know having to deal with uncertainty regarding their right to stay in the place they’ve lived and worked for years and years does not make me a traitor.

Pointing out that the vote of 17 million people out of a country of 66 million doesn’t really give anyone carte blanche to do things that will take decades to recover from doesn’t make me a traitor.

Disagreeing with the assertion from the Daily Express that the said 17 million have been ignored, because the past three years has been almost nothing but an attempt to deliver this impossible thing you think you want does not make me a traitor.

Pointing out that about 1.5 million of them have died in the 3 years since, and that millions more now have a right to vote, making the original result somewhat out of date doesn’t make me a traitor.

Thinking that it’s strange that those in positions of influence advising we go ahead and leave without a deal stand to make £8.3 billion from their hedge fund speculations betting against the performance of UK companies because they know the country will be negatively affected isn’t reported more widely in the press doesn’t make me a traitor. (Eat, and I can’t stress this strongly enough, the rich.)

Feeling depressed when thinking about the sheer amount of good that could have been done year after year if dickheads didn't obsess over stupid shite don't make me no traitor.

Finding it hard to understand how non-racist leave voters don’t think that the massive level of support from racists and the sharp rise in racist violence the day the result was announced isn’t cause for concern and possibly a rethink doesn’t make me a traitor.

Pointing out that precisely nobody voted for no deal, which in fact highlights the profoundly unworkable nature of the original referendum, cursed from the outset, does not make me a traitor.

Being afraid for people who are dependent on drugs imported from other EU countries does not make me a traitor.

Saying that if you’re surprised that the ‘plan’ to take us out keeps falling apart when it comes up against the cold light of reality and long-established Parliamentary law means you’re not getting enough actual fact in your tabloid-fed bullshit does not make me a traitor. (As a starting point, try supplementing your red-top nonsense by following actual legal expert David Allen Green, if you can stand the hellscape Twitter has become.)

Thinking that ripping up over 4 decades of social, legal and economic integration without anything to replace it with is highly likely to cause recession, anxiety, social unrest, violence and the collapse of institutions and arrangements dependent on this integration (like, say, the NHS or the Good Friday Agreement) doesn’t make me a traitor.

Feeling impotent fury watching an old colleague’s record store go from a growing business to a stagnating one, barely afloat in the years since the referendum as stock imported from Europe rises steadily in cost due to a floundering and uncertain pound, and punters find themselves with less disposable income does not make me a traitor.

Repeat after me: NONE. OF. THESE. THINGS. MAKE. ME. A. TRAITOR.

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.”

Stop ruining things.

There was a field in my local town centre that always managed to lift my spirits as I went past it. It wasn’t very large and it was full of buttercups at the right time of year. It’s strange sometimes how small things can have a significant impact. This field wasn’t large or spectacular, but its yellow carpet throughout the summer months meant it always did a lot to improve my outlook when I drove past it (yes I know the fact that I drove past as I appreciated this field is possibly somewhat illogical, but its location meant that I would never be in a position to walk past it – if you’re local it’s by the M54 roundabout just up the hill from where Blockbusters used to be).

You might notice me talking in the past tense. That’s because they dug it up and concreted it over. It’s now yet another KFC and yet another Costa Coffee – there are already multiple instances of both brands throughout my town. Now driving past, the little lift I used to get has been replaced by another little tug dragging me down. Those little lifts are important – they help get you through the day, which helps get you through the week, which helps get you through the so on and so on. Without them, life has a little less colour, a little less joy, a little more…grey.

You could consider me lucky, because I still live in an area with a significant amount of greenery, but every time another meadow of flowers is ripped up and destroyed to build another copy of another brand we don’t need any more of, it gets harder and harder to stay positive.

How are we supposed to stop them? How soon will it be until they build a Costa on top of the Wrekin? Or on the Ironbridge? I don’t know. I’ve tried not going to them, but it doesn’t seem to make a difference, what with everybody else going to them.

Maybe eventually enough of us will realise what we’re losing with every new unnecessary church erected to the gods of capitalism and profit to make a difference, but I doubt that’ll happen in time.

Too late?

