The Twin Towers of Babel

The Establishment - Image ©Elsewhere

We have arrived full-square back in the era of the Rotten Borough and the Country Squire. How this can possibly have happened in the space of just four years heaven only knows. That which is plain is that it was done with the full co-operation and voting power of those segments of the general public that stand to suffer the most. Whether through the direct effects of COVID-19 and its after-effects, which are becoming more manifest as time goes on, or through the economic damage that the devastating combination of the virus and the inevitable no-deal brexit that will ensue in the following months. Factor in the bare-faced self-interest and privileged entitlement of the central actors in this sorry drama and a period of economic disparity such that we've not seen since the Great Depression beckons.

The public school system at the heart of it all is specifically structured to reinforce class divisions by ensuring that wealth and more particularly political power remains centred firmly with those from backgrounds with sufficient family clout and cash reserves to push dullards like our current excuse for a Prime Minister to the most senior position in the land. Some of us thought wrongly and optimistically that the days of such nepotism had long been on the wane.

Dulled into a false sense of security that morality and intellect would move society forward towards a fairer and more equitable system built on the best of liberal-socialist principles that seemed to be the Zeitgeist of the era, we sleepwalked into the current disaster blinded by internecine arguments on the Left and what should have been seen as obvious crass politicking on the Right, fuelled by a cynical propaganda machine that takes its principles and methods from that tragic period of European history that culminated in WWII.

It is no accident that the current Government has outsourced enormous amounts of public money - our money - to companies run by members of the old-boy-club, usually to zero practical benefit to those who actually footed the bill or in dealing with the rather pressing situation we are currently faced with. In what twisted universe can a private equity firm quartered in the tax haven of Mauritius be contracted to provide PPE for the NHS, if not under the auspices of the network? Have they suddenly taken up sewing instead of laundering?

The current administration's blatant ignoring of, or worse, inability to absorb even the most accessible technical, logistical and epidemiological briefings and not accept the genuine offers of help from a private sector they purport to be the party of, serves only to reinforce the increasingly obvious view that collectively they are either entirely out of touch with reality, completely incompetent to hold office, or just cynically trying to reconstruct the class structure of the Eighteenth Century. And all with the collusion, consciously or not of a section of society so far beyond their pale that they appear on their balance-sheets merely as collateral damage.

Where we go from here will depend on the outcome of the next nine months. By the start of the next tax year, we will at least have the benefit of hindsight afforded by the twin towers of our self-penned disaster movie. A winter of viral discontent made so much worse by this bastard scion of Cameron.