What a brilliant and refreshing read, I’m not the only white, heterosexual, middle aged male who thinks that the world is wading through treacle. Keep it up
Another highly entertaining read, Dominic. I'm likely a few years older than you (early-teens during the three-day week), but everything you wrote struck a chord with me.
You say: "But yell at clouds I must. Because these particular clouds are intrusive and annoying." It's not just that they are intrusive and annoying, though; unchallenged, they become a permanent feature of our 'sky'.
And the sheep will go to the ballot box and vote for the status quo because it will allow the 'wrong tribe' to win otherwise. How utterly depressing the world is and how tribal and braindead people have become. Let's all vote the same way and expect something different to happen....Einsten was right, people really are mad.
If there is a club to be formed of old men shouting at clouds, put me down for founding membership.
Although I am reassured by this post that I won’t be the only member.
Anyhow I must dash as I need to drink more protein post gym as I have to clearly demonstrate to others my right wing tendencies and toxic masculinity attitudes.
Strong men create strong times and all that stuff.
Really enjoyed the article. Well observed and so true too. Duracell batteries deserve a mention. Before them there copper tops came along, I had to buy a new lamp for my Chopper every time the battery died. Damn you blue cardboard EverReady’s.
I finished school in 78 having enjoyed growing up through that amazing decade, but as I entered the world of work and even as a teenager I began to take a slight interest in politics as the new Thatcher government took on the Unions. As a result of my taking an interest in politics I got to hear that the Thatcher government were having cabinet meetings about what to do with the Boomer generation when they reached retirement.
I remember the unemployment as the last of the boomers surged into the job market in ‘79-80, (and a fantastic music scene emerging as a result), the panicked institutions struggling to cope and the church eventually conceding that shops could open on Sunday, and restrictions on pub opening hours were eased so that the consumer economy could begin and generate new employment.
Incidentally we’re not really living that much longer, .. infant deaths in particular and childhood deaths in general have declined so dramatically since the 50’s the average life expectancy just seems to have increased.
The typical age at death is still around 76 making 2021 the beginning of the end of the Boomers and the start of something they call ‘the great wealth transfer’
The fact that Thatchers government were so concerned about the ‘Demographic Timebomb’ ( something most of them wouldn’t be around to see) intrigued me, obviously raising the retirement age was a partial solution, as was an immigration policy that attracted a large enough working population to support the retirees, but ultimately they themselves would become a problem unless we had a Ponzi scheme like immigration policy.
The heath service was always going to be itself a casualty of this aging population and so living as healthy a life as possible (diet and exercise) was a priority for me, and I think that decision is paying off. ( fingers crossed ) .. making it through the fifties with no health issues is considered a positive sign of reaching old age.
Whatever plans were made by the government , I think they’ve hardly scratched the surface of the demographic problem so far, anyone have any ideas on how this pans out in the next 10 -15 years ?
I’m coming late to this, promoted by your year end look back at your first year’s output.
It all resonates totally- I think from your references that we must be near contemporaries, I being a product of ‘63, the year made famous by Philip Larkin.
I laughed at your curries of mince ‘n’ sultanas; you should be so lucky! To my parents curry belonged in that wide category known as “foreign muck”. Mince was to be enjoyed unsullied by anything other than an onion, itself an exotic visitor to the kitchen, accompanied by boiled potatoes.
Where and why did it all start to go wrong? I think back to my undergraduate years at the start of the 80s and the years that followed as a period of unalloyed optimism. We finally had a government prepared to throw off the WW2 legacy of command and control which reached its nadir of awfulness in the period from the 3 Day Week to the Winter of Discontent, a government which genuinely believed in the freedom of the individual, the superiority of the collective good of a million individual choices over the collective good perceived by the man in Whitehall and increasing prosperity as profit was detoxified and business allowed to flourish. So successful was it, although the left of course hated it and hated even more the fact that the working classes absolutely loved it, that to regain power the Labour Party had to declare that it accepted it all. Except it didn’t really.
With the benefit now of a quarter century of hindsight we can date the turning point when it all started to go wrong to that fateful day in 97 when one T Blair (yes, him) declared Year Zero and embarked on his softly softly revolution. Committed to the economic status quo to throw off his party’s appalling historic reputation his mission was gradual but wholesale cultural change which in due course would then change the economics too.
So we had bans on hunting, withdrawing access to private education to the less well off, immigration (“rubbing the noses of conservatives in diversity”), the human rights, equality and gender recognition acts, using the privatised utilities which had successfully increased their ability to supply reliably while steadily reducing prices as a means of achieving social change by directing their activities etc etc. And embedding it as a permanent revolution by outsourcing all relevant control of life to external “independent” quangos, staffed exclusively by Blairites with future leadership appointments reserved to another Appointments quango itself run by Blairites. So it didn’t matter for whom the People voted, Blairism would live on.