I’ve been banging on about climate change a lot lately. Well, I don’t intend to apologise for that. Just because too many of us are either not aware of what’s going to happen, or are ignoring it and choosing to carry on regardless, or, like me, carry on fully aware that everything I can do to reduce the damage I’m doing is like using a teaspoon to clean up an oil spill, it doesn’t mean the future we’ve decided for ourselves is something I can stop going on about.

Because I can take a pretty decent guess at how I think my kids are going to die. The latest IPCC report paints a pretty bleak picture of our future if major changes aren’t made yesterday. That bleak picture is actually pretty rosy compared to the likely reality, knowing full well as we do that those with the power to effect real change don’t have any intention of doing it. Keeping within 2 degrees of warming will merely mean the deaths of millions and the resettling of millions more. Not speaking for myself, we’ve always pretty much accepted this, because it will mostly be impoverished countries taking the brunt of it, so we’ll all be able to feel sorry for those poor folks living far away, maybe donate a bit to a charity and keep on pissing away the planet’s resources like we always have, assuming we can do enough to keep within 2 degrees.

But we’re not doing enough. It’s years too late. Maybe decades. But hey, this has only been known for 100 years or so in scientific circles, so it isn’t like we had enough time to change, you know? Murdoch, Koch and other names of very rich white men are continuing to push the discussion in other directions. The good we could have accomplished, and the progress we could have made if we hadn’t spent our time focusing on shite like leaving the E.U. (noticed how the Venn diagram for those heavily in favour of leaving and those that deny climate change is a clear and present threat (or even exists) pretty much overlaps?), abusing folks migrating from other countries (you have no idea of the shitshow coming if you think we’re overwhelmed now (which we’re not)) or countless other political pursuits that won’t mean anything in the long run if this isn’t tackled simultaneously breaks my heart and fills me with fury enough to, when I let it, stop me being of any use to anyone.

We’re currently banking on technology that hasn’t been invented yet to fix this mess at some point in the future. The truth is too ridiculous for parody. It’s like an American senator assuming praying will do a damn thing to stop idiots shooting schoolchildren so they can continue to do nothing (as with climate change, the lack of action by those with the power to affect change, leashed by the power of money, is now beyond reprehensible). There’s a Venn overlap again in there somewhere.

The increasingly likely outcome then is looking more and more like 8 degrees. That’s not ‘just’ the deaths of millions. That’s ecological collapse. That’s impossible to grow food (no, we can’t just switch to growing bananas and coconuts). That’s everybody dying. I’m guessing those on top of the economic tree using their influence to convince as many people as they can to keep the status quo and allow this to happen are assuming their money will protect them, and that they will somehow be able to profit off it. But sooner or later, food won’t just be expensive, it simply won’t be there.

And that’s why I’m worried I can take an educated guess as to how my kids might die. If it is, it’ll be the same way your kids will die. It might even be how I go out if I hold on long enough: starvation. Doesn’t seem possible at the moment does it? That’s why you listen to the people spending their lives in study of it telling you this could happen. It’s probably too late to swerve it, and we’re still going straight at it full throttle, ignoring the shouts of those telling us to change course.

A lasting impression I could do without.

Have you ever read a book or watched a film that you know is extremely good, but you still wish you’d never gone anywhere near it? I’ve done it twice now. The first was when we watched Grave of the Fireflies. Studio Ghibli has a body of work that pretty much nobody can touch for quality, save maybe Pixar. Grave of the Fireflies is a 1988 animated film directed by Isao Takahata which forms part of the Ghibli collection. It brings home the devastating cost of war by focusing on two children in Japan near the end of the second world war, who lose their parents and have to try to survive together in the face of starvation and the antipathy of a population numb to tragedy. Studio Ghibli films are not afraid to focus on hardship, loss and grief, but they are generally optimistic. When I had finished watching, I felt something I’d never felt in reaction to a film before or since; a physical pain. My heart was broken and I felt like I’d been kicked in the gut. The film is incredible; told with the same gift for character and astonishing artistry that is par for the course for Ghibli, but I don’t ever want to see it again and I can’t bring myself to recommend it to anyone. It was like having my heart stomped on by the one person I can usually expect to make it soar. I was in a funk for weeks afterwards, unable to shake the feeling of desperate hopelessness it left in me. Art that can do that is undeniably powerful, but all the same, I’d rather not feel like that.

