I haven't posted on here in a while. For the most part it is because I have started posting on the more official blog Political Promise. After a few false starts they have consistently started to post my articles. This week they seem to be taking a bit longer over it. I suspect this is due to the recent disturbances in the UK. You see my article was about something in no related, how socialist poster boy Hugo Chavez is turning Venenzuela into a corrupt, dictatorial and dysfunctional hellhole. To put it subtly. Anyway, when these disturbances kicked off to my surprise at least two articles were published about these disturbances on Political Promise, well that's it I thought, no one is going to care about my Chavez article. Perhaps the site owners will take their view. But I tell you what I spent more than a few hours researching and writing that piece. So if they don't publish it this weekend I am going to send them a frank (but civil) email urging them to do so, and lay on the emotional blackmail by telling them that I committed a lot of time on it. If that fails then I'll just publish it on here, then bother them again. Oh what an exciting life I do lead.
I have been hesitating about whether to comment much at all about the UK riots for most of this week. I nearly decided against it since like many of us I imagine, I could find frustratingly few definite facts to get a grip on, and make sense of this madness. I haven't done much better since then. I have made a consciouss decision to resolve to explore this issue in greater detail when the fires have stopped, the fighting has stopped, and all of the reactionaries have shut their gobs, and the Little Englanders have scuttled away to hide under their tabloid rags. Fear and anger are hardly ever decent ingredients in people's decision making, or in the forming of their opinions. Like Tommy Lee Jones said in Men In Black "The person is smart, people are dumb, panicing and dangerous animals, and you know it".
Of all of the times that riots happen this is decidedly one of the most inconvenient, if there is ever a convenient one. The economy is struggling on like a rusty bicycle. The world is looking to us as the host the next Olympics. We are trying to pay off our debt, and are actually cutting police numbers as their work is clearly increasing. Nothing about this is satisfying for me. Least of all the loudest people who always seem to have an answer for these kind of situations, they are many. They are the tabloids, the scared, the angry and above all the Little Englanders.
Let me tell you who the Little Englanders are: They don't give a damn about the world or politics and all of that boring stuff. Until any of it threatens their job, their friends job or otherwise breaks up their routine. Perhaps with the assistance of stuff spontaneously being destroyed and burnt in their streets.
They don't want to read newspapers. They are too depressing, and full of things they may have to look up to understand. But this would waste precious seconds in their perfect and small worlds.
They prefer to read papers that probe into the lives of the famous. Famous by achievement or purely by prostituting their lives in the papers, and using the payoff money to hide behind their shame. They want to be consistently reminded that celebs experience unhappiness, embarrassment and heartbreak just as much as us. Often even more! So much the better, it isn't the Little Englanders life after all.
They blindly support the royal family as almost uber celebs. Paying almost no attention to the hierarchical and arcane values they stand for, and the utter indifference and snobbery they all ultimately hold towards us on some level.
They vote the same way all the time if they even vote. Their party could be running a platform of mandatory tarring and fearthering for all, but they would still vote for them again. Because they are funny, or have nice hair, or they generally just like them. Party manifestos are for nerds and wierdos in their opinion.
They use government declared times of austerity to become even more small minded and ultimately distrustful individuals. So what if entire families are being flushed down storm drains in India? Things are bad here they say. Why are we fighting here? Why don't we just leave all of those people to those friendly religious Nazis?
This country is great and has always been great. Stop talking about depressing stuff like Amritsar!
These are the Little Enlanders, and their numbers are growing. If we are not careful their influence will allow the reactionaries and the human parasitic filth that run the tabloids like Piers Morgan. He has started spreading his venous views on Twitter. How dare he. Why can't he just cross into the US and die in a horrific plane crash that would cause him agonising pain, and leave the rest of the passengers remarkably OK? There is still time. He and others have been calling for the deployment of the army. This is a terrible idea, beyond terrible even. For one it would send a signal to the rioters that they are winning, for another it is simply not necessary. It also sends completely the wrong message. Our country will get through this, as it does with many other things. We had riots in the 70s and 80s that didn't require martial law. It will be much the same case this time around.
Sooner or later we are going to have to ask why all this happened. And answers like, "because young people need more skull cracking and tear gasing" just won't cut it. The way these riots have simultaneously burst out merits our attention. And serious debate. Is the House of Commons up for it? Nowadays I am more inclined to say they are more likely to have a sensible debate than the public is, and that is saying something. We need a serious culture shift to make serious and contructive debate accessible and thriving again, in this toxic environment such a culture will surely struggle.