The impact on life was slow but insidious, just as the ambition to change the EEC into a United States of Europe was to be established slowly without the People (pesky troublesome people) noticing too much. And so it worked for a long time until the revolution was almost complete.
But of course eventually the People do notice, even when it’s almost too late. And so Brexit happened and now there is a backlash against the Blairite legacy we now conveniently call Wokery. Ironically of course the culmination of both has happened under a nominally conservative watch (it too had succumbed to St Tony as the route back to power) which never wanted Brexit and accepted Wokery; so the People are going to wreak their revenge by throwing out the “Conservative” government and replacing it with what will almost certainly be Blairism on steroids. After all, there will be no money to spend (unlike the 97 inheritance) so there will be nothing to do other than meddle in our lives even more and impose the Woke agenda more vigorously than ever. But with the People now alert, and rejecting many of its nostrums, the outcome will be interesting to behold.
Anyway, I’ve written far too much (perhaps I should start this blogging park too) so will stop. Keep up the good work!
As I read your fascinating discussion of the self-important busybodies denigrating and blocking pleasurable things, all while insisting they're improving life, I kept seeing our Canadian Prime Minister. He came into office claiming to represent "sunny ways", but it's been downhill ever since. Recent polls indicate that a majority have finally understood his nature well enough to want him gone, but he lives in a bubble that he can't see outside. His impending doom gives reason to hope for a return to respect for individual responsibility.
Than you for this, I echo and agree with every word. I spend my professional life fighting back the idiocies of "equality" which only create inequality, and my personal life trying to ignore the crowds of people telling me how to live my life and, most heinously, "be safe". Life is not safe, we're all going to die and the best we can do is live a little first.
This "tinkering" approach of making everything slightly worse, always, has been a hallmark of Britain for the last 25 years. Some of it seems to be the love of technocracy (we're experts, you're not so do as you're told) but a lot is the old political rule that it's easier to create change than improvement.
I can remember considering Britain a very un-bureaucratic country in the 90s.
What a brilliant and refreshing read, I’m not the only white, heterosexual, middle aged male who thinks that the world is wading through treacle. Keep it up
Another highly entertaining read, Dominic. I'm likely a few years older than you (early-teens during the three-day week), but everything you wrote struck a chord with me.
You say: "But yell at clouds I must. Because these particular clouds are intrusive and annoying." It's not just that they are intrusive and annoying, though; unchallenged, they become a permanent feature of our 'sky'.
And the sheep will go to the ballot box and vote for the status quo because it will allow the 'wrong tribe' to win otherwise. How utterly depressing the world is and how tribal and braindead people have become. Let's all vote the same way and expect something different to happen....Einsten was right, people really are mad.
Stop the world I want to get off.
I genuinely liked this piece too. Sincerely, Jack Riepe — Writer • Speaker • Chronic Divorce Defendant
If there is a club to be formed of old men shouting at clouds, put me down for founding membership.
Although I am reassured by this post that I won’t be the only member.
Anyhow I must dash as I need to drink more protein post gym as I have to clearly demonstrate to others my right wing tendencies and toxic masculinity attitudes.
Strong men create strong times and all that stuff.
Really enjoyed the article. Well observed and so true too. Duracell batteries deserve a mention. Before them there copper tops came along, I had to buy a new lamp for my Chopper every time the battery died. Damn you blue cardboard EverReady’s.
I finished school in 78 having enjoyed growing up through that amazing decade, but as I entered the world of work and even as a teenager I began to take a slight interest in politics as the new Thatcher government took on the Unions. As a result of my taking an interest in politics I got to hear that the Thatcher government were having cabinet meetings about what to do with the Boomer generation when they reached retirement.
I remember the unemployment as the last of the boomers surged into the job market in ‘79-80, (and a fantastic music scene emerging as a result), the panicked institutions struggling to cope and the church eventually conceding that shops could open on Sunday, and restrictions on pub opening hours were eased so that the consumer economy could begin and generate new employment.
Incidentally we’re not really living that much longer, .. infant deaths in particular and childhood deaths in general have declined so dramatically since the 50’s the average life expectancy just seems to have increased.
The typical age at death is still around 76 making 2021 the beginning of the end of the Boomers and the start of something they call ‘the great wealth transfer’
https://www.forbes.com/sites/markhall/2019/11/11/the-greatest-wealth-transfer-in-history-whats-happening-and-what-are-the-implications/
The fact that Thatchers government were so concerned about the ‘Demographic Timebomb’ ( something most of them wouldn’t be around to see) intrigued me, obviously raising the retirement age was a partial solution, as was an immigration policy that attracted a large enough working population to support the retirees, but ultimately they themselves would become a problem unless we had a Ponzi scheme like immigration policy.