I recently read Random Acts of Senseless Violence. Written by Jack Womack and published in 1993, it tells the story of Lola, a young teenage girl living in a in a well-to-do area of New York, while the world around her falls apart. When her parents can no longer find work and have to move to a more dangerous area, we follow Lola as she changes from private school girl to ruthless gangster, and it makes for such a depressing read. It’s very well done, but it is so infuriating to see this innocent girl have her life taken from her and her potential lost. Not just Lola, but a society that could’ve been so much more devolve into shadow of itself, beset by riots and greed. It felt the same way reading High Rise felt, this chilling feeling of a society making the decision to let itself topple from the cliff edge, and the sense of everything slowly going to hell, when with just a little more will, it might’ve pulled itself back from the brink. A bit like living in a UK forcing itself to leave the European Union even though it knows full well what the consequences are going to be, or like I would imagine living in the U.S. under President Cockwomble feels like.

This book has stuck with me not just because of that though, but because of something specific, and that’s the death of Lola’s father. No longer able to make ends meet as a screenwriter due to the volatile world the book is set in, he has no choice but to work extremely long hours in a job in which he is constantly under pressure and screamed at and berated for barely enough money to afford the rent on the crappy apartment the family have had to move to. There is a truly haunting scene in which poor Lola finds her father dead having had a heart attack in the middle of the night, and eventually, this is the thing that pushes Lola beyond the point of no return.

I’m not saying that the world in which I live and work is anywhere near as bad as the unfortunate Lola’s. But I am on that borderline between just managing financially and not managing. And I do work overtime. Since reading that book, the only thing on my mind when I get up at 6:15 on a Saturday morning to work overtime to supplement my wages while my family sleeps is that dreadful scene of Lola discovering her father’s body, after he worked and stressed himself to death trying play a rigged game just to keep his family safe and alive (he’d already given up on happy).

If this strikes you as overly melodramatic, well you’d be right. I actually quite enjoy my job. My family are, relatively speaking, safe and happy. While I do always feel like I don’t have enough money to get by, the truth is, we’ve managed it so far, so I expect we’ll be fine. But that’s the effect of well-made art on the psyche. We are going to have to deal with major crises over the coming decades because nobody has got the will to do a damn thing about climate change, but instead of the biggest emergency our species has ever had to deal with dominating the news and the political stage, we’re arguing about whether or not it’s a good idea to rip up the fragile Northern Ireland peace agreement so Lord Snooty (how can you not look at that snivelling weasel Rees-Mogg and think of anyone else?) can keep hold of his unearned, inherited, offshore tax-free millions and withdrawing from the agreement that ended the Cold War (good job America. Well done).

So it feels like, as in Random Acts of Senseless Violence, we are also a society deliberately deciding to step off into the abyss, and that’s why Lola and her father struck such a chord with me; forced to narrow their view and look out only for themselves, and as far as her father goes, eventually die trying.

Still. Chin up, eh?

A conversation around a campfire.

The sun was a blazing orange fire over the western horizon. Even at this late hour, the heat was oppressive, leaving you at once drenched and parched whether or not you were in shade. Shadows everywhere were lengthening, announcing the onset of another night. The sky was a clear bright blue, but it was possible to see the blue turning a darker shade as the sun continued to set. The ground was bare, brown and dusty; there had been no rain all season, but the rains would soon return; torrential, relentless, deadly. For now though, dryness and heat reigned.

In the middle distance, the city sparkled. A dead forest of metal, concrete and glass, but it looked beautiful bathed in the orange and pink sunset for all of that. She knew not to get closer – that beauty was not even skin-deep. Up close, the façade wouldn’t last a moment and the stench of death and decay would overwhelm. In that place, she would be prey. Better to stay out here, scratching for whatever she could find to survive with her family.

