It’s All Downhill From Here….

Hello all. Hope you’re enjoying life, you know, looking at bees and butterflies and countryside and blue sky and a fridge full of food while you’re charging your iPhone or something.

I was engulfed by a wave of despondency while watching the news.

It was one thing after another.

Rape. Murder. Drugs. Corruption. Child abuse. Economic disaster.

All my lectures make me think there is no hope for the future – the bees are dying. The water is polluted. Food supply on its way out. Soil degraded. Energy running out. Space running out. Rainforests being dug up for cattle pasture and palm oil.

What are we doing?

Everybody is talking, but nobody is saying anything.

We’re wrapped up in social media and ‘fails’ and ‘vines’ and ‘first world problems’ and all of this crap that doesn’t matter, while around us our planet is falling apart and no-one is listening.

Everything for the quickest. Everything for now. It’s a fundamental part of human biology that we grab whatever we can, while we can. Look at the ‘obesity crisis’. We’re hard-wired into it. We’re not good at future planning, really. Not long-term. Sure, you might have a pension pot, but do you know where your food and oxygen will be coming from by the time you retire? I don’t. We’re good at focussing on the little things while watching the most important bits crumble around us. Fiddling while Rome burns.

My specialism is in the environmental side, but every time I turn on the TV there’s terrorism and war and what I think of as immediate, direct crises (most of the shit going down is the fault of humans; but it’s more shocking when you see it, properly, unfolding in front of you, as you do with war and famine and disease). More threats. It will only get worse. We know from history that dissatisfaction breeds discontent and creates a vacuum that some extremist form of leadership will only be too happy to fill. These gaps are getting more frequent. Moth-eaten holes in a very tired, worn out comfort blanket that no longer serves its purpose, outgrown and outdated.

‘A stitch in time saves nine’, but it’s like the needle hasn’t even been invented yet.

We face so many problems, nobody knows where to begin, and nobody wants to be the first to jump.

We need to push together, rather than all pull in different directions and shout over one another like bad radio signals, tuning each other out.

Corruption, denial, power races, terrorism, war, resource stakes, both excess and poverty… what’s going to happen to us? Seriously. I’m scared.

I’m using a bag for life while nuclear waste is dumped in the sea, North Korea’s waving missiles about, and China opens three new coal-fired power stations a week.

Aargh.

Yours despondently, which is really quite unusual,

Georgie

In Other News: Still On The Subject Of Everything Dying

So yes, we’ve established that we’re all going to die. Veganism, honestly, would be a way to substantially mitigate some of these effects, but no-one is going to do that while they can still buy about half a cow for ten quid, are they?

Anyway, one of my friends appeared to be rather confused by the concept of veganism. He didn’t understand why I was laughing so hard at his observation: “If we all ate plants and no animals, there would be more food for everyone, because we wouldn’t have to feed the animals. There, I’ve solved all the world’s problems! We will all become vegans! Or, well, vegetarians – because I still want to be able to eat onions.”

I laughed so much.

“What?” he said.

View of a Politician

Hello dear readers.

Don’t worry, this isn’t political party-wise or anything. I don’t like politics. I just see a whole bunch of problems really. How I wish Cameron and Clegg and Miliband – and all politicians, past, present and future, might read this! But they won’t. They probably have better things to do, and anyway, what do I know? I’m not a politician and therefore my views are irrelevant. But I’m getting ahead of myself here. (This is also based on UK politics so apologies to any American friends.)

The election is four months away and already I am sick to death of election crap being rammed down my throat.

And it’s not even ‘Look at us and how good we’re going to be’; it’s all ‘Look how shit the opposition is!’ Well, that sums it up. We’re in such a state that even the parties are finding it a struggle to come up with positives about themselves.