The heath service was always going to be itself a casualty of this aging population and so living as healthy a life as possible (diet and exercise) was a priority for me, and I think that decision is paying off. ( fingers crossed ) .. making it through the fifties with no health issues is considered a positive sign of reaching old age.
Whatever plans were made by the government , I think they’ve hardly scratched the surface of the demographic problem so far, anyone have any ideas on how this pans out in the next 10 -15 years ?
I’m coming late to this, promoted by your year end look back at your first year’s output.
It all resonates totally- I think from your references that we must be near contemporaries, I being a product of ‘63, the year made famous by Philip Larkin.
I laughed at your curries of mince ‘n’ sultanas; you should be so lucky! To my parents curry belonged in that wide category known as “foreign muck”. Mince was to be enjoyed unsullied by anything other than an onion, itself an exotic visitor to the kitchen, accompanied by boiled potatoes.
Where and why did it all start to go wrong? I think back to my undergraduate years at the start of the 80s and the years that followed as a period of unalloyed optimism. We finally had a government prepared to throw off the WW2 legacy of command and control which reached its nadir of awfulness in the period from the 3 Day Week to the Winter of Discontent, a government which genuinely believed in the freedom of the individual, the superiority of the collective good of a million individual choices over the collective good perceived by the man in Whitehall and increasing prosperity as profit was detoxified and business allowed to flourish. So successful was it, although the left of course hated it and hated even more the fact that the working classes absolutely loved it, that to regain power the Labour Party had to declare that it accepted it all. Except it didn’t really.
With the benefit now of a quarter century of hindsight we can date the turning point when it all started to go wrong to that fateful day in 97 when one T Blair (yes, him) declared Year Zero and embarked on his softly softly revolution. Committed to the economic status quo to throw off his party’s appalling historic reputation his mission was gradual but wholesale cultural change which in due course would then change the economics too.
So we had bans on hunting, withdrawing access to private education to the less well off, immigration (“rubbing the noses of conservatives in diversity”), the human rights, equality and gender recognition acts, using the privatised utilities which had successfully increased their ability to supply reliably while steadily reducing prices as a means of achieving social change by directing their activities etc etc. And embedding it as a permanent revolution by outsourcing all relevant control of life to external “independent” quangos, staffed exclusively by Blairites with future leadership appointments reserved to another Appointments quango itself run by Blairites. So it didn’t matter for whom the People voted, Blairism would live on.
The impact on life was slow but insidious, just as the ambition to change the EEC into a United States of Europe was to be established slowly without the People (pesky troublesome people) noticing too much. And so it worked for a long time until the revolution was almost complete.
But of course eventually the People do notice, even when it’s almost too late. And so Brexit happened and now there is a backlash against the Blairite legacy we now conveniently call Wokery. Ironically of course the culmination of both has happened under a nominally conservative watch (it too had succumbed to St Tony as the route back to power) which never wanted Brexit and accepted Wokery; so the People are going to wreak their revenge by throwing out the “Conservative” government and replacing it with what will almost certainly be Blairism on steroids. After all, there will be no money to spend (unlike the 97 inheritance) so there will be nothing to do other than meddle in our lives even more and impose the Woke agenda more vigorously than ever. But with the People now alert, and rejecting many of its nostrums, the outcome will be interesting to behold.
Anyway, I’ve written far too much (perhaps I should start this blogging park too) so will stop. Keep up the good work!
As I read your fascinating discussion of the self-important busybodies denigrating and blocking pleasurable things, all while insisting they're improving life, I kept seeing our Canadian Prime Minister. He came into office claiming to represent "sunny ways", but it's been downhill ever since. Recent polls indicate that a majority have finally understood his nature well enough to want him gone, but he lives in a bubble that he can't see outside. His impending doom gives reason to hope for a return to respect for individual responsibility.
Than you for this, I echo and agree with every word. I spend my professional life fighting back the idiocies of "equality" which only create inequality, and my personal life trying to ignore the crowds of people telling me how to live my life and, most heinously, "be safe". Life is not safe, we're all going to die and the best we can do is live a little first.
This "tinkering" approach of making everything slightly worse, always, has been a hallmark of Britain for the last 25 years. Some of it seems to be the love of technocracy (we're experts, you're not so do as you're told) but a lot is the old political rule that it's easier to create change than improvement.
I can remember considering Britain a very un-bureaucratic country in the 90s.
All truth. Signed, middle aged immigrant woman, canadian citizen.