In spite of the heat, they worked together to get a fire going. Even at this late hour, it was possible to get badly burned by extended exposure to the sun, but when it finally fell behind the horizon the sky would darken quickly. The family gathered in the shade of an overhanging rock and shared the meagre provisions they had managed to gather, save and catch while avoiding the worst of the sun and other scavengers. They had a little food and some clean water, which was getting more difficult to find around here, now the supply of sealed plastic bottles was running low. They’d probably have to move on again soon. Too much running water would make you ill, as would the air, but what could you do? You had to drink. You had to breathe. Unless you didn’t.

But those were problems for another day. Tonight they would eat, drink and be together in each other’s company. Perhaps nana would tell them more stories about the old world. Sure enough, when the sun had gone and the food had been eaten, nana regaled them all.

“Oh what a world we had,” she would say. “Those towers over yonder? There weren’t no death around them, no rot.” She paused. “Well, not as much as there is now. We’d live in buildings all cosied up next to each other, and the really tall ones like that,” she said, pointing to the dark horizon where we knew the night hid those tall, dead towers, “we’d go to work.”

“What’s work?” the others dutifully replied, although they’d heard nana talk about this before, and expected it all to make as little sense this time as all the other times.

“Well, little ones, we used to spend all day in buildings doing things inside them. Working.” Nana looked down. “Keeping it all going,” she whispered, almost to herself.

“Was it fun?”

“Fun? No, it was work. We had to do it. Or at least we thought we did. Even those that didn’t think we had to had to because there were so many of us that did think we had to. We spent almost all of our time working in those buildings.”

“Because you didn’t have to look for food?”

“That was the beauty of it my darlings. We didn’t need to. Huge buildings full of all types of food. We always preferred the food that hurt us.” She shrugged at this seemingly nonsensical statement before continuing. “We were paid for the work we did. We used what they paid us to get our food. Then just threw away what we didn’t want. Let somebody else deal with it, that’s what we thought. That’s what we were brought up to think.” Nana was on a roll now. The story was familiar, so they settled back and allowed it to wash over them. She pulled a dead, useless black box from her pocket and caressed it. She would often do that when talking about the old days.

“My whole life was in this little box in those days,” she said wistfully, as she had done many times before. “Every single one of these little things that were made damaged the planet. But we all had one. It was worth it. At least I thought it was, back then. We all did. Even when we realised the damage we were doing, we carried right on doing it. The world was a small price to pay for one of these. There were other devices as well. Huge screens where we would watch stories unfold, shiny boxes that would allow us to play games with other people all over the world.”

“I can’t even imagine it, but it sounds wonderful,” the older kids would say.

“It should have been your world as well little ones. You should have inherited it from us. But the truth is, we refused to stop. We didn’t want to. Why leave a wonderful world behind for others, when we could just take it all ourselves? In hindsight, I guess we should’ve been more considerate, but by the time it had become clear to most of us, it was too late. But there were enough of us that knew in our hearts and didn’t care to stop even so. Every year we used the pay from our working to by new boxes, new screens, new things, even though the ones we already had worked fine. The new ones didn’t do a whole lot different, but there were enough little things that change with each new one that we just had to have it. For a device that takes your picture and puts little dog ears on you, we figured the world was a small price to pay.”

“Ah well nana. Maybe someday that world will come back.”

“I hope so little ones. I hope so.”

They all knew it wouldn’t, though. For what did they have left to build it with? Seas choked with discarded plastic? Rivers of poisoned water empty of life? No. Better to focus on what was real, not what was gone. They would survive while they could and adapt if they could.

Evening gave way to night and the sky darkened further, before coming alive again with stars. The night was full of them, with the Milky Way visible as a long strip of dust dissecting the sky, saturated with starlight. They were all mesmerised, like always on a clear night. As they stared to drift off to sleep under the sky, some of them heard nana speak softly to herself, tears in her eyes and clutching her dead phone. “I’m so sorry,” she said, over and over again, until she finally slept.

Not losing the will to try.

That’s what they want you to do. You’re bombarded with so many outrages – lies upon lies upon lies. It’s fatiguing. It gets so tiresome that it can sometimes be hard to find the will to give a shit.

