I don’t think I’ve ever felt quite as
depressed, angry and hopeless about UK politics as I’ve found myself feeling
over recent months (this last week has felt particularly disheartening).
Well, to
be honest, this probably goes back to the start of 2015, at least… just before the
last General Election (not that I was exactly a bundle of joy following the
outcome of the 2010 election!).
I
remember precisely how I felt when the exit poll results were announced on
television at the end of 7 May… utterly shattered. I watched in downright
disbelief. How could the electorate be so stupid?*
I also
remember thinking at that time just how strange it was that I appeared to
inhabit a virtual world (via facebook!) in which most of my friends shared my
thoughts and aspirations for the world, poverty, war, climate change, taxation,
health, education, justice… (the list is quite long!).
Unfortunately,
clearly, there was a parallel virtual world inhabited by people with largely
opposite political viewpoints(!)… and these were obviously in the slight
majority (hence the election result).
Sadly, as
far as the real world was concerned, things haven’t been helped in the UK
Parliament by a completely ineffective Opposition – which continues to fail to
challenge the government over a wide variety of crucial issues.
Fast
forward to 23 June 2016 - EU Referendum Day – and things got massively worse! The
Referendum vote (which, incidentally, is ADVISORY, not mandatory… and which
surely should therefore mean that parliament needs to vote on whether or not
the UK stays in the EU?) has actually resulted in the government deciding to
‘pick+choose’ which of the MANY messages in the Brexit vote it wants to listen
to (mainly immigration, sovereignty… it seems) and which it decides to ignore
(once again, the list is long). For goodness sake, it wasn’t like a General
Election – with an opportunity to reverse the decision in 5 years’ time – no,
it’s a decision that affects our children, their children and their
grandchildren. It didn’t matter that the resulting 52%:48% majority was so
narrow. It didn’t matter that the campaign produced lies from BOTH sides of the
argument (but far more from the Brexit people in my view).
Once again, I seemed to be living in
facebook virtual world of people who largely shared my beliefs and aspirations,
but lost out to the alternative facebook equivalent universe.
I remember feeling absolutely
devastated by the vote for days and days (and, frankly, still haven’t
recovered… as we continue to hear how our government interprets the voters’
wishes!).
It’s been
interesting/depressing/alarming/reassuring talking to various people about the
situation. One or two have suggested we all move to Scotland (only
half-jokingly?) – assuming that the SNP will launch another Independence
Referendum in the light of the EU decision… and that voters will opt to follow
the ‘Remain’ option. Others complain about the country being London-centric –
with huge concentration on the relatively small Westminster parliamentary
‘village’. Other people point to the fact that many of our population
(especially in the north of England) feel ignored by politicians and that the
EU Referendum represented a valid way of making an effective ‘protest’… and then
there’s been the ‘Occupy’ movement too.
All this has set me thinking…
Given how
much the world has changed over the past 25 years or so (since the internet,
for example), would it really be possible – perhaps, before 2050 – for us to be
living lives in which we could opt in or out of various ‘society options’? In
other words, allow us (ok, I’m not going to be around by then!) to live our
lives in a world of like-minded people – a bit like the facebook virtual world
I seem to be inhabiting today, but where our life-style preferences can
actually become reality?
Fantasy? Really? Who knows?
If someone had told you 10 years ago
that we were going to be having driver-less cars in the near future, would you
have believed them? If someone had told my father (he died 24 years ago) that
we’d ALL have computers in our homes or that people would be able to contact
each other instantly on tiny phones that each of us would carry around with us
in our pockets, he would have laughed at our naivety…
Maybe reading
Paul Mason’s book “Postcapitalism” has simply made me question how we do things… and
how we’ll do things in the future, for example:
“The main contradiction today is
between the possibility of free, abundant goods and information and a system of
monopolies, banks and governments trying to keep things private, scarce and
commercial. Everything comes down to the struggle between the network and the
hierarchy, between old forms of society moulded around capitalism and new forms
of society that prefigure what comes next”.
Yes, I
could list a whole multitude of issues that, on the face of it, couldn’t be
resolved in the sort of world I’m trying to imagine… and, no doubt, someone
will also point me to extensive research currently being undertaking on a virtual
reality world… or maybe it’ll just be a case of all the banks, governments,
corporations or the establishment simply won’t allow it?!
Just remember this blog post in the
year 2050(!)… you’ll be scratching your heads trying to remember the name of that
old bloke who vaguely talked about the alternative, virtual world that had
actually become a reality!
Yeh, right!
*: Actually, I’ve had huge reservations about so-called ‘democracy’ for several
years: I certainly wouldn’t trust the UK electorate to vote on hanging, for
example (and I obviously wouldn’t have allowed them to decide about the EU!)...
I’m afraid I think we have a massively-biased press and media which are all too
ready to inflict their views on what I regard as a sadly gullible population!
Photo: Hayward Gallery, London (Carsten Holler: 'Decision' exhibition 2015).
