The Easter holiday week came up trumps for a true to form British Bank holiday yet again.The freak warm weather of March had fired hopes that a stay at home Easter might be wonderful and enable everyone to say they had helped save the planet by not taking to the air or even car. Too bad. That’s not the way things turned out but that's OK as it enabled a retreat to normal grumpiness.
The country,-and especially its rulers,- had a bad run in to the Spring break. The government public relations machine had gone absent and all sorts of banana skins were being slipped on. The British whinge factor had wound itself up into a noisy whine and the Gummnt was to blame for all manner of evils like taxing grannies (always an emotive subject even though here no state pension only grannies were affected and on the whole most grannies didn’t do at all badly in the Budget. Nobody seemed to worry much about grandpas) and for recommending unwise virgins to fill their petrol tanks so as to mitigate the effects of a possible looming tanker drivers’ strike. It wasn’t bad advice to anyone unable to figure out things for themselves and in reality probably spiked the union's guns and averted an Easter walkout but there was no credit for that. The media itself hasn’t of course come to the aid of Her Majesty’s Government. Nothing to do with it being miffed at the past year’s spotights on some aspects of its behaviour and integrity of course.
For those for whom normal grumpiness wasn’t enough, teachers had the offer of a whole Bank Holiday at one of their two union conferences. Where better to be rather being with ones’s family and even having some good relaxing fun, than at a union conference? It’s no coincidence that those who can’t wait to immerse themselves for a whole long weekend in such a gathering tend to be those to whom anything veering anywhere near the least unsociable edge of the pink, never mind the blue zone is unthinkable. No surprise therefore that there were calls for a people’s revolution and opposition to all change of any kind, especially the weeding out of their weeker brothers and sisters who blight the whole lifetimes of successive generations of children. It was“ No!” to everything. This is from people entrusted to give the nation's children a quality education. Scary, but what can one expect from a union conference hall on a wet Bank Holiday?
Elsewhere on the miserabalist scene the Olympic spirit is alive and well. It includes demands for extra money for turning up to work and even more for a few bits of flexibility and purchased “goodwill”. National enthusiasm for this event is patchy enough anyway and the usual grumps, “Think of all the schools, hospitals and libraries we could have for the money” are doing their disgrunted rounds amongst the less enthusiastic.
INFORMATION FOR FOREIGNERS: Forget pomp and circumstance, leading the world or invading you,thrusting for business etc, British politics are obsessed schools and hospitals. Many major political announcements are made not in Parliament but in carefully selected schools and hospitals with equally carefully selected staff and pupils or patients momentarily in the background. Visions of the future, economics, transport and suchlike gain very little traction. If schools and hospitals aren’t top of any politician’s agenda they may as well pack up. The other agenda now being heavily pushed by the union-dependent Labour party and its even more dependent leader, Miliband Minor, is the old favourite of class warfare. It’s a dangerous and thoroughly divisive theme and its perpetrators well know what they are doing. It is cynically deliberate and amongst other things undermines any ethos of success being desirable or even deserved unless those involved are footballers, pop stars, talent (?)show contestants or lottery winners. Those are considered OK and praiseworthy. They deserve the loot. People who have worked hard for their wealth, or whose families have historically earned it are beyond the pale and are to be scorned. All good for the socialist cause but not for igniting a burning passion in people to do well in life.
Out in the Shires all sorts of things are making them see red,-or blue. Incinerators have joined high speed railway lines,(or even low speed ones if they inconvenience bats or newts), new roads, local coffee shops, all kinds of development and indeed almost any change to anything. Who cares about the future needs of the growing population? “Say No To....” campaigns are the thing. These are particularly vociferous in areas inhabited by large numbers of bored corporate early retirees to whom the opportunity “to be somebody” again is too much to resist. Sadly many have forward vision limited at best to the extent their future life expectancy. Fighting to retain even the inadequate past is more exciting than promoting things they will probably never see. The best of the visionary Victorians were determined to leave legacies for future generations. They designed and built capacities way beyond their immediate needs. They understood the need to do that. Too few of the UK's older generation who have a heavy responsibilty and duty in that respect currently have any interest in the long term or using their vast experience of life to enrich it. It's much more satisfying to be grumpy and fill in the next word on those “Say No to....” banners.
Amongst all this gloom though the cavalry is at hand. A real break in the clouds. It’s the celebration of another Great British Disaster,-the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. Move over Dunkirk, the Charge of the Light Brigade, Gallipoli and other favourites. Right now the Titanic is the Big Thing. Bookshop windows are decked with countless different tomes and magazines, TV reporters have scoured the land for “ My great grandfather/mother was on/just missed/ couldn’t afford the ticket/was nowhere near but knew someone who was on, the Titanic.” Night after night television programmes scour the wreckage for more “new“ angles, most of which look remarkably and often ghoulishly familiar. Fred Olsen Line have risen and hopefully will not sink to the occasion They have a commemorative voyage on the Balmoral. Another ship,-from New York,-will tonight meet it at the site of the original sinking. Will an iceberg again spoil the party?
The UK has a lot to look forward to this summer,-the Royal Jubilee, the usual June absenteeism generating social and sports fest of horse racing, tennis and rowing, its footballers not winning in Europe and of course the Olympics once all its operatives have been bribed not to down tools. There's a chance of almost no work being done at all in some quarters. There’s lots to be grumpy about and if all that isn’t enough there’s always “Schools and Hospitals, Schools and Hospitals” to fall back on.