Take the presidency over the water (lower-case ‘p’ on purpose, before you wonder – that piss-filled cheese piece isn’t worthy of being called a President). Mere weeks ago a story broke about how he inherited hundreds of millions from his father that was laundered illegally – it should’ve been enough to finish any democratically-elected world leader, but it’s already been forgotten in the midst of his administration approving the launching of tear gas at migrants seeking asylum at the US-Mexico border. Granted, the facts of the matter here are not simple to ascertain, but following the administration’s previous efforts at separating families at the border and locking children up, even forcing distraught toddlers to appear in court, you’d think they’d want to be mindful of their public image. He’s just rolling from one dreadful abuse of power to the next as a constant diversionary tactic. And somehow, it’s working – Republicans are mildly critical, but won’t move to remove him as long as their agenda is being pushed through and Democrats don’t have enough power to mobilise (although that might now have changed following the recent midterm elections). It’s mind-boggling how a supposedly democratically elected party can represent the views of such a small percentage of a country’s population and yet hold such a large majority of the power. Makes the UK’s first past the post system and elected oligarchy seem positively fair. Although it isn’t, but I’ve mentioned that before. Speaking of our own fair isle, the press are largely doing their damnedest to convince us there is anything remotely positive to the shitshow that is our attempt to leave the EU – so far there is not one damn thing that is set to improve – our quality of life, our standing in the international community, our GDP – everything is going to get worse. But hey, we had a vote before anyone knew anything about the details of the consequences of our national brain fart, so you know, better just get on with it.

A similar tactic has been employed regarding climate change over the years. The future projections are now so dire that most people appear to be plugging fingers in ears and just hoping it will go away or somebody else will solve the problem. There are 100 companies responsible for about 71% of all carbon emissions, so the truth is we could have solved this years ago easily if people just weren’t greedy arseholes. It’s not going to go away. It’s going to get worse. Unless an asteroid comes along in the meantime and wipes us out it’s going to ruin us, and the timescale appears to be a matter of decades, not centuries. Not even the next generation – my generation. The changes that we can’t be arsed to make now will be forced on us, and frankly, I find it hard to think of a reason why we wouldn’t deserve it.

What was I talking about? Oh yes, the way all of this makes it hard to avoid being ground down. It’s ok to feel like that – there are times it’s unavoidable. Sometimes it pays to take a little time to collect yourself, then pick yourself up and do better. Continue to vote, to resist the creeping xenophobia and wider acceptance of it. Arm yourself with fact, not bullshit opinions spouted by others that have zero regard for objective truth. Do your research, don’t rely on one source of news, because it will misinform you. Don’t stop, because that’s what they want you to do.

New occasional feature: Ending with a song loosely related to the post:

Ocean Colour Scene: Up on the Downside: “I am a witness to a land of a million fools.”

Too many.

“A person is smart. People are dumb dangerous animals and you know it.” – Agent Kay (Tommy Lee Jones, Men in Black, 1997)

There’s a perfect world that most people have in their heads and think that if only they could arrange for certain things to happen, then that utopia would be within reach. Trouble is everyone is complex, multi-faceted and different, so one person’s perfect world is another’s hell on earth. Some might want peace everywhere, an informed and intelligent populace with a social conscience, leading to the overcoming of catastrophic climate change, poverty and a new age of enlightenment, co-operation and scientific discovery. Some people think their perfect world would be one without people that are a different colour, religion or [insert culturally-relevant subject matter here for yourself, because frankly, the list is endless]. It seems that many of those in charge of numerous countries think a perfect world is one without poor people (on the face of it, a commendable aspiration, but methods of achieving said aspiration are sadly much less commendable).

