Sunday 1 April 2018

We won't be fooled again ?

     Last night I watched a play This House at the Edinburgh Festival  Theatre. It was about events in the Houses of Parliament in the 1970s when the Labour Party struggled on for four and a half years running a minority government until the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher was elected in 1979. This House was a poor play full of baseless, hackneyed clichés (if that's not tautologous), about the poorly educated, but well meaning  - as the author of the play, James Graham, seems to imagine them -  Labour Members of Parliament of that time and while their Conservative counterparts are represented as patrician, powerful, and sophisticated. Of course, the latter figures little in the play for Tories are understood to know the score while their Labour opponents are seen as people who are naive about the ways of the world. The play had been performed at the National Theatre in London, before coming to Scotland and it was awarded five star ratings by some national newspapers. This confirmed much of what I have thought about the culture of the Westminster political/media bubble.
     Our current government proudly proclaims the United Kingdom to be the 5th or 6th wealthiest economy in the world. For some reason this has made an impression on me and after watching the play and after leaving the theatre last night I began to think of what might have befallen our community in the United Kingdom  if it had not achieved such a high level of wealth. In my reverie, I conjured up the following awful fantasies that might befall our country if it was not the fifth or sixth wealthiest on our planet:-

         We would not be dealing with the probably now impossible task of counteracting the threat global warming will have on the Earth.

         We would no longer be members of a wider supportive human community like the EU. 

        We would be persuaded that immigrants have caused all our economic problems.

          There would be a need for a state of  austerity and our public services would be cut to the extent  that :-

          The losers, (as the competitive capitalist philosophy demands there must be), including the weak, the agèd, the poor, the homeless, children and young people in care, people with mental health difficulties, the disabled and other vulnerable folk in our community would have had their support - personal, practical and financial - withdrawn.

         Our National Health Service, the greatest achievement of any community anywhere in the world would have its services decimated and most of what was left would be provided by private companies who wished to make profits from people's ill-health.

         We wouldn't have enough homes for families and they'd become homeless and often forced to leave their own communities because they couldn't afford to live in them.

        Our national education system that provides equal education opportunities for all would have been broken up and most schools would be run by private companies making profit from our children.

       Many of our universities would be struggling to survive and their students would have the prospect of lifelong debt for tuition fees.

         Our fire, police and ambulance services would no longer have the resources to serve their communities.

         The prisoners in our prison system would no longer be provided with help to be rehabilitated and would spend most of their time in their cells in solitary confinement.

         Community libraries would be closed and those remaining would have resources and services curtailed.


          There were many other images that I can't recollect now but  when the bustle of reality roused me from my dwam I was relieved to find none of these things had come to pass. How could they in such a wealthy nation? 






April 1st, 2018, Milton Street Edinburgh
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Postscript : The Who at  at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYMD_W_r3Fg





      

      



     

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