What’s this about an EU referendum in 2017? That’s what the Tories promise. The problem is, the general public are looking at immigration and nothing else; the idea of a referendum terrifies me because Joe Bloggs doesn’t know the half. I don’t know much. But I do know our entire trade would collapse, the farming industry would go bust, and there would be absolutely zero conservation without the EU; no subsidies for farming, trade, water, infrastructure, health and education; and not to mention that immigration probably wouldn’t change because our border controls are so incredibly lax anyway. Nooooo. The EU isn’t all good, but it’s too late now, we’re in too deep. We need European Union whether we like it or not, just like the Scots need the Union with Britain (go Scotland, yay!).

I can’t find any party that I wholly agree with. Some are closer than others. I once told a Conservative councillor that I dislike all parties equally, but I corrected myself; groups such as the BNP and UKIP don’t even deserve to scrape the sludge off the bottom of David Cameron’s wellies after he very reluctantly visited the Somerset Levels when they spent months underwater. And then blamed the floods on the Environment Agency.

But I’m still going to vote, because, as Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg recently put it, (quote!) “It’s like at Nando’s, asking someone else to put in your order and then you get something you don’t want.” The smartest and most relevant thing I think I ever heard a politician say.

Because your average politician seems to me to be like a public schoolboy who never left home; sometimes well-meaning, but more often ill-informed, completely out of touch, and interested in the perks and salary rather than improving the economy, environment, or life for the average person. Politics as a career, rather than a calling; politics for its own sake, and nobody else’s.

The way to get people interested in politics – because we appear to be in the midst of a vast wave of apathy here in the UK, particularly among young voters – is to be honest with them. To be personal but not condescending. To not punch them in the face, Mr Prescott. To not call them plebs, Mr Mitchell, or bigots, Mr Brown (whether they are or not, you’re not helping yourself there). Politicians should be helping people to understand how a true, positive solution to a problem works, and showing they actually care about the issues raised. They need to allow people to ask questions or submit causes for concern, and actually listen to their feedback. Be honest if a policy doesn’t work, don’t just try to cover it up or smear the other side – don’t treat us like we’re daft, please. Help people to understand that the best policy isn’t necessarily for the quickest short-term (often financial) gain, but that we need to invest now to ensure we actually have a food supply, countryside, energy, water and so on in future. EU policies should be made more relevant and transparent, displayed factually and without bias, and information about the EU’s entire role in UK politics (the publicly-perceived ‘good’ and ‘bad’ bits) made common knowledge. People should be able to object to EU policies. Most of all, parties need to show people that the government has the country’s best interests at heart, not their party’s or their evanescent political leader, and that winning the next election is not the be all and end all of their aims. Because at the moment, everything is money-grabbing, attention-seeking, short-term, short-sighted chaos; the government has never seemed so detached from reality for the majority of the population, and has never seemed so opposed to the general public and its needs. Building on green belt, investing in coal, raising taxes, freezing wages, increasing inflation, ‘red tape’, student loans, tuition fees, the education farce, the crippled NHS, political scandal, and constantly squeezing people to the degree that food banks are springing up like dandelions after rain.

Come on, Britain. We can do it. Let’s make it a proper democracy. Let’s stand for what we believe in and vote for – well, if not what we believe in, then the closest thing to it, that’s what I’ll be doing until something better comes along, grr… And despite all our gripes, which will be ably expressed, we will be queueing down at the toll booth in the rain, because that is what we do. We carry on!

Yours stoically, if rather grumpily,

Georgie

In Other News: Erm, a Little Bit Rude

My Grandma has dementia. At present, she’s on a dementia ward. It is a very surreal place. She has her ups and downs, but we visited this week and she was kind of OK. She’s very tiny and underweight and has big thick glasses and so her eyes look truly enormous. And she was lying on the sofa with Mum next to her, and suddenly Grandma stopped talking and jerked up and gazed with really intense massive-eye contact at Mum. Really intense. And then sort of slumped back again. Mum opened her mouth and then suddenly went “WERE YOU JUST FARTING?” and Grandma looked really pleased with herself. “Yup,” she said happily.

Intense eye-contact farting. That is a new one.