The truth of it is we’ll never see that perfect world we want to strive for, because we don’t all share common cause, and there are far too many people to be able a convince a significant enough portion of them to build the world you see. You might throw names like Ghandi or MLK in my face in response to that. Fair point, but are we really any closer to the world they envisioned? They just had MLK day on the US, where Paul Ryan posed in front of a statue of King, spinning some bullshit about how he agrees with the message of equality and peaceful resistance, which for him appears to mean spending much of his political career trying to reverse the Affordable Care Act, seemingly for no other reason than it was introduced by a black President and brokering a monster tax cut for the rich while standing by and watching while poorer immigrant families that have been living in the US for 30 years are torn apart by the Government of which he forms a major part. Then being bunged a cool half mil by some of the super-rich he’s working for. I’m genuinely baffled how someone doesn’t literally fall apart from this level of cognitive dissonance.

You can talk to people one-on-one, and maybe have a chance of each of you understanding the other’s perspective, which is a start you can build from. But how do you do that when there are so many of us, in thrall to different ideologies spouted on all forms of media with no thought as to how it might affect other people. You just can’t resolve that on a larger scale – everything from the democratic process (although technically we don’t exactly have a democracy, more an elective oligarchy or a kakistocracy, but I’m well aware I’ve laboured that point a number of times previously), through the ability to maintain an informed, educated and non-impoverished populace, or an ecology that can support us, right through to not going to war. There are simply too many of us to sustain it.

At some level, I think most of us know this (or is that my own brand of cognitive dissonance?). But as far as I can see are carrying on regardless hoping that somehow we’ll find a solution. But what to do? How do we even begin to move towards a point where we can begin to see eye to eye? To be honest, I’m buggered if I know. How can you fight such a large scale collective difference of opinion, particularly as it’s often fuelled by those supposedly in control? Abolish the politicking for personal profit that passes for democracy both at home and abroad, dismantle press outfits that demonstrably lie consistently to further a profit-increasing agenda. Make asshole millionaires and asshole companies pay tax. Smaller generation sizes. That might be a start. A big ask, and not something that I can see happening any time soon. A steadily deteriorating climate provides a ticking clock that makes it even more unlikely.

Ah well. We’ll either figure it out in time or we won’t. Take comfort in the knowledge that wider Universe doesn’t care a jot for your cares or mine, and try to find enjoyment where you can.

Newish occasional feature: Ending with a song relating to the post:

Blur: There are too many of us. “That’s plain to see.”

In case for some reason it isn’t clear.

It is not normal to be a Nazi. There has been a recent New York Times article about one of the newly-bold Nazi pieces of shit over in America in the wake of Trump. It talks about how this pond scum is just like everyone else with the unfortunate exception of his extreme right-wing viewpoint. It cannot be said clearly enough: Fuck. That. Shit.

If you consider yourself an average everyday person but somehow you’re convinced that your skin colour (not your genetic heritage – that’s different – everybody’s got a bit of everybody else in their genes, Nazi or not (the video that links to, by the way, is just beautiful and should be watched by absolutely everybody)), or the religion you prefer, or the fact that you have a dick, makes you automatically better than others because they’re different, then take a long, hard look at yourself, and think about what it was that made you white, Christian, or male. Nothing special. Genes. The part of the world where you happened to be born. If you still can’t see it, then please feel free to lie down and die.

Same goes for you if you think the fact that you’re a multi-millionaire means you should pay less tax. Lewis Hamilton, Bono and the Queen can promote Children in Need or tell us what we should do to end poverty or make the world a better place all they want; the truth is, if they and every other fucknut like them didn’t invest the country’s money offshore so they could sit on a fortune of £250 million instead of a mere £198 million, there’d be much less need for Children in Need. Selfish, greedy fucks.

There are so many other examples (denying obvious truths like the facts that leaving the EU is turning into exactly the custerfuck those of us wanting to stay told you it would, that being in a position of power or celebrity doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want with the bodies of other people, that climate change is now likely to prevent us seeing the next century in as a civilised species because we couldn’t be arsed to do anything about it when we had the chance, running a newspaper that channels utter bullshit, becoming the biggest enabler of this crap out there, and, the newest – deciding that animals don’t feel pain to prevent you having to deal with pesky welfare regulations when you have your ‘sovereignty’ back (which you never actually lost in the first place)), that to go into depth would take for ever and make me sick in my soul. That’s if a soul was anything more than a human invention.

But most of all, the Nazis.