How are you? How do you feel right now? How do you feel most days? Do things feel different, somehow? More frightening? More concerning? More real?
Some days, I feel as though I’m living in a globally scaled hostage situation, one which is hurtling towards its predictable, hideous end. The world I thought I would live in until old-age, or a mistimed step in front of a bus, is fragmenting; bigger and bigger pieces are being ripped off and ejected forcefully into screaming gales that whip my skin raw, while thunder clouds grow and curl around the perimeters of what I understood to be normal and sane. I feel a pervading sense of doom, and an acceleration into what may be the next stage of our civilisation. It is not a stage I relish.
If you’re reading this, the chances are that you have a similar feeling, at least some of it, some of the time. A lot of us use the phrase “clown world” to describe some of the ridiculousness and societal hysteria that has become so commonplace: over-educated youths screaming that we’re “genociding” them if we don’t cater to their sense of identity; the British Broadcasting Company trying to convince children that Britain is a country of “migrants” that has had a significant population of Sub-Saharan heritage since Roman times (oh, Horrible Histories, how the greats have fallen!); environmental protestors demanding we stop eating meat, driving cars, and just generally living, while they themselves live in gorgeous, draughty, country houses and drive diesel SUV’s to the theatre.
I don’t mind people making arguments I disagree with, or living lives I think are detrimental to their wellbeing. It’s necessary to have different ideas swirl around and clash at times, otherwise we would become quite stagnant. I’m mostly conservative in my views and cautious in my actions, but if everybody were like me, very few risks would be taken. Very few innovations would be concocted. Nobody would play Rugby Union for fear of neck injury, and then we would be bereft of watching large, hulking men crashing into each other in the mud and I’ve lost my train of thought. Oh dear.
My point is that a balance is healthy. A plurality of personalities is healthy. What we have right now does not seem healthy to me. Perhaps I’ve not been paying attention too closely. I’ve been elbow deep in nappies for the last year and a half. Having a child makes your world tiny and huge in the same moment. Everything is more intense, but nearly all you think about is the little squirming bundle of joy in front of you. One greasy politician is the same as another. I’ve only recently realised that the UK’s government, Conservative in name at least, has decided that we can no longer have normal gas boilers installed in our homes from 2030. We must instead use more expensive, inferior heat pumps. From the same year, we will be unable to buy internal combustion engine cars, also known as cars. We will instead have to fork out for electric vehicles, which take about 4 years to charge, cannot be refilled when stranded on the hard shoulder, and have batteries that do more environmental damage when disposed of. There’s also the small issue of extracting the rare metals needed in the first place, but whoever let a few sad African child miners get in the way of progress?
These technical issues aside, why do politicians, who half the country hates at any given moment, get to constrict our choices to such a degree? Why do they get to control out we heat our homes, or move from place to place? I suppose the short answer is, we let them. I understand we vote people in charge to make decisions that impact our lives, but the idea that they can interfere so deeply with domestic matters like central heating honestly frightens me. What also frightens me is how stupid these decisions are if you were to apply any normal government-favoured metric to them.
If we can’t heat our homes properly, people will die. Others will get sick and be a dreaded drain on the blessed NHS. I’m sure it won’t be long before the rich, insulated, metropolitans in charge ban open fires and wood-burners too. If we can’t travel as effectively as we can with petrol or diesel cars, there will be a negative impact on the economy, which has already been – to use a technical term – mostly in the sh*tter since my childhood. Effectively banning cigarettes, the latest jolly jape from Mr Sunak, will reduce tax income for the country. Smokers cough up (pardon me) more than they cost. But no, the fags must go. Daddy knows best.
Some days, I feel fleeting moments of hope, mostly when I read something about the Blade Runners destroying the ULEZ cameras in London (God bless them, I really mean that). Even that has been enough to scare the cossetted overlords. I really do think rebellion is needed, just to try to re-set the balance a little bit. The more we yield to, the more they can do against us. I don’t even view this as some big, terrible, globally orchestrated conspiracy. I just think that if somebody is ideologically driven enough to believe that they know best, and therefore not only has the right, but the moral need to control others, then they will do this. The more tools they have to do this with, the more they can control people effectively. As I said previously, I have my views about every dark and dusty corner of life. I do not, however, think that I have the right to make you live out my own Approved Methods. Individual autonomy and privacy matters. We are losing both, but there is still hope. Well, I hope there is still hope. In the meantime, I think I need to find some sort of anti-net-zero advocacy group, and not because I hate the planet, but because I love the people who live on it and with it.
I sense it too. Everyone does. At its most mild it is walking on eggshells. At its worst I wonder if I need to be thinking about leaving the country. I no longer believe we can vote our way out of this.
The good part is all
Our problems are of our own making. Poor governance for the most part. Which means...it can be fixed.