I have no good idea why it has been so long since I posted on here. Perhaps I am losing curiosity, or that I no longer feel anything I have to say is worthy of an audience. We have had the house up for sale, largely as a consequence of herself deciding to change employers, which implies a change of residence. So, one way or another, she has been working elsewhere since September. The first job turned out to be horrid for a number of reasons but mostly for accumulated stress, much of which was attributed by herself to the incessant nature of the role. The new employer is even further away from 'home' (i.e., where I live) but a far nicer situation. Yet that too is now declared somehow not good, or not good enough. I suggest that at least some of the problem is internal. But then it is extremely difficult for people to recognise what it is that they want; self-analysis seems to require forms of honesty and of internal discussion that is simply too difficult (for many). But then in general I see an increasing proportion of the population actually unwilling to do Thinking, classing that as Work - and, therefore, not to be done when not at work. I say this misses the point entirely.
An equivalent logical failure was exhibited (and discussed previously) when She Who Must Be Obeyed, was told at a school on a sink estate in Manchester that, education was worthless. The logic train went: We pay nothing for education, so it is valued at nothing, so it is worth nothing, so we don't want it because (obviously) something worth nothing is not worth having. The state thinks differently, that free education makes it possible for everyone to have equal opportunity. The evidence that it creates equality is difficult to find, but there are examples of success. Those examples generally point to other circumstances being necessary for education to turn into future success and in turn this general position ought to provide politicians with copious reasons to make education — or our attitude and access to it — fundamentally change. We would most certainly be very much worse off as a society if we were required to pay for it. I have written thoughts on this elsewhere. I.e. earlier.
Britain is in a slump of sorts. We are not quite in recession (two adjacent quarters of negative growth of the economy) but the numbers are so close to zero that we could call the economy stagnant with some precision. Elephants not recognised as nearby include the effects of having left the European Union, for which we must blame ourselves and our politicians collectively and individually. We have just had the local elections and a few associated by-elections. The turnout was very low almost everywhere and the media reaction continues to build 'stories' from very poor materials. In Blackpool South the turnout was 38.5%, about half of what might vote at a general election, so one might suggest (I do suggest) that many more people expressed apathy than voted and many more people who might normally vote decided that this was a waste of time in May 2024. So press coverage of the huge swing of 26% towards Labour (genuinely a landslide, a massive shift) is, in my eyes, wasted comment.
The Conservatives (in power, for those not in Britain) are salting the earth in some respects. One example is the cancellation of the northern branch HS2 (the bit I thought worthwhile doubled the track in the place where there is under-capacity most of the year); the purchased land has had those sales cancelled in ways that make renewal of the project very much (even) more expensive. That is, the politicians have made sure that Labour cannot overturn their decision. But then so much of what we see within both major parties is that they are a loose association of conflicting ideas and attitudes, many of which are quite extreme. This means that, while a party attempts to appeal to the general middle ground, its constituent parts are each chasing something that the middle ground would consider extreme and, therefore, probably unsupportable. So while any individual MP is elected to represent their constituents, the party position is an entirely different set of circumstances and attitudes, such that much of the time any individual MP is representing a very small group of hard-headed determined (and loud) people with a definite agenda - one with which the electorate in general does not support. This does not bring us toward consensus. Since the first pass the post (FPTP) system means that the vast majority voted for someone not elected (or no-one at all, having not voted), each MP actually stands on behalf of people who didn't want them or don't care. This does little to cause there to be responsibility. Transferable votes would change this: I vote Green as 1st choice, but the 1st choice pile is too small to continue so my vote is moved to my 2nd choice, say Liberal. And so on, such that I either voted for the winner or the immediate loser, which also hugely increases the chance that I did vote for the successful candidate. That would make a change, though there are several systems for PR, proportional representation, some of which I find very unattractive. For example, one of these systems has a list of regional candidates somehow ranked; that would mean we would find it hard to reject a specific long-term candidate. I would rather (very much so) have my MP chosen on an entirely different basis more like that for Jury Service. But then I like just that system for the Upper House, to be filled with people professionally knowledgeable picked by the system not by parties and able to call upon a wide range of expert advice so as to make sensible decisions on our behalf.
DJS 20240513